Audio Transcript

We talk often about glorifying God when things are hard, glorifying God in suffering and loss and even in death. Philippians 1:20 is a key text for us, one we’ve addressed now over thirty times on the podcast, for good reason.

But what about glorifying God when things in life are good — and especially when your business is flourishing? That’s our question today from a listener named Matt. “Hello, Pastor John. Thank you for this podcast! How should a Christian Hedonist who is successful in business and a prominent leader speak in front of others about their story? It seems like many ‘Christian business leaders’ make their success story all about themselves and then mask it all in a thin Christian wrapper. So what is the best way to authentically and humbly recognize a position of leadership and success, but to speak of it in a way that makes God look great?”

I really appreciate this question, especially the way it’s phrased there at the end, because I think that is the goal of everything in life: to make God, Christ, look great. But I am going to push it back one step. Matt asks about how a successful person in a leadership position may speak so as to make God look great. I’m going to push it back and say that almost everything hangs on how a successful person in a leadership position thinks and feels about his success and leadership. I really do believe that if a person’s thinking and feeling about his success and his work and his relationships and his leadership are deeply biblical and spiritual, then the speaking and all the more or less subtle forms of communication will take care of themselves.

Let me try to explain what I mean by right thinking and right feeling when it comes to one’s success and leadership. There are five ways to think and, I think, five ways to feel about our life’s achievements, if God has given us success and given us (therefore) leadership.

Patterns of Right Thinking

First, you will think rightly about the nature of what success is. You will not assume the world’s definition of success, though there will be overlaps. Essential to your definition of success will be your goals in life. These will not be identical with the world’s goals. Success is reaching goals; that’s what success is. And so, choosing life goals is prior to seeking success. Yours will include pleasing your Creator and the Lord of your life, getting in sync with his goals in the world. This will involve doing good for people in the hope of showing Christ’s supreme worth. This will imply pervasive integrity, honesty, justice, generosity, the true good of clients and customers and employees and community.

“Absolutely everything that makes this business flourish is a free and undeserved gift of God.”

Second, you will think rightly about the fact that absolutely everything that makes this business flourish is a free and undeserved gift of God, including the raw materials, the skill of employees, the social conditions, the weather, the managerial successes and processes, and your own life abilities, disciplines. Acts 17:25 says, “[God is not] served by human hands as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.” Life and breath and everything are a gift of God. You will think rightly about that.

Third, you will think rightly about the relationship between hard work and divine blessing. You will know God is decisive in all blessing, but you will not make the mistake of thinking that he does not use human means and human giftedness. “The horse is made ready for the day of battle, but the victory belongs to the Lord” (Proverbs 21:31). Both. Your preparations are essential, but God is decisive. Or 1 Corinthians 15:10: “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 is with me.” So yes, you worked. Yes, you are gifted. Yes, that’s crucial. But all of it — all of it — is owing to grace.

Fourth, you will remember that God is sovereign and governs the world for his wise purposes. The smallest turn of affairs is ordered by God. “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father” (Matthew 10:29). Every sparrow dies, and it dies by God’s will. “The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord” (Proverbs 16:33). This conviction is essential to right thinking about success.

Fifth, you will think rightly about the fact that as an undeserving sinner, not only is every good thing that comes to you a gift of God, but it comes to you, as his child, undeserved, and owing to the purchase he made by the blood of Christ. Most Christians don’t make this connection between the death of Christ and the blessings they receive in this life. They think only in terms of forgiveness. But consider Romans 8:32: “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” In other words, everything that comes to God’s undeserving children is owing to God’s not sparing his Son but giving him up for us. Every gift that we have from God in our business life, in our leadership, comes with a price tag: the blood of Jesus. We need to think rightly about that.

Patterns of Right Feeling

Now, what about feeling? If you’re going to speak about your successful business and your leadership in a way that makes Christ look great, you will need to be transformed into the kind of person, from the inside out, who actually feels the greatness of Christ — not just knows it, but thinks it and feels it, and all the things that go with it.

