The Daily CHEW™
Moving God’s Love from Head to Heart for Christian Professionals
You can build a successful firm and lose the marriage you built it for — and not realize how close you are until your wife casually mentions that getting a shower today was the biggest win on her list. A Christian wealth manager I worked with was running 70-hour weeks to grow what he believed would secure his family. His wife was home with two children under three, pregnant with the third, and his aging parents had just moved into the in-law suite. Some days he would shuttle his dad to a doctor’s appointment, run to a client lunch in the same neighborhood, then pick his dad back up — and be back in the office by 3. She was lonely. He was stretched. They were snapping at each other in the kitchen and apologizing in the dark. They both knew this was not the life they had said they wanted to build, but neither knew how to stop the wheel.
What broke open in our work together was not a calendar fix. It was that they had both quietly come to see God as a figure who increased their suffering when they were not obeying enough. When John 17:23 — “that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me” — moved from a verse they knew to a reality at heart level, everything started to shift. They repented. They set boundaries. They guarded couple time. He started saying no to prospective client dinners so he could be home for bedtime stories. He landed about as many clients as before — but less hurried, less hectic. She watched him read and pray with their children at night, and her resentment began to loosen when she finally heard him say the firm was not the mistress — it was the vehicle for his calling and his love for her and the kids. They took every minute of Sunday off to worship and be a family. The marriage was still hard. The sacrifices were still real. But they knew God loved them and they trusted Him better. The shower stopped being the biggest win.
Here is the question for this Thursday: If I really believed God loves me with the same love He has for His Son, how would that change the way I am building the thing I believe will secure my family — and how I am showing up for my spouse this week?
One move before Friday: Ask your spouse one question tonight: “What has been the biggest win on your list this week?” Then listen without fixing. If the answer surprises you, that is the conversation. If this is the only thing I do from this CHEW today, it is enough.
If this story is closer to one you are quietly living — or you know someone walking through it — reach out. Email me at [email protected] or call 404-421-8120 and tell me what hit. I read every email myself. No agenda. Just men and women who love Jesus, talking honestly about the work and the home.
With you on the journey,
Ryan
If you had to put this into one sentence for today, what would you say God is inviting you to rest in or return to?
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