The Two Most Powerful Words

I’m about to share a secret with you. Well, it’s not so much a secret as it is a simple truth that’s been taken for granted. Nevertheless, this truth is powerful and has the potential to alter the way you live your life, the person you become, and the places you will go on your journey. By employing this truth, you can:

• Create golden memories
• Develop meaningful relationships
• Manage your finances better
• Cultivate the gifts you have
• And achieve the goals that you set for your life.

Are you ready? Good. I’ll give you a day to think about what these words could be. Let me know what you think. Talk to you tomorrow, my friend.

Is There No Vision?

Is There no Vision?

I have to admit I have an almost fanatical curiosity about the way organizational plans play out.  Whenever I find a textbook scenario playing out before my eyes I will stop what I am doing and observe the players, the play and try to figure out what the intended goal is.

Such was the case just recently when heading out for one of my yearling hiking/mountain climbing trips. 

 

Here is the scenario:

 This year the destination was Colorado.  So as usual my brother David and I running behind, and Atlanta is one of the busiest airports in the world.  Add to this equation what anyone paying attention knows; airline companies are in serious trouble.  9/11, the world-wide recession, skyrocketing fuel prices, reduction in travelers have created the perfect storm.  So you would think that in order to ensure travelers on any certain airline, customer service has to be number one.  Ok, one more variable. We have not flown American’s regional partner before so it is all new to us.

When we arrive we see the normal setup for Atlanta: there is the normal Self-Service Kiosks setup, but you still have to bring your bags to the check in agent to get them on a plane.  Now even though it is very early the line is seriously backed up.  When I scan the front counter I note that 4 ticket agents are working on one man’s problem.  At first I think, AHA! They understand, but another second glance and I can see they are actually ignoring the customer, who is becoming visually agitated.  They clearly do not know how the system works, and while they joke and laugh with each other the line is becoming longer with anxious travelers.  Now I note that they clearly think this is funny, and I wonder how long the 4 of them will continue, ignoring what is happening right in front of them.  Please keep in mind that I am not angry.  Something fascinating is happening here, and the absurd contradiction of what should be happening has me mesmerized. 

 Through some miracle they manage to get the tags out of the machine, and 2 agents go back to work while the other 2 disappear into the back. Thankfully, the line begins moving again.  When I step up the agent says gruffly without looking up, ” So Mr. Gray you missed your plane?”  I look at her nametag, and reply “Mary, as far as I can see the plane has not started boarding yet, and most of us in this line are on that plane. We have been waiting while you folks worked on the machine.”  To which she replied in the same gruff voice, “Well you didn’t put your bags in the kiosk, they are not in the system.”  With a broad smile (because I had already discussed this with my brother why we paid $15 extra for a single bag) I reply “Yes, ma’am I did but if it didn’t show up let’s go ahead and do it now.” 

For the sake of the story I think you get the idea.  This sort of treatment was repeated one customer after another; the plane was late, connections lost etc.  The reason I bring it up is because what happened at the counter was a direct result of what these employees believed about their job.  There is no doubt in my mind that many of those customers vowed never to fly that airline again.  However, if you were to ask the employees working the counter that day if they felt they gave excellent customer service, there is equal assurance they would enthusiastically reply, YES! 

Culture Contradictions

This apparent contradiction is made the more fascinating by how obvious it is.  Organizational culture does not happen overnight. It is precious when it is great and should be defended by every member. When it is bad, it takes the energy akin to escaping earth’s gravity to change it. 

I wondered as the plane finally took off for Houston if the folks at the top realized how the vision they cast for the company, if any, was being carried out in the most important spot: the check-in counter.  Where there is no vision the organization perishes!  Where the vision is not adopted the same thing happens. 

Ask yourself this question: What happened?  Something is wrong here and whatever leader-followership gap exists, it has allowed a culture of customer neglect to foster.  If you do not believe that leadership is important, this example shows the principles of leadership have a direct impact on the bottom line.

Casting Vision

Leaders are responsible to cast vision.  It must be simple and carefully crafted.  It also must be strategically ambiguous (more on that later).  This is not just a vision problem, it has a thread that runs through all the foundations of good leadership: communication, team-building, culture and environment.

Still think about this: Does your church give newcomers the cold shoulder? Do people steal from the till? Do employees seem not to care about what happens to the company? Is it hard to get people motivated to do a great job?  That starts with a vision, which is a leadership issue.  Recreate that scenario where excellent customer service is identified, believed in and carried out at the counter.  Can you cast vision for that? If you can you are well on your way to developing leadership skills.

Cultivating Purity (Pt. 2): Breaking it Down

After my last post you’re were either offended or intrigued by the thought of changing the way we think about purity and sin. Let me explain what I mean.

The Apostle Paul tries passionately to convince new believers that they are not made right with God by keeping a perfect record (Rom. 3:21-23, Phil 3:9, Gal 2:16). He states that we are made right with God by simply accepting Christ’s sacrifice for us as the adequate payment for our wrongdoings (past, present, and future). Be clear that neither he, nor I, are saying that you should just do whatever twirls your carousel. On the contrary, we still do the things that the law instructs, but not because we are cut off and defiled before God if we don’t.

As believers in Christ, that’s not to be our driving motivation for living a pure life. We live a pure life because it’s part of the character of Jesus that we want to develop in our lives.

So here’s how it works: Jesus makes us right with God by his sacrifice. That makes us pure in the “spiritual” sense. Then he gives us his Holy Spirit to help us develop a habit of purity in our daily lives. We then make daily decisions that determine the development of our character.

