Issue 188
Have you noticed how hard it is to do the actual job you want to do? There are at least three enemies which seem to surround you and keep firing salvoes at your position, aimed at deflecting you from your priorities. The result is that you spend time on things that you don’t enjoy, are not very good at and didn’t take on the job to do.
The first such enemy is administration. Before all professional administrators delete this file in fury let me bring in an immediate caveat. If your skill is administration and you are employed to do it, you are gold dust. Everything you are about to read is not a criticism of administration but a recognition of how important it is that it is done by people who are good at it.
But if you are not and your skill is in building, teaching, medicine, horticulture or any other discipline then you will find yourself being dragged into administration. You will recognise quickly how draining this can be. Instead of doing your stuff, you’re doing the support or release work for your stuff. It also makes you appreciate those who stuff is support and release.
The second salvo launcher goes by the name of bureaucracy. It even has two firing angles: the first is red tape – a whole lot of rules, regulations and procedures which come your way from government or professional bodies which though designed to be helpful can sink you in a flood of paper; the second angle is targets. Those who work in health, education or public sectors find themselves the target of target practice. A new aim, a new initiative, a new approach creates a weary response in those who already have a good idea of how to work well but find themselves hitched up to a new political bandwagon. Even if the initiative is good it still leaves people with a feeling of meeting targets rather than doing their work.
There is a third enemy – a sniper rather than a salvo firer which goes under the name of talent. Clever and subtle, this enemy’s modus operandi is to tempt you out of position. The temptation comes because you are able to do something reasonably well but shouldn’t. It is so hard not to do something that you are capable of doing but in reality should leave to someone else or even leave undone altogether.
Jesus of Nazareth did not escape this onslaught. Perhaps the most obvious moment was when his own followers asked him if he would rescue Israel from the Romans. Here was an invitation to completely change the focus of his energy and go for the wrong goal. Early in his career the same friends invited him to heal more people when his priority was to preach. At other times he was invited to get involved in legal, political and domestic feuds. He was even on the fringes of a battle about baptism.
The enemies may have had slightly different faces and tactics to yours but the battle was the same. If he had given in he would have lost his focus, calling, mission and purpose. He would have been drained but not achieving; he would have been busy but ineffective.
There is something incredibly gracious about the character of Jesus of Nazareth but when it came to being deflected from his purpose he was ruthless. His tactics included leaving one place and going to another, rebuking people and the power behind them, quoting biblical passages as weapons of words, and simply point blank refusing to be drawn. Never rude or unfair and never uncaring, he knew that he would be of no use to those he loved if he missed his point. Neither will you.
Acts 1:6
6 So when they met together, they asked him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?”
Mark 1: 35-38
35 Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed. 36Simon and his companions went to look for him, 37and when they found him, they exclaimed: “Everyone is looking for you!” 38Jesus replied, “Let us go somewhere else—to the nearby villages—so I can preach there also. That is why I have come.”
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Work well
Geoff Shattock
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