Not Spending Time with God?
Have you ever taken your exercise routine for granted and had those days where you just did not want to go to the gym or go for that run? Sure, we have all had days like that. I don’t care what level you are at in your exercise routine, professional athlete or just beginning, everyone has had this experience. So what separates the professionals from the amateurs? The professionals still go and push through the work out even when they don’t want to, while amateurs take the day off. Sure that professional may not make great strides or gains that day because of the way they are feeling, yet pushing through even when they did not want to certainly allow them to maintain their current conditioning without losing ground.
So how about your spiritual conditioning, are you taking days off when you don’t feel like “exercising”? Our spiritual conditioning is no different than our physical conditioning. There are plenty of days when we don’t feel like sitting down and spending time with God. Sometimes our days are so busy the thought of trying to sit down and mentally engage for a period of time with God seems like too much work. Just like the professional athlete versus the amateur, what separates the spiritually mature from the spiritually naive? Pushing through and continuing to “work out”(spending time with God) when we don’t feel like it. You may feel like you did not get much out of that time with God because of your mental state of mind, however just like the professional athlete, you did not lose ground in your spiritual condition.
I have also noticed in my physical workouts, when I take some days off I feel guilty about missing later on that day. However, the more I miss a workout, the easier and less guilty I feel about doing so. There is this gradual fading of the intensity and guilt associated with not doing it. The same is true for spending time with God. At first I feel guilty about skipping that time, but the more I skip the more desensitized I become to it and the guilt feelings and intensity start to fade. Pushing through and continuing to spend time with God when we don’t want to will maintain those healthy habits and routines in your life.
Only the Son of Man
Only the Son of Man could take a leper like me and let him stand. I still think back to three years ago when I came to know Christ as my Savior and Forgiver, one of the passages that had a huge impact on my conversion was John chapter 5: 1-10:
John 5: 1-10…Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for a feast of the Jews. 2Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. 3Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. 5One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. 6When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?”
7″Sir,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.”
8Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” 9At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked. 10The day on which this took place was a Sabbath, and so the Jews said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat.”
I remember the night God allowed me to make the connection between the passage above and my spiritual paralysis. I still remember clearly God saying “Ron, you have been a spiritual invalid for 35 years…just cross that line and accept my gift, pick up your mat and walk”. Wow, it still brings emotion to me when I stop and think about it.
Managing Organizational Momentum
Momentum definition: force or speed of movement; impetus, as of a physical object or course of events.
How do you maintain momentum within your organization once the ball starts to roll? I have tackled this very question in several positions I have had in the past. In reality momentum requires serious effort to get something moving but once it is moving it is harder to get it to stop then to keep moving. One way to keep momentum going is to have constantly greater goals. Below I have outline four additional areas that I have found beneficial to watch in order maintain organizational momentum.
Velocity
“If we weren’t still hiring great people and pushing ahead at full speed, it would be easy to fall behind and become a mediocre company.”
- Bill Gates
First, at minimum your organization needs to maintain the velocity in which the organization is currently operating, and most likely increase it due to competition from your competitors. Velocity is defined as: the rate of speed with which something happens. To continue the momentum, that you worked so hard to create, you have to continue to operate, change and recreate yourself at the minimum rate of speed in which it took to produce the current momentum. History is littered with organizations that were once industry leaders that no longer exist because they failed to change or reinvent themselves to maintain the momentum.
“The world is changing very fast. Big will not beat small anymore. It will be the fast beating the slow.”
—Rupert Murdoch
One Mistake
As quoted by Peg Wood, “Commitment is the ignitor of momentum.” Just like a sports competition, one play can swing the momentum over to the other team and create a dramatically different outcome. Your organization is Read more
Where is God Leading You?
Let me share a brief thought. We know that God is omnipresent… He is everywhere. Because we know this, we can never be without Him or His Holy Spirit. This is comforting news for you and me who know God as our personal savior. No matter what you or I do or where God leads us, we can never be far from God’s comforting presence. Psalm 139:7 says: “where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?” What an awesome gift that God allows me to know Him like that.
So as God leads you in a new direction or even keeps you right where He has you, pray and ask God to touch those you come in contact with that they will see something different in you that will allow God a chance to draw them closer to Him. After all, reaching a lost world is our responsibility.
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