September 2024

Regularly reading your Bible is an essential discipline if you want to consistently glorify God with your business. But we are bombarded with so much information throughout the day that the nuggets of eternal truth that could have a positive impact on our lives and our work can easily get washed away and replaced in our minds with the urgent and important details of day-to-day life. This is especially true for business leaders.

Thankfully, God has given us some additional disciplines to help us implant the truths in His Word into our minds, hearts, and lives so that they can bear fruit in our walk, our work, and our businesses. In the article linked below I focus specifically on meditating on what you’ve read, scripture memorization, and applying God’s Word.

All of these disciplines are aimed at the same goal — making the scripture that we read fully available to us in our daily lives. This happens because:

– We haven’t forgotten the words and concepts

– We more deeply understand what they say and mean

– We recognize how they apply to our world today

– We signal to our brains that this is important to us

Some of this will naturally happen if we are diligent about reading the Word, and especially if we are reading thoughtfully and attentively (and not just checking “Bible reading” off our daily to-do list). But spending a few more minutes each day going deeper with these additional disciplines will multiply the impact that our daily reading can have on how we think, speak, and act.

Read the full article here to learn more about these disciplines and how to build them into your regular routine.

What does Bible reading have to do with running a business?

God is the Creator. He made man in His image, so we are also creative. God put man to work from the very beginning and gave him dominion over creation. We were designed from the beginning to create, build, and manage. Business leaders reflect this in our work creating, building, growing, and managing businesses. 

Much of the Bible is focused on helping us see how to live all aspects of our lives in a way that pleases Him and glorifies Him, including through our work. In his teaching, Jesus often used parables, telling stories of businessmen acting in ways that reflected God’s ways and glorified Him, or of other businessmen acting in ways that conflicted with God’s ways and dishonored Him. Throughout the Bible, God makes clear that the righteous (those that live according to His ways) will be blessed both in this life and in the eternal life to come.

The Bible is the only authoritative and infallible source for knowing God and what He desires from us. Anything we can learn about pleasing and glorifying God will come from the Bible, either directly or indirectly. We can learn much from listening to preachers and teachers and authors, but if we really want to know what God says, we must read the Word He has given us, the Bible.

God’s Word is also the source of all wisdom. All of it is profitable for training in righteousness that we may be equipped for every good work. Reading the Bible can give us encouragement and hope, even when going through challenges, as it reminds us of God’s great power and promises. It also reminds us of what truly matters, so that we can focus on the most important things.

Read the full article here, including some tips for how to make Bible reading a regular discipline in your life.

Dictionary.com lists three definitions for the verb “discipline”, all of which are important in growing spiritual fruit in our lives:

1. “to train by instruction and exercise; drill.”
2. “to bring to a state of order and obedience by training and control.”
3. “to punish or penalize in order to train and control; correct; chastise.”

As Christians seeking to honor God with our lives and our businesses, spiritual disciplines are activities we regularly undertake to develop spiritual knowledge, order and obedience in our lives. We should welcome correction as we seek spiritual maturity.

In his book Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life, Donald Whitney defines spiritual disciplines as “those practices found in Scripture that promote spiritual growth among believers in the gospel of Jesus Christ. They are the habits of devotion and experiential Christianity that have been practiced by the people of God since biblical times.”

Read the full article about spiritual disciplines and the seven specific behaviors we will be writing about in the coming weeks here.