Calling

School has started for our kids. Soon enough, they’ll understand that learning never stops. Speaking of continually learning, I came across an article about frontline leaders needing leadership skills. The main points were these:

• Managers are important to organizations but lack leadership skills.
• More seriously, 12% of respondents to a survey felt their organizations invested enough in developing them.

The article mentions the changing demographics of frontline managers, older ones making way for Millennials. However, the point that struck me was the importance of taking “a broader view of their own work, as well as the work of the team.” This means skills beyond doing the job in front of you.
The article mentions several critical skills, but one missing skill may be the most important: translating one’s work into a sense of calling. The skills mentioned in the article (I’m not mentioning them here so you can do the article’s author the courtesy of a visit to that page) are functional. Translating one’s work into a sense of calling requires a higher order skill. Why is that important?
First, let’s define calling. Michael Novak said in Business as a Calling: Work and the Examined Life, “A career in business is not only a morally serious vocation but a morally noble one.” I heard an insurance executive say his company wasn’t selling insurance. It was providing protection for families against the kind of loss that disrupts lives and breaks dreams. The actress, Shannen Doherty, recently said her management team let her insurance lapse, putting her at serious risk in the face of catastrophic illness. More than just selling commodities, business people like that insurance executive have the potential to do good through their work.
Calling is a way to focus on the greater good you can do through your work. Relate what you do at work to what Michael Novak says:

• “…fulfilling something you were meant to do.”
• “…a sense of having uncovered our personal destiny.”
• “…a sense of having been able to contribute something worthwhile to the common public life.”
• “…something we were good at and something we enjoyed.”

What must you learn to get to that point? What skill is needed to translate what you do at work into a better understanding of your calling? Think about cultivating the ability to have a vision. Vision is what you believe the world will look like as a result of pursuing your calling. Continually refining that vision will help you understand your calling more clearly.
How can you refine your vision? One way is to engage in reflective practice. Reflective practice involves thinking deeply about your experiences to gain a clearer understanding of your work and how it relates to your life. Here are some ideas from my own experience:

• Keep a journal. It doesn’t have to be elaborate. It can be collections of articles on topics that help you think and reflect. Modern software like Evernote and OneNote and bookmarking sites like Diigo and Delicious make it easy to collect and annotate those articles.
• Consult with others. Friends, family, and mentors know you well. Using them as sounding boards can shed light on things you may not have noticed or considered before.
• Read books. Besides absorbing writing skills by reading well-written books, following a story or argument through the length of a book will spark your imagination.
• Turn off the radio during your commute. The quiet of your car can help you reflect.
• Keep a voice recording with you. I discovered that Dragon Naturally Speaking has a speech-to-text capability and can turn what you record into text you can use for notes. In that quiet car, you’ll surprise yourself with how much you record.
• Invest in leadership training. It doesn’t have to be only degree programs. Solid leadership training through classroom and online certificate programs will serve you well.

Your calling is a powerful force. Discovering that calling by refining a personal vision through reflective practice will help you lift your eyes above the horizon to see the greater good you’re doing through your job.

Via Bleeding Green Nation, an article that connects military thought to Chip Kelly's innovative football ideas: "...once you look behind the glitz and glamour of Kelly's offense, it becomes clear that speed is just a byproduct of a much larger innovation."

Points:

• "...it wasn't the best equipment or the number of soldiers that defined a Great General, but rather their ability to quickly adapt and out-maneuver an enemy."
• "...conflict was just a series of decision loops."

The article mentioned most decisions in battle happen instantaneously. This sounds similar to Gary Klein's ideas about Recognition-Primed Decision-making (RPD) where the decision-maker cycles through patterns until he or she finds a familiar pattern to apply to a situation. This is an instantaneous process.

According to JC Ryle in his book, Holiness: Its Nature, Hindrances, Difficulties, and Roots: "A holy man will follow after faithfulness in all his duties and relations in life."

