by Guest Blogger Christine Young
For many years I believed that God would answer prayer and perform miracles for other people but not for me. I had such a low opinion of myself I felt condemned and rejected by God. I did not see God as good. I saw Him as a supreme authority waiting to punish me for the slightest fault. I had witnessed true miracles and had seen people get mighty answers to prayer, but that did not bring me joy. I only felt even more rejected. Was God really willing to help me? I doubted it.

Hello,
My pen name is Christine and I’m a 75 year old mother of 10 with 19 grandchildren and 3 great grandchildren. I enjoy gardening, interior decorating traveling. In 2015 My husband and I climbed Mt Kilimanjaro in Africa.

While on a mission trip to Jamaica I was asked to write a book to testify of God’s faithfulness throughout my life. Previously God had laid it on my heart to do so also. I initially resisted. Not only had I never written a book before, but my story is hard to tell, let alone relive. Sad and embarrassing things that had remained hidden for many years would have to come into the light. Unflattering stories would have to be told and old wounds dredged up.

But God persisted until I gave in and, against my own will, I clicked on my computer and typed “Chapter 1.”
My hope is that you will find my story interesting and see that God is ever so faithful. He will never put on us more than we can bear, and He teaches us through the trials so they can become our greatest strengths. We only need to trust that He loves us and always wants what’s best for our lives.

If you find my book valuable, I would appreciate a review so that others will read it and be encouraged. I want as many people as possible to see that God truly is the way to a new beginning. It is available online at most bookstores and Amazon.

“Little children, I shall be with you a little while longer,” Jesus said.
How sweet that he calls us children, I thought. The other disciples listened closely. Some leaned on trees while others just stood. The night breeze danced in the air and the smell of olives lingered nearby. 
Jesus continued with deep focus on our faces.
“You will seek Me; and as I said to the Jews, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come,’ so now I say to you. A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another.  By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”
Everyone’s faces twisted in distress, and my heart sank as I heard his words. 
What Jesus said about loving others quickly went over our heads. All we heard was that our Lord was leaving.
What? I thought. You. Are. LEAVING?? Why–
Then Peter interrupted my thoughts.
“Lord, where are You going,” he asked, looking very confused.
Jesus looked at him and answered, “Where I am going, you cannot follow Me now, but you shall follow Me afterward.”
Jesus continued speaking to his bewildered disciples, “All of you will be made to stumble because of Me this night, for it is written: ‘I will strike the Shepherd, And the sheep of the flock will be scattered.’”
Everyone’s faces changed, realizing what he was saying. 
“But after I have been raised, I will go before you to Galilee.”
Jesus’s words hit our hearts like a hammer shatters glass. His words seemed to break us. 
The other disciples stared at him in utter confusion. They were unable to speak or move. We all just stared into Jesus’s eyes, hoping that he would explain everything.
Then Peter, who was leaning on a tree, stepped forward and spoke to Jesus “Even if all are made to stumble because of You, I will never be made to stumble. Lord… Why can I not follow You now? I will lay down my life for Your sake.”
Jesus immediately answered, “Will you lay down your life for My sake?” 
Peter’s face melted in confusion. 
“Most assuredly, I say to you, the rooster shall not crow till you have denied Me three times.”
But Peter spoke more passionately, “If I have to die with You, I will not deny You!”
The other disciples murmured in agreement. 
I watched as Peter’s eyes turned shiny like glass under the light of the torches. 
He fell silent to keep the tears back.
Jesus looked at everyone’s pleading eyes and became sorrowful as he spoke.
“Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.  And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also. And where I go, you know, and the way you know.”
This time Thomas spoke up. “Lord, we do not know where You are going, and how can we know the way?”
Jesus looked at him and then at everyone else as he spoke. “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.”
Everyone stood looking at each other in disbelief. I sat amazed at his words. 
I sat confused. 
I sat sorrow-filled. 
I sat utterly blown away. 
. . .
I sat.
Then I looked up from my Bible. 
I was filled with peace, but I was also speechless at what had happened on the pages of my small Bible. My worries were all gone, and now all I could think about was about what I had read.
I looked at the clock. The clock blared 4:45 in red numbers. 
Wow, time really passed, I thought. 
 I got up quickly, flying in my heart, thinking, I should share this! 
And so I did.
This passage is based on John 13:33-14:6, where Jesus speaks to His disciples about His impending departure, urging them to love one another and reassuring them that He is the way to the Father.

