Jesus didn't give us a question. He gave us a command.
We spent a generation asking “What Would Jesus Do.” He had already told us.
Do The First Two.
Start with Christ; in everything that you do.
Free. No account required. Starts tomorrow morning.
Matthew 22:37 -40 - ESV
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This iis the great and first commandment. And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
Jesus did not give us a slogan.
He gave us the two commands that every other command hangs on.
-WHERE MANY BELIEVERS LIVE-
The bracelet was sincere. Nobody questions that.
In the late 1990s, four letters appeared on wrist everywhere. WWJD; What Would Jesus Do? It was a genuine attempt to bring faith into Monday morning. Teenagers wore it to school. Parents wore it to work. Pastors quoted it from pulpits.
But somewhere in the sincerity of the question – we quietly walked past the answer He had already given.
We asked what Jesus would do. While not doing what Jesus had said.
You may recognize this tension. It often looks like this:
- Your faith is real on Sunday. Your Monday feels like a different country.
- You have Christian quotes on your wall and compromise in your calendar.
- You pray in the morning and operate by a different set of rules by noon.
- You know what Jesus said. You are not consistently doing it.
- You asked “What Would Jesus Do?” a thousand times and acted on it fewer times than you want to admit.
That is not a condemnation. That is a diagnosis.
And the diagnosis has a name: the gap between the question and the obedience.
DTFT – Do The First Two – is what closes it.
DTFT
DO THE FIRST TWO
First 1 – Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.
First 2 – Love your neighbor as yourself.
Not a bracelet. Not a framework. Not a brand
A commandment; recovered.
-WHY THESE TWO FIRST-
Jesus was asked which commandment was the greatest. He did not pick one from the list of ten. He reached further back, to the Shema; the ancient declaration Israel had spoken every morning for centuries and named two.
And then He said something that changes everything about how we read every other commandment ever given:
“On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
-Matthew 22:40
The word depend in Greek is kremtai: to hang, to be uspended from. Every other commandment hangs on these two. They are not the most important items in a list of twelve. They are the structure that holds the entire moral architecture of Scripture together.
Which means this: a person who genuinely does the First Two does not need to be told not to steal, not to lie, not to harm. Love; when it is real, does not produce those things. The remaining commandments are not replaced. They are fulfilled.
Paul confirmed it in Romans 13:8-10. Augustine said it this way: Love God and do what you will. Not as permission to disobey, but as the recognition that genuine love and genuine obedience are the same direction.
-THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WWJD AND DTFT-
WWJD
A question
Asks what Jesus would do
External ; imitate someone else
Produces better behavior
Worn on the wrist
Felt spiritual without surrender
DTFT
A command
Obeys what Jesus already said
Internal; be formed into someone new
Produces a different person
Lived in the Monday morning
Requires surrender to produce formation
-THE FIRST COMMAND-
Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.
Jesus is quoting the Shema: the prayer Israel spoke every morning before the day began. Deuteronomy 6:4-5. Not a feeling. A declaration. Not an emotion. An allegiance.
The Hebrew word for love here: ahav- is covenant language. It means loyal devotion. The kind that does not clock out at 5pm. The kind that governs how you handle the difficult email, the unfair meeting, the Thursday afternoon when the faith feels very far from the work.
Jesus expands the scope: heart, soul, mind, strength. Every faculty. Every resource. Not the Sunday version of yourself. The whole person. In the whole workday.
WHAT THIS LOOKS LIKE ON MONDAY MORNING
Before the phone. Before the inbox. Before the first meeting. A deliberate, specific, non-negotiable encounter with Christ as the starting point of the workday. Not a formula. A conversation. “What are we doing today? What do you see that I cannot yet see? What do I need to fully surrender and let go of? What do you need me to carry into this room?”
-THE SECOND COMMAND-
Love your neighbor as yourself.
