Ouch! The Sting of Correction-Selah58-CMAW154

S   I want to share something that happened to me at my job in the hope that you can learn from and benefit from it. I won't say exactly when this happened, but at some point during my career, I was asked by my boss for a meeting after a contractor I worked with had asked for a meeting with him.  For some context I had not had this boss for very long, less than year, and actually had not gone through my first year-end evaluation with him, and he was new to our facility so he didn't know me or my work.  Well the contractor who asked for a meeting with him basically told him I was not doing a good job working with him and that my peers did a much better job.  He gave a lot of specifics but that was more or less the bottom line. I was nervous about my meeting with my boss since there had been tension between me and this contractor and I knew things were not good between us, but I tried not to stress about it too much leading up to the meeting.  Unfortunately what I heard was worse than I had thought and I basically was told that in this particular area I was not doing well at all.  My contractor 2 days earlier had told him all the things I was doing wrong in my working relationship wit him, and pointed out how my colleagues were doing a much better job than I was when it came to working with him. My meeting was early in the day so I had a full day ahead of me before I could come home and share this all with my wife.  She was a great consoler encourager, and listener.  I shed a few tears. I prayed to God that night for a good nights rest and He answered my prayer. I woke the next morning and had a more meaningful, heart to heart, conversation with God than I had had in a long time.  After that and some time in the Word, I called my friend.  He was the perfect person to call for several reasons.  First he was a friend and cared enough to take the time to listen to me and offer me the truth.  Second, he knew my situation on many levels because, though was retired, he used to do the same job I did, and because he worked for the same employer he knew the people I was talking about.  Third, and most important he had a strong faith in Christ. He had several suggestions for me which I wrote down.  Some had to do with how I handled myself in my job.  He also suggested a few key individuals I should talk to for additional advise. Rather than continuing on with this story, I wanted to stop and share with you some of my key learnings from this episode which I hope you can apply to your situation.   First, I learned that as painful as it is, correction has the benefit of humbling us.  It's a reminder that there is a God and He's not me.  The Bible says humility is good James 4:10 says "Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up." In Matthew 5:5 Jesus said "Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth." Humility is a great way to prevent pride, something the Bible speaks strongly against.  I would say humility is good whether it's forced on you or something you choose willingly, though of course it's much better if you choose it.  Look for pride in yourself and practice humility BEFORE it's forced upon you.  When it comes to your work, remember that God is your provider.  Not you.  Not your employer.  Even your abilities and your discipline and hard work ethic are gifts from your Creator.   Let me point us that correction doesn't automatically humble us.  I would say it automatically embarasses us, but we must choose to be humbled by it.  If we do NOT choose humility, we are at a high risk of one or both of two very undesirable responses.  One is to be angry and the other is to feel sorry for ourselves.  In this particular situation, I felt a strong temptation toward both of these emotions, and I did experience both of those to some degree.  I would say that talking with God and my wife about it were the best ways I found to avoid sinking deep into those emotions.   A second lesson I learned is the importance of friends, and that those friendships are not a given.  It meant so much to me to reach out to my friend for his opinion.  Though I had not been in touch with him for a while due to him moving and retiring, we had built a foundation of friendship that made that phone call possible.  It's kind of like preparing for a storm.  You can't wait for the storm to prepare, you need to have the foresight and discipline to invest in valuable friendships.   A third lesson I learned is that integrity can be independent of skills.  One comment that was made to me that everyone who was voicing complaints about certain things I was not doing well in my work also said that they respected me as a person.  That meant a lot to me.  It didn't change the need to change things, but it reminded me what was most important, and that's integrity.  You can have high integrity and lack skills.  You can have low integrity, and a lack of respect from others, and be highly skilled and "successful" in worldly terms.   A fourth lesson I learned was the importance of periodic self assessment, which includes input from others affected by you.  I've talked in the past about the importance of applying the prayer found in Psalm 139:22-24, which says "Search me, O God, and know my heart;
Try me, and know my anxieties;
24 And see if there is any wicked way in me,
