Issue 396
Here are some things you will already know about business. If your customers are turned off by your company, you will not fix it just by changing the way it looks. It may look better, but behind the image, the reality is still toxic.
If a staff member has a bad attitude, the change needs to take place at that level for better performance to follow, otherwise the change is cosmetic only.
Here is a more complex one. If a working environment is dreary, drab, dirty and chaotic, then brightening, cleaning, decorating and tidying could well improve staff morale and performance. But notice it is the change in morale which leads to better performance.
Real change originates from the re-motivated team, the re-modelled morale, or replenished mental resources. The best smiles originate from a happy heart and the warmest welcome comes from a hospitable centre.
You know if you are physically showing signs of injury or illness, that the cure and recovery takes place in the diet, the blood, or the bones. You do not cut off parts to lose weight, you change the energy balance.
These hints point to a principle. Real change works from the inside out. Change originates in the mind, the will, the emotions.
Now it is possible to argue about my analogies and perhaps find counterexamples, but there is one place where this is an absolute, deep truth. If you want to connect with the economy of God, if you want to fly in the atmosphere of the divine, if you want to see the ways of the Creator, and if you want to live the Christian way to life, than you cannot do it without a massive, internal revolution. This revolution is so radical, it requires a complete cataclysmic event in your soul, described as a new birth by Jesus of Nazareth. Dogs give birth to dogs, cats to cats, horses to horses, or generically, body gives birth to body. The older word is flesh – which gives birth to flesh.
A very high-powered politician took the night off to point out to Jesus that Jesus’ life made no sense unless God was with him. What Jesus did could only be attributed to God. This was a comment with no question. But Jesus knew what the politician wanted. He wanted to know how to live that life himself.
So Jesus gives him the alternatives. Flesh or Spirit. You have already been flesh-born – that’s how you know you are alive and you can do what you do.
But do you want to be Spirit-born, so you can do what you don’t currently do? If you want to be Spirit-born, you will be born into a life of light, truth, belief, non-condemnation, and what is more, a life which will never die – even though your body will.
This kind of life is only liveable when a dramatic, internal birth takes place. It changes you from the inside out. Now take this to work. What do you want – truth? You will not become a truthful person by trying to impose truthfulness on yourself. When the spirit of truth has been born inside of you, truth comes out of your pores.
Do you want to be fair? Don’t go to school to learn how to be fair – let the Spirit, who’s just, transform your decision-making.
What do you want – flesh or Spirit? Spirit works from inside out.
Here is the challenge. Many of you reading this piece believe you have already been born of the Spirit and I have no reason, nor right to doubt that. But I guarantee, you are trying to impose growth from the outside in. Try harder, obey more rules, discipline yourself. If that worked, you wouldn’t need the revolution, would you?
Let the Spirit grow in you. Let him transform your working practices, let him reshape your motivation, let him detoxify your core. Let him supply you with energy. Listen to Jesus’ summary of the results. ‘But those who live by the truth, come in to the light, so that it may be seen plainly, that what they have done, has been done through God’.
Jesus is not presenting two choices, but they are two alternatives. You didn’t choose to be born – you already are. You can ask, however, for the gift of spiritual birth and then your job is to let the life grow in you. Following this, you will work and live in a way that can only be explained in Nicodemus’ words: ‘God is with you’.
What do you want – Spirit or flesh, inside our outside?
John 3:1-21
1 Now there was a Pharisee, a man named Nicodemus who was a member of the Jewish ruling council. 2 He came to Jesus at night and said, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.” 3 Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.”
4 “How can someone be born when they are old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!”5 Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. 6 Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. 7 You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ 8 The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” 9 “How can this be?” Nicodemus asked. 10 “You are Israel’s teacher,” said Jesus, “and do you not understand these things? 11 Very truly I tell you, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony. 12 I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things? 13 No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven—the Son of Man. 14 Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, 15 that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.”
16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. 19 This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. 20 Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. 21 But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.
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Geoff Shattock
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