American culture loves productivity! Just scan through Amazon and Instagram and you will see umpteen courses, planners, coaches, and books all giving you the secret to boosting your productivity.
We need to post more, make more, do more than we did yesterday. Productivity can be an idol that causes us to worship busyness and motion in an unhealthy way. As we know through our Younique journey, God designed us to thrive in a healthy rhythm of rest and work.
While we cannot idolize productivity we do need to appreciate that God values work that creates and multiplies. We just need to revisit the Parable of the Talents in Matthew 25 to be reminded of God’s desire for us to cultivate and grow what he has given to us.
The parable doesn’t elevate destructive competition, unethical business practices, or workaholism. The parable does create a picture of God being generous and trusting, providing more than we need and giving us the freedom to use it for his glory and our good.
What God does expect is that we give it a go, invest and try, look for ways to expand and grow. The parable doesn’t set up an expectation of return in a specific formula. Rather, what is raised up as honorable is the effort to multiply.
God calls us to be faithful with a little, and when we are faithful with a little we often find ourselves being entrusted with more. We are invited, expected, to offer our skills and talents in addition to our wealth and the resources (however big or small) to work that creates value for ourselves, our community, and the church.
Tip 68: Work is Multiplication.
God is a producing God, a God who creates and multiplies, and as people created in his image we are to also multiply in his name. Productivity must be related to the first great command to love God with all that we are, which includes being faithful with what he has entrusted to us.
Being productive also means we are thinking not only of ourselves but of others. 1 Peter 4:10 connects stewardship of what God has given us to the love we show others: “As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace.”
This connects yesterday’s insight that our work is our service with the expectation that we use the gifts we have received and multiply them.
When we view productivity and multiplication through the lens of servant leadership we live into God’s design for us as partners in his redemptive work and recipients of both satisfaction and joy.
Please send me your questions, challenges, and suggestions as we continue in the 90-Day Goal Together. I look forward to hearing from you and sharing the journey with you.
Check out our YouTube playlist with daily videos to help you crush your next personal goal.