First, you will feel thankful for everything. Ephesians 5:20: “[Give] thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus.” 1 Thessalonians 5:18: “Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” If you take those two texts together, it says “for all things” and “in all things.” Few feelings are more winsome, humbling, others-oriented than thankfulness. This cannot be pretended; it is a feeling. It is a feeling before it is words. Do you really feel thankful? That will make a huge difference in how you talk.

“Do you really feel thankful? That will make a huge difference in how you talk.”

Second, you will feel not just thankful for all good things; you will feel undeserving — really undeserving. This is huge. Do you? Your understanding of sin will be existential in your business life. You will know that every morning that you wake up, and you don’t wake up in hell, is a good morning, an undeserved morning. If your doctrine of sin does not bring you to this point, you need to return to thinking rightly about the issue of sin and go deeper into Scripture. We must pray. This doesn’t come naturally. We must plead with God that the truth of our own fall and nature as children of wrath (Ephesians 2:3) will cause us to feel undeserving of every single good that comes to us.

Third, you will feel amazed. This is the upside of undeserving when grace rises to meet every degree of guilt we feel. The feelings of thankfulness and being undeserving now overflow with amazement, as if a million-dollar check landed in your mailbox every single morning — only better. The grace of God is amazing.

Fourth, you will not feel proud but humble — not just think it but feel it. This makes all the difference. First Corinthians 4:7: “What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?” Or here’s James 4:13–16. This is spoken directly to businessmen and women:

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit.” . . . Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.

In other words, it’s arrogant to say, “I’m going downtown today to do some business.” You don’t know if you’re going to make it downtown. The sovereignty of God and the grace of God over every detail of our lives, James says, cancels boasting and causes us to feel humble.

Fifth, you will feel an overflowing joy that inclines you to love other people and be generous with them. Second Corinthians 8:2: “In a severe test of affliction, their abundance of joy . . . overflowed in a wealth of generosity.”

If you have these five aspects of right thinking and these five aspects of right feeling about your success and leadership, there will be an overflow of right speaking to make Christ look great.

It’s not a long drive — just thirty minutes — but it’s an intense one. I’m always a strange mixture of anxious and excited. It’s normally a Monday afternoon, and my destination is a place the three of us call “The Wardrobe.”

The three of us are Ray Ortlund, T. J. Tims, and myself. And “The Wardrobe” is what we call Ray’s new study, not because it’s in any way cramped, but because for the three of us it represents a gateway into a better world. Monday afternoon is when the three of us typically get together to pray and catch up, and specifically to confess our sins.

The New Testament repeatedly shows us the need to be transparent with one another. John urges us to “walk in the light” (1 John 1:7), James to “confess your sins to one another and pray for one another” (James 5:16). The former charge appeals to us: we all like the idea of living in transparency. It’s what excites me as I drive to Ray’s house. But the former comes as a result of the latter — in other words, walking in the light comes as we confess our sins. That’s the part I always feel a little anxious about. Transparency can’t happen without confession. We need to practice James 5:16 in order to enjoy 1 John 1:7.

Doorway to the Light

Being honest about our sins requires being honest not just with God, but with one another. We might think this latter dimension would be the easier of the two: if we’ve already come clean to God, surely it’s no big deal to come clean to each other? But I find the opposite to be the case. God already knows the worst about me. I’m never admitting something he doesn’t already know about — more fully than I do. But with Ray and T. J., that’s not the case. I can really lose face by confessing my sins to them.

There are other reasons we can find confession to another person difficult. Being open makes us vulnerable. At times in the past, I’ve risked some openness with someone and been met with a blank stare, or a really insensitive response. Sometimes it’s hard to know if we want to risk transparency. But we’re actually missing out if we don’t. Both John and James show us the benefits:

If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. (1 John 1:7)

Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. (James 5:16)

Real, deep fellowship is birthed through this kind of honesty. James even says there is healing that takes place. The very act of confessing our sins, and entrusting them to the knowledge of believing friends, is already doing something in us. It pours health and light into the broken and darkened places of our hearts.

