The Power of Proficiency
Tom Shrader teaches about being the right person in the right place doing the right thing, exploring how God has uniquely gifted each believer for service in His body. Using workplace illustrations and drawing from 1 Corinthians 12 and 1 Peter 4, he challenges listeners to discover their spiritual gifts and work within their areas of giftedness rather than focusing on their weaknesses. He emphasizes that 80% of church attenders don't know their spiritual gifts, leading to dysfunction in the body of Christ.
“You are created by God in the image of God, and at the point that you became a Christian, you received a special enablement, a special power to perform a function or activity in the body of Christ with efficiency and effectiveness.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Power Broker
Recorded: April 13, 2006
Duration: 44 min
Themes: giftedness, service, calling, purpose, workplace, spiritual gifts, proficiency, body of christ, discovering gifts, workplace ministry, new believer, seeking purpose, church member, feeling lost, career transition, retired christian
Scripture: 1 Corinthians 12:1-20, 1 Peter 4:10-11, Genesis 1, Genesis 2, Ephesians 2:10, Psalm 139:13-16
Theological Themes: spiritual gifts, charismata, ecclesiology, body of christ, spiritual maturity, sanctification, biblical gifts, church unity
Full Transcript
Well, session two of a 10-session series, a little longer than norm for us, titled Power Broker. Let me remind you a little bit of the basis of this series. If you missed last week, I'd encourage you to grab the tape, because that tape is a perfect overview of what we are going to be looking at in these 10 weeks.
We're going to talk about power, and as you would suspect, with a little bit of a different approach. The approach is this: The world says, get power, grab it, hold it, retain it, bring people and other things into your sphere of influence, get what you can from them. Once you have everything you can from them, then you're done with them. Our vision of power is a little bit different. God has created us, and God has transferred power to us, and He's transferred power to us so we can use it, and so that we can pass it along in the right situations, in the right environment.
We said there are four environments God's created for that: church, government, family, and workplace. Those will comprise the last four lessons of this series. But we said as we really look at this, what we want to understand is that there are some things that lead up to it. So the first five sessions, beginning today, will be on proficiency, ownership, work, encouragement, and release.
Understanding God's Structure Through Family
Most of the illustrations, at least today, and probably through the series, frankly, will flow from the workplace. Not all of them. To best illustrate maybe how we bring all of this together, the family might be a great illustration. God has a structure for family. It's not very complicated: wives submit to your husbands, husbands love your wives, kids listen to your parents. That's God's structure for the family.
But the process in that, even as He transfers power or gives us that power as a mom or a dad, is to bring that child up and to be able to equip that child, to encourage that child, and ultimately to release that child. So there's a great little mini illustration of what this is all about.
Why This Matters Even If You're Not Working
Most of the illustrations are going to flow from the workplace. For some of you, that's problematic, because you have ceased to be involved in the workplace, either by choice or by somebody else's decision. Either way, it's functionally the same. The tendency at this point might be to say, "I'm not working. I don't need this. Why don't I take 10 weeks off?" Let me tell you why.
Because if things go right, you should be such a compelling force to the people around you that they will be coming to you saying, "Hey, I need some help. I'm thinking about doing this. What do you think?" So you have grandkids, kids, neighbors, friends, who are in the midst of working things through, and they're going to come to you. They're going to say, "Well, what about this? What do you think about this?"
Now here's what we're going to do. We're going to help you think this thing through. So they come to you, and they say, "Boy, I'm thinking about this. What do you think?" You're going to have this incredible answer. Then they're going to go, "Wow, you're really smart." And you can say, "No, Mr. Schrader's really smart, and he taught me all of that." That's our goal as we work our way through this.
Grounding Our Study in Scripture
Again, I remind you, if you are, as I am, one who loves to study God's word, sometimes people fall into the trap of saying, "Well, if I'm just not there chapter by chapter, verse by verse, I don't know that this is really helping me." Well, I think that it is. We're going to give you some scripture that will help reinforce what we're talking about. Certainly the principles we talk about flow from that.
Let me invite you to open your Bible to two places: 1 Corinthians chapter 12 and 1 Peter chapter 4. Let me read through a couple of passages now, then make some comments, and then trust you to start to pull these things together. Let you do a little work here.
