A Biblical Take on Work-Life Balance
Honor God's command to rest and our limits for the sake of the kingdom
I’ve discussed how work-life balance is harder for women across the board, how women may be more prone to burnout, and how women often care for themselves last after they care for everyone else. I see these all as interrelated realities, wherein women are often holding more responsibilities and getting less time for themselves. I want to dive a bit further into this overall discussion, focusing more on work-life balance broadly.
For my purposes today, think of work-life balance as a state in which your work life isn’t overwhelming and dominating your life. As a result, you will likely feel that you have time to both be successful in your work and to be fulfilled in your personal life. You will feel that that managing both of these is doable, and that you have time to rest and do things that refuel you.
Perhaps this topic make you a bit uneasy. Is work-life balance in the Bible? Shouldn’t we perhaps be continually sacrificing and serving for Jesus? Can’t we trust that God will strengthen us when we keep serving others and him?
While God does call us to submit our lives to him, doing so doesn’t involve ignoring our human limitations and needs. In fact, submitting to God means you must rest. He included this in the Ten Commandments, of all places:
“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.” (Exodus 20:8-11)
Of course, the Sabbath isn’t the only kind of rest that God expects his people to observe. The Old Testament is filled with feasts and festivals, and even calls for God’s people to let their land rest at times. God himself is limitless, but he made his creation — humans included — with limits, and intends for his creation to thrive by honoring those limits.
As we rest, we are refreshed, just as God was refreshed in his resting on the seventh day (Exodus 31:17). Rest gives us time to celebrate and enjoy God’s provision. Having time away from our work responsibilities allows us to live out the reality that our identities are not found in work or ministry, which is vital if we want to not only know that truth cognitively but also experientially, deep in our beings. Rest also gives us time to connect more deeply with others, or to check in with ourselves and bring our full selves before God. These are the kinds of things that lead to the fulfilling personal life that work-life balance aims at.
Jesus himself practiced rest amidst his busy ministry schedule and also instructed his disciples to do the same. Luke tells us that it was common for Jesus “withdraw to desolate places and pray” (Luke 5:16). After Jesus had sent the 12 disciples out for ministry and they came back with exciting stories, Jesus invited them to take up the same practice: “Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while” (Mark 6:31). Having had no time to eat (v. 32), he even provides each of them with a basketful of food, so that they won’t have to worry about working to get food (v. 43).
In addition to having rich teaching about rest, the Scriptures also teach us that we are to pay attention to our limits when it comes to how much we are doing. Both Moses and the apostles came across times in their ministries when it was necessary to recruit others to help them, because the weight of the responsibilities was too much to carry themselves (Exodus 18:13-26, Acts 6:1-7). They simply could not do it all by themselves without wearing themselves out (Exodus 18:18) or dropping the ball on important ministry priorities (Acts 6:2). In Moses’s case, he couldn’t see this himself and needed the wise input of someone else to see that he was taking on too much. Likewise, we often need others to help us assess whether we are taking on too many responsibilities.
Unfortunately, our culture is often allergic to the Biblical norms of rest, refreshment, and honoring our limits. It’s no wonder so many have felt the need to write books about the Biblical teachings on rest. Even amongst Christian leaders, it’s incredibly common to take on more than we can handle, ignore the Biblical commands to rest, find our identities in our ministries, and not even prioritize our own personal spiritual and emotional health. A plethora of books, ministries, retreat centers, and more are focused on helping ministry leaders navigate these pitfalls.
Within youth ministry, the expectations often work against healthy rhythms of work and rest. Often, youth ministries operate in ways that demand the leaders have high energy, flexibility, and availability. In other words, it works best for someone who is younger and in a phase of life where they can (or at least think they can) work 50-60+ hour work weeks, including staying out multiple nights for events, relational ministry, and overnight trips. This can produce a youth group that draws in lots of students and even produce a lot of encouraging fruit. However, it’s not very sustainable or healthy in the long-term for leaders.
When you add the non-work responsibilities of females to the picture, it’s easy to see how women in youth ministry may be taking on more than they actually have capacity for. In the long-term, this can lead to exhaustion, burnout, and other negative consequences. In other words, the seeming short-term gains of taking on more will actually result in a loss in her capacity for long-term kingdom impact. In this way, following God’s commands to rest and honoring our God-given limits (in other words, seeking a healthy work-life balance) is about long-term kingdom impact.
So, women, how do you need to assess your capacity and how much you’re trying to take on today?