For All My Efforts

Be careful that you do not forget the Lord your God, failing to observe his commands, his laws and his decrees that I am giving you this day. Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down, and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all you have is multiplied, then your heart will become proud and you will forget the Lord your God. You may say to yourself, “My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.” But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your forefathers, as it is today.
Deuteronomy 8:11-14a, 17-18

Do you recall the story of how Jacob, who later became Israel, father of the nation, became wealthy? Remember after cheating his brother out of the birthright and then lying to his father to get the blessing of the first born, he took off to his uncle Laban’s house. A lot of good the birthright and blessing did him. Because of the way he went about getting them, he had to get out of Dodge and quick, for fear of the wrath of his brother. So he arrives at Uncle Laban’s with nothing and that dear fellow gave him a place to live and a dose of his own medicine.

Laban agreed to give Jacob his daughter Rachel in marriage in exchange for seven years of labor. The morning after the wedding night, Jacob realizes Uncle Laban is a cad and has given him the wrong girl, the ugly older sister, Leah. Well, too late to give her back now! So he agrees to work yet another seven years for Rachel, the one he really wanted.

During this time, Jacob realizes he’s got to get smart with Uncle Laban if he ever wants to get ahead. So he makes a deal with him: “I will go on tending your flocks and watching over them. Let me go through all your flocks today and remove from them every speckled or spotted sheep, every dark-colored lamb and every spotted or speckled goat. They will be my wages,” (Gen. 30:32). From then on, Jacob was to get all the spotted and speckled among the flocks and herds.
Now Jacob had a strategy: he took “fresh-cut branches from poplar, almond and plane trees and made white stripes on them by peeling the bark and exposing the white inner wood of the branches. Then he placed the peeled branches in all the watering troughs, so that they would be directly in front of the flocks when they came to drink. When the flocks were in heat and came to drink, they mated in front of the branches. And they bore young that were streaked or speckled or spotted,” (Gen. 30:37-38) because as anyone in animal husbandry can tell you, if you want spotted, speckled or streaked livestock, you have to expose them to this kind of environment when they’re drinking and mating, right? He further bettered his livestock by selecting only the stronger females to expose to these gene-influencing branches. “In this way the man grew exceedingly prosperous and came to own large flocks, and maidservants and menservents, and camels and donkeys,” (Gen. 30:43).

So that was the secret of his success – striped braches in the watering trough. I wonder how many Israelite shepherds throughout history tried to replicate this strategy and ended up wondering why it wasn’t working for them. I suppose that it is possible that being in a certain type of environment could encourage genetic selection in favor of that environment in one generation, but any way you look at it from the perspective of our current understanding of genetics, it’s clear that what Jacob was doing had little to no bearing on the result he was getting.

And yet God certainly knew that when you and I would read this story thousands of years later, we would understand that poor Jacob was clueless and really just grasping at straws. On the other hand, he was doing something, anything, the only thing he could think of to try to become more prosperous. He was making an effort. But it was God who gave the increase because of the plan that he had for Jacob.

We might think Jacob was pretty naïve, but not so. He knew the score. He told his wives: “God has not allowed [Laban] to harm me. If he said, ‘The speckled ones will be your wages,’ then all the flocks gave birth to speckled young; and if he said, ‘The streaked ones will be your wages,’ then all the flocks bore streaked young. So God has taken away your father’s livestock and has given them to me.”

If he had made this connection, that his success was God’s doing, why would he bother peeling almond branches? I’m gonna say he did it because it was all he knew to do. Whereas he attributed God with the increase, Jacob contributed all he could as well, even it if was sheer nonsense by today’s standards.

What about your success thus far? Have your flocks and herds increased by your own efforts, or did God come along and miraculously cause the increase? Careful how you answer.

Who can explain why certain things succeed so and others do not. It’s not all about marketing – some companies spend millions of dollars on a campaign that produces no results. It’s not about talent, if that were the ticket wouldn’t ever Denzel Washington movie have been a box office hit? Perseverance? Don’t you know a starving artist who has been starving for decades? There’s something very mysterious about success, and whereas I don’t think all of it is God’s will, he’s certainly allowing every success. God is enabling our health, intelligence, relative peace so we can work, and an environment in which we can be successful – capitalist United States of America. These things are much more tenuous than we believe. From one day to the next any of it could change at God’s command. But God allows these favorable conditions so that we can produce wealth.

If anyone has their doubts about whether God disapproves of fine houses, having some silver and gold on hand, and a big successful family business, let this scripture put that question to rest. God says in his word that enabling this ability to produce wealth is how he confirms his covenant with Israel. I’m no theologian, but I think this somehow applies to us gentiles to as. Like Paul said in Galatians 3:29, “If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise.”

So good! But wait, there’s a flipside to this. “If you ever forget the Lord your God and follow other gods and worship and bow down to them, I testify against you today that you will surely be destroyed. Like the nations the Lord destroyed before you, so you will be destroyed for not obeying the Lord your God,” Deut. 8:19-20.

With great privilege comes great responsibility. And the privilege of wealth carries with it the responsibility of gratitude and recognition of the one Force that made it possible, at a minimum.

Contemplate this: In what ways have I seen the hand of God enabling my success in the past and present?

Patience, Grasshopper

Lazy hands make a man poor, but diligent hands bring wealth. Proverbs 10:4
The sluggard craves and gets nothing, but the desires of the diligent are fully satisfied. Proverbs 13:4

OK, I sought the Kingdom of God first, now what? I’m still not a huge success – I’m ready for this to happen already!

Even a fool-proof formula for success needs time to work its “magic.” The time spent in earnest seeking God’s Kingdom daily, day after day, is a practical expression of a good character trait that is behind every true success story: diligence.

