I am in an experiment to show myself a person can put God first, seek first his kingdom, and spend time with God daily. The experiment seeks to show if a person does put God first then not only will a crazy job and life not fall apart- it will thrive.
There is a great Bible passage that I've applied to my business life from time to time over the past several years. Its great how the Lord can illuminate a scripture to encourage us by applying it to our situation.
Here it is: Jeremiah 29:7 "And seek the peace of the city where I have caused you to be carried away captive, and pray to the LORD for it; for in its peace you will have peace."
The passage above was written to the Israelites whose cities had been destroyed, many of whose people had been killed, and who had been taken away from their homeland and forced to live in a foreign land and settle there. If anyone had an opportunity to be negative, doubting, frustrated, fearful, and vengeful it was these people.
But God sent them a messenger who told them to actually seek the peace of the city He had sent them to and he went so far as to tell them to pray for it. The Lord commanded and taught the people to rise above their immediate circumstances and take a new view. He showed them that if they would take the high road and seek the peace and prosperity of this foreign land - that they would be blessed by doing that.
God gave the exiled Israelites two instructions:
* Seek the peace of the place they live and work
* Pray for the place they live and work
We can apply those two principles in the places we live and work. First of all God commanded that His people do this good to their CAPTORS in EXILE. He did not expect them to sit around, be lazy, be hateful, be resentful, and to only do good if things were perfect! No he first said to seek the peace of the place they were living and working. To seek the peace of a place I think you have to be willing to forgive and take the high road. To seek the peace of a place I think you have to actually do proactive good. He said "seek the peace" - he didn't say just sit there and do no harm... The other principle was to pray for the place they lived and worked. This means actually understanding we can have a spiritual impact on the people around us- and on the neighborhood we live in and on the organization we work for. The Lord said to pray for those people who had taken them captive.
I'd like to apply this lesson to our workplaces. God does not call us to only conduct ourselves proactively and do good things for our company, boss, fellow employees, or our customers when things are nice and perfect. As you can see God expects us to reach out, make a difference, seek the peace, and yes - even pray for our company, our boss, our employees, our peers, and our customers.
I don't want you to take this as a mandate that you have to do by yourself. Ask the Lord for an attitude shift. Ask God for help. Ask the Lord for ideas about what you can do. Ask Him to help you make a difference. Actively forgive people who do you wrong-- and make the decision that you will be kind, work hard, fix things if they need fixing, and not be a complainer. Come to the Lord and ask for help on this- you are not on your own. If you put yourself and your job in God's hands and start conducting yourself like this- do it because you trust God - do it because you choose to work for Him. If you put yourself in God's hands- you'll have his help.
No comments:
Post a Comment