“Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men” Colossians 3:23

“rendering service with a good will as to the Lord and not to man” Ephesians 6:7

I was having a conversation with someone the other day about work and the concept of true professionalism in pursuing whatever work in which we may find ourselves. I am a huge believer in pursuing excellence in all we do because I believe we are designed to do so, and it pleases God when we operate as designed. Moreover, achieving true excellence requires dedication, diligence, hard work, perseverance, and sacrifice. Unfortunately, excellence seems to be becoming rarer in America—especially as I observe younger Americans—and my friend and I were lamenting that trend. If you are suspect of such a claim, do a quick google search of “waning excellence in America” and all sorts of articles and studies appear. There are irrefutable trends to the negative and Christians should think about such change considering biblical truth.

During the conversation, the concept of “work-life balance” came up, which has become a quite popular subject of debate in our modern culture. The Human Resources (HR) professional definition of work-life balance is this: “work-life balance refers to the level of prioritization between personal and professional activities in an individual’s life and the level to which activities related to their job are present in the home.” Hmmmm, this somewhat tortured definition seems awfully “me-centered” and not very God-centered. It seems considering one’s work-life balance has emerged over the last few decades in response to the conventional wisdom of the culture, which is dangerous for truth-bearers. According to the culture, many people are simply miserable, so perhaps it must be because we work too hard. The logic argues that people do not have enough balance of things other than work to keep them from being miserable. Therefore, solving one’s work-life balance becomes a holy grail of happiness of sorts because ‘finding” a “right” work-life balance is touted as the path to a stress-free life. The goal for the wise 21st-century person is to strive for that balance and once one finds it, wham, you have utopia!

Of course, no one can define with any sense of credibility or authority the “right” work-life balance, which means each individual then gets to define, or even demand, the “right” work-life balance for themselves. It is then no surprise that conflict erupts between employer and employee as they are now forced to negotiate on this utterly subjective point.

Sadly, like so many ideas that rise from within the culture and apart from biblical wisdom, striving for the right work-life balance is a waste of time. The search will never yield the results promised. A “right” work-life balance cannot save a loveless marriage, nor rescue catastrophic communication breakdowns between poorly prioritizing parents and their rebellious kids. However, God’s Word can save marriages and does fix the most egregious of parenting failures. This is because God’s Word always addresses what is in the human heart.

God is always challenging the motivations of our hearts. Great behavior emanating from less than honorable motives will not produce the good result a person may want, nor will it in any way please God. However, a rightly oriented heart—one that is choosing to act from a deep motivation of love for God—will bear both temporal and eternal fruit. Allow me to explain what I mean in looking at three things: work, marriage, and parenting.

Work

God designed us to work, and we are supposed to work for Him. He is our ultimate boss, so working for him means we are not putting conditions on the work he providentially provides—whether in quality, quantity, or level of effort. We are to do the task at hand to the very best of our gifting and ability, which means sometimes we must work overtime, or work harder than anyone else around us, or labor thanklessly, or even fruitlessly, for a time. If we are living by faith, we trust that we are where we are supposed to be and we give it our all. Then we trust the results to God. If we are loving the Lord with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our might as Deuteronomy 6:5 commands, we can work in an unfettered way and trust the Sovereign of the universe to arrange for the “right” work-life balance.

“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.  You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.  And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.  You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.  You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes.  You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

In my own work-life of forty-one years, I have seen God move me through seasons wherein there have been times of maximum intensity—and arguably unforgivably bad work-life balances—interspersed with times of less job demand, but far more family needs to attend to. And even as God was graciously leading me, I succumbed to varying levels of anxiety throughout. But as I grew in my maturity to trust God, and therefore to cease trying to make a situation something other than what He desired for me, I came to see His goodness and trustworthiness! God loves healthy marriages, and He loves parenting that honors Him. So, He will make a way for your work-life balance if you totally trust Him born of love, and “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men” (Colossians 3:23).

Marriage

As a husband, there is one thing that my wife Cynthia needs to know. She needs to know that I love her more than anything else in the world, except for God. As such, she is my number one priority, and every decision I make must account for that right priority. This idea is not in conflict with what I have written above about work. Scripture is both clear and complementary and Ephesians 5 commands me to love Cynthia with a Christ-like love: “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (Ephesians 5:25). This means nothing in the temporal world is more important than tending sacrificially to my marriage. Money, fame, power, prestige, or achievement must never compete with my priority to love Cynthia as Christ loves the church. And trust me, men, our wives read our hearts nearly as well as our supernatural God does, so there is no attempting to fool them. What I have experienced in my own marriage of nearly 40 years is that when I am called to extraordinary duty—bad work-life balance—Cynthia becomes a cheerleader and helper because she knows and trusts my heart. Working long hours is never the real issue. The real issue is the “why” behind working long hours. A disingenuous “why” breeds resentment. A noble “why” engenders support and prayer and a coming alongside.

Parenting

Cynthia and I have been greatly blessed with five children who are now all adults. Our “baby” turned twenty-one this past January! Praise God they are all followers of Christ and living lives of integrity and worth. I been asked more than a few times what the secret was to the successful parenting of these five, especially because being a military family, we moved twelve times in twenty-six years, and I was often gone on long deployments. According to conventional wisdom, such turmoil is not a formula for success. Well, I was never a perfect parent, nor was Cynthia. However, what we did get right was very similar to what I said above about marriage. We believed all along that these precious children were our next highest priority after God and our marriage. We believed that priority deep in our hearts and we demonstrated that true belief in our actions. I will tell you that the kids all knew. There is simply no fooling the ones made in God’s image whether young or old. They knew we would die for them and so they did not resent the harder times as the world would tell them they should have. Instead, they rooted for us and learned to pray for us.

The bottom line of this blog is simply this: your heart motivations matter and none is fooled when one’s motivations are not what they should truly be. God looks at the heart!

“But the LORD said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the LORD sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.” 1 Samuel 16:7