Audio Transcript
Ambitiously successful people rarely wait to cash in on a few big moments. They look for those big moments, yes. But if you look behind the key moments, you find that success is built day by day. They focus their life’s attention on one steady goal. They work. They endure. They plod and they work toward one end. They are never content with being busy. Today on Ask Pastor John: Daily vigilance for lifelong productivity.
Today is Labor Day in the States, a holiday to celebrate American workers. As we take this break from our daily work, it is a good time to ask why we work every day. Aaron writes in. Aaron is a busy, aspiring church planter, a 29-year-old husband and father of two toddlers. “Pastor John, I admire you. I look at your life, this podcast, the books you have written, the sermons you have preached, and the way you seem to use every minute for God’s glory. I want that. But I cannot have it right now. We have two little ones at home and I feel like I am constantly fighting off distractions just so I can get the bare minimum done. I read productivity books, but I feel like a sluggard compared to you. How do you stay urgent, Pastor John? How do you manage the daily grind without losing your passion?” Aaron, that’s a great question. Here’s how Pastor John answered a similar question in 2016.
1. Measure by Christ
I think the first thing that I should say is this: Beware of wanting to be like me. You don’t know the sins of my life. You don’t know how much I have neglected. You don’t know what the costs have been. The real question is how to be the fullest, most God-centered, Christ-exalting, Bible-saturated, loving, humble, mission-advancing, justice-seeking, others-serving person you can be. Don’t measure yourself by others; measure yourself by your potential in Christ. That’s the first thing that I felt I had to say because of the way the question seemed to be posed. Now, there are a lot of other things to say. Let me tick them off.
2. Pursue Great Goals
Give 10 percent of your focus in life to avoiding obstacles to productivity, and 90 percent of your focus to fastening onto great goals and pursuing them with all your might. Very few people become productive by avoiding obstacles to productivity. It’s not a good focus. That’s not where energy comes from. It’s not where vision comes from. People write books about that and make a lot of money, but that’s not where anybody gets anything worthwhile done.
Getting things done that count comes from great, glorious, wonderful future possibilities that take you captive and draw your pursuit with all your might. And then all that other stuff about getting obstacles out of your way — that’s the 10 percent of brute work that you have to do.
3. Focus on Your Chapter
Third thing I want to say: Life comes to us in chapters that are very different from each other. If you are married and have little children, that’s a chapter that needs a great deal of focus on the children. If God wills, there may be another chapter for you with different possibilities, different potentials, and different priorities. The Lord will be pleased if you focus on the chapter you’re in and live according to the demands of that chapter with all your might.
4. Find a Life Goal
Give serious thought and prayer to what your big, all-consuming life goal is. The biblical expression of mine is found in Philippians 1:20–21. This is John Piper, not just Paul, talking:
It is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.
So, Christ magnified in living and dying, spreading a passion for that Christ into the lives of others — that’s the goal. That’s the big, overarching goal. So, find yours, and make it work in everything you do.
5. Get Gospel Accountability
Get a sense of gospel-rooted accountability before the living God. That is, understand the gospel and the spiritual dynamics of how it works. You don’t labor to get into a right relationship with God. The gospel dynamics don’t work that way. You labor morning till night with all your might because you are in a right relationship with God. Philippians 2:12–13: “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for [ground, basis, foundation] it is God who works in you.” That’s the gospel dynamic.
By the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that [had already taken up residence in me and was at work in me]. (1 Corinthians 15:10)
And if you get that order out of whack, you may accomplish a lot in life and go straight to hell with all your books and all your buildings.
“You don’t labor to get into a right relationship with God. You labor because you are in a right relationship with God.”
Let the Lord Jesus intensify this sense of accountability on the last day with the parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14–30). The master gave to one person five talents, to another person two, and to another person one. He came to call account, and the person with one heard those awful words: “You wicked and slothful servant.” I don’t want to hear that word. I want to experience the counterpart to those words from Luke 12:42–43: “Who then is the faithful and wise manager, whom his master will set over his household [I often thought those words when I was a pastor — I was over a household], to give them their portion of food at the proper time? Blessed is that servant whom his master will find so doing when he comes.”
I would be sitting, preparing my messages or writing something or leading the family in devotions or something. And I would say, “Come now, Lord Jesus, and you’ll find me doing it.” That’s the opposite of a wicked, lazy servant, who buried his talent and didn’t do anything with it. So, that’s number five.
6. Add Urgency to Accountability
Add to your sense of accountability before God a sense of urgency. “We must work the works of him who sent [us] while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work” (John 9:4). Or Ephesians 5:15–16: “Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of [literally, redeeming] the time, because the days are evil.” Or Colossians 4:5: “Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time.” There’s urgency in this. The days are evil and night is coming.
7. Work Wholeheartedly
Do what you do with all your heart. Be done with half-heartedness. Oh, so many people limp through life, doing what they do with half of a heart, half of their energy. If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing with your whole soul. Ecclesiastes 9:10: “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might.” Jonathan Edwards’s resolution “Resolved, to live with all my might, while I do live” probably had more impact on me in the last thirty years than anything else, in his resolutions at least. Those words took hold of me a long time ago — oh, yes, Lord.
The opposite of this: Fourteen times in the book of Proverbs the word sluggard is used. Isn’t that an ugly word? What’s a sluggard? Proverbs 20:4: “The sluggard does not plow in the autumn; he will seek at harvest and have nothing.” You don’t want to be a sluggard.
8. Don’t Quit
Many chops fell a huge tree. Man, this is so crucial because of how quickly we get discouraged after one thousand chops and the tree’s not down yet. I just finished listening to Robinson Crusoe. You may say, “What in the world was John Piper listening to — a teenage novel?” I never heard some of these classics, so I’m listening to them. Robinson Crusoe is marooned on an island all by himself. He wants to escape and needs a boat. The mainland is 45 miles away. There might be cannibals over there, and he’s not sure he wants to go, but he needs a boat.
“Don’t measure yourself by others; measure yourself by your potential in Christ.”
He’s got nothing else to do, so he’s going to make a boat. He finds a tree. This tree is five feet, ten inches across at the bottom (I think). He has an axe. It takes him twenty-two days to chop this tree down, fourteen more days to chop the branches off, and a year and a half to finish the boat with an axe. I’d chop on a tree for a day or two days and say, “This tree is not coming down. I’m done with this tree. I’m going to work on some little tree.” So, there’s the key: Many chops fell a big tree. Well, you want to do something great? Don’t quit. Keep chopping.
9. Be Cheerful
Be willing to do many things in life cheerfully that at first you don’t want to do, that don’t come naturally to you. There is no worthwhile role in life that does not require you to do things you don’t at first feel like doing or that only lets you do what comes naturally. So, be cheerful. Be cheerful in doing the parts of your life that you do not at first prefer to do.
10. Find Your Love
And lastly — I tried to push it to make it ten, so it would be a nice round number. Lastly, find your niche — that is, find the thing you do love to do. With all your weaknesses and all your strengths, put most of your energies and your love there for Christ and his kingdom.
