When I’m coaching people or business leaders, I often tell them this: Learn to be more of a value than a than a cost to your customers or employees. Do this by what you mean to people, not what you do for people.
Many of us spend a lifetime trying to become important to others through what we do for them. But this approach to life often means we spend a lifetime failing with others. People are careful. They will easily accept what we do for them, but they may never allow us to mean anything more than that. Unfortunately for us, when we don’t mean much to people, they can easily learn to do without us.
We see this most clearly in the workplace. People are hired because of what it’s believed they can do. But the organization will hardly pay a person more than the value of what that person does for the organization. This will never be best for the individual. We should learn to be more value to others than the things we do for them.
We also see this in our Spiritual walk. Many of us place a value on Christ for what He has done for us. That is good—better to value Him for what He has done than to not value Him at all. But there is more and better for some of us. 2 Corinthians 3:17 says, “Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” People who believe like this value Christ for what He means to them.
The Spirit of the Lord lives in our hearts. When we allow Him to have a home in our hearts, it means freedom. Christ isn’t just about setting us free from a chain or a prison or a stronghold so we can go on our way. When He lives in our hearts it means we are free from anything that could take away our freedom.
It is better for us to desire what Christ means to us more than to simply live for what He has done for us. There is no bondage where Christ lives. When you learn to value Him more than to place a value on what He can do, you will have all that He means.
With the Lord, we must learn to want more than the pearl; we should want the ocean where all the oysters live. Matthew 13:44 tells of a man who thought like this. It says, “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and hid; and for joy over it he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.” This man valued what produced the treasure more than he valued the treasure.
Learn to mean more than simply do more. When someone comes along who can do what you for less cost, people will value you less. You must learn to be more value to others than you are a cost to others. This is more easily and effectively done when you let the Lord live in you and through you.
There is nothing we can do that is bigger than Who the Lord is. There is nothing we can do that is better than Who the Lord is. But nothing the Lord does is bigger or better than Who the Lord is and what He means to us. When we live by the value of who we are to others, it makes what we do for others of greater value to them.
Christ living in us, rewriting the letter of our lives before others, enables us to:
- Live in freedom in the middle of what tries to make us captive;
- Live like we have much in a land that has little;
- Prosper in the middle of a famine;
- Shine in the brightest sun;
- Stay dry in the middle of a storm;
- Light up the darkest darkness;
- And be joyful in the middle of the most sorrowful moments.
So, just as Christ means all these things to us, we also should work to become the same to the people we encounter daily. We make life harder than it is because we live by what we can do more than by what we mean to others.
Let the Lord have Life in your life. Then He will make you the doorway out for people who are in bondage to something. Where the Spirit of the Lord is, we come to mean more to others than what we can do for them.
Live a Delivered Life. Love you.
Live Delivered 