Ploductivity: A Practical Theology of Work & Wealth

by Douglas Wilson

Living in the presence of God means that you are living in such a way as to invite or seek His favor. The Sabbath and the tithe illustrate well the trust we are to display in this. Would you rather work hard for seven unblessed days, or work hard for six blessed days? Would you rather try to live on a hundred percent of an unblessed income or on ninety percent of a blessed income? Would you rather have smaller barns blessed or larger barns unblessed (Luke 12:20)? “Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it: Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain” (Ps. 127:1).

As we look for the blessing of God, we need to be mindful of what kind of blessing we are looking for. What I am talking about is Deuteronomic blessings, the kind of blessing that increases both your basket and your store (Deut. 28:5). I am talking about the kind of blessing that lands on your productivity. “And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us: And establish thou the work of our hands upon us; Yea, the work of our hands establish thou it” (Ps. 90:17).

Pray that God establish the work of your hands, and not just the work of your heart. This is not a facile “health and wealth” approach because God is not to be treated as some kind of a vending machine. God’s blessing includes both temporal victories and temporal defeats, and evangelical faith knows how to handle all of it. Some subdued kingdoms and received their dead back to life again, while others were flogged and imprisoned (Heb. 11:33–39). Some lived in palaces and some in caves, but faithfulness knows how to live in either place. At the same time, although the faith can thrive in times of persecution, we are not to pray for persecution. We are instructed to pray for quiet and peaceable lives (1 Tim. 2:2). A Christian should be able to be content whether he is out in the cold, or inside by the fire (Phil. 4:12). But even so, everything else being equal, the apostle Paul knew enough to come in out of the rain. We know which way to go, which way to pray, which direction to set our sights as we work. So with h...

Finitude is one of our glories. God

He will say well done to pipsqueaks with a couple of fists full of nanoworks. We sometimes marvel at those dedicated engravers who can carve the Lord’s Prayer on the head of a pin, but we must always remember that our Creator put our whole planet on the head of a pin.

Now if we were placed in this world in order to work before the Lord, and if the Lord ordained good works beforehand for us to do, and if He intended us to do good by those good works, this means that we do not have to have the big picture in order to work productively and faithfully. This is good because we are too small to have the big picture.