Devotion 10.19.15

What is our motivation in life?  What gets us out of bed to go through our day?  Work (the clock), service, an activity such as a vacation, and other such things?  How do we do once we get to our destination?  What's our pulse, our attitude, our behavior?  I was reading a brief piece the other day about "subversives" in the organization and what might cause such.  The author encouraged openness in the organization, casting vision and striving to go deep into the organization to be sure everyone is on board, and conversations with staff to check the pulse.

I was skeptical when I read it.  There are some pitfalls with the thinking, and I noted it with the author.  People, I said, lie.  You can be open and beyond open, and yet a true subversive finds way to tangle the message.  You can visit, and the true subversive, finds a way to pervert the motive.  Subversives will go to lengths I never dreamed imaginable to thwart the vision and mission because of agendas or needs that the organization cannot meet or that they won't bring to the table because they have found meaning in their activity.  In short, organizational theory often forgets to acknowledge one simple fact - sin.

Paul, a masterful administrator, went to lengths to manage and lead the congregations in his day throughout what is now modern day Eastern Europe, Israel, Syria, and Western Asia.  He traveled there.  He wrote.  He taught.  He sent his own protégés.  And in each of his messages, we find messages indicated congregations had bad habits, sinful behavior, and agendas.  "...Continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.  Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe as you hold out the word of life...." (Philippians 2:12 - 16)

That's quite a checklist, but as a church, our role is to shine as lights in this world, crooked and depraved, then and now.  Our role is to work together without complaining or arguing to act in his good purpose so that we can hold out the word of life.

Our prayer should be just that. 

Hope Men's Ministry