Who Gets Your Best?
Ask a man why he works the hours he works and he will tell you it is for his family.
Sometimes that is true.
But there is a version of that answer that has quietly stopped being true, and the man saying it is the last one to notice. The overtime that was going to be temporary. The season that was going to end after this project. The promotion that was going to buy the time back.
Brother, count the seasons. How many have you already spent this way?
Notice what the verse asks of you. Not build something impressive. Not provide well enough that no one can question you. Whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. For whose glory is a question most men never put to their own ambition, because we have never had to. Providing sounds holy. Working hard sounds faithful. Both can be true while a man is also running from something at home he does not know how to fix.
You are building something. Somebody is paying for it.
That is not automatically wrong. Every worthwhile thing costs something. But a man should know the price and who is being charged, and he should decide it on purpose instead of discovering it ten years later.
Your children are not going to remember the number.
They are going to remember whether you were there.
What am I building, and who is paying for it?
God, show me the honest answer about why I work the way I do. Where my ambition is really about my own name, give me the humility to admit it. Where it is costing the people I love more than I have been willing to see, give me the courage to change it while there is still time. Let whatever I build be for Your glory and not my reputation. Amen.
Ask your wife, or your oldest child, or the person closest to you this question: “What have you given up because of my work?” Do not defend yourself. Do not explain. Write down what they say.
Keep walking through the fire
Forged by Fire is a book about the cost of isolation and the power of brotherhood. If this hit something, the book goes further.