God's Gift Distribution System
1 Corinthians chapter 12, verse 1: "Now concerning spiritual gifts, brothers, I don't want you to be uninformed. You know that when you were pagans, you were led astray to mute idols, however you were led. I want you to understand that no one, speaking in the spirit of God, says Jesus is a curse. No one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit." So there's some background. So I want you to understand this stuff.
Here's what we're going to focus on, verse 4: "Now there are varieties of gifts, many gifts, but the same spirit. The variety of services, but the same Lord. There are varieties of activities, but it's the same God who empowers them and everyone. To each is given a manifestation of the spirit for the common good." What He's talking about there is each one is given a spiritual gift, a special enablement to perform a function in the body of Christ. We'll talk more about it in a minute.
The Body of Christ Illustration
Verse 12, 1 Corinthians chapter 12, verse 12: "For just as the body is one and has many members, all the members of the body, though many are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one spirit we were all baptized into one body, Jew, Greek, slave, free, we were all made to drink of one spirit. For the body does not consist of one member, but of many."
"If the foot should say, because I'm not a hand, I don't belong to the body, that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the ear should say, because I'm not an eye, I do not belong to the body, that would not make it any less of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? But as it is, God arranged the members of the body, each one of them as He chooses. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, and yet one body," and then he expands on that.
First Peter chapter 4, verse 10, similar idea. Peter's writing, if it's been a while since you've worked your way through the book of First Peter, it is a wonderful book, especially talking about suffering.
and pain and hardship and difficulties. So if you find yourself there, lots of encouragement in First Peter.
First Peter chapter 4, verse 10: "As each one has received a gift, use it to serve one another as good stewards of God's varied gifts. Whoever speaks is one who speaks oracles of God. Whoever serves is one who serves by the strength that God supplies. In order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to Him belong the glory and dominion forever and ever."
Those passages should come to life as we start to unpack what we're going to look at today. We're going to look at the power of proficiency, and by proficiency we mean the right person in the right place doing the right thing. As I said, lots of the illustrations are going to flow from the workplace today, and clearly you have many people who kind of define who they are really by what they do. They look at work, and they think of what's required for them, and it may take a certain amount of hours, and those are all issues for you to discuss.
The Three Circles of Optimal Performance
Here's what I want you to see. You can imagine three circles. Here's a circle that identifies what you can do. Here's another circle that identifies what you want to do, and here's a third circle that identifies what you're paid to do or empowered to do. What would be absolutely optimum is to have those three circles perfectly overlap. What you can do, what you want to do, and what you're paid to do, they just overlap.
Now it doesn't tend to go that way. It tends to be that there are things that you can do that you aren't paid to do, or things that you can do but you don't want to do, or things you want to do but you can't do them, or things you want to do but they're not paying you to do it. That's how it tends to be.
What we're really focusing on is that section in the middle where those three circles intersect, and now I am doing what I can do and what I want to do, and it's what I'm being paid to do. It may not just be paid to do. It may be empowered to do. It may be something in a church setting where you're working as a volunteer, and you just love people.
I'll use Larry as an example. Larry Wright would be as involved in church as they wanted him to be, but he wanted no position of authority. He wanted not to rule, and he didn't want to go to any meetings. He's a very wise man. What Larry can do is teach the Bible. What Larry wanted to do is teach the Bible, and what the church really let him do was teach the Bible. Now, they weren't paying him for that, but see how those things overlap? That's what we're talking about. That's in the zone.
Being in the Zone
If you're talking about a golfer or an athlete being in the zone, or it's talking about a time when the basket looks this big, they're in the zone. That's what we're talking about. Now, when you're in that zone, two F words are produced. One can be frustration because the zone's so small, and you don't get to hang in there very often that you get frustrated that there's only this little bit of time that I'm doing what I can do and want to do, and I'm entrusted to do or paid to do or empowered to do.
The other's fulfillment. I mean, that's where you're going to be fulfilled. That's where you're going to sit down at the end of the day, and you're going to say, it was a good day. You're going to sit down at the end of the weekend and say it was a good week. You're going to sit down at the end of a month and say it was good month. You're going to sit down at the end of a life and say it was a good life. That's where you're going to find satisfaction and fulfillment. All of a sudden, some of these other things, especially as you get older, begin to fade away.
