Friday, August 24, 2007

The greatest sign of respect...

"The world was not worthy of them." - Hebrews 11:38a

"Then the LORD said to Satan, 'Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.'" - Job 1:8

I just got back from Dallas from a "sales simulation" training thing with my work... and on the plane home, reading "Shattered Dreams" I had a little epiphany that I wanted to share... no worries, it does relate to my prep for the trip.

Late on the second day of interviewing the executives we were supposed to meet with and build our proposal/business case for, we had to take the high level numbers (which were huge because one of my teammates likes showing big numbers) to be reviewed by our company's simultaed CFO. I needed to have a one-on-one meeting with an executive, hadn't yet, so it made sense that this would be the most logical opportunity for me (since I do financial business cases for a living). The downside was, we hadn't 'fully baked' our numbers before this meeting and our business case was in the process of being changed as a result of a few prior meetings, so I was feeling a little trepadation as I walked into the CFO's office. What resulted was a merciless beating (where I was the 'beaten') because I wasn't able to defend the ONE-BILLION-DOLLAR (cue Dr. Evil voice here) numbers that we e-mailed the guy 2 hours earlier. I stood my ground and attempted to defend but at the end of the day... I went away with work to do - and a little upset at a teammate or two for setting me up to go through that interrogation. Now, this meeting was great in that some teams got beat up when they were presenting their final proposal... not us (I took one for the team)... and we WON!!! Cool.

The ah-ha moment came in what the role player told me in my one-on-one feedback session with him after everyone came out of role. He told me that he set out to make this a really, really hard meeting because he was very impressed with me and my team and wanted to see if I had what it took... and he told me after the fact that he was proud of me in that I stood my ground, didn't lose my cool, and was willing to defend what I put in front of him (the number he decided to pick on wasn't one of those, but oh well). In fact, we had a chance to 'chat' (he's British) afterwards and really had fun talking to him (he's into miltary history, which I also find to be facinating).

As I was reading Larry Crabb on the plane later, what he was talking about in Chapter 3 about God trusting US with trials and pain because HE can trust us to live in hope of Christ through shattered dreams and suffering and show the world where true joy really exists. As I started to put my own trials and frustrations (even the little ones) in perspective, with the words of a retired CFO, a smart author, and the words I read about God bragging on a dude from Uz named Job in my quiet time earlier.... it dawned on me that God also trusts that in all these things that I will not give up hope, because my hope is not in the little things that the world says are ultimately important but in God. Especially as I am preparing to spend a week serving Risttee Church... the perspective becomes more clear because there's not too many things that can make the gospel appear less compelling than a joyless Christian - and it's cool that God allows me to see that He's proving that His joy is alive in me. That's one thing that I defintely want my new Estonian college student friends to see and be attracted to!

cheers!
chris <><

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