Three Building Blocks

2001

How do you keep from work or a thousand other things that could steal your heart…how do you keep the things that take up two-thirds of your time during the day from stealing your heart? Such as for all of us going in and working all day, being consumed with goals, and trying to make sure it’s successful, that we’re able to pay bills, etc. from consuming your heart?

There are some practical building blocks. You’ve noticed the difference, for example, with the Lutheran guy at your work; having something to talk about, somebody to talk to. You said that’s changed the atmosphere, right? So, that could actually be a choice that we make, or at the very least, something that we pray fervently about, is that God would bring somebody like that into our work environment. There’s no question that there’s a synergy, a process of building together with others.

There’s a shadow of it even in the business world. Like you were saying, in the past you had guys to talk to. They were co-workers of yours and business partners and somehow you feed on each other and are the better for it. Not that he was even smarter than you, but somehow the process of working together created a greater whole.

That’s just a shadow. God allows those things to happen so we can see what it’s like spiritually. Any of us by ourselves, with the best of intentions, the greatest of knowledge and commitment aren’t a fraction of what we can be if we’re working together. So that’s one thing is, I think everybody ought to make it a serious priority to find people that they can work with, and talk to on the job, at least have regular lunches with, carpool with or something -- make that an incredibly serious priority at whatever sacrifice is necessary to weave other people into our work experiences.

If we’re fortunate enough to work side by side with them for a day, that’s great, but at the very least, pray that we would have people like that and also hire them. [We know some who] moved their whole office ten or twelve miles, away from their shop where they do the machinery repair, so that they could have more of a flow of people just stopping by. Not everybody has that opportunity, but you can at least see the building practice that has value.

You’ve got a microcosm with this guy that just happened into your world. It actually changes the whole environment. Even though you still don’t even know the quality of his heart yet, there is enough there that it has already changed the atmosphere.

I think there’s a good lesson in that. How much more so if this was a true-hearted brother with a deep relationship with God. Maybe it will be that, but if it were definitely that and already functioning that way, it would change the atmosphere another magnitude easily, even from what it already is. So that’s one thing.

I think also if you knew that unlocking the door on time played a big part in the reliability and the perception of your business…if you were in the habit of opening up a half hour late or forty-five minutes late or just closing for the morning just because you were bored, you’d probably lose a huge percentage of your customer base. Because that lack of reliability has created a perception, “I can’t depend on you. I’m going to go someplace where I know what time they open.” Your food might be better than some other place, but you’ve lost a lot.

So you would make it a priority, as small as that seems, you would make it a priority just to make sure your doors are open. You may think, “Hey, I very seldom make more than fifteen bucks in that first fifteen minutes, so I’m only losing fifteen dollars by not opening.” Wrong! You’re losing a lot more than that.

I’m just trying to give an earthly analogy of how essential it is that you do things like set apart twenty minutes alone with God before you do anything else in a day. If unlocking the door at a certain time every day is important, this dictates the whole flow of your business. Every relationship, every customer interaction, your P & L statement at the end of the month, your prices of your cost of goods and your waste is in the palm of God’s hands. It’s not based on our little sixteen cubic inch space (I’ve never done the math on it), but it’s not based on that. It’s really based clearly, the scriptures over and over again are very clear about the fact that all those details are in God’s hands.

You work hard, you plant the seed and you get no harvest. You put money in your pocket, it’s got holes in it, and you don’t know where the money went. All the way through the scriptures God is saying again and again, “This stuff is in Him.”

So if opening the doors on time, something as silly and ridiculous as that can be a commitment on our part, surely we can make a commitment knowing that the whole business doesn’t ride on that, but it does ride on our relationship with God and our peace of mind, even if the business were successful. Nebuchadnezzar was very successful and he lost his mind. Our success doesn’t determine our peace. God determines our peace.

Nebuchadnezzar didn’t lose his mind because he lost some battles. He lost his mind because God snapped His fingers and his son took over the kingdom as a result. Anyway, I’m just saying there’s another issue. How we build, the environment we build in, weaving brothers or sisters into it.

And with the sisters it would be the basic stuff of life, whether it’s laundry or shopping or whatever -- if you wait until you get business done, if you wait until you get all your other stuff done and then find time for God, you’re going to cost yourself a thousand times more than you thought you were.

So, this guy is a great analogy because you’ve felt the change in atmosphere. Well, there’s a change of atmosphere in our hearts when we lay the groundwork -- not only when building with brothers and sisters, but also with laying the groundwork on the most basic level of, “If opening the doors on time is important, so also it’s got to be a thousand times more important to actually be on our knees spending time with God.”

So, there’s another real basic thing that regardless of how many hours a day you work, those two things have changed the atmosphere of how you do business. It just feels different to you. Everything about it has a different meaning.

The third thing is having your eyes open to what God is about while you’re doing your business. In just about any business you’re interacting with co-workers, with clients, with vendors, with employees and employers. In just about any situation you’re crossing paths. And you can discipline your mind to think of them as souls, or you can just face them for their monetary or political value and then think about kingdom things later. And if you do that, you’re always going to be, again, outside of the heart of God.

He never viewed anybody, when He was a carpenter, as a source of income. He never viewed His own work as a source of personal gratification. He pictured the person -- the mother that would be sitting on that rocking chair rocking her baby. He prayed over that rocking chair for that mother and her baby and the baby’s future while He was whittling. Everything had something to do with the Father’s work. It wasn’t disconnected from the rest of the world.

So that’s a discipline of mind where we force ourselves to view things from God’s perspective. “This tree that I’m whittling this rocking chair out of, My Father planted this 150 years ago. I wonder what the world was like back then?” Just that sort of perspective of life that isn’t just limited to a P & L statement and the quality of product or quality of design or the political problems or the numbers on the spreadsheet. It’s a quality of life that sees more deeply into the whole thing.

And we’ve got to force ourselves to do that. I don’t know of anybody who accidentally sees life that way. Again, we wander away from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. It’s a wandering thing that happens to us and we’ve got to force ourselves to be attentive in order to avoid that.

So, there are three things that hardly anybody I’ve ever met actually does. Not that everybody doesn’t know about them already, but not many people will actually do them as a practice in life. So they don’t experience the joy that comes from it. They wander away from the thoughts and “Oh yeah” two months later when somebody says it to them again. But those are choices.

If you missed unlocking the doors two or three times, and you got some flack for it and somebody came in and said, “Hey look, I don’t want to do business with you anymore because you’re not reliable,” you’d probably make a New Year’s resolution. Like, “I WILL unlock the doors.” It would change your actions as you see the cost or the price of making sloppy choices. You would resolve that this is not going to happen anymore. I’ll put three alarm clocks around the room. I’ll do what I have to do.

And surely about far more important matters, we can do the same thing, is resolve that I’m going to do what I have to do. I’m going to find a way. I’m going to work toward these three things. At least those three that we talked about and whatever other ones God points out over time. But make choices about them, just like we would about something stupid and simple like unlocking the doors at a certain time.