{{first_name|Friend}},
I want to ask you something worth sitting with.
If you had enough money and would never be paid again, would you still do what you're doing right now?
Because that question is more revealing than most people are ready for.
God placed Adam in the Garden of Eden. Not to survive. Not to grind.
The word Eden literally means pleasure. God's very first assignment for humanity was to tend a garden of pleasure.
Work was never designed to be something you endure just to pay bills. It was designed to be an experience of pleasure.
Sin made that harder. Work became toil. The joy got buried under pressure and deadlines. But God's heart for us has not changed. He still wants us to experience pleasure, not merely survive.
Before we go further, does that mean we should chase anything and everything that feels good and avoid whatever does not?
Not quite.
We tend to think of pleasure as dangerous. Something that leads us away from God. And honestly, we've seen enough examples to make that case.
But what if the problem isn't pleasure itself? What if the problem is what we've settled for?
C.S. Lewis put it better than I ever could:
"It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased."
We are not too pleasure-seeking. We are settling for pleasures that are far too small.
What if we were made to pursue the greatest pleasure we could ever experience: God Himself?
Scripture makes this case repeatedly:
"In your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore."
"Delight yourself in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart."
"These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.
"May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing..."
"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace..."
Joy is not a reward you earn after getting everything right. It is the natural fruit of being close to God. He intends for you to experience that joy at work, not just on vacation or at church.
So what does this mean practically?
Most people spend about a third of their lives at work. If you do not experience God there, that is a significant portion of life lived outside of His presence, not because He left, but because we never invited Him in.
The goal of your work is set far too low if it stops at income. Making money to pay bills is not a God-sized vision for a third of your life.
You were made to find joy in God as you work, to experience His presence in the process, not just celebrate it in the outcome. He wants to work alongside you the way a father plays with their children: present, engaged, and delighting in it together.
And when that becomes real, everything shifts.
The task you have been putting off becomes an opportunity to experience God in a new way. Your measure of a productive day is no longer the number of boxes checked, but how many ways you saw the love of God at work. You stop working out of desperation or survival and start working with joy and gratitude. Instead of being overwhelmed by outcomes, you are trusting Him with them. Discipline gets easier. The noise of the world gets quieter.
That is a completely different way to show up every morning.
Start here this week:
Whether you are building a business or showing up to a 9-to-5, ask yourself honestly: why would I keep doing this if I had enough money and never needed to be paid again?
The answer will tell you whether you are building from a calling or just surviving.
Then ask two more: How can I bring God into my work this week? What would it look like to actually experience Him through it?
I cannot wait to hear what you discover.
In Him,
Stephen