Faithful vs. Willful Comes Down to a Question of Identity

by J.D. Greear

Achieve, work harder, be a go-getter, pursue. These concepts which are so familiar to entrepreneurs are not inherently bad but have the potential to knock us on our backs if not kept in the right context. And that context includes a prioritization of rest, trusting the Lord to accomplish his work. JD Greear shares with us the importance of recognizing how faithfulness to the Lord’s call both to work and rest is a key component to living in our Christ-centered identity as faith driven entrepreneurs. 

It's easy for those with a passion for business or for entrepreneurial work who are good at it, to get so consumed in it that it becomes their entire identity. 

Jesus told his followers that they were to be part of his body, a local church. Jesus never approved of Lone Ranger Christians. If you love Jesus, he wants you to be committed as a member of his body with deep relationships and opportunities for service in that body. You are a friend. That's another one of your roles, and you need to be a good friend. And that takes time to develop you. You can have also can have responsibilities to yourself, and that is to stay healthy physically and emotionally. It's easy to sacrifice one of these identities in order to get success in business as if that's your only identity. But that's not success. It is impossible to call yourself successful. If you live that way, God has not called you first to success. He's called you first of faithfulness and faithfulness means faithfully fulfilling all the roles that God has given you. And when you embrace that, what you're going to find is that this crushing burden is lifted off of your shoulders. 

In Psalm 127, the psalmist writes, unless the Lord builds the house, those who built it labor in vain, unless the Lord watches over the city. The Watchmen stays awake in vain. It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest…the point is, that when you are walking with God and when you're just focused on being faithful, you have the capacity to take the rest that you need because it's not all on you. You see, here's the dilemma of the song. If the watchman is asleep, well, then who's guarding the city? If the contractor is asleep, who's building the house? And the Psalmist smiles very sweetly when you ask that. And he says, easy, God is rest. The Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. He's saying that even the best watchman and even the best contractors have limitations and God promises to be the one who fills in the gap, because of those limitations, to make up the difference. If we trust him, listen, entrepreneur or business owner especially, it is ultimately not your responsibility to guarantee the safety of the city. It's not even your responsibility to make the crops flourish. It is your responsibility to be faithful and to faithfully fulfill the roles he's given you. And after you've been faithful, you can lie down to sleep, whether literally or metaphorically, and you can leave the rest in his hand. God designed you so that you needed sleep. You needed a Sabbath to take a day, a week to rest, to turn yourself off. And during those times, you worked to remind yourself daily and weekly that you are not God. 

Hey, good news. The weight of the city is not on you, which means you have the luxury of resting. I've heard it said like this: in Christ, all you can do is all you can do. And the good news is in Christ, all you can do is enough.

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[ Photo by Joshua Eckstein on Unsplash ]