The Problem in Our Workplaces
Let me give you some statistics that will probably give you evidence that we have a problem. Fifty percent of American workers say they're in the wrong position. Eight out of ten people in the workplace say, "I'm in the wrong spot." Fifty percent of corporate managers say they wouldn't take their job again knowing what they know now. You're walking into an office where eight out of ten people don't like what they're doing and half the management hate their job. Go get them, tiger. That explains a lot of the workforce around you.
I'll give you some other stats that are pretty interesting to me. Eighty percent of church attenders say they don't know their spiritual gift. Can we hang there a second? Those passages we read at the beginning, here's what God is saying to you. At the point that you became a Christian, you received a special enablement, a special power to perform a function or activity in the body of Christ with efficiency and effectiveness. The creator God of the universe has created you in such a way that you have a special gift and eight out of ten people in a church say they don't know what it is.
The Body Metaphor and Its Implications
The other illustration we talked about is the body. Here's why that becomes really important to me. Here we are. We're all part of a body. Eight out of ten of you don't know what your gift is. My assumption is if you're functioning in that gifted area strictly by accident or providence I guess, but by accident, so the body now is all disfigured because we don't have all the arms participating. We don't have the knees involved. All the eyes aren't working.
Paul talked about it. There's a tendency to say, "Oh my gosh, the guy up front, that's the key guy." Well let's say that's the eye. His whole point was let's say we really have really, really good eyes, really good teaching. The problem is an eye doesn't move around very well. That eye can't even turn itself from this side to this side. We need the whole body. That's the point. We're talking about proficiency and empowerment.
Let me give you two more statistics. In fact, there's a cover story of Time Magazine this week. One out of three high school students will not complete high school, will not graduate. The dropout rate right about now in
High schools around our country have a dropout rate of one in three. Every day about 1,200 students drop out of high school. That's a bill that's going to come due because they're not dropping out to become CEOs. The average income of a non-high school graduate is $17,000 a year.
Kids are bailing. There's a tendency to say, oh, they're just those poor disenfranchised kids. No. It's across the board. Obviously, rates are higher in some areas than others. I'll give you another stat and then we'll move on: 80% of people who have served on a church board said that the experience had a negative effect on their Christian life. You can tell the guys in the room that have been on boards, by the way.
When we're talking about empowerment and effectiveness, you really see it come to life when we look at these statistics. That's the evidence of the problem.
What Causes the Problem
Let me give you some things I think cause the problem. Number one, we have educational tracks that are standardized. Everybody's trained the same way. You go to school, and especially now, the real objective is to pass the state test. We better get through the state test because you aren't going to get out of school. You may be able to weld. You may be able to create. You may be the greatest handyman in the world, but if you can't pass the state test, you're not going to get a degree.
I used to fight with my girls about this. I would say, girls, do you understand most of what they're teaching you in school is just so stupid? Let's have some fun here. All you're doing is studying. My girls were just studying, studying, studying. It was a little different maybe than how you approached your children, but I would say, geometry, girls, it doesn't matter. Get your C and get out. You're never going to use this stuff. It is never going to come into play. Get rid of it. Dad, leave us alone.
Mark Twain said, "I never let school interfere with my education." That's the truth.
Here's the second thing: job descriptions are pretty fixed. We'll talk about it more in a bit. I'm talking to a guy not long ago, and he said, I've had eight guys in this one spot in four years, and none of them can get the job done. Well, let me tell you something. Either you have the worst discernment of any manager in the world, or you've got a job description that just simply is not realistic. Something's missing.
Then you have people who never really understand who they really are. That's a little psychobabble maybe for you, but what I'm saying is, they never really understand what they're really good at. They never understand their strengths. They never take the time to take an inventory. The last thing is, you've got people who really don't understand their roles. By that, I mean you have bosses who are just concerned about production and really aren't concerned about other things like fulfillment and satisfaction. It's just our job to get it done.
Personalizing the Problem
Let me personalize the problem to you, and then we're going to attack it. Let me ask you three questions. How did you come to be doing what you're doing right now? How did you end up in this job?
Well, here's how I got there. It was Memorial Day weekend. I graduated from college, and my dad said, you need to get a job. I was tubing down the river with one of my fraternity brothers, and he said, you know, my neighbor has a daughter whose uncle's sister has a job that he needs fulfilled. You need a job. Why don't you take it? Didn't think about what you're trained for. Didn't think about your gifts. Just landed there.
