Editor’s Note: Read the previous articles in this series below!
“Workism” and God’s Design for Work
The Impact of the Fall on Work
The Motivation for Work
Protecting Yourself and Your Family at Work
Guarding Your Heart at Work
In our ongoing series on work, we’ve explored biblical principles that can help us balance work and family in a way that honors God. The Bible teaches that work is a God-given blessing, but due to the corruption of sin, it must be approached with diligence, intentionality, and wisdom to protect your family.
In our first article, we discussed the stakes for failing to balance work and family and God’s design for work in Genesis 1. Next, we looked at the effects of sin on our work and how that can lead to frustration and heartache for us and our families. In our third article, we explored the Christian’s proper motivation for working: honoring Christ. In our fourth and fifth articles, we considered how a crucial step in balancing work and family is guarding our hearts at work.
In this final article, we’ll look at pursuing wisdom in balancing work and family and I’ll share practical actions that helped me in my almost twenty-year career in tech.
Balancing Family and Work: “Pursue Wisdom”
In God’s infinite wisdom, he hasn’t given us a step-by-step recipe for applying the Word in our lives when it comes to balancing work and family. Everyone’s work situation and family situation is different. As we seek to honor him in our work, he doesn’t give us legalistic rules, like: “only work these specific hours during the day.”
Instead, he gives us wisdom to apply the Bible to our individual situations. As we seek to practically apply biblical truths, we need to be pursuing spiritual wisdom from God on a daily basis:
For the Lord gives wisdom; from his mouth come knowledge and understanding; he stores up sound wisdom for the upright; he is a shield to those who walk in integrity, guarding the paths of justice and watching over the way of his saints.
Proverbs 2:6-8
If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him.
James 1:5
So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.
Psalm 90:12
Below I will share some practical things that have helped me in the working world over the past 20 years. Many of these are not Biblical commands; they’re practical suggestions. You and your spouse should discuss what makes sense for your family.
Preparation
Walking with the Lord and seeking His help are absolutely crucial to prepare you to enter the workplace.
Be in the Word and Prayer Every Day. Being in the Word and in constant communion with God helped keep my walk with the Lord on track in spite of the many ups and downs of my job.
If Possible, Do Your Bible Reading Before You Go into Work. For me, infusing God’s Word into my heart before entering the workplace helped me to keep a biblical perspective throughout the day.
Pray for Wisdom to Navigate Work and Family in a God Honoring Way. I needed God’s help to have to understand how to practically keep a God-honoring approach to my work and family.
Pray That God Would Help You Find Satisfaction in Your Work. If you put God first and don’t look to work as an idol, only then will you be able to find satisfaction in your job from God.
Pray for God’s Blessing on Your Work. God is sovereign over all things, including the outcome of your work. Do your best, but give the results over to God.
Pray for God’s Hand of Protection to Be on You at Work. We need God’s help to withstand the attacks of sin and temptation at work.
Communication
Keeping clear lines of communication open with your spouse is essential to balancing work and family.
Share What’s Happening at Work. Work is a significant part of our lives, so our spouses should know the highlights and lowlights of our jobs.
Take an Interest in Your Spouse’s Work. Whether your spouse works in the home or in the workplace, make sure that you’re showing interest in their work as well.
Discuss Your Work/Family Balance Regularly and Make Adjustments as Needed. Always keep the lines of communication open with your spouse about what is or isn’t working with your current approach to work/family and make changes to strike the right balance.
Prioritization
Understanding your most important priorities at work and at home will ensure you approach your work intentionally.
Clearly Identify Your Top Priorities. If you have a mason jar filled with big rocks and sand, the order you put the rocks and sand in the jar matters. If you put the sand in first, the rocks won’t fit. If you put the rocks in first, the sand will fill in around the rocks and everything will fit in the jar. Identify and protect your big rocks at work and plan your week around those priorities first. Less important things will fill in around your priorities. If you don’t identify and protect your big rocks, you may need to work longer hours to get those things accomplished as you’ve spent your time throughout the day on sand.
Intentionally Structure Your Time. Related to the above point, once you’ve identified your top priorities, you should map out how you will accomplish those priorities over the coming days, weeks, and quarters. If you reverse engineer what needs to happen to accomplish your milestones, you can plan the work with accuracy. I would spend an hour every Monday to map out my week and several minutes every morning mapping out my day. That allowed me to schedule time to accomplish my top priorities without the days, weeks, and quarters getting away from me.
Align on Non-Negotiable Family Priorities. Every family has different priorities, but aligning with your spouse on what the top priorities are for your family is vitally important. For example, having dinner as a family each night could be a priority. If your kids play sports, not missing their games could be a top priority. Whatever your family priorities may be, it’s critical that you and your spouse are on the same page about them.
Measure Your Days to Gain a Heart of Wisdom. Time with your family is precious. There’s a sobering statistic that 90% of the time a child spends with their parents in their lifetime has elapsed by the time they turn eighteen. Keeping the scarcity of time with your children in mind will allow you to weigh the true costs of overworking.
Optimization
More time working is less time with the family, so looking for efficiencies at work can result in more family time.
Regularly Assess How You Work. With the teams I’ve led in the past, I regularly talked about the two sides of work: what you did and how you did it. “What you did” refers to what you produced and the results you achieved. “How you did it” relates to the actions you took to achieve your results. Someone could achieve great results, but the way they got there was messy and time-consuming. You should always be assessing how you do your work to become more efficient. Can you be more productive if you do things a different way? Are there inefficiencies in your processes? Saving time at work can result in more time with your family.
Get Feedback From Your Boss. Humbly seeking feedback from your boss on ways you can improve can help you identify areas that you could be more efficient. Your boss likely sees across a wide set of working styles and can give you feedback on ways to be more productive.
Get a Good Night’s Sleep. By nature, I’m a night owl and like to decompress at night. However, if I don’t get enough sleep, I feel groggy and sluggish throughout the next day. I’m not able to work as efficiently and my work takes longer. Getting a good night’s sleep allows me to bring my best to my work and be more productive during work hours.
Delineation
Being deliberate in creating clear lines between work and family will help you achieve balance.
Set Boundaries on Work. There will always be busy seasons that crop up at work, but aiming for specific times when you will stop working for the day or week will at least keep you from unintentionally drifting into overworking.
Be Present with Your Family. Work can easily intrude on family time—that includes actual work tasks like email or phone calls, but it can also include mental space that work-problems occupy when you’re with your family. I’ve ruined many vacations by checking work emails and getting caught up in thinking about work while I should be enjoying time with my family. I now delete my work email app from my phone on vacations to avoid the temptation of not being present.
Make Time for Fellowship and Serving at Church. As you strive to balance work and family, don’t neglect time fellowshipping and serving at church. You and your family will be tremendously blessed spiritually by the time you spend with the body of Christ.
If you work as unto the Lord, guard your heart diligently, and seek wisdom daily, you can rest in God’s provision for you and your family. Scripture contains many words of encouragement of comfort for the person blessed by God with work and family.
Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain life that he has given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun. Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might.
Ecclesiastes 9:9-10
There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God, for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment?
Ecclesiastes 2:24
Blessed is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in his ways! You shall eat the fruit of the labor of your hands; you shall be blessed, and it shall be well with you. Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house; your children will be like olive shoots around your table. Behold, thus shall the man be blessed who fears the Lord.
Psalm 128:1-4
