An Accidental Meeting?

I’m at a meeting in Bangkok this week, and today was our first day.  When I walked into the conference room, there was an elderly English man talking with one of my team members.

Turns out (stay with me while I connect the dots), he just relocated to Bangkok with his wife for some work she does.  They haven’t found a church yet, so when he was walking past the Bangkok Christian Guesthouse and saw that a church met there on Sundays, he went in to inquire about it at the front desk.

As he was about to leave, he asked if by chance they had ever heard of an organization called Compassion.  (Compassion is the Christian ministry that I work with, and we help poor children in developing nations around the world by working through the local church.)  The man had sponsored a child in Thailand for many years through us and wanted to get in touch with us to see if we knew any recent information about her.

The person at the desk thought he was part of our meeting and said, “Compassion is tomorrow, not today.”  Surprised and a little confused, he asked some questions and found out we were having a meeting at the guesthouse, so he returned this morning to talk with us, tell us stories about his sponsored child and show us her picture.

He doesn’t sponsor her anymore, because she is now 27 years old, but we took his information and are going to see if the Thai office can get the former sponsored child and her sponsors connected.

Some people believe in coincidences.  I don’t.  It was no accident that this man wandered past our hotel the day before we got here.  God was planning a reunion!

Don’t Miss the Meaning

Many of us go through life having experiences but missing their meaning.  If you believe Romans 8:28, then you know that God uses ALL things for the good of those who love Him.  He uses good experiences and bad.  They are a tool to shape us more like Christ and a test to reveal the quality of our heart.

But we are so busy!  Most of us don’t take the time to stop and reflect.  We have the experience but miss the meaning because we moved on to the next stimulating activity or responsibility in our lives.  It’s like going on an incredible trip to a distant country, having fantastic experiences pregnant with significance for our lives and then packing them into our suitcase for the trip home.  When we arrive, we leave the suitcase in a corner unopened and grab a new, empty suitcase, where we will pack in all the potentially meaningful experiences of today.

But when will we ever find the time to unpack?  Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow…

It’s very optimistic of us to think that things will slow down tomorrow so that we can pull out all the great experiences of the past to reminisce and learn their deep truths, but it probably won’t happen.  And who knows?  Yesterday’s experiences might have an expiration date.  God may have given them to us right before we needed them.  By the time we stop to examine them, they might taste very bitter to us as we realize how much we needed them when we had an opportunity or were put to the test.

The key responsibility of parents, mentors and supervisors is to help their children, their mentees or their staff unpack the lessons that experience is meant to teach them.  By creating space in busy schedules, these leaders help their followers learn the importance of fully receiving each experience that God gives them.  They contextualize by adding their insights and their own lessons learned; they ask questions to reveal the hidden value of seemingly meaningless circumstances; they challenge their followers to ask “why” until God’s purpose is revealed.

If you are in a leadership role, stop working so much and start coaching more.  Most of us in leadership roles are too busy with our own responsibilities to unpack lessons with our followers.  It’s great if you are shoulder-to-shoulder with them, having the experience together, but even more important is being face-to-face, examining what’s in their suitcase.

The question is, do you care about them enough to want them to grow and learn and develop as God intends?  If so, don’t waste anymore of the teachable moments He sends you.

Inside-Out

My youngest son often puts his shirts on inside-out. Not a big deal. I’ve done it when I was in a rush to get somewhere. But even when I tell him he is inside-out, he doesn’t care. He’s content to go around all day with his shirt tag announcing that he can’t dress himself.

I was thinking about my son as I read Matthew 23 this morning, because Jesus also liked to turn things inside-out. In the passage, He is dealing out the “seven woes” to the teachers of the law and the Pharisees, and He criticizes them for “cleaning the outside of the cup or dish” while the inside is full of nastiness. To drive home His point, He compares them to freshly painted tombs filled with dead men’s bones. They look good on the outside, but they reek of death inside.

He challenges them to clean up their insides first, because when the inside is clean, the outside will become clean, too. Jesus is saying that if they will change their character, their behavior will follow. If they change their WHO, their DO will soon match.

I’m guilty of making the same mistakes as the Pharisees sometimes. I clean up my behaviors, because I want to be seen as a godly Christian. I want people to think highly of me for the way I follow God. But the problem is that it’s difficult to keep the act going when I’m not on stage. Behind the curtains with my family and even more in private moments or times of stress, I step out of character, and I find myself leading two lives. A “hypocrite” (the Greek word for “actor” that Jesus used to label false spiritual leaders) like the Pharisees.

I’ve tried outside-in for years, and it doesn’t work. Who I am has to change first, and this means changing my heart. It’s got to happen from the inside-out.

I find this clean-up project to be exhausting, but the great news is that I don’t have to do it alone. Jesus is ready to roll-up His sleeves if I invite Him to join me. And honestly, I can’t do it without Him. Jesus is the Project Manager. He plans the work and works the plan. I’m just the assistant, and I have two main roles: invite Him onto the worksite each day and follow His directions.

Inside-out work is exceedingly slow and exceedingly difficult. It never goes as fast as I want it to, and it always requires lots of challenging situations that Jesus uses as a tool to shape my character and a test to reveal the quality of my heart. It’s a project that won’t be done until I join the Project Manager in heaven, but I’m encouraged by this Scripture:

“Being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 1:6)

Maybe my son is the one who has got it right. Pay less attention to how you look on the outside and more attention to being the right person on the inside. Wear your shirt inside-out every once in awhile, and you will find that life is a lot more fun when you don’t pretend to be someone you are not.