365 – Page 42 – Watch. Stand. Pray.

288 – Deserved Leadership

Don’t be instantly put off by problems in the world. Jesus puts foolish companies and incompetent governments to oversee people who aren’t ready for more. Maybe the people don’t know enough or maybe they are too irresponsible. A few more Bible-based morals—not to be confused with religious institutions—among the masses would surely help their society improve faster. Trying to improve one’s self, do one’s best, keep learning, look out for others—those ideas began in God’s Word and are hard to argue with. But, even with plentiful Biblical morality in a society, Jesus may have reasons why he keeps a society oppressed by fools in government and big business.

Don’t get in Jesus’s way.

If you spite the fool in charge—and it doesn’t make sense to you that the people deserve that fool as their leader—you might be just like that fool. We often despise people who share our own problems; it’s the mirror we despise. Psychology calls it “projection”, like looking through rose-colored glasses where the red color we see everywhere actually comes from us and only exists in our altered view of the world.

Desire to overthrown the fool in charge basically presumes that Jesus won’t grant people a better leader if the people are ready for it. That leads to failed revolutions or “regime planning” in other nations by toppling foreign governments to mask under the table imperialism. It usually backfires. Don’t meddle in other people’s problems; those problems are well-deserved, no matter how much those problems’ people would have you believe otherwise.

A worthy revolution or overthrow of government only succeeds because the overall society is ready for more competent leadership, thus Jesus gives the nod for a regime change.

Jesus is already King of Kings and Lord of Lords. He appoints those leaders and he does so for a reason.

It can be difficult to fathom that a society deserves it’s leaders. But, think about laziness itself. Lazy people only wake from their slumber when they have enough problems. By having constant problems from bad leaders, people must think and ponder more, actually making them better people. We have what we deserve more often than not.

289 – Be Responsible with Information & Thus Receive More

Heaven hides sensitive information, reserving it for those who work with sensitive hands and slow tongues. If you can’t keep a secret, then you will be one of the last people to know.

God always hopes for everyone’s best, so He will let dark secrets appear on your doorstep from time to time. It’s not your job to be the gossip vine and tell those secrets to the world. When you learn a dark secret, God wanted you to know that dark secret so that you could secretly sprinkle some light into that secret situation and perhaps only God would ever know—perhaps, not even the people you helped would know that you helped them.

That’s why God brings us dark, dirty secrets in the secret. It’s not so we can gossip, but so we can help… secretly.

If you are responsible with information—if you keep secrets that find you, if someone’s dirty business doesn’t become public knowledge just because you learned about it, God will keep sending you more and more secrets. He will send you news of the biggest problems and the biggest solutions. You will even gain the ear of leaders in government at every level—because you know how to keep a tight lip about other people’s business. It’s not that those leaders will trust you with information; God will trust you with information and they will trust your words to solve the problems they can’t figure out.

But, if your mouth always says exactly what your ears hear, you may have a local reputation for being honest, but you will probably have a bigger reputation as a gossip and hate monger, and you will certainly never learn the information necessary to make a sweeping difference. God simply won’t let that information darken your door.

Report crimes with solid proof, but aid the underground railroad. Talk about normal events, but give damaging reports hesitantly and only when necessary.

There are different classes of newspapers. The gossip fliers hang on a different rack than the reputed periodical and they sell at a different price. Choose which you will be by your ability to do something constructive with other people’s dark secrets.

290 – Learn Your Limits Young

When young, early, poor, and small, life doesn’t offer us the powers and opportunities to smack around those who do injustice to us. Tyrants are made by holding grudges, then beheading their enemies the moment they get the chance. In some cases, your rise to power may require you to send many people to prison or fire them from the company the next day, but be selective. As a general rule, if justice demands that you fire your bad coworkers once you become their supervisor, firing even half of those you could is excessive.

