When the focus zeroes in on the career, the writing, the marketing, the push-push-push, hurry-hurry-hurry, work-work-work, think-think-think, go here: www.HolyDesperation.com.
Take a deep breath.
I appreciate the reasoning behind the whole writing/publishing gig. I do. It’s sound. Business requires hard work in order to turn a profit unless someone happens to cash in on a phenomenon that nets them a huge reward with little investment. If given the time, we might all be able to think of an example.
However, things change a bit—at least for me—when you insert “Christian” in front of a business title. If the business dares to claim this designation, it is implied that the owners, the operators, and the workers adhere to the moniker or its connotation. Translated it simply should mean if you choose to engage this business and its employees for services, you will encounter integrity, efforts to accomplish excellence both in workmanship and customer service, and receive adequately explained information about all aspects of what the business offers along with reasonable prices for what is provided. Right? As with Christian people in general, there are too many testimonies of this not being the case. It’s disappointing at best and a travesty at worst.
Some “Christian” professionals seem to compartmentalize their “religion” from their business practices. They choose methodology or practices which mesh with the secular approach to business/business relationships. Others give lip service to Christian principles but operate in the worldly business mode, not seeing there can be a disconnect between the two. Others mingle their faith and business as it should be, functioning together to arrive at desired goals.
Okay. Switching gears. Just a bit. If you’re a Christian who is a career person of any kind, you have to figure out how to mingle faith and business every working day. Most people who have careers have a hard time leaving work and not bringing that career home. Careers compose a huge amount of daily existence. Most people can’t flip a switch as they walk out the business door for the day or the weekend and morph into the “home” person. Usually, there is an untangling period like with a clingy child you’re trying to set down without pushing them away from you. They’re important, but they need to stop clinging.
What, or more critically: who is number one in your life? Is it Jesus? Is it really? It’s a question we must ask ourselves daily. That heavy bloodstained cross lies there in our path. Will we walk over it? Treat it as an annoying obstacle? Or pick it up and carry that monument of death which reminds us of who we really are, who we claim to be, who we need to follow? Have we died to self?
Do we follow the demands of “the man” or do we discover how to truly follow Jesus? Do we promote ourselves without conscience or do we understand how the Lord would have us progress and move forward in our work? Sometimes it won’t be easy, and like everything else of value which we’ve worked for or toward, it requires something of us. Always.
Where do we expect to see this exemplifed and practiced? In those businesses who dare to proclaim their faith as a designation of how they intend to do business. That’s where. When they don’t conduct that business with the implied qualifications and the simple—though often not without extra effort—courtesy innately required, I can’t help but wonder why they bother with the title. Maybe especially in “Christian” publishing . . .
Father, you say I am an ambassador for your Son. I need you, Holy Spirit, to guide me, to lead me into the darkness, to provide the shine of your Truth. Everywhere I go. I'm desperate for you. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.
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