needverse – Page 17 – Watch. Stand. Pray.

209 – Respectful Authority Has Respected

No one who has truly learned to respect authority will argue. They won’t argue with their leaders. They won’t argue with their subordinates. They won’t argue.

The basics of command structure start with knowing what battles to choose, including inside baseball. When someone has a decision to make, and that person makes the decision, then the decision is made. If there are facts or other information the person doesn’t know, then those above and below in the command structure will inform that decision-maker. Interruptions are welcome if they advise, whether from above or below. But, once the information and facts are known, the decision-maker must make the decision. Then, it is final. Even if it wrong, discussion it won’t help.

Continuing discussion without any affect on decision is called a filibuster; it is a tactic of legislative bodies with warring parties. In a filibuster, people keep talking because they don’t like the decision, so they hope to delay the decision—forever if possible. But, in a command structure, that can’t work. In a family, a company, organization, or military—a filibuster is immature. Many argue that a filibuster is also immature in a legislature, but then legislators are often accused of being immature as well as dishonest. But, I digress.

Stay on topic. When the decision is made, it’s finished. That is true whether it is your decision or someone else’s. Don’t be rude about it. In fact, one sign of maturity is to be kind when you tell someone that a decision is already made—whether it is your decision or not.

Mature leaders do not argue with those under them. Someone who respects authority knows to respect oneself when one has the place of authority. Never trust a leader who argues, resents, or is irritated by subordinates. That leader doesn’t understand respect for authority, yet such leaders are likely to talk about “respect” often. More importantly, make sure that you never become that leader.

Learn to identify and then to accept when the decision is already made. Move on to other topics. Finish the job. Fix problems with the decisions that are within your power. Respect-worthy people don’t argue once decisions are passed.

208 – Deliverance and Strength by Waiting on the Lord

Sometimes, not always, God delivers and strengthens us by means of us waiting on Him. In the ark, Noah had to wait on God. Israel had to wait and let God deliver them from Egypt. Israel wanted to keep waiting when it was time to step up and seize. So, in the desert, though the older generation was being punished, the younger generation was being nourished and trained for battle to seize. In that season of forty years, they had to wait on God every day.

As warriors in training, knowing that God Himself would fight for them—since God Himself strengthened them with manna everyday—was an advantageous military tactic. Few armies flank only one side, expecting God to flank the other. But, when you have to wait for your food—every day for forty years—as two generations of able-bodies soldiers did in nomadic Israel’s dessert season, the “God” factor is a tactic you learn to trust in. When they finally left the desert and marched straight for Jericho, Israel’s armies didn’t doubt Joshua when he told them that God’s tactic was to march in circles and shout.

Running from Saul, David had to wait. In the pit, Jeremiah had to wait. In the fiery furnace, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego could only respect the king wait on God. In the lions’ den, Daniel waited ’til morning. In every one of the “waiting” situations in the Bible, God swoops in and saves His people mightily—to the detriment and shame of their enemies every single time.

We can’t calculate nor forecast with strategy when to win by waiting and when to win by fighting. But, waiting must not be ruled out as a “lesser” tactic or a “last resort”. Timing is everything. Nearly every military force involves “waiting” in their attack plans. “Get in position” are three words many Americans know. The grand strategy makes it all make sense. Waiting is not about laziness, apathy, or passivity; it’s about scruples, timing, maturity, and self-control.

God may have already dispatched His evac force to your location. You may be the evac force for an entourage on its way to you. Be there when it’s time.

207 – Good Operations: List & Complete Vision

Less organized cultures tend to think of getting things done as “hard, passionate work”. This idea may be common in a poorer part of town or in developing nations. It generally goes hand-in-hand with the idea that “being angry” as a parent means the parent is “serious” and therefore “responsible”. None of this is true. Being “angry” does not make one more in-charge; having all rules memorized while acting calm does.

The way to get things done well is to have a complete list, both on paper and in mind. Do everything according to the list—both to-do items and procedural rules—and the job will be done perfectly. This doesn’t require any passion or desperation or “hard-working” attitude.