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 At one point in our life together, my wife, Coleen, and I were foster parents.  Over the years we had 19 foster children of various sexes, races, and physical and emotional disabilities.   One of those was Michael, who arrived in our home as a 17-year-old refugee from Albania, which was then the most closed and repressive socialist country in the world.  Michael had escaped the regime by swimming across a portion of the Adriatic Sea and eventually landing in a UN refugee camp in what was then Yugoslavia. During the time that Michael was in our home, the regime fell in Albania and the country opened up. Michael was able to speak with his parents via a phone in the village where his family lived.

           One thing leads to another, and a couple of years later Coleen and I visited his parents in their village in the remote foothills in Albania.  We eventually hosted John, Michael’s 80-ish father, for a couple of weeks in our home. 

           Culture shock is too mild a term to describe John’s experiences.  For example, Albania at that time did not have a single stop light in the country because there was no need for one.  There were no cars; people walked or traveled in oxcarts.  Bringing John to America was like time travel — fast-forwarding him a couple of hundred years. He was overwhelmed and awestruck. The treadmill, for example, was a source of amusement – “Why would somebody walk on it when they could just walk outside?  Silly Americans.” Expressways provided a terrifying experience; air conditioning was a wonder.

           As we escorted him to the airplane that would take him back to Albania, he thanked us, said good-bye to his son, and then said, “My whole life, I was told that we were one of the richest nations on earth, but now I see that we are one of the poorest.  It’s like my whole life has been wasted.”

           For years that moment stuck with me like a weight on my heart – every time I thought of it, I felt sad.

           But, in recent years I’ve seen it differently.  John was wrong. His life wasn’t wasted, unless, of course, you judge your life solely by the amount of material possessions you’ve accumulated. It is true that the socialist government lied to him for a lifetime, and that those lies narrowed his world and prevented him from seeing opportunities he never had.

           But John made the most of the situation in which he found himself.  He was the village elder and helped his villagers survive in a difficult time.  He and his wife raised two children and instilled a sound character in them, embedding one with the self -confidence and courage necessary to escape. There was something in John that sought for more, and he instilled that hunger to do more, see more, be more, and accomplish more into his prodigy.  He made an impact.  He had influence. In John’s world, he was significant.

Understanding significance

According to Merriam-Webster, significance is defined this way: “the quality of being important: the quality of having notable worth or influence.”  Wiktionary sheds this light on it: “extent to which something matters.”
       
           While there is a degree of significance to be achieved through one’s family – John had influence on his family, for example — my focus in this article is on a higher level of significance. Having “notable worth or influence” implies that significance on that level is relatively rare. People take note of it.

           Suppose you could lay a foundation of significance with your family, and then reached out to "matter” to a larger world.  Suppose you could seek significance in your career and your business.

           Just that idea alone would put you in a special category. The sad truth is that very few people seek to be significant to anyone over and above their core family.  Most people are content to just get by. In my work of helping sales forces sell better, for example,  I’ve often observed that if you randomly select 20 salespeople and survey them, you’ll find that only one of those 20 have spent $25 of their own money on their own improvement over the course of the year. While salespeople happen to be the professional group with whom I am most familiar, I suspect that salespeople are not unique in their indifference to personal improvement.  Probably the same thing could be said about product managers, customer service representatives, social workers, and every other job title.

