Two great Questions

1 John 3:16-24

In a forty-year career at 3M Company, I was exposed to many bosses, and I learned it was wise to ask this question of the men I worked for: “Am I meeting your expectations?”  That question served me very well, and it always was asked long before any annual review, and with it came another question, I ask the men with authority over me: “What are your short and long term goals and what can I do to help you achieve those goals?”  Both of these questions helped to keep me in focus on what was important to the person who had the ability to promote me or demote me.  I wish I could report that I always used this approach with each of my bosses, but in the beginning of my career I had no understanding of this concept and as I got near the end of my career I ended up working for a man who was not secure in his role and I let that cloud my opinion, believing that those questions would be wasted on him.  I was wrong, and as my friend and boss Kim would often say, it was a bought lesson, a very expensive lesson that brought out my flesh and it exposed how evil my mind was, I dropped the ball and did not honor God with my actions or my response.  In fact, looking back I must say it was pride that kept me from asking those questions and it was the lowest point of my forty years.

What does that have to do with 1 John 3:16-24, everything!  Our Father in heaven has sent the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth to live in each of us who have invited Christ into our lives, and it is a wise Christian that asks; “Am I meeting your expectations?”  Dear Father, “What are your short and long term goals and what can I do to help you achieve those goals for my family, my business, my neighborhood, and your church?”  The apostle John tells us that God has made clear His goals and if we miss these basic goals we have a problem.  The Holy Spirit has made this clear in 1 John 3:16-17, “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. (Jesus said it is rare that someone would die even for a friend, but the Holy Spirit is telling us that when we put others before ourselves, it a form of laying down our life.)  17, But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him?” 

John is clear, love is an action, it is not words or talk but it has actions, it has deeds and what actions come from that: “By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him; for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything.  Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God; and whatever we ask we receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him.”  (1 John 3:19-21)  So it is important to ask those two questions: “Am I meeting your expectations.”  Dear Father, “What are your short and long term goals for me, and what can I do to help you achieve those goals for my family, my business, my neighborhood, and your church?” 

When I ask those questions with the intent of obeying, of submitting totally to His authority, the Spirit of truth makes clear these truths; “And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us.  Whoever keeps his commandments abides in him, and he in them.  And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit whom he gave us.”  (1 John 3:23-24)  This should come with a warning, these questions need to be ask often, very often, for me it may be many times each day.  And why is that, because I still have old learned patterns in my mind on how to get my needs met outside of the will of God.  My dear friend Bill called them the sixteen lane green highways of my mind, on how to live independent of God’s authority.  I’ve been asking our Father for 30+ years to renew my mind and my dependence on His authority and to make me aware of the truth found in John 10:10.  When it comes to habit, it is important to understand we did not show up on planet earth with ready-made habits.  Oswald Chambers tells us to “Apply it spiritually – when we are bon again, God does not give us a fully fledged series of holy habits, we have to make them; and the forming of habits on the basic of God’s supernatural work in our souls is the education of our spiritual life.”

From the Back Porch,

Bob Rice