And Assembled/Accounts…where are your benchmarks?
(And Assembled) Exodus 35:1-38:20; I Kings 7:13-26 & 40-51; Ezekiel 45:16-46:18; II Corinthians 9:6-11 (Accounts) Exodus 38:21-40:38; I Kings 7:51-8:21; II Corinthians 3:7-18
I teach a bible study group and I give numerous assignments. I’m known to give an assignment and not get back to the reason it was assigned until the end of the term. Sometimes, a student gets mad at me. He/she says:
“I didn’t think I was going to need it because you didn’t ask for it, so I didn’t do it.”
To which I reply:
“Who told you that you didn’t have to do it?”
God often gives us assignments “ahead” of time
If God has given you 400 assignments this year, he has the right to ask you to bring up assignment number 365. Now, you can argue with him about how he never collected it, but it is just a waste of time. The truth is that every assignment God gives us, he intends to use by the end of the course. You’d do well to realize that. It just may be that the assignment that you neglected to do is the very bridge that links last year’s vision to next year’s target. So how will you see how to get there if you didn’t do it?
Take the time to do your homework or you will regret it…NOW!
Moses was gone for what seemed to be a long time for a particular reason. God could have made the conversation go by faster. He didn’t need 40 days in order to get the information into Moses’ head. What he needed was a time of sifting. During those 40 days, the camp was tested. How many of them were still working on the last assignments they were given, and how many of them had gone on to finding their own things to do? And how many of us have done the same thing?
As Israel figured out, Moses wasn’t going to wait for them to catch up to where he would be when he returned from the mountain. He was coming down from that mountain with new expectations. How would they be prepared to receive what he was bringing if they hadn’t made any space for it?
In his absence, they should have discovered that they had gifts and they had talent. How did they discover this? Because they realized what they hadn’t given to God yet. Isn’t that the purpose of setting annual benchmarks? It is an opportunity to congratulate ourselves on what we were able to accomplish, and to recognize what we still have the ability to accomplish in the year to come. In other words, we realize that even if we did some things good, there was more that we could have done.
And then enters Moses:
1. Where are the people with the gifts? They’ll build our services.
2. Where are the people with the talents? They’ll build our resources.
3. Where are the people who know know how to deal with an unusual business? They will build our management team.
There wasn’t time to put together resumes and portfolios. That was their job! That was what they were suppose to be doing the whole time! The expectation was for the people to take an assessment of what they had. Don’t you remember? Right before God called Moses away, he told Moses to tell the people to bring whatever their hearts moved them to bring. The people were suppose to be working on self-assessments. That was the assignment, and the delivery of that assignment was the meeting of the benchmark. God never forsakes his people, but he does step back to see how they react to assignments when they think he is no longer watching.
Did you finish your self-assessment this year? What did you find?
Israel thought that God was up on the mountain talking to Moses (and he was) but they neglected to understand that he was also down in the wilderness with them while they rose up to play instead of doing what they were suppose to be doing. At the end of the day, Moses was surprised to see how they behaved without him there, but God was not.
Some people found that they still had an idol in their heart. It manifested itself as an image that they were willing to bow down and worship when it was thrown in the fire. And some people found that they had more to offer to God than they had given when he asked them to give the first time. In their shame, they reflected, and wished that he’d give them another chance. On their resume, in their portfolios, they found that they had additional space. It wasn’t that they knew what was suppose to go there, but they knew that there was room for more.
God did not chastise those who gave in to the idol. Nor did he praise those who worked so diligently on their self-assessments. Instead, like any good teacher does, he skipped to the punchline and wrote on the board:
“Pull out your benchmark assignment. You’ll need it for the new vision.”
I wonder how many people were caught saying, “Oops…” because they never assembled their accounts the first time he gave the assignment.
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Weekly Reading for 3/20/10
And He Called…
Leviticus 1:1 – 5:26; I Samuel 15: 1-34; Isaiah 43: 21-44:23; Hebrews 10: 1-18