BU BÖLÜM HAKKINDA
When someone else makes a mistake, when they fall short of expectations, our natural reaction is to criticise them, or perhaps punish them. Ostracise them. But consider this – what if our first reaction was to compensate for them – to make up for their shortcomings with our natural gifts and abilities? How different would this world be, if we all did that?
People's mistakes can be so annoying especially, let me say, when they make the same mistake over and over and over again which of course we all do. Now you might protest and say, "I don't make the same mistake over and over again." And my response to you would be "sure you do, we all do." Here's why ...
There are some things that you're naturally good at and some things that you're not and there are some things that the next guy is naturally good at and some things that he isn't. So there you are the two of you good at different things and bad at different things.
So you see the mistakes that he makes at the things you're good at, and you say to yourself, 'how can that guy keep on making the same mistake, it's so obvious?' And right while you're thinking that he's thinking exactly the same about you.
My friend Keith is a great encourager, the sort of person you really enjoy spending an hour or two with over lunch. You come away feeling so much better about yourself. He recently sent me a document we'd both been working on; it was an 18-page contract that I'd developed meticulously with some lawyers.
While I was away on holidays he needed to make a few changes but did he turn on the Word Processor's change-control feature so that I could see the changes he'd made? Nooo. Now I was about to get annoyed and then I remembered, hang on, whoa, whoa, whoa, this is Keith, we're talking about Keith here. He's a great encourager but when it comes to technology and admin and all that stuff he's a dead loss. It's the way he is and he's never going to be any different.
Now I can't do what he does and he can't do what I do and that's the way, folks, it was always meant to be. And so I'm at that point confronted with exactly the same question that I hit you with at the top of the program, am I going to criticise him or am I going to help him? Which will it be?
See this is a question that confronts each one of us at least several times a day. Think of the people you've been annoyed with over the last twenty-four hours, what was the source of the annoyance? How did you respond? Did you criticise them or did you help them?
The series of message we're in right at the moment is called "Are You a Blessing or a Burden?" inspired by a great quote from Dr Tayo Adeyemi in the UK. He said:
You are either a blessing or a burden, an asset or a liability, a problem solver or a problem. It's your choice.
And so we're on a bit of a journey to discover some practical rubber hits the road kind of things that you and I can do to be more of a blessing than a burden; to be more of part of the solution rather than being part of the problem. And this is really a practical thing we can do.
When someone makes a mistake, we can stuff our pride back into our pocket and choose to help them instead of criticising them. And when you think about it as much as it maybe a counter-intuitive thing to do it actually makes an enormous amount of sense both for them and for us.
I'm going to read you a short passage from the Old Testament, a Book written about three thousand years ago called the Book of Ecclesiastes. It's purported to have been written by one of the wisest men who's ever lived, King Solomon of Israel. Its Ecclesiastes chapter 4, verses 9 to 12:
Two people are better than one because they have a good reward for their toil. If they fall one will lift the other up but woe to the one who is alone and falls and doesn't have another to help. Again if two lie down together they keep warm but how can one keep warm alone? And though one might prevail against another, two withstand one, actually a three fold cord is not quickly broken.
I was sharing this with a bunch of people once and I did it visually. I had two people hold a single piece of rope tight and then I cut it in the middle, well of course at that point the rope failed. Then we took two ropes and wound them around each other and around and around and around, then I got the people to hold them again tight and I cut one rope on the right and I cut the other rope in the middle and I cut the first rope on the left.
See the ropes pretty much hung together because what happened was that the second rope compensated for the first in the places where it was cut and it had failed and vice versa. Then we took three ropes and plaited them together as a woman would plait her hair.
I got the people to hold this thing tight, I cut each of the three ropes in two different places and you know what, you could pull as hard as you like and the ropes didn't fail. I could actually sit on them and they wouldn't come apart. That's the picture here.
You and I have the capacity to compensate for the failures and the weaknesses of others and because we're all different, we're all strong in different places, we're all weak in different places, when we're bound together in a relationship as a team we can compensate for one another in those different places just as the ropes did.
I cleaned up the mess with the contract that Keith couldn't, and you know what, he goes out and encourages members of our team in a way I couldn't do. And you know something, that's how it's meant to be, it's exactly how it's meant to work.
The beauty of that, the reason that it makes so much sense is that together in a mutually supportive relationship in a team of two or three or four or even ten people we can achieve so much more. Now some teams don't achieve anything because they're always fighting and criticising.
If we want to be a blessing rather than a burden, an asset rather than a liability, a part of the solution rather than the problem there are two parts to this. The first is bringing all our skills and abilities to the table with energy and gusto and dedication and hard work. That's the first part.
The second part is having the wisdom and the humility to use those skills, to use those abilities, to compensate for the weaknesses of others. If we each have that level of wisdom and maturity then our team, our relationship, I'll tell you, it's going to be completely unstoppable. A team with people in it who are prepared to compensate for one another is going to achieve some amazing things.
Now serving one another takes humility, a much under rated attribute these days is humility. It's about laying aside what we think we're entitled to and pitching in and serving anyway. Humility is serving people even when in our superior judgement they don't deserve it. Humility is rising above the petty bickering and the point scoring and the recognition and the reward seeking and just getting on to achieve the aim.
Humility is shutting our mouths when we feel like complaining, when others around us are behaving like two-year olds and by the goodness of our example, by our faithfulness, by our quiet assurance, showing people the way forward. That's humility. Takes a strong and mature and a wise person to live out that sort of humility.
The best leaders are the humble ones, 1 Peter chapter 5, verse 5:
All of you must clothe yourselves with humility in your dealings with one another for God opposes the proud but he gives grace to the humble.
Hey that's powerful stuff. We often think when we read stuff like that in God's Word, hey I know someone that that's meant for. You know who it's meant for? It's meant for you and me today. It's meant for us to take to heart. Listen, God opposes the proud. Is it really the way to go, to live our lives in a way that God is always going to oppose us with all His might and all His power?
And yet He gives grace to the humble. Humble yourself therefore under the mighty hand of God. That's how we become more of a blessing than a burden, more of an asset than a liability and more of a solution than part of the problem. That's exactly how we do this stuff.