How to Hear Another’s Sins

I’ve found this fellowship, healing, and light in my times with Ray and T. J. All three of us are in some form of full-time pastoral ministry, which I know can be isolating for many pastors. But I’ve never felt so deeply known by others before. It’s embarrassing to confess what I must confess, for sure. But it is also liberating. I don’t have to pretend. I’m not sitting on something, wondering if it’s going to be discovered. They truly know the worst about me (and I about them!), and it makes our continued affection for each other all the more precious.

I’ve been trying to think through how we got here — what marks of these two men have helped me be so open with them.

Be Unshockable

Neither Ray nor T. J. has collapsed in shock when I’ve confessed something to them. I think it’s because they know their own hearts well enough. When we know our own depravity, it’s hard to be surprised at someone else’s.

“When we know our own depravity, it’s hard to be surprised at someone else’s.”

I think this is why Paul describes himself as “the foremost” of sinners (1 Timothy 1:15). I doubt he’s suggesting that, out of all people, he has the greatest capacity or worst track record when it comes to sin. When someone is aware of just how messed up his own heart is, it can be hard to imagine there’s someone else out there who is more messed up.

If we’re unshockable — because we know how sinful and depraved we are — we make it much easier for others to confess. If I share a particularly distressing sin, and you respond in surprised disgust, I’ll think twice about admitting anything like that to you (or perhaps anyone) ever again. But if you respond with a measure of understanding, knowing your own heart to be prone to sin (even if in different ways), I find it much easier for me to be honest with you next time.

Be Reciprocal

It is hard to be transparent with someone if they’re never really transparent with us. Between Christian friends, building trust requires sufficient mutuality. It’s hard to keep bearing our souls if the other person remains closed. We do have different personalities and experiences, so we won’t all naturally open up with one another to the same extent. But all the same, honesty begets honesty. Someone else’s transparency makes it easier for us to be transparent, and vice versa.

“Honesty begets honesty.”

Ray and T. J. have always been open with me. They’ve never hesitated to entrust me with their struggles. Their example makes it so much easier for me to do the same.

Be a Good Listener

Once, I shared with Ray about a particularly distressing sin of mine. He carefully listened before asking one or two searching questions, making sure he had as full a picture of the situation as he could, and making sure I was giving him the whole story and not holding back important details. And his loving listening made the counsel he gave me all the more deep and insightful.

If you want to invite another’s honesty, learn to listen well. “If one gives an answer before he hears, it is his folly and shame” (Proverbs 18:13). We are to be “quick to hear, slow to speak” (James 1:19).

Listening well also means remembering well. We don’t serve each other well if, after someone has disclosed something significant, we quickly forget what it was and how it had affected him. Remembering his struggles is part of how we bear his burdens. Only then can we care well for him by following up and doing all we can to encourage him to repent well and keep fighting.

Be a Friend

Lastly, it takes time to cultivate the trusted, confidential, deep fellowship that fosters this kind of mutual transparency — this walking in the light together. Occasionally, we might find ourselves experiencing a moment of glorious, transparent light-walking with a believer we hardly know. But those moments tend to be rare. What we all really need are committed brothers or sisters walking alongside us for the long haul — not just a drive-by confession here and there.

What we’re really talking about here is true friendship. Paul tells us to “Welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God” (Romans 15:7). Honesty, encouragement, faithfulness, and loving rebuke when necessary — these are traits we find in our friendship with Christ. The greatest way to foster transparency with one another is to cultivate in us Christ’s heart for one another.

This is what I have experienced with my true friends, Ray and T. J. It is what makes our Monday meetings in “The Wardrobe” a gateway into a better world — a world where we walk openly in the light of the Light.