Some key points:

• It's more than just staying out of trouble or doing the assigned task. Ryle says anyone can do that, including "others who take no thought for their souls."
• The challenge, for Ryle, is "Holy persons should aim at doing everything well, and should be ashamed of allowing themselves to do anything ill if they can help it."
• Ryle's examples include being "good husbands, good wives, good parents and good children, good masters and good servants, good neighbours, good friends, good subjects, good in private and good in public, good in the place of business and good by their firesides."
• Ultimately, Ryle concludes, "Holiness is worth little indeed, if it does not bear this kind of fruit."

That's a tall order, and it involves, instead, greater vision, effort, and endurance.

• It involves greater vision because the holy person needs to strive for excellence in all things.
• It involves greater effort because great achievements come at a great cost.
• Operating at such a high level requires great endurance, and that's where faithfulness comes in.

Faithfulness, therefore, can be seen as having a sense of unfinished business that should drive Christians beyond ordinary living. Ryle points to Jesus's questions in Matthew 5:47, the final in a set of rhetorical questions that conclude his exhortation to do more than return an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Instead, Jesus charged his disciples to turn the other cheek, give one's coat in addition to one's cloak, and go the extra mile. Those final questions, "What more are you doing than others? Do not the Gentiles do the same?" are a challenge to live above the ordinary every day.

How can we find the great endurance to stay that course day in and day out? It's no coincidence that faith is not only belief but also perseverance, that is, keeping faith, or as Ryle expresses it, faithfulness. That distinction corresponds to Ryle's distinction earlier in Holiness between justification and sanctification.

• Justification is the initial act where God immediately sees the individual as righteous and sanctification is the lifelong process of growing toward God's vision every day.
• In other words, justification is how God immediately sees His followers, but sanctification is how God shapes His followers over the course of their lives.

John Piper said that distinction is the root of the endurance needed to consistently do everything well without flagging. In studying the lives of John Newton, Charles Simeon, and William Wilberforce, Piper discovered this secret to endurance:

• Justification, God's grace act of covering our sins with Christ's sacrifice, was not sanctification, the lifelong process of holy living.
• Too many people, Piper said, believe once justified means fully sanctified and don't take on the hard task of spiritual growth.
• That means they're surprised and discouraged when they discover holy living is hard.

Newton, Simeon, and Wilberforce didn't lose sight of that, so justification became the basis of hope that got them through the hard times that inevitably come when trying to do the right thing.

• They looked back on God's act of justification in order to look forward to the great tasks ahead.
• They were encouraged that God's act of justification meant they would never lose that relationship with God and, resting in that knowledge, attempted great things for God day in and day out.

How can we make that endurance our own as we fight the Sunday night blues thinking of the week ahead? In his great hymn, Amazing Grace, John Newton tells us how.

• We first understand just how great God's grace was to bring us to Himself. Newton, a former slaver, understood his condition before God, calling himself a wretch and equating his transformation to going from lost to found, from blindness to seeing.
• After his conversion, Newton accepted the path of growth in holiness as grace taught his heart to fear.
• Knowing that grace his fears relieved, Newton accepted that life was full of dangers, toils, and snares, but anchored himself in God's grace that brought him safe thus far and would lead him home.

This formula for endurance is what allowed Newton to counsel Wilberforce during a time of self-doubt to stay in politics, advice that led to a change in British law regarding slavery. It's a formula that can motivate us to stay the course. To steal Douglas MacArthur's words from a different speech, anchoring in God's grace will "build courage when courage seems to fail…regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith…[and] create hope when hope becomes forlorn."

Jump start your prayer life with prayers from the Bible

A way to pray by using Bible prayers. 

Example: Jabez prayer. 1 Chronicles 4:10 NASB. "Now Jabez called on the God of Israel, saying, 'Oh that You would bless me indeed and enlarge my border, and that Your hand might be with me, and that You would keep me from harm that it may not pain me!' And God granted him what he requested."