Jesus is quoting Leviticus 19:18. The neighbor in that passage is not limited to the person you like. It includes the contractor you pay, the employee who frustrates you, the client who takes advantage of you, the colleague whose emails you dread.
The measure is precise: as yourself. The same instinctive concern you show your own reputation, your own comfort, your own opportunities, show that to others. Not as sentiment. As action.
John 13:34–35 connects it to witness: By this all people will know that you are my disciples; if you have love for one another. The way you treat the people in your business is your public declaration of whose you are.
WHAT THIS LOOKS LIKE ON MONDAY MORNING
Before the difficult email; ask whether it honors your neighbor. Before the decision that benefits you at someone else’s expense; ask whether it passes the love-as-yourself test. Before the meeting where your leadership will be felt; ask what loving these specific people actually requires from you today.
DTFT is not the practice of trying harder to love. It is the daily return to the source of love, so that what flows into your day comes from the One who defines it, not from your own depleted reserves.
-WHY THIS IS URGENT RIGHT NOW-
Sam Altman — the CEO of OpenAI, the man building the technology reshaping every industry on earth — was recently asked what skills matter most in the age of AI.
He did not say learn to code. He named four:
“Become high agency. Get good at generating ideas. Be very resilient. Be very adaptable. These are going to matter more than any specific technical skill. And they are all learnable.” — Sam Altman, CEO, OpenAI |
The Kingdom has been producing all four for two thousand years.
Not as techniques. As the natural outcome of genuine formation in the First Two.
ALTMAN CALLS IT
High Agency
Idea Generation
Resilience
Adaptability
THE KINGDOM CALLS IT
Stewardship
The Genesis mandate to govern your domain
Creative Stewardship
Made in the image of the creator
Resurrection Confidence
Day three is a theology, not a cliché
Rooted Identity
Deep roots produce flexibility, not ridgidity
Altman described the graduate of a DTFT practice. He does not know that. But the world is now paying premium prices for what the First Two produce as a natural byproduct of genuine obedience.
WWJD asked you to act like Jesus. DTFT commands you to love like Jesus. Acting like someone is imitation. Loving like someone is transformation. The bracelet produced imitators. The First Two, genuinely obeyed, produce people who no longer need to ask what Jesus would do — because they are so formed in His love that the answer is already present in who they have become.
-THE PRACTICE-
THE DTFT 30-DAY CHALLENGE
Do The First Two — every morning for 30 days.
Free. No account required. Start tomorrow.
Thirty mornings. One prompt. Three parts. Sixty seconds.
Each day of the challenge meets you at a specific tension that marketplace believers actually face — the difficult email, the meeting where you were not heard, the Thursday when the faith feels far from the work — and applies the First Two directly to it.
Not as a devotional you observe. As a formation practice you actually do.
-SAMPLE-DAY 1-
DAY 1 · HIGH AGENCY
DTFT — DO THE FIRST TWO
Start with Christ · In Everything You Do.
THE SITUATION
It is Monday morning. Your inbox has 47 unread messages. Your calendar has 4 meetings. Before you open a single one; you have a choice about where this day actually begins.
THE DTFT QUESTION
What does starting with Christ before the inbox change about what you decide to open first, respond to first, and defer entirely?
THE KINGDOM WORD
The inbox is not your agenda. It is everyone else’s agenda for you. The Kingdom citizen sets their own agenda before they receive anyone else’s.
The challenge covers five weeks: High Agency, Idea Generation, Resilience, Adaptability, and Integration. Each week applies the First Two to a specific dimension of your work life. By Day 30, the ritual is not a discipline you maintain. It is a posture you inhabit.
-THE FORMATION LADDER-
DTFT is the door. Here is where it leads.
Not every person walks every level. Some people will do the 30-day challenge and find it is exactly what they needed for this season. Some will complete it and know immediately they want to go deeper. The ladder is not a sales funnel. It is a map of a journey. Walk as far as the assignment requires.
