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Tent Stakes

I have been amidst a major career decision the past two years, year, four months, 6 weeks, 2 weeks and finally day. What a ride, trying pick from two very different destinations whose journeys would contrast in almost every way. It is a blessing is to have options. I am grateful to have them as well as having to learn from myself what I want, what I was made for, where I want to go. In many ways (as I was reminded by my lovely wife), it was a return to who I was and who I wanted to be when I was young enough to not realize that the world is challenging. As a person of faith, we should continue living in that world, with requests and hope that God will help us overcome the challenges of the world.

You are tempted to write out a scorecard, to list all of the positives and negatives of the differing job options and tally them. But a calling is not a comparison between options, it is a matching of an option to who you are.

What is important to me? The most thorough answer would involve traversing years of journals and seeing what they say back to me. But that takes too long, and I am sleepy, so here are my tent stakes, the items that hold in place who I am.

• Work needs to be important and valuable to the world and works of God.
• I want to work with like-minded people - those who view the job as a service to others.
• Flexibility based in performance success - if I prove myself trustworthy, then I want to the room to act independently.
• I do not want to be an administrator. I was fooled to believe that leadership was administration. That is wrong, and it disagrees terribly with me.
• People are first. When faced with a decision between business, profit, reputation, perceived success... give the individual priority, whether that be your client, coworker, boss or wife. If in doubt, the person deserves the benefit over the object.
• I will not lie, cheat or steal to accomplish my, my company or my client's goals. I am willing to lose my job before my integrity.
• I am a leader. I have spent the last few years attempting to abdicate myself from this reality, and it is like trying to cut out a part of my soul. I need to embrace this part of who I am, who I am called to be, in a manner that vitalizes me and those I am with.

How I am not like Jesus

We are called to conform to the likeness of Jesus.

What was He like?

Amongst His many attributes, we find:

Kindness: giving people the benefit of the doubt, being for them, a shepherd.

Compassion: not succumbing to cynicism before a foolish audience who won't learn, sheltering them from evil without and within, healing body, mind and soul.

Power: walking forward in the faith of His Father and the action-ministry of the Great I Am, transforming people (not merely soothing them)

I lack "power" - I don't normally dare ask God to bother with me - I don't deserve His attention. I don't seek His supernatural intervention with me... and that bleeds over to my intercession for others.

I have recognized this reality for two years, and started acting to overcome this weakness (this lack of faith in God and understanding of the world and myself) one year ago. This day I am in the midst of the movement of God in my life, Him reaching into my world and moving, twisting, altering in ways only He can. I rejoice today, and will decide in the days to come whether to learn from this experience, to see His power and take hold of it, or not.