Work, work, and more work

This morning I talked to friend — “How’s it going?” I routinely asked.

“It’s Monday…”

We both knew what he meant by that — “The weekend is over, rest is gone, work has begun, the drudgery is back.  It’s Monday.”  You know exactly what those two words mean.

For many, work is no friend, but a necessary evil.  For others, work is a mistress that consumes our affections (with our joyful participation) so that we can avoid other responsibilities.  And most of us struggle to maintain a biblical perspective on work, as multiple comments to me after yesterday’s sermon indicated.

Here are a few more resources that I’ve seen that may help you cultivate a more biblical perspective on work and labor (remembering that you don’t have to be paid in order to work or have a job):

• I found Tom Pennington’s sermon, “Don’t Forget Who You Work For” to be quite helpful on this subject.
• Lance Quinn provides about 20 principles for work from Proverbs in “Work Hard and Don’t Be Lazy!”
• Bob Thune wrote a series of four brief articles on “A Theology of Work” for The Gospel Coalition.  I found them generally to be quite helpful and balanced.
• I now subscribe to Kevin DeYoung’s blog.  He is an articulate, biblical thinker — and he makes me think.  And I seldom disagree with him.  His article “The 4 P’s of Business” interacts with the topic of work from a different perspective (what is the responsibility of the businessman in running his business?), but it is also a worthy contribution to this discussion.
• John MacArthur:  “A Theology of Work” and “Work:  A Noble Christian Duty” (Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3)
• John Piper’s chapter “Making Much of Christ from 8 to 5” in Don’t Waste Your Life is especially helpful (free PDF download).