day 836: Accountability

"The one who plants and the one who waters work as a team with the same purpose. Yet they will be rewarded individually, according to their own hard work."

Accountability is a hard principle to establish and an even harder principle to ensure. It has been my experience through the years of working in business that many people (I won't say most, but it sometimes feels that way) do not want to be held accountable for both the success and the failure of something. There's usually not much problem on the wanting to be accountable for the success, it's the other side that they avoid. But, the fact is, it can't go both ways. Well, it can, but no one is happy in that place. For people to be held accountable and rewarded as such, they have to be willing to share in the acceptance of failure and more so, their own failures in the outcome. Failure is an amazing spectacle to watch. Everyone runs away from a failure like school boys fleeing the broken window from a baseball. No one wants the personal blame. But like those same school boys if the ball goes straight and over the fence, landing in the area called a home run, the batter will proudly strut across all four bases. In business, we need to fill our companies with people who want to take accountability and who don't run and hide when the ball breaks the window. It is those who can stand up, learn from, and move forward with new information and experience who will be the leaders of the future.

Paul works with his team in Corinth to help them understand how to work together to do God's work. He teaches them accountability in 1 Corinthians 3:8. He explains that while we all are working together to plant and water, that in the end we will be judged individually, according to our own "hard work". What is so great about our God is that we are accepted into His Kingdom not by our works, but by our faith, but Paul makes a point here as well for us. We are not saved by committee. We don't walk into Heaven as a team. We come to Jesus personally and we do so on our own faith and our own decision. Yes, we are held accountable individually on this decision. From there, God allows us to water, plant and be watered and grown, but again only as much as we personally will allow. Today, let's stand up for accountability and take some on our own growth in Christ. Let's not let the team around us either pull us down or artificially prop us up. Let's be accountable for our own walk with Christ and make that walk deeper and stronger, starting today.

Reference: 1 Corinthians 3:8 (New Living Testament)

day 305: Big Shoulders

Any job that we do well comes with responsibility and accountability. I can't think of any job where something is not expected from the person doing the job. Even if the work is just sitting around at a desk (like a security guard), the person doing the job has to show up at the assigned time and stay through the scheduled work time. And while there are many jobs where at the end of the day, the work is left at the workplace, even that work can have us at the end of the day or into the night, rethinking the day and playing back what we did to make sure we didn't mess up or forget something. As we gain more responsibility, we take on more and more of the burden that comes with that responsibility. We even talk about it openly at work when we say, "to do that job you have to have big and wide shoulders". This comes from the story and image of Atlas holding up the globe on his shoulders. Some days it feels just like that and that weight can feel overwhelming. On those days we are best reminded of what Jesus came to take upon His shoulders. Hundreds and hundreds of years before Jesus was born, the prophet Isaiah wrote that a child would be born and he would not only bear the weight of the lives and souls of each of us, but He would also be the bearer of all that we know. In Isaiah 9:6 we read these words that are so familiar to us at this time of year;

"For a child is born to us, a son is given to us.
The government will rest on his shoulders.
And he will be called: Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace."

As a child born into the world, Jesus was given the government of our world to rest squarely on His shoulders. As you think about the pressures, the stress, the problems, the challenges, the needs of others and the obstacles in front of you, don't forget to rejoice that God gave us His Son who has already taken all of the biggest and toughest challenges on His shoulders for us. And what He is asking from us daily, is to just keep loading Him up. His shoulders are big enough for us to give all that we have to Him. He never shrugs and He never tires. He holds it all up, for us. So as we think about the baby Jesus over the next week plus and we celebrate His birth, let's also remember that this little baby took it all for us, gave His all for us, and waits on us to give Him more. There is nothing we should let sit on our own shoulders that distracts or detracts from us accepting the gift of His love and living the abundant life that He wants us to have.

Reference: Isaiah 9:6 (New Living Testament)