Aligned values
| | Posted On Saturday, March 6, 2010 at 8:57 PM
Great study last week everyone! We missed Jess and we hope she had a safe and fun trip. In James 2:1-13, James is telling us not to pick favorites in our lives and to love everyone equally. Whether or not we favor one person or another in our behavior tells us something about where our values are aligned. He uses the rich man and the poor man to make his argument and we automatically think money. But as we discussed before, rich and poor can mean anything: fame, power, money, looks, knowledge, spirit and possessions. God levels the playing field and takes all of us to him, achievements and flaws together and gives his grace equally to his children. Shouldn't we follow His example? Shouldn't our values be aligned with His?
We had a couple of reflection questions and some homework. The activity was to think about a area of your life where it is easy to your values to be aligned with God's values, where you interact with everyone without favoritism. Now think about why it's easy for you to do that in that particular situation and try to replicate that in other parts of your life. The goal is to be aligned with the Lord in all aspects of life, so that our instinctive actions are what he would find pleasing.
We had a couple of reflection questions and some homework. The activity was to think about a area of your life where it is easy to your values to be aligned with God's values, where you interact with everyone without favoritism. Now think about why it's easy for you to do that in that particular situation and try to replicate that in other parts of your life. The goal is to be aligned with the Lord in all aspects of life, so that our instinctive actions are what he would find pleasing.
Interestingly enough, I find I have an easy time of treating everyone with respect in a restaurant and with my waiter. The interaction is limited, but walking in, I treat them with the same respect I give each waiter (knowing that they will be handling my food!).
I also get as frustrated with bad service, regardless of the waiter. I think it's mostly because these people are all strangers to me, so I don't know if I would be just as frustrated with a friend of mine or if I would be more forgiving.
I think if they were all friends of mine, I would me more forgiving, so I'm going to try to treat my server as if they are my friends and give them the benefit of the doubt. I'll let you know how that goes.
A divine meeting occured last night. The stars aligned for me and my motorcycle to hang out at santanna row last night at Ducati Bike Night. I've been praying about some future possibilities in leaving the high-tech and moving into an industry i love: motorcycles. Nothing serious, but just asking God about it.
Now, at the meets the attitude is to go met people, and get into some real conversations. Last night i hung out with 3 Ducati North America employees and instantly i thought of our lesson in James. I was tempted to treat them 'better', because i wanted something beyond the Heart of God. I thought "careful not to treat these guys 'differently' just because you may want something from them".
And, through our learning and by God's spirit, I didn't! Although tempted, it was all in having conversation just as though I would to get to know them personally, and about their lives.
It wasn't to get 'in' and 'liked' in order to look for a job at Ducati. The attitude was to know these guys just like any others at the meet.
Thanks for the lessons and supports folks.