A good work ethic works hard and with a purpose, but that isn’t what makes the work quality. Hard work simply makes the work happen. Whether the work is accomplished with quality depends on whether it was done to specification.

This is a problem in the manufacturing third-world where high-maintenance Western consumers look for features and factors that developing nations don’t even know exist, let alone matter.

Consider Vietnam. When a grandfather was young and went farming to feed his family, but blew his leg off on a land mine because an American president died and a vice president took over, presuming the right to start a war neither nation wanted. He grew up not being able to walk, so things around the house never got done. The concept of “finished” had been literally blasted to bits for his family. They raised kids with dangers and hazards in the house, but the house was considered safe because it didn’t have any land mines. When the eight year old grandson goes to school, he doesn’t have time to think about whether he has folding or patch pockets on his shorts. So, as an adult working in a clothing factory, he might overlook that detail on the product specification—10,000 times. It is the responsibility of the West to help him learn.

Envisioning the resulting product and managing its list of specs are the keys to good operations. Learn these yourself and help everyone else understand them better.

206 – Operations Are the Second Great Command

Operations refer to the normal flow of work, whether in family or administration. “Operations” work is “secular”, being neither religious or non-religious. Anyone can become good at operations or never learn and do a bad job with operations—regardless of religions. The skill of “operating” a boat or bicycle is part of operations. You can learn good operations from anyone.

Operations are neither more nor less important to God than loving God and people. Just how the Second Great Command flow in a sequence, not a hierarchy or priority, operations second in sequence to living God first. Operations actually are part of the Second Great Command.

To make friends, be a friend. To be a friend, do a good job.

Love includes making sure that people don’t get wet from a leaky roof, regardless of whether residents of a house feel affection for the roofer who did a good job. Keep the car working, pay the bills, keep food on the table—these things are part of love. Love also includes tenderness, giving others personal space, and smiling or frowning as needed to get through each unique moment.

Martin Luther taught that the street sweeper and cobbler should find just as much glory in their work as a bishop or priest, not because they are equally glamorous, but because God likes good shoes and clean streets. Jesus himself learned the secular skill of carpentry. But, Jesus’s lifestyle of teaching was also a matter of operations. When his disciples would quarrel mildly or the religious teachers challenged him, Jesus always knew what to say. Jesus’s ultimate work of operations was to die so that anyone who simply welcome’s Jesus in their minds and hearts would be able to continue a positive existence in the next life. Dying at the cross was Jesus’s main operation in his first Earthly ministry.

Since operations are part of the Second Great Command, flowing from the First Great Command to love God, loving God and loving others will make operations flow more smoothly. If you do your work because you love others, knowing that your boss is a Jewish carpenter, you will gain more insight and everything will work out best.

205 – Stand or Fall

You must decide who you are, what you want, what you do, what you won’t ever do—you need to know clearly, backwards and forwards, your worldview’s DNA.

When one knocks over a glass of water, sand doesn’t pour out. Whatever is inside of our hearts will spill out when we get shaken. Hardships helps us see what our de facto values are—our values at their core, the ones we may not even admit to even in our own minds.

We must clearly resolve whose team we’re on, which game we’re playing, what our target is, and where our boundaries are. Know them, think them through, imagine worst case scenarios. Imagine someone blackmailing every member of your family and each of your friends in the worst way. Dwell on it. Imagine the cost of what you believe. If it’s not worth believing, then change those beliefs now—only believe in something if you have truly thought through the greatest cost for believing it.

If you can’t think of something worth paying your most feared price to keep believing in, then your life will come to a shameful end and you will eventually be unwittingly recruited to the ranks of people who do what they hate, to help wicked people destroy the lives of millions through corruption.