And lead me in the way everlasting." While we're listening to that still, small voice of God in response to this prayer, we should be lining up our behaviors as WE see them against scripture, AND we should asking for the opinions of others.  We should check in with Christian men we respect, who know us well, for their honest opinion about how we're doing.  When it comes to our job, we should also check in with those who are directly impacted on how we're doing in our job. Don't wait for your mid-year and end of year review with your boss to find out out how you're doing.  Ask the people you work with every day.  One of my response to this event was I immediately started asking those I worked with for their input.  If you want honest input, you need to have some basic trust in place.  If that is lacking then that is your first issue you need to address.   A fifth lesson I learned is to remember the sting.  Do whatever you need to do to bring to your remembrance your feelings immediately after being corrected, so that you don't fall back into complacency and old habits.  If positive change is needed, it also needs to be maintained.  This is especially important if the consequences from your correction are not highly impactful in the long term.     A sixth lesson I learned is the importance of identity.  If the sting of correction you receive from man, in whatever form that takes, is too great, this may be an indication you are not sufficiently grounded in your identity as a son or daughter of God.  If the sting is real but not earth shattering due to your true identity being in Christ, celebrate that fact and appreciate that the same correction earlier in life would have been much more devistating.  That was true for me in this case.  It stung.  More than it should have, but less than it would have in the past.  I still had to check myself and remember that while I knew I needed to make some changes, at the end of the day, I was more than a conqueror because of what Christ had done in my life, and that I was to cast my cares on Him and to be anxious for nothing.  I also reminded myself that this was a small issue in the big picture of God's Kingdom and his plan.    My final comment on this experience is that you feel you have been knocked down a notch or two by an event like this, but as a result you grow closer to God, you have ended up farther ahead than before it happened.     E https://www.christianpost.com/news/viola-brown-credits-faith-for-helping-her-through-wars-pandemics.html   L But if you warn the righteous person not to sin, and he does not sin, he shall surely live, because he took warning, and you will have delivered your soul.” Ezekiel 3:21 - ESV   A   Prepping resource coming   H   Make an appointment with yourself and block that time out on your calendar    

S   I want to share something that happened to me at my job in the hope that you can learn from and benefit from it. I won't say exactly when this happened, but at some point during my career, I was asked by my boss for a meeting after a contractor I worked with had asked for a meeting with him.  For some context I had not had this boss for very long, less than year, and actually had not gone through my first year-end evaluation with him, and he was new to our facility so he didn't know me or my work.  Well the contractor who asked for a meeting with him basically told him I was not doing a good job working with him and that my peers did a much better job.  He gave a lot of specifics but that was more or less the bottom line. I was nervous about my meeting with my boss since there had been tension between me and this contractor and I knew things were not good between us, but I tried not to stress about it too much leading up to the meeting.  Unfortunately what I heard was worse than I had thought and I basically was told that in this particular area I was not doing well at all.  My contractor 2 days earlier had told him all the things I was doing wrong in my working relationship wit him, and pointed out how my colleagues were doing a much better job than I was when it came to working with him. My meeting was early in the day so I had a full day ahead of me before I could come home and share this all with my wife.  She was a great consoler encourager, and listener.  I shed a few tears. I prayed to God that night for a good nights rest and He answered my prayer. I woke the next morning and had a more meaningful, heart to heart, conversation with God than I had had in a long time.  After that and some time in the Word, I called my friend.  He was the perfect person to call for several reasons.  First he was a friend and cared enough to take the time to listen to me and offer me the truth.  Second, he knew my situation on many levels because, though was retired, he used to do the same job I did, and because he worked for the same employer he knew the people I was talking about.  Third, and most important he had a strong faith in Christ. He had several suggestions for me which I wrote down.  Some had to do with how I handled myself in my job.  He also suggested a few key individuals I should talk to for additional advise. Rather than continuing on with this story, I wanted to stop and share with you some of my key learnings from this episode which I hope you can apply to your situation.   First, I learned that as painful as it is, correction has the benefit of humbling us.  It's a reminder that there is a God and He's not me.  