Here's the second question: What have you learned about yourself since you started this job? Well, I've learned I hate this job. That's what I've learned. I got 20 years in this. Nothing could be worse. I'll tell you something that could be worse. What could be worse? 20 more years of it. That would be worse.
So you're in this job. You hate this job. You can't stand this job. You've been in it 20 years. That could be worse. The third question: knowing what you know now, are you sure you're in the best place for the future?
When we were kids, about the first of November, we loved it. Obviously, we outgrew it, but we would get these paper, red and green paper, and we'd cut them in strips, and we'd tape them or glue them into rings, and they would lead up to Christmas. Then every day, one of us would get to tear a ring off. It was like a big deal at our house.
I have a friend. Every time I see him, he'll say something like this: nine years, seven months, 12 days. What he means is, that's when I retire. He's got 4,100 rings where he just tears one off every day. I love this guy, but all I can think of is, what an awful way to live. That's what we're really getting at.
The Argument for Proficiency
We're going to make an argument for this power of proficiency: right person, right place. Here's the first point. We are made in the image of God. We clearly see that in Genesis chapter 1, chapter 2. Paul says in Ephesians chapter 2, verse 10, "We are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works."
You're made in the image of God. This is really important. It's not what the New Age movement says. It says you are God. New Age movement says, listen, you're a God. Just release the God in you. We're saying, no, you're not God. You're made in the image of God.
What does that mean? Three things, at least. Number one, it means you have a rational intellect. You can think. Your life ought to be beyond just reaction or reflex. We can sit down with you and go, A equals B, B equals C, therefore, A equals C. Some of you look like you're struggling anyway, but you get the point. You can think. It separates you from the rest of the world. You're different.
There's the second thing that separates you. You have personality. By personality, I
don't just mean you're fun to go to a game with. I mean you have emotion. It separates you from the animals. You can think. You can react. I know I'm watching a show the other night, and there's an elephant burying its baby, and they're talking about how sad the elephant is, and I got that. But I'm talking about really genuine emotion, like fear and anger and love that flows out of this rational understanding. You have a personality. You have emotion.
Here's the third thing, and you have a sense of transcendence. You're never going to go into an anthill, tear it apart, and find him in there burning incense to something. You understand there's something bigger than you. I'm watching an interview last night with a guy who was a TV personality, and God saved him. They ask him, you were an atheist as a kid. How did that happen? And he said, you know, I couldn't understand this. It seemed like there was something. I sensed there was something bigger than me. I wasn't raised in a religious home. It just made sense that there's something bigger than me.
And those become driving forces, don't they? I did a funeral the other day, and I love to do funerals, for an 83-year-old guy. And it was a marvelous funeral. During the shared time, we had a guy get up and talk about small-town basketball in the state of Iowa. And he reflected back to the time when there were no class 1, 2, 3, 4, and everybody played in the state tournament. And he was talking about this man who was his brother. How did I know this guy was from Iowa? The guy who died had a brother Elmer and a brother Delmer. There you go. Get a little sense of this. It just is, right?
And he was talking about his brother playing in the state tournament when they all played. I mean, I just know this. In 1936 or 37, the state tournament in the state of Iowa was won by the Melrose, Iowa team, the Shamrocks or the Irish, whichever they were, with seven kids on them, that beat Des Moines and all the other schools undefeated that year. It's a wonderful time. But the room was filled with this guy's peers. Everybody in the room was 80 plus.
The Reality of Our Mortality
So I try to make this point to them. You're old. Now, you're all golfers because they were all golfers. So I said, let me use a golf illustration. You're all playing the 18th hole of life. Some of you are putting out on the 18th hole of life. Some of you have hit a putt and the friends are saying, I'll give it to you. You're going to die. And you know what? Not one person afterwards came up and said, I take exception with that. I don't think I'm going to die. They all got it. And that's a very sobering moment in a room full of old people. Because you say to them, what do you think happens then?
So those are really important things. And there's a sense that there's something bigger out there. I had a kid that was home from college. So his dad brought him to a PL lunch. And the idea is, can you in 45 minutes undo what I've done in his life in 20 years? That's the way it is.
And so I meet the kid afterwards. I said, what do you think of that? He said, you want me to be honest? I said, sure. He said, I don't buy any of it. I said, really? None of it? No. And I said, well, what do you believe? He said, I just don't believe there's a God. And I said, how did we get here? And he said, well, accident, chance. And I didn't pursue the discussion on what chance is. My assumption is he hasn't had that class yet.
