One of the gifts of following Jesus is that He keeps meeting us in the ordinary places of life — including our work.

That has been the heartbeat of this series. We have been asking what it looks like to take Jesus’ words seriously in Matthew 28:20: “Teach them to obey everything that I have commanded you.” Not as a religious checklist, but as an invitation to learn His way of living in the places where we lead, decide, serve, speak, and carry responsibility.

So far, we have explored what happens when the people around us become neighbours rather than transactions, when leadership becomes service rather than control, when our words become trustworthy, and when developing people means helping them grow into responsibility and leadership themselves.

This week, I want to sit with a question that touches almost every business owner and leader I know:

What comes first when everything matters?

Because business has a way of making almost everything feel urgent. Revenue matters. Payroll matters. Customers matter. Growth matters. Staff matter. Opportunity matters. Reputation matters. The future matters.

And Jesus does not dismiss any of that.

Instead, He invites us to discover what it looks like to hold all of it from a different centre.

But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well. Matthew 6:33 (RSV)

Jesus is speaking in a passage about anxiety — food, clothing, tomorrow, whether there will be enough. That makes His words particularly relevant to anyone who has carried the responsibility of a business.

“Seek first the Kingdom” is sometimes heard as though God is asking us to care less about the practical realities of life. But Jesus seems to be saying almost the opposite. He knows those realities matter. He knows we need provision. He knows tomorrow carries uncertainty.

His invitation is about what gets to sit at the centre.

For a business owner, that question can become uncomfortable quickly.

Is growth serving the Kingdom, or has growth quietly become the kingdom?

Is profit a resource entrusted to me, or has it become the measure by which I determine whether I am successful?

Am I pursuing this opportunity because it is genuinely good, or because I am afraid someone else will get there first?

Am I making this decision from freedom, or from the need to prove something?

Those questions are not an argument against ambition. I think we sometimes make the mistake of treating ambition itself as suspicious. There is nothing inherently spiritual about thinking small. Building something excellent, creating employment, taking calculated risks, growing a company, developing people, generating wealth, and solving real problems can all be profoundly life-giving.

The issue is not whether we build.

The issue is what is building us while we build.

Laura Nash, who studied Christian CEOs and the intersection of faith and business, tells the story of a Christian executive who bought a company from a woman at a price they had both agreed was fair. The deal was signed. The transaction was complete.

A month later, the seller came back.

She told him she now believed the company had been worth more than the price they had agreed on, and asked him to listen to her case.

By normal negotiating standards, he owed her nothing.

The deal was done.

But he listened.

And after listening, he agreed that she had a point. He reopened the conversation and paid her more.

Nash says he did not do it because he expected anything in return. He did it because his faith shaped the way he saw the other person and the way he understood the deal. Interestingly, the seller later recommended his company to former clients, and the decision ended up benefiting the business too. But that was not the reason he made it.

I love that story because it makes “seek first the Kingdom” concrete.

The question was not simply, “What am I legally entitled to keep?”

It became, “What is right here? What honours the person in front of me? What does generosity look like when I am free from fear?”

That is Kingdom-first thinking.

Not anti-profit.

Not naive.

Not careless.

Just a refusal to let self-protection become the highest value in the room.

That is the tension many Christian business leaders live with. We want to run healthy businesses. We want to make good decisions. We want to be responsible stewards. But somewhere along the way, the pressure to protect margins, secure the deal, or stay ahead can quietly become stronger than our ability to listen to what love is asking of us.

Seeking the Kingdom first interrupts that.

It reminds us that business is not a separate world where the values of Jesus are temporarily suspended.

It is one of the places where they become most real.

Seeking the Kingdom first means I can pursue excellence without asking excellence to tell me who I am. I can make profit without making profit my master. I can plan for tomorrow without pretending I control tomorrow. I can pursue an opportunity enthusiastically and still walk away if obtaining it would require me to become someone I do not want to be.

It also changes how we define success.

Jesus’ Kingdom keeps introducing measures that rarely appear on a dashboard.

Did we tell the truth?

Did people flourish?

Did we treat someone with dignity when it would have been easier not to?

Did our success become generosity?

Did we make decisions from trust rather than fear?

Did we leave something healthier than we found it?

A profitable year can be celebrated. A growing company can be celebrated. A successful transaction can be celebrated. But none of these has to carry the unbearable weight of becoming our identity.

They can simply become gifts to steward.

That is why the second half of Jesus’ invitation matters so much. He does not say, “Seek the Kingdom first, and then worry harder about everything else.” He points His hearers back toward the Father’s provision.

The freedom of the Kingdom is not that outcomes no longer matter.

It is that outcomes no longer have to own us.

We can work hard and rest.

We can plan and remain open.

We can take responsibility without assuming that we are God.

We can succeed without needing success to save us.

And we can face disappointment without believing that disappointment has the final word.

Perhaps seeking the Kingdom first at work begins with a surprisingly simple question before the next decision:

What does love require here?

Not, “What makes me look successful?”

Not only, “What produces the greatest return?”

Not even, “What is safest?”

But: what is God doing here, and what would it look like for me to participate?

That does not always produce an obvious answer. Christian business leadership is not a formula in which prayer guarantees the correct strategy.

It is relationship.

It is learning, over time, to recognize the character of Jesus in the choices before us.

And perhaps that is why Jesus said “seek.”

Seeking assumes movement. Attention. Curiosity. Trust.

We keep looking for the Kingdom in the meeting, in the budget, in the opportunity, in the disappointment, in the person sitting across from us.

And often we discover that God was already there.

Reflection Questions

1. What currently occupies the “first place” in my thinking about my work — Kingdom, growth, security, approval, money, or something else?
2. Is there an opportunity I am pursuing primarily because I am afraid of missing out?
3. Where am I carrying a responsibility as though everything depends on me?
4. How would I define success differently if the flourishing of people and faithfulness to Jesus mattered as much as financial results?
5. What current decision might look different if I asked, “What does love require here?”

From the series Working the Jesus Way, Learning to Follow Christ in Business, Leadership, and Everyday Work