The Bible says humility is good James 4:10 says "Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up." In Matthew 5:5 Jesus said "Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth." Humility is a great way to prevent pride, something the Bible speaks strongly against.  I would say humility is good whether it's forced on you or something you choose willingly, though of course it's much better if you choose it.  Look for pride in yourself and practice humility BEFORE it's forced upon you.  When it comes to your work, remember that God is your provider.  Not you.  Not your employer.  Even your abilities and your discipline and hard work ethic are gifts from your Creator.   Let me point us that correction doesn't automatically humble us.  I would say it automatically embarasses us, but we must choose to be humbled by it.  If we do NOT choose humility, we are at a high risk of one or both of two very undesirable responses.  One is to be angry and the other is to feel sorry for ourselves.  In this particular situation, I felt a strong temptation toward both of these emotions, and I did experience both of those to some degree.  I would say that talking with God and my wife about it were the best ways I found to avoid sinking deep into those emotions.   A second lesson I learned is the importance of friends, and that those friendships are not a given.  It meant so much to me to reach out to my friend for his opinion.  Though I had not been in touch with him for a while due to him moving and retiring, we had built a foundation of friendship that made that phone call possible.  It's kind of like preparing for a storm.  You can't wait for the storm to prepare, you need to have the foresight and discipline to invest in valuable friendships.   A third lesson I learned is that integrity can be independent of skills.  One comment that was made to me that everyone who was voicing complaints about certain things I was not doing well in my work also said that they respected me as a person.  That meant a lot to me.  It didn't change the need to change things, but it reminded me what was most important, and that's integrity.  You can have high integrity and lack skills.  You can have low integrity, and a lack of respect from others, and be highly skilled and "successful" in worldly terms.   A fourth lesson I learned was the importance of periodic self assessment, which includes input from others affected by you.  I've talked in the past about the importance of applying the prayer found in Psalm 139:22-24, which says "Search me, O God, and know my heart; Try me, and know my anxieties; 24 And see if there is any wicked way in me, And lead me in the way everlasting." While we're listening to that still, small voice of God in response to this prayer, we should be lining up our behaviors as WE see them against scripture, AND we should asking for the opinions of others.  We should check in with Christian men we respect, who know us well, for their honest opinion about how we're doing.  When it comes to our job, we should also check in with those who are directly impacted on how we're doing in our job. Don't wait for your mid-year and end of year review with your boss to find out out how you're doing.  Ask the people you work with every day.  One of my response to this event was I immediately started asking those I worked with for their input.  If you want honest input, you need to have some basic trust in place.  If that is lacking then that is your first issue you need to address.   A fifth lesson I learned is to remember the sting.  Do whatever you need to do to bring to your remembrance your feelings immediately after being corrected, so that you don't fall back into complacency and old habits.  If positive change is needed, it also needs to be maintained.  This is especially important if the consequences from your correction are not highly impactful in the long term.     A sixth lesson I learned is the importance of identity.  If the sting of correction you receive from man, in whatever form that takes, is too great, this may be an indication you are not sufficiently grounded in your identity as a son or daughter of God.  If the sting is real but not earth shattering due to your true identity being in Christ, celebrate that fact and appreciate that the same correction earlier in life would have been much more devistating.  That was true for me in this case.  It stung.  More than it should have, but less than it would have in the past.  I still had to check myself and remember that while I knew I needed to make some changes, at the end of the day, I was more than a conqueror because of what Christ had done in my life, and that I was to cast my cares on Him and to be anxious for nothing.  I also reminded myself that this was a small issue in the big picture of God's Kingdom and his plan.    My final comment on this experience is that you feel you have been knocked down a notch or two by an event like this, but as a result you grow closer to God, you have ended up farther ahead than before it happened.     E https://www.christianpost.com/news/viola-brown-credits-faith-for-helping-her-through-wars-pandemics.html   L But if you warn the righteous person not to sin, and he does not sin, he shall surely live, because he took warning, and you will have delivered your soul.” Ezekiel 3:21 - ESV   A   Prepping resource coming   H   Make an appointment with yourself and block that time out on your calendar