People change with time. Exacting justice against the single worst aggressor may be just what is necessary to bring the rest of the mob in line. Fire only one person on your new day in office, then watch the email meta to see who gets it in gear and who prepares to bail. If you can afford, it’s best to fire no one at all. You would be surprised how loyal your old enemies become once you wield the power of their purse. That could be all the justice needed. This is how God likes to work.

You may be one of the lucky few who gets promoted and are thus celebrated by all your peers. Keep your conscience, keep learning, stay humble, and make sure that you never lose the respect of the friends who helped get you where you are, all while at the same time making the hard choices of a leader.

God allows us to receive injustice in our younger years, but not so to tell us who to hang once we get our turn to keep the throne warm for the day. God shows us these things so we can learn to respond within limits, so that our tenderness can continue once He gives us more responsibility. Look at the limits life gives you and remain within those limits after you receive the power to crush your enemies. Use your past experience to help you remain sensitive to the needs of others beneath you in the future.

Self-control and restraint are necessary for any leader. Learn those things early, then God will entrust you with authority.

291 – Pushover Popularity

Of the many styles and manners, the “pushover” style is the only style everyone will accept. If you want everyone to love you, just be a pushover who can’t get one single thing accomplished in the world. But, if you plan to do anything, like mow the lawn or perhaps something less controversial, you’re going to be accused by someone of being “mean” sounding and cold-hearted.

The more good things you do and the fewer excuses you accept from yourself, the more “verbally abusive” you will seem to those who make excuses for themselves. Not being a pushover is a cardinal sin to those who

Natural human tendency prefers things that are easy to push around. “Go-getters”, who make things happen, have taught themselves over time thet people aren’t things, so we shouldn’t want to push people around. If a person is easy to push around, that person won’t get things done. Learning this is the only way “go-getters” went and got anything done because big things only get done with the help of many “go-getters” going and getting together.

Good friends aren’t easily pushed over; good friends push back. Those who learn to like “pushback” teach themselves again every day to avoid “yesmen”—even loath them. But, left to our inborn autopilot, everyone prefers the pushovers.

You can’t make everyone happy. If you break any ground, you’re going to kick up dust and someone is going to sneeze. “Go-getters” break ground and kick up dust to achieve their good goals that help humanity. Don’t surrender your good goals to the attacks from convincing pushovers, who get under your skin, who won’t accept anything less than you accomplishing absolutely nothing good.

Of course, they will claim to want “good things” accomplished, but they never make a difference below the vernier and they miraculously find a way to complain about petty non-issues whenever someone does. They won’t admit to themselves that they are pushovers who want everyone else to be a pushover as well, so they certainly won’t admit as much to you.

If you won’t be pushed over then your work won’t be pushed over, but will continue to help humanity for years to come.

292 – Problem of Patience

Being patient includes being misunderstood by otherwise and seemingly good people. They won’t know why you won’t jump to take action, so friends whom you thought to be the “most wonderful in the world” will jump to curse at you because they lack patience themselves.

The forgotten virtue of patience is one reason why so many people question God’s goodness, merely for not having eradicated evil. God is eradicating evil through us, being patient with us as we make up our own minds to stop giving into evil—including evil’s way of impatience.

The way of patience opens doors that open no other way. Some doors are only locked by a “slow hinge”—a hinge that turns so sluggishly that most people think the door is sealed shut. Keep pushing, ever so slightly, and the door locked by patience will open up.

The call to be patient applies especially when we don’t feel like it. God is infinitely more patient with us than we could ever be with anyone else. But, if you can be patient with God being patient with you then you can be patient with anyone.

Don’t be impatient about other people’s lack of progress; that’s their problem. Don’t care more about a student’s education than the student cares himself. Don’t get yourself worked up over whatever evil scheme evil Men have planned.

Those who are impatient are their own worst enemies. They don’t need any punitive intervention from you. Just patiently keep watch as God lets them mess themselves up, impatiently of course.