Make a table like this one, a row for each part of the prayer:

Bible prayer.	What it means to you.	Ongoing prayer concern. Something you pray about on a recurring basis. What does the specific part of the Bible prayer mean for your ongoing prayer concern?	Immediate prayer concern. Something you call upon God right away. What does the specific part of the Bible prayer mean for your immediate prayer concern?	God's responses. How is God responding? How did God finally respond?
Bless me.
Enlarge my border.
Your hand might be with me.
You would keep me from harm that it may not pain me.

Via Instapundit and the New York Times, operations management contributes to improved treatment of heart attacks:

From 2003 to 2013, the death rate from coronary heart disease fell about 38 percent, according to the American Heart Association citing data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, the primary federal agency that funds heart research, says this decline has been spurred by better control of cholesterol and blood pressure, reduced smoking rates, improved medical treatments — and faster care of people in the throes of a heart attack.

Faster care comes from streamlined processes. The article provides insight into how that came about and how it's also helping stroke victims.

A page in your prayer journal

Don't be afraid to start with asking. Prayer is one of God's tools for changing you. Over time, you'll start with praise and thanksgiving.

Prayer item: Describe what you're praying about (be specific), then start to fill out the table below: 

Purpose in your heart: Commit to God's general will. Write down God's commands, commissions, and promises you think apply. Feel free to change these over time. They will help you reflect on God's purposes below.	Wait on God for His specific will: Progress and preparation toward answered prayer (list what you think is God's movement toward answering your prayer) Your preparation (what seems related to moving you as part or as all of God's final answer; what seems related to preparing you to become part or all of God's final answer)
God's final answer: What God finally answered.	Act decisively: Your decisions and commitments in response to God's answer
Purposes: God's specific will as revealed in His final answer (reflect on the alignment between your original request and God's final answer)	Person: Reflect on these to help you identify aspects of your character to bring in line with God's. God's, names, character, and attributes Christ's names, character, and attributes

How to make prayer that comes from you and not vain repetition:

• Follow the matrix clockwise:  - Supplication leading to asking God to exercise His attributes.
• Counterclockwise - Praise/thanks for exercising His attributes. 

Christian Theology 101: One mind with God

Via JC Ryle's Holiness:Its Nature, Hindrances, Difficulties, and Roots, one characteristic of holiness: "Holiness is the habit of being of one mind with God, according as we find his mind described in Scripture."

Ryle makes these points about what "one mind" means:

• Agreeing with God's judgments. The more we agree, the holier we become.
• Measuring everything by the standard of God's Word (Bible)

"Holy" means "set apart," something Ryle's two points about "one mind" bring out. Here are a few thoughts:

• Servants adopt the master's priorities over their own, the foundation for servants achieving "one mind" with the master. 
• Servants make decisions based on their understanding of the master's priorities. This helps servants do what the master wants even if the master is absent. In the military, we called this the commander's intent. What did the commander want to accomplish? Knowing that priority helped us use the right tactics for the situation.
• Measuring everything by God's Word requires studying God's Word.

Is this a harsh thing? It might be hard, but it shouldn't be harsh because we set ourselves apart everyday in many ways. We pursue the priorities of our employers. We go to school or training courses to understand concepts by which we measure things in our professions and pursuits. 

"One mind" makes for more effective groups as well. Teams must be of one mind to win the game. The military invests much money into training units so they're of one mind. "One mind" in that sense grows from having the master's priorities in common and a common framework for evaluation and decision-making. That level of team and individual accomplishment doesn't come without an investment of properly focused hard work.

What happens when you reach the state of "one mind"? In the movie, The Last Samurai, the character played by Tom Cruise was having trouble mastering the samurai sword skills. The chief's son advised him, "You must have no mind." In other words, don't overthink it. Just act. Thinking about what you'll do in high speed combat will get you killed.

Reaching the state of "one mind" is Christianity's version of "no mind." You've internalized God's priorities to the extent you can respond to situations, confident you're fulfilling His intent. In Christianity, "no mind" really means "not your mind but God's."