In our society which likes everything to be fast and disposable, diligence is underrated. You might think it’s non-existent, but the advances in medicine, science, technology, computers and more are evidence of diligence. I work with an organization that funds research on hearing and balance. Each year they give out 20 or more grants to scientists working on tiny little pieces of the huge puzzle “hearing and balance for everyone.” To the average person, some of these studies seem terribly insignificant. For instance, one that was funded this year seeks to quantify the mitochondrial DNA common deletion level and total deletion load in the cochlea of people with and without age-related hearing loss. (Yawn.) And this is just one of the many, many studies in progress right now that will someday complete the puzzle and yield a headline: Cure Found for Age-Related Hearing Loss! There are so many diligent researchers out there working on so many problems and we’ve seen so much measurable progress and so many remarkable breakthroughs that we now expect them and wonder why the heck more aren’t happening. Why isn’t there a cure for Alzhiemer’s yet? Can’t we get this Parkinson’s thing figured out before it’s too late for Michael J. Fox? What’s the hold up?

We want this same overnight success in our lives too, don’t we? I do, I’ll admit it. Daily I am dreaming up new ways in which I could be a huge success by this time tomorrow – a serendipitous meeting with just the right corporate buyer, one of Rachel Ray’s producers Stumble(s) Upon my Reba Ray page, an Oprah producer’s daughter receives On My Own Now for graduation. These are just the type of catalyst that make for big breaks. And yet, unless I have something for someone out there to discover, how could anything like that ever happen to me? Even Joe the Plumber had spent years building up a plumbing business before John McCain pulled his name out of obscurity. Think of any “overnight” success or fame and you will be able to trace it back to years – if not decades – of diligent preparation for that one moment that made the difference. Scientists, celebrities and Joe the Plumber make success look so easy, but diligence is their common denominator.

Instead of wallowing in despair about our future not getting here fast enough, we need to hunker down, put our noses to the grindstone and take care of the business, however small and tedious, that God has given us to do today. That might include cleaning toilets, washing dishes, writing a boring report, making someone else’s coffee or changing dirty diapers. If we do with diligence and a positive attitude, as unto the Lord, the task God has given us to do today, all these things will be added unto us in God’s perfect timing, which usually allots for sufficient development of our character so that when we do get “all these things,” we know how to put them to use for God’s glory and our good.

Yipee! God Sanctions Success

Praise the Lord.
Blessed is the man who fears the Lord,
who finds great delight in his commands.
2 His children will be mighty in the land;
the generation of the upright will be blessed.
3 Wealth and riches are in his house,
and his righteousness endures forever.
4 Even in darkness light dawns for the upright,
for the gracious and compassionate and righteous man.
5 Good will come to him who is generous and lends freely,
who conducts his affairs with justice.
6 Surely he will never be shaken;
a righteous man will be remembered forever.
7 He will have no fear of bad news;
his heart is steadfast, trusting in the Lord.
8 His heart is secure, he will have no fear;
in the end he will look in triumph on his foes.
9 He has scattered abroad his gifts to the poor,
his righteousness endures forever;
his horn will be lifted high in honor.
10 The wicked man will see and be vexed,
he will gnash his teeth and waste away;
the longings of the wicked will come to nothing.
Psalms 112

The hardest part about writing this blog for me is accepting what it says. Just because I’m blogging about throwing away your 401K doesn’t mean I want to throw mine away. Guess what. I also want a big house and I’d like to drive a Buick Eight in mint condition, have a massage in my home at least once a week and never have to do my own nails (hands or feet!) ever again! Frankly, it’s as painful to me to learn what the Bible says about money.

But then we come on a scripture like this and I can finally breathe. If you’ve been waiting to exhale too, here’s your chance. Yes, Praise the Lord! I love the picture we have here of a truly successful man. Wealthy, fearless, stable, triumphant, influential, honored and envied: Sounds like a universal wish list – it’s what we all want. Add love in there and we’re golden! What a relief that God actually sanctions successful people like this guy, which means I can be in God’s will and have all these things too!

Psalms 112 not only paints us a picture of ultimate success, it gives specific direction on how achieve it. Let’s look at the adjectives used to describe that direction: reverent, joyful, obedient, gracious, compassionate, righteous, generous, just and worry-free. This is quite a different recipe for success than the Seven Habits of Highly Successful People, which are (in sum): be proactive; begin with the end in mind; put first things first (this comes third?); think win/win; seek first to understand, then to be understood; synergize; and build your production capability. Sounds like a lot of work. For starters, I need to learn how to synergize.

You can spend a good deal of time and resource to chasing and implement The Secret of success – there are hundreds of books on the subject, not to mention seminars, conferences and retreats. But why would you waste your precious resources on such nonsense. Are you a Christian? Do you believe the Bible? Then stop messing with all that garbage and set your feet on the road to success today with this one simple instruction: Seek first the Kingdom of God and it’s righteousness.

That means stop right now trying to learn to synergize and get back to the basics: pray morning and night, meditate on the Word day and night (that would require memorizing some of it), focus your attention on living like Christ, getting that tongue under control, loving the unlovable, helping people in need, that sort of thing that you don’t need to read a book to know how to do because the Holy Spirit is right there at every turn telling you “This is the way, walk in it!” (punctuation added ).

Following this one simple “habit” (seeking God’s Kingdom first), you will begin to notice (and others will too) that you’re become more and more like the man in this psalm : reverent, joyful, obedient, gracious, compassionate, righteous, generous, just and worry-free. When you arrive, Praise the Lord! And don’t be surprised to look around and realize you’re also in the house of your dreams, with beautiful kids who bring you joy, doing something you love to do that provides a comfortable life for your family and plenty left over with which to lend freely and scatter abroad.