a drop of water

I had the opportunity to attend an InterVarsity Faith+Business conference in February at USD. It was titled: “Unleash: Creativity” and was “designed to challenge your thinking on the conventional divide between faith and work- unleashing your creativity to be a spiritual leader in business and through business.” The speaker talks can be downloaded here.

Scott Schimmel	Joon Han	Diane Brown	Jonathan Neddenriep	Bob Goff

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One the points that Scott made during the opening session is that he hopes that parachurch organizations can begin to celebrate the students entering the marketplace just as effectively as those pursuing full time ministry.  We desperately need to send them into the marketplace with the same missionary call and vision because their role is just as important.

A few other take home points from the conference included:

1. Leadership enables people to become the best version of themselves.
2. Equip your employees to leave and motivate them to stay.
3. Bible Study vs Bible Doing.
4. Be reflective about your experiences and decisions and God’s fingerprints on your life.
5. If you are unhappy about your job, it is your own fault. You need to think harder.

Please contact Scott if you would like to know more or be apart of this exciting work.

Daniel 3:18 – But even if he does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were three Jews who had governing responsibilities in the province of Babylon during the reign of King Nebuchadnezzar.  The King had created a giant ninety by ninety foot image for everyone to worship.  The penalty for disobeying the king’s degree and worshiping the image was death by fiery furnace.  Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego refused to bow down and worship King Nebuchadnezzar’s creation and were brought before the enraged king, declaring their loyalty to their God.

I’ve always read this passage as magnifying Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego’s faith in God to save them in a time of crisis.  But I was amazed when reading 3:18 because it reveals the depth of their faith.  In 3:17, they speak boldy by faith that the God whom they serve is able to save them from the fiery furnace, and 3:18 continues to share that if he does not, the God whom they serve is worth dying for.

So often I find my faith in God dependent on the “correct, just, and happy” ending coming into reality.  I trust because I believe God will get me out of this bad sitation; I trust in God because I believe he will get me to that better situation.  God does want the best for those who love him, but my faith needs to be switched up so it is not so rooted in the “what” God will do for me.

This got me thinking about the kind of questions to assess my spiritual health.  I’ve been hearing the word “Spiritual Formation” a lot recently.  It sounds like the kind of tangible, intentional spiritual discipleship that I want to make a norm in my life, so its brought to the top of my mind a few questions that I have been wrestling with.  I’d like to package them up and maybe turn them into a type of personal spiritual assessment in my next post.

“Joy is not a requirement of Christian discipleship, it is a consequence.”
Eugene Peterson – p.96, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction

Those who I look up to are always joyful.  Even with the greeting in passing, their joy is contagious.  That is something I wish I could give to people, a contagious joy.  It is not just a contagious joy rooted in their innate ability to hope for the best, but in their belief in God and humility to see the good that is happening.  Peterson notes that “joy is not a moral requirement for Christian living” since we will “experience events that are full of sadness and pain” and that we should never conclude that “I’m not joyful, therefore I must not be christian.”

That truth in evidenced by those who I look up to who are seemingly always joyful.  Their life circumstances are not any different that mine, often much harder and more trying when you get to know what they face daily.  Peterson emphasizes that joy (and other christian ways of living) is not something “we have to acquire in order to experience life in Christ; it is what comes to us when we are walking in the way of faith and obedience.”

So often I find myself chasing after fruits of faith and obedience, only to realize that I’ve tried to play without reading the directions.  It is when I focus on the simplest things in life, God’s presence, his leading, and trying to be his hands and feet in the here and now that joy comes, because it puts the complexity and the overwhelming issue and problems in their place, in Gods hand.  That is where I want my joy to come from; any other source else is shortlived.