Audio Transcript

One of the themes we address on the podcast is retirement and how to not waste the retirement years. We have talked about end-of-life decisions as well, but very little about inheritances and wills. We’ll we do so today, initiated by a really important question that came from an anonymous woman. Here’s what she wrote: “Pastor John, thank you for this podcast! My husband and I are in our seventies, both working and healthy, by God’s kindness. Of course, we’re all terminal, as you know.

“Here’s my question: We own a property valued at nearly two million dollars. Additionally, we own investment properties that will fund our expenses when we can no longer bring in income. My question is about who will inherit our assets when we’re gone. We have three children. One does not follow the Lord, one is a believer who married a spouse who is not very serious about the things of God, and one is disabled with mental illness. Our first two children are materially fine. Currently, I’m inclined to leave the bulk of our assets to Christian ministries and invest in the kingdom of God, with a modest trust fund set up for our third child. How do you navigate this decision? The Bible says, ‘A good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children’ (Proverbs 13:22). But I feel an opposite approach would be wiser here. Is it?”

Well, first let me say that I am answering this question right off of our front burner because we too are in our seventies — the same as you. And just a few weeks ago Noël and I sat down with two lawyers, one of our sons, and a financial counselor from a Christian agency and had a big powwow about wills, trusts, and medical directives, to try to get our house in order.

We have been thinking a lot. We got the green light from two of our sons to be willing to function as executors — they don’t call them executors anymore, amazingly. You know why? Because it’s a masculine word. Oh my goodness — personal representative is what they say now. Isn’t that unbelievable? Just unbelievable. All right, okay. That’s another podcast.

So we involved a Christian financial service that we trust to give us good counsel, and Noël and I have spent a lot of time thinking and praying about the issue of inheritance. That’s the first thing to say — it’s right off of our front burner.

Positioned to Bless

The second thing I want to do is give a brief comment about two biblical passages. First is the one you mentioned: “A good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children, but the sinner’s wealth is laid up for the righteous” (Proverbs 13:22). I don’t think the point of this proverb is that a good man should, or has a duty to, leave an inheritance to his children and grandchildren, but that in general, a good man has the resources and the ability to do it. The point of this proverb is that his children and grandchildren will experience blessing because they had a good man for a father and a grandfather.

I don’t think it’s a command, but a blessing, because the contrast in the second half of the verse goes like this: “But the sinner’s wealth is laid up for the righteous.” In other words, he thinks that — the wicked man, the sinner thinks — he’s accumulating wealth for himself and his heirs, but it’s not going to work out that way.

So, the point seems to be not that every person has a duty to leave an inheritance of any particular kind of material goods, but that the good person is in a position to do so, to bless his heirs, and the unrighteous man is not in a position to bless his heirs in the same way. Or to put it another way, children and grandchildren are blessed to have a righteous father and grandfather. Blessing will flow to them one way or the other, but not so the children of an unrighteous father.

Even that hope, I think, is only a typical proverbial generalization, because we know from the Bible that many ungodly people leave huge inheritances to their children, often to their ruin. For example, Psalm 17:13–14 says, “Deliver my soul . . . from men of the world whose portion is in this life. You fill their womb with treasure; they are satisfied with children, and they leave their abundance to their infants.”

“The righteous are in a position to leave a legacy, financial and otherwise, to their children and grandchildren.”

In other words, often, unrighteous people are very wealthy and leave lots of deadly money for their heirs. So some wicked men have great inheritances, but some righteous men are very poor. Proverbs 28:6: “Better is a poor man who walks in his integrity than a rich man who is crooked in his ways.” So, the point is that proverbs are generalizations, and in general, the righteous are in a position to leave a precious legacy, financial and otherwise, to their children and grandchildren.

