After Pastor Steve’s sermon this past week, I found myself pondering a question he asked us: Do you have someone who is able to tell you the truth, and are you willing to listen to them? Someone you trust who you meet with regularly, pray with, be honest with, who challenges you to grow and who keeps you on track with your faith. Then Pastor Steve told us to write down 2-3 people who we respect and ask them if they might be willing to be those kind of people to us.
Did you do it? Did you ask 2-3 people this week if they might be willing to be those kind of people to you? Did you ask one person? What was their response(s)?
When I was first out of college and moving up the corporate ladder in marketing, I had a wonderful senior mentor and friend who I always could count on for good advice, encouragement and honesty. She had already “made it” to the level I aspired to be some day. She had 20 years of knowledge in marketing/advertising. She helped me to navigate the complexities of the corporate world in such a way to “avoid” the pitfalls along the way and to stay on the “clear path” to success, especially in a male-dominated industrial manufacturing setting. What a gift she was to me during those early years of my business career. Her advice saved me from making career moves that would have limited my scope and taken me off the path I had set for myself. Listening to her wasn’t always the easiest, but her advice was solid and she truly saved me from “myself!”
Sometimes we think we are making the best decision, but our thinking and viewpoint can become clouded. We all need to be surrounded by one or two people who really care and who are willing to say the tough things we need to hear in order to grow as people and as leaders. We need to be saved from ourselves so we don’t make bad decisions, as Rehoboam did.
In order to be eternally saved from ourselves, we need to have Jesus in our lives and we need to have relationship with Him, but we also need to be surrounded by other Christians who will help us to walk the walk of faith as well. Who are you going to ask to surround you in 2012?
Maybe that would be a great goal to begin this New Year – finding your own core group of “advisors” who encourage you, support you, listen to you, but most importantly, challenge you to hear the truth so you can grow into the person God has designed you to be.
Here’s a great song, I Am New, to help us think about becoming the people God created us to be – we are a new creation in Him. We are not who we were, but we are being made NEW!
To His Glory!
Pastor Carol
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