           Gaining significance means, among other things, performing in such a way as to be notable.  Notable implies performance above and beyond the average. And that means striving for excellence in your work or business. Striving for excellence means continually improving yourself.  You can’t become excellent unless you do better – forever. And doing better means sharpening the saw and continually improving.  So, being indifferent to personal improvement is to deny an attraction to significance.

Why bother?

           There are compelling reasons to strive for significance in your career and your business. One is the exceptional positive impact on people.  As we noted in the definition, significance is defined by its impact on others.  To be “notable” requires people to notice.  To be “important” requires someone else to deem it so.  So, significance is achieved through positive impact on other people.

           There is something in the soul of human beings that compels us to help others. So many of these ideas rise out of the Judeo-Christian mindset and scriptures. We only have one life, the Bible tells us, and we should live it with an eye toward eternity. “Love your neighbor as yourself” Jesus commanded. Significance is one manifestation of that command.  It informs the way you do your job and live your life, encouraging you to make the most of every minute by positively impacting others. 

           But significance also reaches inward and prompts us to attain more of our potential, to be more, and to achieve more. Insignificant people are content to utilize a fraction of their potential.  Those who strive for significance stretch themselves, put themselves in challenging situations so that they stretch and build the abilities and competencies they were born with.   Show me a person who continually challenges himself/herself, who pushes the boundaries of latent potential to exercise more of that potential, I’ll show you someone who is growing in significance.  

           Significance then, can be much more than just a handy phrase.  It can be an organizing principle in one’s life, ordering priorities and organizing actions in pursuit of a higher calling.

The price to pay

           Maybe that’s why so few people seek it.  Its not easy, it doesn’t come quickly and there are prices to pay as you seek it.

           Significance in your job or business requires several things:  motivation, focus, sacrifice and discipline, to begin with.

           Motivation speaks to that desire that wells up from inside a person to be significant.  It probably won’t happen by chance. You’ll need to want it.  As a lifetime student of motivation (I’m forever asked how to motivate a salesforce, for example) I’ve observed that motivation is rarely injected from outside, but instead is often instilled during our formative years– typically very intentionally by parents or circumstances.  Motivation is often kept in check by our beliefs and our thinking habits.  Once we have the idea that we can be significant in our careers and our businesses, that concept can free us to unleash motivation that has lain dormant. 

           Focus speaks to our ability to prioritize and harness our resources to the highest priority tasks.  Once we have decided to seek significance, we need to focus on those things that will bring us closer to that goal.

           Sacrifice is that dragon that guards the path to significance and discourages most people from taking the next step. The idea of giving some things up now in exchange for greater influence later just doesn’t resonate with many of our colleagues. For many, the choice between buying tickets to a ball game, or paying for a seminar is a no-brainer.  Taking a cut in pay for a promotion that brings greater influence is, for those uninterested in significance, an unreasonable choice.

           Discipline is, like sacrifice, a word that scares many people.  It this context, discipline means that you exert your will to invest time and energy into things that move you closer to significance, even if they are difficult and uncomfortable.

           There are other characteristics that inform the character and practices of the person who seeks significance and we’ll treat them in other articles.

           Sounds like a challenge, and it is.  That’s why few people really choose to seek significance in their careers and businesses.  But for those believe there is more to life than just this, that they can be more, achieve more, and impact more, it can provide an overarching way of life and a lifetime of fulfillment.

           The first step is to recognize that it is available to you, and to decide you want it.

PWA-25
Related Resources
www.davekahle.com/significant-business-manifesto
www.davekahle.com/you-or-him-gods-plan-business
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Do you remember that from your childhood?  It was a response from our parents when we were verbally attacked, criticized, or otherwise made to feel bad by what someone said to us.  It was probably helpful in nudging us off our hurt feelings.  However, like Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny, it was untrue,

The truth lies in the opposite direction. While words may not break our bones, they can have a huge impact on our lives.  On one hand, they can build us up and give us confidence and dedication, and on the other, they can generate feelings of inferiority, a defeated self-image and lead to depression and passivity.
Words are one of our most powerful tools for living a life of fulfillment and purpose.
The Bible is full of passages that remind of this powerful truth and encourage us to choose our words wisely.