Obligated to Save

Now, the other text I wanted to make a comment about — which she didn’t mention, but I think people will mention if they push into the Bible on this — is 2 Corinthians 12:14, where Paul thinks of himself as a parent to his churches and says, “For children are not obligated to save up for their parents, but parents for their children.” Now the point, I think, is not about inheritances in that verse, because even if it were, the argument wouldn’t work because of the way he relates to his churches — he’s not going to die in order to be a blessing to the churches.

The point is that parents are to support their children while they are growing up. So, whether we leave inheritances to children, and how much we leave to our children, should be decided, I’m arguing, on the basis of wider biblical teachings rather than on the basis of that proverb or that passage in 2 Corinthians.

Five Factors to Consider

So, let me mention five things that Noël and I have taken into account that might also inform our friend who’s asking this question and maybe some others.

1. Be generous while you’re alive.

Be generous to your children while you are alive and while you can see how they are doing and what their needs are. For example, when my father died and left me some money — left me and my sister some money — Noël and I had a wonderful time taking a picture of my dad from an old photograph, putting it in a card, writing a special little message about his legacy and sending a lot of money to each of our kids. We surprised them with some thousands of dollars because we just didn’t need it. We didn’t need the money that daddy left us.

“While your children are alive, bear witness to the sufficiency of Jesus by being generous to them.”

So the point is, while your children are alive, bear witness to the sufficiency of Jesus by being generous to them according to their real needs rather than waiting for the blessing to come only when you’re gone.

2. Remember the dangers of wealth.

Be aware of the dangers of wealth for yourself and for your children. Jesus said very plainly, “Only with difficulty will a rich person enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 19:23). Being rich is not necessarily a blessing. Far more often it is a curse. There are many legacies to leave children that are vastly more important than money. Be aware of that danger.

3. Beware when wealth comes easily.

This is especially true when wealth is gotten easily and quickly — for example, with inheritances. Proverbs 13:11: “Wealth gained hastily will dwindle, but whoever gathers little by little will increase it.” Or Proverbs 20:21: “An inheritance gained hastily in the beginning will not be blessed in the end” — in other words, as the prodigal son got all of his inheritance at once. “Give it to me, Dad.” Dad gives it to him, and he goes off and ruins his life with it. He wastes his whole life until God gets ahold of him. Not only is money dangerous, but money gotten quickly and easily is even more dangerous.

4. Designate actual dollar amounts.

Rather than leaving your entire estate open-ended to all of your offspring, consider picking an actual dollar amount. I’m not counting here actual things like furniture, or books, or some heirloom. I’m just talking about the actual cash, and leave a fixed amount to each son or daughter, and then leave all the rest to Christian ministries that you believe in.

This decision felt very freeing to Noël and me. We tried to decide what the house, and the car, and the saving accounts, if everything were liquidated, would be worth. Then we picked a number that each child would get — I think a significant, generous number, and yet a limited number that isn’t the totality of the estate. Everything else we’re going to leave to the National Christian Foundation. I presume you know about them. They distribute the money according to the way you want. It can go to your church. It can go to Desiring God. It can go to Bethlehem College & Seminary.

The reason it’s so much easier to leave your residual amounts to a foundation like that is because to change your will is difficult if you specify the ministries in your will, whereas I can get on the phone and within a minute change the place that the money will go out from the National Christian Foundation. So just a hint, if you decide to leave large amounts of money to Christian ministries, there’s an easy way to do it without specifying those ministries in your will. I’m sure you’re far ahead of me on that kind of research.

5. Take thought for special needs.

Here’s the last thing: By all means take thought for special needs, especially children or grandchildren with disabilities or other difficulties that would make life harder for them. So special trust accounts and things like that are a beautiful Christian act of love, I think.

So those are the ways, some of them, that Noël and I have thought so far. We don’t claim to be perfect in this. But let me stress in closing, as I’m sure you already know, that vastly more important than any financial legacy is the legacy of biblical truth, and the glorious gospel of Christ, and a life showing the love of Christ.