July 19. Living Up Or Living Down.
What are you willing to endure pain and suffering for?
Entrepreneurs balance the opportunities and challenges of their companies, that includes their employees and their families. That balancing act certainly has its peaks and valleys but often it is those valleys that provide the best opportunity to learn.
Valleys provide experiences that are priceless, often cost us and they develop endurance in us. Endurance, that word carries some weight with it. It means that I must get up, lift up or even push through some type of struggle, exhaustion, or challenge. As entrepreneurs, our team members share the experience of developing endurance as well.
What are the areas that you have endured through in the past? How might your current team members learn from your past lessons of endurance that they might not be aware of? Our teams do not have to personally experience all the challenges to benefit from your endurance. We can share our endurance.
That can be part of our leadership journey if we make the choice. Sharing our endurance experiences can build confidence in our teams faster. If your team or a team member is experiencing a valley, what wisdom of endurance can you share with them to boost their confidence?
What is the first thing that you can do about it in the next seven days?
You might have heard the expression that "bad things happen to good people." It has been a common subject for many studies in the faith world over the last twenty years, probably forever. Why? Because it is true and has been true throughout time.
If it continues to be true today, then we might have two choices. One is to run and hide under the covers and ignore what is going on in the world or in our sphere of influence. The other choice might be to embrace that the amazing blessing of our eternal God is worth the risk to love, share and endure.
We are called to be compassionate people as Christians, but even more so we are challenged to be people who endure. We are called to fight the good fight. In James we read, "For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow.
So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing.” James 1:3-4 NLT. I like to think that we sometimes choose to live down. Living down is living depressed, being held back by ourselves or others, and being moved away from loving relationships with each other.
The other choice is to live up. Living up is finding joy and moving ourselves forward to always be growing. It is about being in a relationship, enduring and loving. Where might you see an opportunity to live up? What is the first thing that you can do about it in the next seven days?
Let us pray, Heavenly Father, it is a beautiful day full of opportunities and challenges ahead of us. We ask for your guiding light to shine upon us as we endure. We know that the fog will clear, the sun will rise and that your love for us will prevail. We are the people of the resurrection.
Because Christ was lifted up, we choose to live up today as well. Be with those that might feel that they are caught in the spiral of living down. Help us to help each other to live up. In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen,