LEVEL 0 | DTFT DAILY PROMPT Free · 60 seconds · Daily The ambient presence. One prompt every morning before the day begins. The 60-second declaration of whose you are before the world tells you what you are for. Surrender required: One minute of morning attention. |
LEVEL 1 | DTFT 30-DAY CHALLENGE Free · 30 days · Download The formation arc. Thirty mornings. One prompt per day. Five weeks of applied formation across the four skills the AI age most urgently needs — and the Kingdom has always produced. Surrender required: 30 mornings. One decision each day. |
LEVEL 2 | STEWARD STRONG 90-Day Formation Intensive · Cohort · Application Required The structured container. For the person who completed the challenge and is ready for the full formation experience — community, accountability, weekly live sessions, and 90 days of building the identity that the daily practice points toward. Surrender required: 90 days. Financial investment. Honest community. Full formation. |
LEVEL 3/4 | MESSAGE STEWARDSHIP Premium · Diagnostic-First · Small Number For the leader who has been formed and is now responsible for governing influence at scale. A diagnostic process and custom-built communication framework for those who feel genuinely accountable for what they say publicly. Surrender required: Full diagnostic honesty. Willingness to be redirected. Governed influence over metric-driven output. |
-A WORD FROM MICHAEL-
I did not invent DTFT.
I recovered it.
When Jesus was asked which commandment was the greatest, He reached past the ten and named two. And then He said something I could not stop sitting with: on these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.
Everything hangs on the First Two. Every other commandment is held up by these. Which means a person who genuinely does the First Two is not trying to keep the law. They are living in the love that the law was always pointing toward.
WWJD asked us to imagine. The First Two command us to obey. That is not a smaller invitation. It is a more honest one.
I built this practice because I needed it. Because I was doing the work of faith and the work of ministry and the work of Monday without a daily practice that connected all three. And when I named it; when I said out loud that the answer was always the First Two, that DTFT was not a new thing but a recovered thing. Then something settled in me that had been unsettled for longer than I knew.
The 30-day challenge is free because the truth it is built on is not mine to sell. I am just the one who handed it a name and built a container for it.
Take it. Use it. Send it to someone who needs it.
And do the first two tomorrow morning before you do anything else.
— Michael | The Hustle Is Holy™
-QUESTIONS-
Is DTFT a Bible study or a devotional?
Neither. It is a formation practice. A daily application of the First Two commands to the specific, concrete, sometimes difficult situations you face at work Monday through Friday. It is rooted in Scripture but it is not a study of Scripture. It is the practice of obeying it.
Do I need to be a Christian to do the 30-day challenge?
The challenge is built on the commands of Jesus and uses Kingdom formation language throughout. It is designed for believers. However, if you’re not one and something drew you here anyway, do not wait until you have the theology figured out. Just start. The practice will do the introducing.
How is this different from a morning devotional?
A devotional is generally something you read and observe. DTFT is something you do. Each prompt takes you from a situation you recognize, through a question that applies the First Two directly to it, and gives you a Kingdom formation truth to carry into the day. It is active, not passive.
I am not a business owner. Is this still for me?
Yes. DTFT is for any person who carries work; which is everyone. The language tends toward the marketplace because that is where the Sunday-Monday gap is most acute. But the commands are for every person in every domain of life and work.
What happens after Day 30?
On Day 30, you will receive one invitation to STEWARD STRONG: the 90-day formation intensive that takes everything the challenge built and gives it structure, community, and depth. It is not a pitch. It is a progression. You will know whether it is the right next step.
Is the challenge really free?
Yes. Completely. No credit card. No trial period. No upsell buried in the download. The First Two commands are not for sale. The 30-day challenge that applies them is a gift. Share it freely.
WWJD gave us a question.
Jesus gave us a command.
Do The First Two.
Start with Christ. In everything you do.
Tomorrow morning — before the inbox,
before the calendar, before anything else:
do the first two.
Free. No account required. Send it to one person who needs it.