Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time.
1 Peter 5:6 (NIV)
I sat at the local pub one afternoon journaling. Without warning a thunderstorm of ideas rolled in. I began thinking about all of the life lessons I have gained as a result of my career.
“Customer complaints are rarely about the complaint.”
“Systems shape souls.”
“Everyone wants to make rules out of exceptions.”
If you had told me when I was a teenager that I would spend over three decades of my life analyzing tens of thousands of business interactions between clients and their customers I would have invited you to go take a long walk off a short pier. That would have been among the last things on this earth I would want to spend my life doing. Besides, I had my entire life dream planned out.
College. Seminary. Pastoral ministry. Preacher. Author.
God had other plans.
Over 100,000 business phone calls, emails, and chats analyzed. Customer research.
Front-line coaching and training.
Executive strategy sessions.
I was good at it. My gifts and abilities dove-tailed perfectly with the job.
There I sat at the bar writing down all of the lessons I’d learned on this, long, strange trip I called a career. Not just business lessons. Life lessons. Spiritual lessons. Lessons about relationships and human interaction. Lessons about systems that apply universally across humanity. They poured right out of me onto the pages of my journal.
When the storm receded I looked at the list. This was the foundational content of a book. I just knew it.
That was well over a decade ago. The idea sat quietly in my journal for years. It wasn’t forgotten. I thought about it all the time. I even had one occasion in which I spoke seriously with a publisher about it, but the opportunity wasn’t right.
I waited. And, I waited.
My soul aches when I have to sit on a great idea.
Last May I was invited to a Zoom networking meeting with a man named Michael through another networking contact I know in Puerto Rico. I have these kinds of networking meetings all the time. You never know who you’re going to meet. I scheduled the meeting with Michael. I had no idea what he did.
As Michael began sharing his story, something funny happened. I discovered right up front that Michael was a believer. He and his wife had spent years working for a ministry I knew very well. I had a former employer who worked for the same ministry. Our stories were eerily similar.
We both chased ministry.
We both tasted disappointment.
God had rerouted both of us into business.
Michael became a publisher of books about business.
In today’s final chapter of Peter’s first letter, Peter tells his readers to humble themselves before God. I often think of humility as an attitude, but Peter speaks of it as being an action to be taken. Humility isn’t thinking lowly of myself, it’s placing myself willingly under God’s hand.
I’ve learned along my journey that humbling myself before God is really all about surrender.
“Whatever you want from me God.”
“I surrender my will as I embrace and pursue the passions you gave me.”
“I will continually ask, seek, and knock as I press on one day at a time.”
Approaching life with this posture, Peter writes that God “may lift you up in due time.”
Which means that humbling myself before God also requires that I trust God’s timing.
In a brainstorm at the pub God gave me the seeds of a book.
Then He buried it in the soil of time for over a decade
But that didn’t mean it was dead. I thought about it. The lessons marinated in my mind and soul. I added lessons to the list. I continued to make mental and spiritual connections.
The seeds germinated.
They grew roots.
Then one day I had a random Zoom meeting with a man name Michael.
The fruit will be available for you to taste in just a few weeks when the book is published.
I have learned along life’s road that there is a timing to the Story that God is authoring in me.
If I’m going to trust the Story. I have to trust His timing.
If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.