So I said, so we're here by chance. Well, where are we going to go when we die? And he said, dust, dirt, worm food. I said, okay. I came from nowhere and nothing, and I'm going to nothing. What should I do when I'm here? And he said, we should treat one another with love and care and esteem one another. I said, all right. Why?
The Power of Asking "Why"
Can I just point something out to you? You don't need to debate people. Just ask them questions. And there's no better question than why. Because after about four whys, they're out of answers. Why? Why would I treat somebody with value because I came from nothing and I'm going to nothing? And he said, because man's valuable. And I said, why? Because I agree with you, man's valuable. But he's not valuable because he's an accident or he got here by chance. Man's valuable because he's created by God in the image of God.
Actually, it takes us to our second point. We're uniquely created by God. We're valuable, and we should treat people with love and care and esteem and dignity. Why? Because you are created by God. We should have in our heart a sense of love and care for people around us. Why? Because they're special. They're unique.
Fearfully and Wonderfully Made
Psalm 139, for you created my innermost being. You knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I'm fearfully, wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful. I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you. One of the prophets says in his writings, I was set aside in my mother's womb for this task. You are unique. You're wired a specific way. You're made differently.
I can talk to people, and they would say to me, here's what I love. I love numbers. I love to work with numbers. I love to figure problems out. I love to calculate things and think them through. I love to look at spreadsheets. I love to look at prophets and law statements. I love it. I absolutely love it.
I would rather have an ice water enema than go in and look at numbers. That might be too graphic. I'm sorry. I would rather not look at numbers. That's my point. I can't imagine something. I can't imagine an hour more painful than looking at numbers. That's just hell for me. That's just awful for me.
But if you say, you get to go and talk to a group of people, I'd rather go and do that all day long. The numbers guy would say, oh, I'd rather never see anybody. Email me the numbers. Put me in a room with no windows. One's not better or different. It is different. One's not better.
than the other. You're made unique. Here's the third thing. We're equal in terms of value. Got different roles. Do you see that with the body? When we looked at 1 Corinthians 12, when Paul was talking, eyes not more important than the ears, and ears not better than the knee. Need the tongue. We need them all. You are valuable.
Now, when we hear that sometimes, we think, well, some people are more valuable. And we tend to judge. And we're not going to take the time to look at it. But in 1 Corinthians chapter 1 and 2, Paul talks about this. He said, when I look at the church, here's what I see.
Paul said, I'm looking at the church at Corinth, a couple of things. I don't see a bunch of really smart people, wise in the world's view. I don't see a bunch of really rich people. And I don't see a bunch of powerful people. You don't see many of those in the body of Christ.
The Church is Made Up of Ordinary People
We could probably do that here this morning. I don't want to embarrass anybody. But any PhDs here? Nope. How about rich people? Well, that gets a little subjective. So we won't have those hands go up, because you'll get a little nervous. Bill Gates, a couple of years ago, paid $38 million for 38 pages of a handwritten manuscript by Michelangelo. So that's some disposable income to buy that.
How about powerful people? How about elected officials? We have one that I know of. Anybody else? One. You mean we don't see political people? No, we'll see them. We'll see them more now. We should see them this October. I affirm what you're doing.
But did you get that? If we were going to say, if God said to you, Tom, put together an organization that will influence the world, you know what I would instinctively do? I'd go try to get the smartest guys, the richest guys, the most successful guys, and the most powerful guys and say, we got a big job. Let's do it. God didn't do that. He took a bunch of people like you and me and said, now let's go do it.
Equal Value, Different Gifts
We are equal in value, the fourth point, but different in terms of giftedness. We're different. We live at a time when we're talking about equality a lot politically. And we confuse that with being identical. We aren't identical. You did not come into the world with the same equal gifts and talents. You don't have them.
It is absolutely true that Michael Jordan and I each had equal opportunity to participate in the National Basketball Association. But there was never a time that anyone thought that we were identical in terms of abilities, right? So you're all different. Some more gifted in areas than others.
Again, go back to the family. God's plan. Wives submit to her husband, husband to your wife. Kids, would you listen? I did a couple of years ago. I have a little pet peeve about Mother's Day and Father's Day. And here's my problem. Most churches, here's what they do. I can give you the Father's Day message. You men are slugs. You need to learn. You need to lead. Step up to the plate. That's what they do every Father's Day.
