My Devotionals

Better is open rebuke than hidden love. Wounds from a friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiplies kisses. (Proverbs 27:5-6)

According to the Harvard Business Review, “By roughly a three to one margin, [employees] believe [that corrective feedback] does even more to improve their performance than positive feedback.” In other words, most people accept the wisdom of today’s proverb that an “open rebuke” is “better” than “hidden love.”

There’s just one problem. While the vast majority of us prefer constructive criticism to pats on the back, “only 5 percent believe managers provide such feedback.”

So, what can you and I do to encourage others to correct us in love? Here are four ideas.

#1: Offer the gift of open but loving rebuke to others. This can be tough for Christians who feel the call to be kind. But you and I aren’t called just to be nice. We’re called to love as Christ loved us (see John...

Like an archer who wounds at random is one who hires a fool or any passer-by. (Proverbs 26:10)

In 2012, the CEO of Yahoo was fired just months after getting the job when an investor discovered that the CEO had lied on his résumé about holding a bachelor’s degree in computer science.

The CEO lost his job. The company was forced to pay out $7 million in severance. And Yahoo’s employees lost a leader and direction.

Who was to blame for all this destruction? The CEO, of course. But also, to quote the Wall Street Journal, the "botched vetting" of the CEO by Yahoo’s Board of Directors who seem to have been in a rush to fill the position.

That’s a dramatic example of what can happen when we fail to heed the warning in today’s passage. The manager who hires too quickly is bound to hire a “fool.” She is “like an archer who wounds at random,” harming herself, the “fool” she hires, and the rest of her team.

How can...

It is a trap to dedicate something rashly and only later to consider one’s vows. (Proverbs 20:25)

How many times have you and I fallen into the “trap” this proverb is warning us against?

I’ve said “yes” to projects at work only to later renegotiate the deadline I could have never hit. I’ve agreed to volunteer at church only to grumble and complain about the commitment on Sunday morning.

Sound familiar?

You and I need practical ways to avoid the trap of saying “yes” too quickly and flippantly. Here are four practices that typically work for me.

#1: Delay every “yes” by at least 24 hours. It is really hard to say “no” if you feel pressured to give an answer to a request for your time the moment you’re asked. So, the next time you’re asked to dedicate your time to something, do whatever you can to delay responding for at least a day. Buy yourself some time by saying, “Let me sleep on...

One who is slack in his work is brother to one who destroys. (Proverbs 18:9)

There were many causes of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of 1986. But a culture of “slack” work was undeniably a contributing factor. In his book, Midnight in Chernobyl, Adam Higginbotham explains that:

The quality of workmanship at all levels of Soviet manufacturing was so poor that building projects…were forced to incorporate an extra stage known as ‘preinstallation overhaul.’ Upon delivery from the factory, each piece of new equipment—transformers, turbines, switching gear—was stripped down to the last nut and bolt, checked for faults, repaired, and then reassembled according to the original specifications, as it should have been in the first place.

That’s an extreme example of what Solomon says in today’s passage—namely that mediocre work “destroys.”

Of course, it’s unlikely that poor performance in your job is going to lead...

Commit to the Lord whatever you do, and he will establish your plans….In their hearts humans plan their course, but the Lord establishes their steps….The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord. (Proverbs 16:3, 9, 33)

In his terrific memoir, On Writing, novelist Stephen King says, “I used to tell interviewers that I wrote every day except for Christmas, the Fourth of July, and my birthday. That was a lie. I told them that because…I didn’t want to sound like a workaholic dweeb…The truth is that when I’m writing, I write every day…not working is the real work."

I deeply resonate with that last line for two reasons. First, because I (like you) love the work God has given me to do. Second, because rest is an act of faith—it’s a way of trusting that the world will keep spinning even if I’m not doing the spinning!

Yes, Scripture frequently commands us to hustle and work hard (see Colossians...

When there are many words, wrongdoing is unavoidable, but one who restrains his lips is wise. (Proverbs 10:19)

Hamilton might be the fastest-moving musical of all-time. Sung at an average of 144 words per minute, the show is more than twice the speed as average-paced productions like Phantom of the Opera, largely because of how much the show’s protagonist, Alexander Hamilton, has to say.

When Hamilton first meets Aaron Burr on stage, Burr is blown away by how much Hamilton can talk. So he offers Hamilton some free advice: “Talk less…Fools who run their mouths off wind up dead”—a not so subtle foreshadowing of the day Hamilton’s “many words” will lead Burr to kill him in history’s most infamous duel.

That’s a good, albeit dramatic, case study of what God is warning us about in Proverbs 10:19. I love how the New Living Translation renders today’s passage: “Too much talk leads to sin. Be sensible and keep your...

Dear children, keep yourselves from idols. (1 John 5:21)

We’ve seen a few helpful definitions of idolatry throughout this series. Let me offer my own: An idol is anything you can’t live without. It’s anything other than God that functions as your deepest source of joy.

And so, if we want to keep our work from becoming an idol, we would be wise to voluntarily practice self-denial—resting from the good gift of work as a means of proving to ourselves that God is the only thing we ultimately need.

Pastor Joe Rigney whose book Strangely Bright inspired me to write this devotional series says this about self-denial: “Biblical self-denial is the voluntary giving up of good things for the sake of better things…[it] keeps our legitimate love of earthly things [like work] in check. We enjoy them when we have them. But we don't covet and crave them….We can voluntarily give them up for the sake of knowing Christ Jesus our Lord.”

That brings us...

Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. (Colossians 3:1-2)

Last week, I argued that paradoxically one way to ensure your work doesn’t become an idol is to enjoy your work most fully as a means of better appreciating the “betterness” of Christ.

But how does that advice match up with today’s passage? Isn’t Paul telling us to ignore “earthly things” like work and focus our mind on exclusively heavenly things? 

Not exactly. A few verses later Paul explains what he meant by “earthly things” saying this: "Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry” (Colossians 3:5-6). 

The word Paul used for “earthly things” in verse 2 is the exact same word we translate...

“You have put more joy in my heart than they have when their grain and wine abound.” (Psalm 4:7)

We’re in a series exploring four principles for enjoying our work without turning our jobs into idols. Last week we unpacked Principle #1: Insist that Jesus is better. Today we turn to Principle #2: Delight in your work freely and fully.

Now, I know that may seem oxymoronic. After all, if Jesus is better than my job, shouldn’t I try to love my work less, not more? I’d argue that’s impossible to do and foolish to try for two reasons. 

First, God created you to enjoy your work. Work was God’s first gift to humankind in the Garden of Eden (see Genesis 1:26-28) and one of the many gifts he has in store for us on the New Earth (see Isaiah 65:17-23). So, to try to love your work less is to fight against God’s design.

Second, the more you enjoy God’s gifts, the more you can appreciate the “betterness” of God. You see this...

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. (Matthew 22:37)

There’s a tension we see throughout Scripture. 

On the one hand, we are invited to delight in creation and our work with creation. “Every good gift” is from God (James 1:17) given to us “for our enjoyment” (1 Timothy 6:17). And that includes our work! Ecclesiastes 2:24 says “a person can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in their own toil” because those good things are “from the hand of God.”

These verses are good examples of what I call the “delight in creation” passages of Scripture. But on the other side of this perceived biblical tension, we find the “delight in Creator” passages that command us to love God above all things. This was summarized most succinctly in Jesus’s articulation of the Greatest Commandment above.

So, we are called to delight in the gifts...