If you don’t stand for something—anything—then you will fall for anything. If you believe that there exists a belief that could never cause anyone pain, that belief would likely cause the most pain. The best chance you have of victory and protecting those you love is if your mind is already made up, so your mind won’t change when the hard times come—because you are a person who seriously, truly, thoroughly, fully, completely, painfully evaluates your ideas all the way to their end. No one is safer to be with—no one is more sober—no one has such a clear mind to focus on actually keeping people safe—no one has the faculties to navigate through challenges and dodge retaliation fire.

When you stand, you will offend one and befriend another. Will you choose your friends or wait for your enemies to choose you?

204 – Uninteresting Sin

When God thinks about us, He is not mostly interested in how much we need forgiveness from sin. He sees us how an adult sees a child: Filled with potential, mostly adorable, and a future that’s bigger than the past, despite the need for replacing broken things and the occasional spanking.

It is remarkably, boringly normal for new Christians to be over-obsessed with their own sin. This immature obsession centers on the question: To sin or not to sin? When young Christians sin, they feel terrible and wonder whether God will forgive them. Before they sin, they are obsessed with how desirable sin can seem. They’re undone by other people’s sin. It’s embryonic.

We outgrow sin by growing in God. Think about Heaven. This is not thinking about “going to Heaven”, because Heaven is not any destination. Heaven is our spiritual origin, the power in our hearts, and the source of glory that we expand to the world around us. Don’t think about Heaven as some boring, celestial cloud; think about Heaven to understand what God wants you to carry in your heart everywhere you go.

Of course, to understand Heaven you can’t just guess or rely on your own “wicked, little” imagination, and you especially can’t learn about Heaven from sinful pop culture’s fiction about demigods in outer space. You’ll need to read God’s Word to understand Heaven, first through virtue, then through Isaiah’s, Ezekiel’s, Daniel’s, and John’s visions of God—and from the Book of Enoch (1 Enoch).

The more you understand Heaven in your own heart, the more boring sin will seem. Temptation to sin won’t grip you, you’ll just be bored sick thinking about it.

When it comes to other people’s sin, that won’t shock you either. You’ll be sad, but not undone, nor will you have some new, lowly view of people when you learn what they did wrong. In fact, the more you understand God, the more you will understand how incredibly much so many people have been forgiven so immensely. As we mature, God gives us insight about other people’s struggles—sinful or otherwise—as we get bored with any kind of sin and more fascinated with God.

203 – Under Attack, Taking Flack

Sooner or later, if you stand for the right thing, some enemy somewhere will give you retaliation flack. If you never get attacked then your missing something. Good people doing good things draw opposition from bad people who do bad things because good things disrupt bad things. Whatever you’re doing, having opposition from somewhere is the only way to know for sure that you’re on the right track.

When people attack you, it’s not because of your problems. Even if you have a problem, good and healthy people will help you, not attack you. People attack others because it helps them feel better in some twisted way.

Maybe you represent truth that proves others to be lacking, so they lash out. Perhaps they want a rag doll to torment as a distraction from their own problems. Or, perhaps they’re just flustered, having a bad day. But, attacks against you are never because of you.

When you’re dealing with an assailant, normal rules of “charisma” might not apply. There is a place for listening to people and arguing in other people’s favor as good manners in social responsibility. If you’re reasonable then reasonable people will listen to you because reasonable people like to listen to reasonable a person. But, this only applies to reasonable people talking to reasonable people.

If someone isn’t reasonable and they are attacking you, whether in broader hostilities of life or merely in conversation, hostile or passive-aggressive, they probably have diabolical issues and you are neither their first nor their last prey. “Being reasonable” and “having honorable manners” will not work with them. No matter what you do, no matter how kind you are, they will be angry with anyone who stands for the right thing when the right thing gets in their way, especially if they have a secret covenant with a secret sin.

When assailants reveal problems, perhaps exploiting their—or someone else’s—victimhood as passive-aggressive blackmail, that’s your safe rout. Answer, “It sounds like a big problem. I wish I could help, but I should stay back while they figure things out.” That’s exactly right. Keep back. Don’t persuade and don’t mess with people who somehow attract diabolical problems.