WHAT: Purpose - God created us for a purpose. There is something that God embedded in us to trigger that longing to know and serve God. Have you figured out why are you put in a certain situation, lead in a church or group of people or became friends with a certain individual? Matthew 28:19-20 the Great Commission and Jabez prayer in 1 Chronicles 4:9-10 says, "Expand God's territory..."
HOW: 1. Prayer - Our way to communicate to God is through prayer and His way is through HIS words- the Bible. There is a need for God's words to enter into our system so we will know what He wants us to do and how we can live our purpose. We cannot do it on our own, we need God. "The effective, pervent prayer of a righteous man avails much." James 5:16;
Prayer and His words are man's link to God, so imagine drawing a line from top to bottom this is the VERTICAL line in drawing the cross.
2. Relationships - there are 2 relationships that we need to build and nurture, the first is with God through His son Jesus Christ and the second is among All the people, regardless of color, size, location, gender and age. Relationships represent the HORIZONTAL line on the cross.
HOW: 1. INPUT - how can we share if our knowledge is limited? The parts of our body were made for a purpose - EARS - "faith comes from hearing God's words.." EYES, HANDS....we link our activities to let God's words enter into our system.
What kind of music do you listen to? Books, magazines or other kinds of media do you read? Who are you always talking to, share your thoughts with? Is he a godly person? What kind of movies, TV shows do we watch, or Facebook, YouTube viral media do we spend our time on? When we listen to God's words in preaching, do we write keywords to remember and meditate later on?
What do we do to nurture these inputs? "meditate on it day and night.." Do we have a daily devotional or quiet time with God?
2. OUTPUT - our actions speak louder than our words. To apply the inputs within us, we need to be aware of God's purpose in our actions. Will Jesus do this? How would He react? Will this build relationships, or break it?
WORDS - what kind of words come out of our mouth, are they encouraging, hopeful, full of love and compassion, kind and forgiving? "Out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks..."
ACTIONS - a helping hand, a listening ear, there are lots of opportunities to do good and let God shine in our actions.
What is the impact of the action or reaction? Will a negative situation turn into positive? Are we contributing to making this world peaceful? How is our co-worker or neighbor or even a distant relative react if they found out that we responded differently and not biblically? God will use us to expand His territory so we need to make it happen by DOING and not just say God's words. LIVE it.
As our assignment, I left them three questions that we also use in our lean management/continuous improvement processes, you can also ask yourself these:
1. What am I doing that I'm not supposed to be doing? Commission or subtraction
2. What am I supposed to be doing that I am not doing? Omission or Addition
3. What am I doing that can be done more right, biblically? level up to expand the territory.
GPR - God, Prayer, Relationships