Mother's Day, what do they do? They do it every year. They beat the snot out of the father, and they give the mom a rose. So in an effort to change all of that a couple of years ago, I said to the ladies, next week on Mother's Day, gals, I've got something very, very, very special for you. You don't want to miss it.
So they came in, and I said, all right, let's open our Bibles. Now, I just want to read a short passage. Wives, submit to your husbands. You can close your Bibles now, and let's talk about what this means. I'm all done, and this lady comes up, and she said, we've been married 50 years. I've never seen it before. I said, what's the secret? And she said, well, it's what you just taught.
God's Design for Roles
So that's how God designed marriage. That's how God put this together. Men and women are absolutely equal. There's no question about that, but they're in different roles. That's not fair. Let me give you an illustration. How about this one? God the Father, God the Son. The Father says to the Son, you go to the world, you do my will, you do my, and He voluntarily submits to Him.
When you look around, it isn't very difficult to figure out, we all have value, we're all equal in terms of rights and all that goes with it, but we're not identical.
I'm in a creative mode right now, which is dangerous and frustrating for everyone around me, and the staff hates me, just momentarily, because I got all my ideas. I mean, I'm really thinking, thinking, thinking, and I got three or four things that I want to do that are just great ideas. But I'm in the bookstore the other day, and I'm reading through this book, and this guy is talking about no one wants to be good. We want to be great.
No one's satisfying being good. We want to be great. And then he said, we want to fulfill our potential. And I thought, what if your potential is just to be good? By very definition, we can't be all great, right? We can't be all exceptional. Some of us, God has wired in one way, some in a totally different way.
Everyone is Essential
Now I come to the workplace, I need to understand that. Here's one last point. I've got about eight minutes. We're all essential in terms of our contribution. That's what we looked at in 1 Corinthians 12. Eye, ear, boom.
Dizzy Dean, some of you remember Dizzy Dean. Dizzy Dean, wonderful pitcher, better broadcaster. Dizzy Dean's pitching career ended because of a rotator cuff? Elbow? No. Big toe. Heard his big toe. Couldn't push, couldn't move.
Now if I'm thinking of, if I'm not evaluating a specimen for pitching, kind of the last part I get to is the big toe. I'm not really thinking much about the big toe. Watch how many guys have turf toe and can't play this year. Watch how many pitchers. There were two or three guys, big name guys last year, that had a problem with their feet.
Everybody's essential. I don't care if you're a big toe, you're essential. See that?
The Challenge of Self-Awareness
Now, give you a couple of obstacles. Number one, people don't know their strengths. Everybody's pretty aware of their weaknesses.
People choose their careers based on issues that don't matter, and they leave careers based on central issues. In other words, you take a job based on benefits. What's it pay? How much vacation? What's the salary? I don't think, if I was interviewing for a job, that I would ever get to the question on salary and vacation and benefits until I was sure I wanted the job. So I'd start with, what am I going to do? And how much freedom am I going to have?
The Same Pattern in Marriage
By the way, this is a side note. This is also true of relationships. Let's take marriage. People get married for a lot of peripheral issues, and they leave them for central issues. So she looks good. He seems nice.
I had two different situations in my premarital counseling. I'm talking to these people who are getting married. I said, "How did you meet?" They said, "We met, and we dated for two years. And then we broke up. And for three years, we dated other people. But it was like a Seinfeld episode with Jerry and Elaine. We'd have a date, and then we'd call each other. We were great friends. And finally, after three years, our friends said to us, 'Do you guys not see that you are best friends?'" And the guy said, "We were out one night having coffee. And I looked at her and I said, 'You know what? I think I love you.' And she said, 'I think I love you, too.'" And they're in to get married. Now, the success rate of that marriage is going to be very, very, very high.
The next people in, I said, "How did you meet?" And he said, "It's a good story. We're driving down the freeway. We make kind of contact. We're waving at each other. She pulls in to get gas. I follow her in. We start to talk. We exchange numbers. And I kind of blow it off and don't think about it." We're going to make up the names. Her name was Mary. So I kind of put her in with my little Rolodex thing and numbers and computer thing. "I'm one day trying to call my friend Marty. I hit Mary instead. She answers the phone. It's been five months. And she says, 'Well, this isn't—there's no Marty here.' And he said, 'Well, who is this?' 'Well, this is Mary.' So we reconnect. So now we decide we want to get married."
