My Devotionals

For the one in authority is God’s servant for your good….for the authorities are God’s servants, who give their full time to governing. (Romans 13:4,6)

Let’s face it: The brand of Christianity isn’t so hot right now. By and large, non-Christians perceive us to be judgmental and unloving, increasingly retreating into subcultural enclaves to sit on Facebook to rage about “the culture” rather than engage it.

Here’s something you can do today to help solve this problem: Celebrate the good in a non-Christian’s work. More than that, tell them that you see God working through them to do good in the world.

That’s what we’ve seen throughout this series on common grace! God gives good gifts of provision and vocational skill to “the righteous and the unrighteous” (see Matthew 5:45). And he works in this world through believers and non-believers alike as we see in Romans 13:1-6.

And so, while we will not agree with...

The Lord is good to all, and his mercy is over all that he has made. (Psalm 145:9)

I was talking with a friend recently who explained how he felt called by God to quit podcasting because of how much anxiety it was causing him.

Every one of this guy’s friends was telling him that he needed the podcast to grow his business. But he shut down the show anyway. And then, his business exploded.

Reflecting on this series of events, my friend said, “It just goes to show that God rewards doing business his way.”

“Ummmmm, not so fast,” I said.

I went on to lovingly explain to my friend that it may be true that God’s blessing was tied to what he perceived to be an act of faithfulness. But not necessarily. While there are certainly eternal rewards tied to working “as unto the Lord” (see Colossians 3:23-24), temporal rewards are not always connected to our righteousness. To quote my college statistics professor, “Correlation does not imply...

When a farmer plows for planting, does he plow continually? Does he keep on breaking up and working the soil?...His God instructs him and teaches him the right way. (Isaiah 28:24,26)

I was recently asked to speak to a group of pastors about Redeeming Your Time, my book that examines God’s Word and bestselling time management books for wisdom about how we can be maximally productive for God’s glory.

Before I took the stage, a pastor spoke and passionately called the audience to ignore “secular” business books. The essence of the man’s message was that, “The only book you need is the Good Book.”

When it was my turn to speak, I knew I couldn’t bite my tongue. So I addressed the pastor’s comments head on and said, “We might not ‘need’ these ‘secular’ business books per se. But God in his common grace has given great wisdom to Christians and non-Christians alike and we would be foolish not to learn from...

Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you. (Luke 6:27)

Last week, we began exploring how our work should be uncommonly shaped by the reality of common grace: the goodness God shows to “the righteous and the unrighteous,” his friends and his enemies (see Matthew 5:45).

Today, we’ll see that common grace should lead us to be good to our enemies.

Interestingly, that’s the context of Matthew 5:45. Jesus said, “I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you…because [God] makes his sun rise on both evil and good people, and he lets rain fall on the righteous and the unrighteous” (Matthew 5:44-45).

You see it right? Jesus is saying that we should do good to our enemies because of God’s common grace! God is so good that he longs to do good to “the righteous and the unrighteous.” And he’s calling you and me to be the conduits for his blessings.

Now, you may not have anyone at work you’d...

[God] causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. (Matthew 5:45)

When the Apostle Paul said in Ephesians 2:8 that “it is by grace you have been saved,” he was referring to God’s saving grace: the grace that, through Christ, saves human beings from their sins.

Separate from saving grace is the doctrine of God’s common grace: the goodness God shows people regardless of their relationship with or faith in him.

That’s what Jesus was referring to in today’s passage when he said that God “causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good” (Matthew 5:45). Christ was saying that, while God is the source of “every good and perfect gift” (James 1:17), God chooses to give those gifts to “the righteous” and “to ungrateful and evil people” (Luke 6:35).

So, while only Christians are recipients of God’s saving grace, every human being is a constant ...