For example, the Bible is God’s Word.  Not Gods feelings, not God’s actions, not God’s intentions. It is God’s word for a reason.

In addition, God spoke the world into existence. It was His words that formed creation.  (Genesis 1, NIV)
And, Jesus is called the Word. . . . In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was fully God. (John 1:1 NIV)

In case there is any confusion, Jesus makes clear how important words are to God:  36 But I tell you that everyone will have to give account on the day of judgment for every empty word they have spoken. 37 For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned.” (Matthew 12:36-37)

As with so many other passages, we often relegate the idea to the realm of “church” and give ourselves a pass when it comes to our behavior in the marketplace.  But there is no exception here for people in the marketplace.  Nowhere does it say, “This applies to your life, except your business or career.  You don’t have to obey this on the job.”
Applications for Christian businesspeople 
If we are going to be serious about our Christianity in the marketplace, it’s clear that we need to think about how we use words, and then put in place some guidelines  to help us use good words well. Here are some suggestions:

• Words are both spoken and written. In our world of instantaneous electronic communication, many of us use far more words in writing via text, email and social media posts, than we speak orally. Word we choose to use in electronic communications may last for decades.

• Make sure that your vision, mission and values statements refer to God’s ownership of the business. Your business is not your business. It belongs to God, and you should say that, in writing, on the foundational documents.  That way, everyone who sees those documents will know where you stand. That’s a great place to use precise words that reflect the glory back to God.
• Be careful about using words that are critical. There are, of course, times when you must correct someone. But we need to be careful about the words we choose and the way we deliver them.  We all have memories of some critical words said to us that have lingered for decades. 

Years ago, I came across the ” sandwich” method of delivering a critique.  We teach it to people in our Sales Management course:  It means that you sandwich the critique between two layers of positive reinforcement. Start with a layer of positive comment, add your slice of critique, and then end with another layer of positive words. 

So, for example, you could say to a salesperson in a coaching moment after a sales call:  “John, you have a nice, easy way with people that makes them comfortable with you. That will serve you well.  (Positive words) However, when you called our competitor a ‘fool,” you exhausted any good will you had.  Never speak badly about a competitor.  It puts the customer in an awkward situation. (The heart of the critique) You learn quickly, so I’m sure you won’t do that again. (More positive words.)

•  Be slow and thoughtful about using judgmental words. In our world of social media and sound bites, it’s easy to fall into the trap of following the pack and making judgements about people and situations.  Even worse is when we do it without any good information as a basis. Every day, thousands, if not millions, of people rush to judgement expressed in social media posts.  As Christians we understand those are words for which the writer will “have to give an account on the day of judgment for every empty word.”
• Be slow to react and respond emotionally. Since we can immediately react, via text or email, the temptation is always to respond quickly to something with which we take offense.  All too often, those harsh and emotional words make the situation worse. Do we really want to “give an account on the day of judgement” for those words we fired off in an emotional reaction to an email?
• Plan to use good words to encourage someone.  Suppose you were to make a list of the people in your sphere of influence on the job and methodically deliver good words of support and encouragement to each.  And then, wait a month, and do it all over again.  What would be the impact on those people, on their respect for you and on your influence with them?

I am reminded of the classic business book The One-Minute Manager, which advocated walking around and finding someone doing something well and complementing him/her for it. That was the gist of the book.  And that simple, easy -to-implement advice can and has made huge differences for those who implement it.
Here's one summary rule.  Think about what we say or write before we do it. Keep in mind that we will give an account for every word.    

Copyright MMXXII by Dave Kahle
All rights reserved.