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What Our Choices Say


Moses warns Israel about the choices they will make in the future.

Just prior to his death, Moses addressed the nation of Israel. 


They were about to enter into some real estate that God had promised years before. Moses knew the only way they would be successful in settling it would be if they continually chose to live for God. .

 

Sadly, he also knew prophetically they would not. And so, with a philosophical “Whatever...”, he gives them a simple encouragement regarding their choices:

 

“… I have set before you life or death, blessing or curse. Oh, that you would choose life; that you and your children might live! Choose to love the Lord your God and to obey him and to cling to him, for he is your life and the length of your days.” DEUTERONOMY 30:19, 20 LIVING BIBLE

 

Living for God and the resulting wholeness has a lot to do with our continual string of choices day in and day out.

 

With that in mind, consider the seemingly uncharitable comment Jesus made to a hurting man in Jerusalem:

 

Sometime later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for a feast of the Jews. Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda (Bethesda means “the house of kindness”) and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When 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?” JOHN 5:1-6 


Excuse me, but shouldn’t that have been obvious?

 

Really? After all, wasn’t the man at the healing waters of the House of Kindness?There may have been hundreds of people lying about this natural spring waiting to be healed. The rumor was that the water rippled ever so often when a supernatural being touched it…and the first ones in would get healed. When Jesus arrived, he headed for one person in particular, a man disabled for nearly forty years. His muscles would have atrophied to the bone. It’s obvious what was wrong, but there was something deeper. And so Jesus gets to the core of the problem with a simple question: “Do you want to get well?” There is a flash of divine psychoanalysis. “You need to be whole. Do you want to be whole?”As harsh as this may sound, many of us have problems that we don’t want to get rid of. And that includes us leaders.

 

There are varieties of Biblical ways to get rid of them: restitution, forgiveness, confession, repentance, and so on. All of them require being painfully honest. I feel on a regular basis that God asks me, “Do you really want to get well?” There are those of us who will not—do not want—to be healed of our emotional stuff. Our identity may be wrapped up in our problem. “I have a right to feel like this…this person hurt me deeply…this employer stiffed me…that parishioner told me I was…”

 

It gives us an excuse for certain behaviors.For some of us, that becomes a way of life. A pattern of identity that we carry throughout our adult lives. I’ve learned there’s always a question whispered behind the choices I make. And those questions reveal more about the Real Me and the choices I make than anything else. Further, those questions expose the depth of wholeness I actually desire with my Father.“Physician (and leaders)…heal thyself.”

 

In other words, slip your oxygen mask on first. 

 

 

Dave Workman | The Elemental Group


 

Every healthy organization is marked by four essential traits: Integrity, Passion, Servanthood, and Imagination. With a practitioner perspective, author Dave Workman offers common sense guidance and tools to maximize leadership. Filled with insight, humor, and reflective exercises, this is an indispensable exploration of these four universal values. Check out Elemental Leaders: Four Essentials Every Leader Needs...and Every Church Must Have.

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