Does God care about how productive we are? He does. Deeply. Consider:

• Our fruitfulness reflects on Jesus: “By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples” (John 15:8).

• We are to live purposefully and manage our time: “Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil” (Ephesians 5:15–16).

• We are not to let the less important tasks crowd out the more important: “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary” (Luke 10:41–42).

• Our productivity can be an indicator of our faithfulness: “Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little. . . . You wicked and slothful servant!” (Matthew 25:21, 26).

Being productive doesn’t just come naturally. Just like any other area of the Christian life, we have to learn it. The Bible gives little instruction on how to do this because the Bible was written for many kinds of people in many cultures living in many eras of technological diversity. So we are called to do the hard work of thinking biblically and experimenting faithfully in our own day.

How Desiring God Became a Web Ministry

But thank God he provides resources so we don’t all have to keep re-inventing the wheels. And Matt Perman is such a resource. His new book titled What’s Best Next is, as John Piper describes it, “simply extraordinary.”

I have known Matt for 16 years. And for 13 of those years, we labored together in the mission of Desiring God. Matt’s contributions to our outreach were many. But there is one particular thing that Matt accomplished that will continue to bear fruit for years to come: the Desiring God website.

In 2004, we delegated the oversight of the site to Matt. He jumped in with both feet and poured countless hours into understanding the principles of how websites worked. And then, with his team, he built a new site from the ground up. When we launched that site in 2006, we had, for the first time, all of John Piper’s recorded and written sermons and articles available online, free of charge, and organized in a way that was easy to use. The day that new site launched, Desiring God really became a web ministry. And Matt Perman is the original architect of this remarkable resource.

Make the Best Use of Time

But an amazing and wonderful thing is that the book What’s Best Next also had its genesis in those intense, often grueling days. As Matt learned how to design websites, he also felt the need to learn how to “make the best use of the time” (Ephesians 5:16). So now there’s another lasting legacy.

What makes this book extraordinary is that Matt 1) synthesizes and modifies the best common-grace productivity practices out there (I know of no one as widely read or reflective in the discipline of productivity), and 2) grounds it all in a gospel-saturated theology. I don’t know how to adequately describe it. It’s sort of like Jonathan Edwards meets Peter Drucker meets David Allen, written in a clear, accessible style.

The book is full of helps. It provides us with the biblical “why’s” for productivity and lots of practical “how’s.” If you like Matt’s system, he will walk you through it from start to finish.

Doing Good and Advancing the Gospel

But most importantly, Matt helps us understand that ultimately, a gospel-driven pursuit of productivity is an act of love towards God and others. It is a way of counting others more significant than ourselves (Philippians 2:3). Repeatedly Matt drives home this point: “Good planning and productivity practices exist to make us more effective in doing good and advancing the gospel” (83).

And so, I commend this book to you as a way to help you live out Ephesians 5:15–16. It was forged partly in the foundry of Matt’s hard work at Desiring God. And as it releases, we share the prayer John Piper expresses at the end of his foreword:

May God give this book wings for the glory of Christ and for the good of the world, and may it bring a blessing back on Matt Perman’s head with wholeness and joy in every corner of his life. (12)

Amen.

For more about *What’s Best Next, see the helpful reviews by Tim Challies and Fred Sanders, and read the entirety of John Piper’s foreword in the post by Justin Taylor.*