There’s a moment many of us know too well. You’re sitting across from someone in a meeting, and you realize they’re not really seeing you. They’re seeing a transaction. A number. A means to an end. The fluorescent lights hum overhead, the coffee grows cold, and somewhere in the exchange of pleasantries and profit margins, the humanity drains out of the room.

The world of money and business can be remarkably cold.

Why Business Turns Cold

It’s worth asking: how does this happen? How do systems built by people, for people, become so impersonal?

Part of the answer is pressure. Quarterly reports don’t ask how your employees are sleeping at night. Shareholders rarely inquire about your vendor’s family struggles. The metrics we’ve built to measure success—revenue, growth, efficiency—have no column for kindness. And when we’re measured only by numbers, we slowly become numbers ourselves.

There’s also fear. Fear of being taken advantage of. Fear of appearing weak. Fear of falling behind. In competitive environments, vulnerability feels like a liability. So we armor up. We speak in jargon and hide behind professional distance. We learn to separate “business” from “personal,” as if we could carve ourselves into pieces and leave our hearts at home.

And then there’s the deeper spiritual reality that Jesus himself named: “You cannot serve both God and money” (Matthew 6:24). When profit becomes the ultimate purpose, people inevitably become the means. The cold creeps in not because business is inherently evil, but because we’ve allowed it to become untethered from its true purpose—serving one another.

A Different Vision

But here’s what I’ve come to believe: it doesn’t have to be this way.

The Christian faith offers a radically different vision for work and commerce. In this vision, business isn’t merely a mechanism for wealth creation—it’s an arena for love. Every transaction is an opportunity for integrity. Every colleague is an image-bearer of God. Every customer is a neighbor.

Consider the early church described in Acts, where believers shared everything they had, and “there were no needy persons among them” (Acts 4:34). This wasn’t communism; it was community. It was an economy animated by something warmer than self-interest.

Or think of the Proverbs 31 woman, often celebrated for her industriousness. Yes, she’s shrewd. Yes, she’s profitable. But notice what else: “She opens her arms to the poor and extends her hands to the needy” (Proverbs 31:20). Her business success and her generosity aren’t separate categories—they flow from the same heart.

Practical Ways to Warm Up Your Business Life

So what does it actually look like to bring warmth into cold professional spaces? Here are a few practices I’ve found meaningful:

See the person before the position. Before your next meeting, take a moment to remember that the person across from you has hopes, fears, a family, a story. Pray for them, even silently. It’s remarkable how this shifts your posture from adversarial to compassionate.

Practice generous honesty. Cold business often hides behind half-truths and spin. Warmth requires the courage to be truthful, even when it’s costly. As Paul wrote, “Speaking the truth in love, we will grow” (Ephesians 4:15). Notice it’s truth in love—not brutal honesty, but honest kindness.

Redefine success. What if you measured your year not just by revenue, but by relationships? Not just by deals closed, but by people encouraged? This isn’t naive—it’s actually strategic. Businesses built on trust and genuine care tend to endure. But more importantly, they’re the kind of work we can bring before God without shame.

Create margins for humanity. Cold businesses run on scarcity—scarcity of time, attention, and grace. Warm businesses build in margins. This might mean starting meetings with a genuine check-in. Giving employees flexibility for family needs. Forgiving a late payment from a struggling client. These margins cost something, but they’re where relationships breathe.

Remember your “why.” The most sustainable warmth comes from purpose. If your only reason for working is to accumulate wealth, the cold will always seep back in. But if your work is an act of worship—a way of loving your neighbor, providing for your family, contributing to human flourishing—then even difficult days carry meaning.

The Warmth That Sustains

I won’t pretend this is easy. The pressures are real. The systems often reward coldness. And some days, warmth feels like swimming upstream.

But I think of Jesus, who entered the most transactional spaces of his day—tax collectors’ booths, money changers’ tables, marketplaces buzzing with commerce—and brought an altogether different economy. An economy of grace. Of extravagant generosity. Of seeing the one in the crowd who needed to be seen.

He didn’t withdraw from the world of money and business. He transformed it by his presence.

And perhaps that’s our calling too. Not to escape the cold, but to carry fire into it. To be the warmth we wish we’d encountered. To build businesses and conduct our work in ways that make people say, “There’s something different here.”

Because in the end, the ledger that matters most isn’t the one tracking profit and loss. It’s the one recording whether we loved well.

“And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” — 1 Corinthians 13:13

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What practices have helped you bring warmth to your professional life? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.