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July 23. A Fight To Flourish, Forgive, Or Be Foolish.
Where might you be carrying a fight forward?
Is your company or team doing battle? Are you preparing for a fight? If so, it might be that the focus of your energies has turned away from its value proposition. A fight for an entrepreneurial team might be generally based on the past and present instead of the present and the future.
I like to think that a "value approach" business is about the present and how to build a bigger future. Fighting can be expensive and might even be a symptom of a team in decline. But transforming a fighting mentality into a vision and value focus takes leadership and an intervention.
Are there sectors in your industry or your company that seem to be on the edge of a fight? Maybe the most productive idea is that we can look around for the leader who might be able to transform it and find a value approach. When we think of inspirational leaders of the past, we often identify their battles.
Mother Theresa battled hunger, poverty, and lack of resources. President Ronald Reagan of the United States battled a wall that divided people. President Lincoln battled the concept of people owning people. But the inspiration comes from the value of winning the battle not in terms of money.
The battles fought above were inspirational because they were battles that valued the love of others. They were all certainly engaged in the present time and looking to resolve an immediate threat. But the results of the battle would be love in the future.
What is the first thing you can do about shaping the results of your battle in the next seven days?
I grew up with a brother and occasionally we got into fights. As children, we acted out our aggression and frustration by fighting. I am talking physical wrestling and throwing a punch. When we allowed our viewpoints to be firm, our stance was cemented, and our value to one another was gone.
The fights were about getting for ourselves, and we both were willing to let the costs of the fight
be very high. Physical harm and even death are a pretty high cost. But we read some great advice about fighting in the Bible. We read, “Avoiding a fight is a mark of honor; only fools insist on quarreling.” Proverbs 20:3 NLT.
I was a fool instead of being a brother. Have you ever done that? As brothers and sisters in Christ, where might our foolishness be filling the spots in our hearts where forgiveness can live? I do not know if both foolishness and forgiveness can live in a bedroom of the heart at the same time.
If we allow them to exist in the heart in different rooms, I suspect that it might be that it causes our heart to be unhealthy. On this Friday, let us be inspired to move forward in our faith by choosing forgiveness. What is the first thing you can do about it in the next seven days?
Let us pray, Heavenly Father, you are the one and only God, the maker of heaven and of earth and of the one bedroom in our heart made for forgiveness. Let us push out the foolishness of fighting that might have taken up residence there. Make our forgiveness to one another flourish. In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen,