As long as we are focused on “not sinning”, we’ll keep circling back to the things we don’t want to do. I learned, from my dad, the saying ,“where the head goes, the body will follow”. Experts tell us that the best way to break a habit is not to focus on breaking it, but to replace it with a different one. So if you’ve got a bad habit like pornography, sexual promiscuity, fantasizing, etc., then the only way to break that habit is to develop a habit of purity.

For a few years, I’ve been making notes of the things that help to cultivate purity and faithfulness in my life. Here are a few things from my list:

• Write down one thing a day about my wife that I love
• Brag about her to other people, especially women
• Shut down all visual media at 11 pm every night at the latest
• Go to bed with my wife
• Be honest with her about everything
• Develop close friendships that I can be truthful about my life with
• Keep myself from being in private with someone of the opposite sex
• Invite my wife into every relationship I have with a girl
• Talk candidly about sex with my wife
• Study Song of Solomon for a godly perspective on sex and relationships
• Limit my TV time
• Learn to “bounce” my attention from temptation instead of meditating on how bad it is and that I shouldn’t look at it

There are plenty more things you can do, but the point is, purity isn’t something you protect from being destroyed. It’s something you cultivate and care for. Make it your quest to cultivate purity.

I’d love to hear some of your habits that help to cultivate purity in your life.

Cultivating Purity

Don’t think of a guy in a hotdog costume playing a Casio keyboard. What did you do? You thought about it, didn’t you? That tactic never works, does it? I’ve played golf, I’ve played soccer (football for the rest of the world), I’ve played racquetball, and the same scenario unfolds. I tell myself, “just don’t hit the tree/goalie/my friend in the eye”. What happens? I never fail to do exactly the thing that I’m trying so hard to avoid. Why is it, then, that we use this flawed approach when it comes to sin, especially sexual sin?

Have you ever tried not to think of a naked woman/man? Have you ever told yourself, “don’t stare at that girl’s cleavage!”? What happens? How bout when you inevitably do make a poor choice and look at pornography or get frisky with your girlfriend or boyfriend? You feel terrible, right? You beat yourself up for it, beg for forgiveness, determine never to do that again, right? I don’t know about you, but as I continue to meditate on what I don’t want to do again, I end up finding myself tempted by that exact same thing and do it again, only to feel worse.

Why do we use this tactic when it comes to sexual sin? I think it’s because of how we think of purity. We treat it as though it’s a criminal record. We think that we start out with a clean slate, then we make a foolish choice and that goes on our record. We get so upset about messing up our perfect record and obsess about that choice and how it took away some of our purity, our perfection. So we confess and ask forgiveness and then we’re perfect again. All we have to do is keep sin from robbing us of our purity again. But what if purity isn’t something that can be stolen? What if it’s not a perfect record? What if it’s a character trait, a habit, like a fruitbearing plant that is to be cultivated?

I’ll go deeper into this in the next post. But until then, I’d love to hear your responses to that question.

Porn & Mrs. P

Last week I told the story of my own introduction to pornography and made the case for a strategy to deal with it in your own life. I left off with the question, “So what do we do about lust, porn, and illicit relationships? How do we successfully guide our sexual desires and develop control of lust?” In this post we’re gonna take a look at an often overlooked passage in scripture that can clue us in to a key bit of wisdom in answering those questions.

That bit of wisdom lies in the story of Joseph and Potiphars’s wife. After Joseph’s brother’s sell him into slavery, he finds himself working in the house of a man named Potiphar. Despite this upgrade from being dragged around the desert by Ishmaelite slave traders, Joseph soon discovered his new job was fraught with just as much peril as his previous condition. His main threat came in the shapely form of Mrs. Potiphar. Mrs. P was a first class some-kinda-freaky nymphomaniac.

Everyday she would proposition Joseph. So how did Joseph handle this constant temptation? Most of us will remember that part where Joseph literally sprinted out of the house when she tried to jump his bones. Let’s go back a little bit though to his daily strategy. Read 39:10 of Genesis, “The woman talked to Joseph every day, but he refused to have sexual relations with her or even spend time with her.”

It’s that last line I want to key in on. Most of us focus on that bold red line of sexual sin. When we cross that line, we know we’ve done wrong. We’re often oblivious, however, to the steps we take towards that line. Joseph wasn’t. He realized that even being physically near this woman was bad for his moral health. So what did he do?

He didn’t chat with her. He didn’t hang around her. He may not have had any intention of having sex with Mrs. P., but he didn’t let that give him an excuse to spend time with her. He knew, ultimately, she was bad news, and he didn’t trust her or himself to just keep things “innocent”.

What does that mean for us today? It means:

• We don’t entertain even the slightest urges to stare a little bit at the girl or guy on the cover of the magazine.
• We don’t let our curiosity about an actress lead us to google her or him.
• We don’t create the opportunity for sex when we are with a person that we are attracted to.
• We change the channel and switch our focus when we know that temptation is flirting with us.

By not talking with Mrs. P, Joseph was not allowing temptation to whisper sweet little “nothings” in his ear. In doing so, he stopped the problem before it ever began. How bout you? What instances can you point out in our day to day life in which your own Mrs. P is whispering sweet little nothings in your ear?

In today’s world, Mrs. Potiphars are calling out to you from everywhere, so this is a challenge. That’s why my next post is going to be about practical steps you can take to cultivate purity in your own life. Because we both know that when you flirt with temptation, you’re flirting with disaster.

I’d like to hear some of your strategies. Feel free to post them here or email them to me so I can include them in my next post.
Category: LeadYou

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