For the foolish who refuse to wise up, remember that they won’t affect your work. Impatient folly can’t harm the task God has for the patient and wise. If they manage to mess up some of your plans then those plans weren’t from God.

If someone makes you late, God is already orchestrating other events so that it won’t matter in the end. Keep your pace, but don’t become impatient.

Having patience is much like having inertia or momentum. Little flies won’t set you off course. Stability comes with patience and is well worth it. Yet, learning patience takes patience, which is always a problem. Just be patient.

293 – Solo Tests

Christian maturity is not tested when we are in groups, but when we are alone. In the secret, when no one is looking, and we have no friends to twist our arms into doing the right thing—that is when we prove and improve our maturity.

Having friends to obligate us and remind us that there are other people in the world relying on our ability to keep our moral code can help coerce good behavior. With other people watching, we are more likely to follow morals and thus not create regret, but this is no test of maturity. If you ever hope to become fully mature, you’re going to have to do the right thing when no one is looking—and that means you’re going to have to be alone sooner or later. Prepare yourself.

Have conversations with good friends. Take counsel and know that having demons to battle makes you more normal than not. But, don’t reduce your friends into a set of crutches. Friends are good for many more things than leaning on all the time. It’s much more fun to take a walk or run together, but that means many hours training on your own to make the group runs all the more formidable.

There is a lot of money made on keeping Christians dependent on systems that only make them weak. The same goes for many consulting companies that maintain a status of “being needed” by offering “solutions” that only perpetuate problems. Sunday morning Christian “church” is great when it’s not a need. But, once it becomes a “need”, that’s when the abuse starts. Jesus is your only “need”, everything else is a “want”, including your friends.

When evaluating any business proposal or Christian fellowship, watch to see what their demands are. Do they try to collect a list of your associates, suppliers, addresses, or phone numbers? Do they get money in a way that perpetuates an existence that only keeps asking for money? Many big companies fall into “marketing scams” because they are bored and never learn to identify scams in personal, social circles, including Christian societies. The way to see through any scam is to grow strong alone.

294 – Vindictiveness Cripples

Anger makes us weak. Getting a grip on anger is a challenge for every human. Some are more prone than others, but it always sneaks up on us. People who rarely get angry can’t control their anger once something finally pushes them over the edge. People who struggle with anger are not alone—they are not a minority; the person who doesn’t struggle with anger just might be the only one on Earth and he is in great peril for not having learned to deal with it earlier.

Giving up anger for joy is one of the hallmarks of Christianity. Sadly, few Christians cash in on this hallmark of their own beliefs, making the “angry Christian” one of the most common oxymorons in the world.

Overcoming anger requires a recipe of owning responsibility for one’s own emotions, uncomfortable amounts of time in focused prayer to and worship of Jesus, filling one’s own thought life with ideas that support a Biblical framework, and, oddly enough, physical health. Diet, exercise, sleep, and environment all contribute to emotions. Even an approaching rain cloud drops barometric pressure, making people edgy. In East Asia, it is generally known that sugar, spice, and fried food contribute to pimples and an “angry/evil fire” in one’s spirit energy. They solve the problem by drinking water, but asparagus also helps, as do melons, guavas, pears, and various edible fruit blossoms.

While curing anger has its recipes, so does anger itself. An uncontrolled lustful thought life is one of the common culprits of anger. So are alcohol, caffeine, and nicotine. Some recent questions consider whether petroleum-based products and chemicals could also have an “angering” effect, such as coming in contact with gasoline, motor oil, or other chemicals, including dry erase marker ink, petroleum-based skin lotion, or bug spray. But, chemicals are always being researched and they certainly are no excuse.

Jesus paid everyone’s vindication price with his own life. So, discipline ought educate and deter, not “transfer due suffering” to supposedly “pay” for crimes. Any conflict, punishment, correction, or disagreement should be entirely empty of any wrath, venom, offense, or “thirst for blood”. If you can’t help it, get help as soon as you can.