25 Great Quotes for Christian Coaches from Tim Keller
Tim Keller’s book, Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God’s Work, has been on my shelf for a while. Last week I finally read it—and it did not disappoint.
For any Christian coach, or those hoping to get into coaching, Keller does a phenomenal job of building out a biblical theology of faith and work.
Here are 25 of the best quotes from the book that I think will deeply resonate with anyone interested in integrating their faith with their vocational calling as a coach.
When we work, we are, as those in the Lutheran tradition often put it, the "fingers of God," the agents of his providential love for others. This understanding elevates the purpose of work from making a living to loving our neighbor and at the same time releases us from the crushing burden of working primarily to prove ourselves.
Everyone imagines accomplishing things, and everyone finds him or herself largely incapable of producing them. Everyone wants to be successful rather than forgotten, and everyone wants to make a difference in life. But that is beyond the control of any of us. If this life is all there is, then everything will eventually burn up in the death of the sun and no one will even be around to remember anything that has ever happened. Everyone will be forgotten, nothing we do will make any difference, and all good endeavors, even the best, will come to naught.
Unless there is God. If the God of the Bible exists, and there is a True Reality beneath and behind this one, and this life is not the only life, then every good endeavor, even the simplest ones, pursued in response to God's calling, can matter forever. That is what the Christian faith promises.
According to the Bible, we don't merely need the money from work to survive; we need the work itself to survive and live fully human lives.
Work is one of the ways we discover who we are, because it is through work that we come to understand our distinct abilities and gifts, a major component in our identities. So author Dorothy Sayers could write, "What is the Christian understanding of work? [It] is that work is not, primarily, a thing one does to live, but the thing one lives to do. It is, or it should be, the full expression of the worker's faculties . .. the medium in which he offers himself to God.”
Work of all kinds, whether with the hands or the mind, evidences our dignity as human beings because it reflects the image of God
Every Christian should be able to identify, with conviction and satisfaction, the ways in which his or her work participates with God in his creativity and cultivation.
Work is our design and our dignity; it is also a way to serve God through creativity, particularly in the creation of culture.
A biblical understanding of work energizes our desire to create value from the resources available to us. Recognizing the God who supplies our resources, and who gives us the privilege of joining in as cultivators, helps us enter into our work with a relentless spirit of creativity.
Just as God equips Christians for building up the Body of Christ, so he also equips all people with talents and gifts for various kinds of work, for the purpose of building up the human community.
The question regarding our choice of work is no longer "What will make me the most money and give me the most status?" The question must now be "How, with my existing abilities and opportunities, can I be of greatest service to other people, knowing what I do of God's will and of human need?”
If the point of work is to serve and exalt ourselves, then our work inevitably becomes less about the work and more about us. Our aggressiveness will eventually become abuse, our drive will become burnout, and our self-sufficiency will become self-loathing.
But if the purpose of work is to serve and exalt something beyond ourselves, then we actually have a better reason to deploy our talent, ambition, and entrepreneurial vigor and we are more likely to be successful in the long run, even by the world's definition.
One of the main ways that you love others in your work is through the "ministry of competence." If God's purpose for your job is that you serve the human community, then the way to serve God best is to do the job as well as it can be done
In a world where people have on average three to four different careers in their work lives, it is perfectly natural that changing careers may be necessary to maximize fruitfulness. God can—and often does—change what he calls us to do.
It is a worthy goal to want to make a contribution to your discipline, if possible; to show a better, deeper, fairer, more skillful, more ennobling way of doing what you do.
Without the gospel of Jesus, we will have to toil not for the joy of serving others, nor the satisfaction of a job well done, but to make a name for ourselves.
We either get our name, our defining essence, security, worth, and uniqueness from what God has done for us and in us (Revelation 2:17), or we make a name through what we can do for ourselves.
Even the most loving, morally beautiful people fall prey to motives of self-interest, fear, and glory seek-ing. Our acceptance of our own brokenness and the world's keeps us going back to God to remember what we cannot do on our own. As a matter of fact, it is very dangerous to think of certain people as being "the good ones" who work to serve and of others as "the bad ones" who are seeking to prove and serve themselves. The DNA of self-centeredness and competitive pride are at work deep in each of us.
Unless you use your clout, your credentials, and your money in service to the people outside the palace, the palace is a prison; it has already given you your name. You may think you have been given little because you are always striving for more, but you have been given much, and God has called you to put it into play. It is natural to root your identity in your position in the palace; to rest your security in the fact that you have a certain measure of control over the variables in your life; to find your significance in having clout in certain circles.
But if you are unwilling to risk your place in the palace for your neighbors, the palace owns you.
Idols are not only the basis for personal sins and problems; they are also the basis for collective ones. When an individual makes and serves an idol, it creates psychological distortion and trouble; when a family, group, or country makes and serves an idol, it creates social and cultural trouble.
Christians seeking to work faithfully and well must discern the shape of the idols functioning in their professions and industries so as to both affirm the beneficial aspects and offset the excesses and distortions.
To be a Christian in business, then, means much more than just being honest or not sleeping with your coworkers. It even means more than personal evangelism or holding a Bible study at the office. Rather, it means thinking out the implications of the gospel worldview and God's purposes for your whole work life—and for the whole of the organization under your influence
Christians are equipped with an ethical compass and power of the gospel that can set us apart—sometimes sharply, sometimes subtly from those around us. This is because biblical Christian faith gives us significant resources not present in other worldviews, which, if lived out, will differentiate believers in the workplace.
Think of the cliché that nobody ever gets to the end of their life and wishes they had spent more time at the office. It makes good sense, of course, up to a point. But here's a more interesting perspective: At the end of your life, will you wish that you had plunged more of your time, passion, and skills into work environments and work products that helped people I to give and receive more love? Can you see a way to answer "yes" to this question from your current career trajectory?
Resting, or practicing Sabbath, is also a way to help us get perspective on our work and put it in its proper place. Often we can't see our wot properly until we get some distance from it and reimmerse ourselves in other activities. Then we see that there is more to life than work. With that perspective and rested bodies and minds, we return to do more and better work.
All of us are haunted by the work under the work—that need to prove and save ourselves, to gain a sense of worth and identity. But if we can experience gospel rest in our hearts, if we can be free from the need to earn our salvation through our work, we will have a deep reservoir of refreshment that continually rejuvenates us, restores our perspective, and renews our passion.
