Back to Work but Better this Time! (1 of 3)

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Created: Monday, 11 September 2006 17:57

Written by Tom Lipp

Oh groan… vacations are over. What a great summer – now it’s back to work. For most of us the year really starts in September.

Work that four letter word - how do we handle it? For students it’s back to books. Studying can be exhausting. So how can we learn to work better? If we’re not good workers our finances soon become a mess. Guaranteed!

One of the first lessons I observed as a financial planner is that a bad work ethic spells financial disaster. So how do we learn to work? Let start at the beginning… In the beginning…. Yes, it’s Genesis. It’s the book least likely to be used in a university course on operations management [How to optimize the work process] where we can learn the most important lessons about work from the greatest Worker of all time.   This is a first of three articles in a series on the importance of working well. How does God get jobs done?  How does God work? For the purpose of these articles let’s ignore the debate on whether the six day of creation were 24 hours or billions of years long. Let’s just see what we can learn about modelling our work patterns after God Almighty. Let’s look at what the text says about working in a divine way.

I know that I have many poor work habits that need improvement and being over 50 now, it’s about time I learned how to work. So let’s look at the text carefully to improve our own productivity.    We find the first and most important step hidden in the second verse of the Bible. –BEGIN WITH THE END IN MIND.  It reads in the NKJV, And the earth was without form and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. Maybe you noticed that this verse contains two sentences. The first describes the chaos before God started his work. That’s where the verse break should have been made.  The Bible is inspired and inerrant in its original autograph, but the assignment of verse numbers is not. Sometimes verse numbering gets in the way of the message of the text and here’s a case in point. The last part of this verse points out that the Spirit of God was hovering (good literal translation) over this dark primeval soup.

What was the Spirit of God doing circling over that blob of empty watery nothingness? He certainly was not sight seeing. There was nothing to see.  I believe that the Spirit of God was planning, thinking, visualizing what He was going to do. How long was He there? We don’t know. But we do know the following:  Before God did anything, He thought about it for a while!   Well, before we do or say anything, let’s step back for a while and ponder exactly what we want to end up with and how we are going to do it.  Imagine that. Thinking about a job before we start it, visualizing what we want to end up with, looking at it from differing perspectives, perhaps discussing it with others and praying about it. How revolutionary. 

Many times I jump right in and think about what I’m doing later. Note that the Spirit of God precedes the Word of God.  In other words let the Spirit lead the Word, not the other way around.    So how does this apply to all our September responsibilities? Well, before we do or say anything, let’s step back for a while and ponder exactly what we want to end up with and how we are going to do it. We mere mortals would be wise to ask the Spirit for his aid and direction with our mundane tasks. We’ve all heard the expression “Look before you leap!” This summer we planned to re-landscape our acreage, but a wise experienced landscaper said wait… take the time to make a proper scaled topographic survey. Plan you work and then work you plan.  The journey of a thousand miles doesn’t begin with the first step; it starts with a good map. After all we are made in God’s image. Let’s learn from our Maker how we can work best.  Next month we’ll look at those important action steps.