Now, if I'm betting on one of these, I'm kind of throwing my money on the first one. But see, I get into this relationship for all these peripheral issues.
Growing Beyond Initial Attraction
This is difficult to say, because it could be easily misunderstood. But many of the reasons that I married Susan no longer exist. If my relationship—and I'm a totally superficial person. There's nobody who's more superficial than I am. Going deep takes time. A lot of work. I'm superficial.
I don't know how long I was married to her before I fell in love with her. I don't know many people that really are in love when they get married anyway. But it took me a while. She had to grow on me. That's what somebody said. If you could be anybody in the world, if you could be anybody in the world, who would you want to be? And I said, "Well, Susan." I mean, how sweet is her deal? But that's a different story.
The things that attracted me to Susan, in other words, put me in the relationship—if those were the only things keeping me in the relationship, I would have been out years ago.
The only things, I wouldn't be in this relationship anymore. So now I have to go to the workplace or the volunteer place or whatever it is with the same ideas.
I'll give you two more things real quickly. Most people really have gift envy. Most people have gift envy. They wish they had that person's gift. God gave me this, but I don't want this. Think about that. The creator God of the universe gives you this gift, wires you this way, makes you this way. And you say, I don't want that. I wish I had done that. Who knows better, the God who created you or you?
Focus on Strengths, Not Weaknesses
Here's the last thing. Most people focus on their weaknesses. Here's what I mean. I learned this a long time ago. If there's 10 things I have to do, I got three of them I do well. The world says, go to seminars for the other seven and get better at them. I'm finally so frustrated with this, I said, I don't want to spend the rest of my life trying to get better at something I'll never be good at. Why don't I take the three that I do well, and I'll see if I can take from good to very good to excellent.
Here's the bottom line. God's just made you a certain way. He just has. Let me give you an illustration of the Apostle Paul. Here's the Apostle Paul on the road to Damascus. He's there for one reason, wipe out the church. What's that personality? That's a driven person. That's a focused person. That's a passionate person. That's a guy that's probably pretty intense.
So on the road, God saves him. Now, look at the writings of the Apostle Paul. If I could, I'd give up my salvation for the sake of Israel. This one thing I do, it's the same personality. All God did is change jerseys on this guy. It's the same thing in your life. You're wired a certain way. If you're not a numbers guy or gal, when I say guy, by the way, do you understand I mean that generically? You get that. If you're not a numbers person, you're not going to be probably. You need to get to the place where you understand your gifts and you're functioning in them.
The Wrong People in the Wrong Place
Let me close with this. Ralph Mattson, it's a guy I met and spent some time with a couple of years ago, wrote this. God has given the gifts. There is no way in which a person who does not have a particular gift can develop it on his own. Mattson goes on to say something like this. Our problem is not incompetence. Our problem in the workplace is we have the wrong people in the wrong place.
Here's the punchline. You have a gift. Discover it. Work in your area of giftedness. People benefit from your area of giftedness. God made you that way. He's given you a gift. Find it. Work in it.
Finding Your Place of Joy
And for some of you today, you just had an epiphany. You've been frustrated. You didn't know why. There's why. Now you have to do something about it. And that may not be a solution that you can implement today. Others of you, you don't understand why when everybody else is complaining about work, you're going, I love what I do. I can tell you why. Because you can do it, you'll want to do it, and that's what they've charged you to do.
It's kind of embarrassing, isn't it? I have that problem periodically when I'm talking to people, because they're all complaining about what they do. And I'm thinking, I love what I do. I love my work. I love my life. It's got some areas of frustration to it, but they're pale in comparison to my joy. And part of it is, I said a long time ago, if I'm doing something and I'm not happy at it, I'm gone. I'm just going to find it.
I will not spend the rest of my life trying to be something I can't be. I'm not going to spend the rest of my life trying to get better at something I'll never be good at. Here's how God's made me. I've got to find the place where I can exercise that.
Next week, the principle of ownership. Father, help us understand that we are valuable because of how you've created us, that you love us and you care for us. You've made us this way. It's not a license for us to say we won't grow. There are always going to be things we're going to have to do that are outside that area of giftedness. But God, help us focus on, this is what I'm gifted to do. Help me do it. We pray that to you in Jesus' name, amen. Have a great week. We'll see you next week.