Work-in-Progress: Grace At Work

These are my notes from B1G Fridays Work-In-Progress: Grace at Work
Do you feel any pressure in your life? Don’t escape the pressures of life. Embrace them. Understand them. If you cannot understand it, you can never manage it.
Pressures = Stress
  • Pressures lead to Stress
  • Stress is actually how the person reacts to the environment
  • Stress is the interaction between the reaction and the individual
  • A Psychological and Physical state that results when the resources of the individual are not sufficient to cope with the demands and pressures of the situation
  • The effect of stress is unique to each person
  • Results to “Feelings” then “Thinking” then “Behaviors” then “Physical Symptoms”
How Stress is Caused?
  • “Alarm” and “Adapt” Reason
  • Alarm: Our first response; confronted with a threat to our safety. Muscles tense and breathing and heart rate becomes rigid
  • Adapt: Second adaptive mechanism; allows us to cease responding when we learn that stimuli in the environment are no longer a threat to our safety
What produces Stress?
  1. Place
    • Excessive demands of work: Long hours worked, work overload and unrealistic targets
    • Nature of work: Work itself may be difficult, unpleasant work hours, hazardous
  2. People
    • Demanding Boss: They are just asking too much
    • Conflict with People (difficult people): they are just about themselves
ACTION PLAN?
FIND THE PURPOSE of those people and situations in your life. Instead of fleeting, learn to adapt. If you manage to understand where the pressure is coming from, we can finally find PEACE.

“But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,”
Galatians 5:22 NLT

PEACE:
  • It is a fruit of the Spirit
  • You cannot manufacture peace
  • You can only have peace when you exude in joy, love, etc
  • If you know how to love, you will experience joy. And if you learn how to have unspeakable joy, peace will overflow.
HOW TO HAVE PEACE:
  1. PLEASE GOD
    • Our natural response is not to please God because of our sinful nature
    • “That’s why those who are still under the control of their sinful nature can never please God.” Romans 8:8 NLT
    • Accept that we are sinful and that there is a powerful God who can make our sins powerless over us so that we can focus everything on Him
    • We can only please God through walking by the Spirit
    • “So I say, let the Holy Spirit guide your lives. Then you won’t be doing what your sinful nature craves.” Galatians 5:16 NLT
    • Follow His commands
    • Whenever we are confronted with a difficult person we usually do this: “When you follow the desires of your sinful nature, the results are very clear: sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures, idolatry, sorcery, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, dissension, division, envy, drunkenness, wild parties, and other sins like these. Let me tell you again, as I have before, that anyone living that sort of life will not inherit the Kingdom of God.” Galatians 5:19-21 NLT
    • Pray for those difficult people in your life. It changes YOU.
  2. ENCOURAGE
    • “Don’t use foul or abusive language. Let everything you say be good and helpful, so that your words will be an encouragement to those who hear them.” Ephesians 4:29 NLT
    • If you want to please the Lord, you have to encourage those difficult people
    • Understand the person, don’t gang up on them, shut up and listen to them – they are hurt, they are in pain.
  3. ASSUME RESPONSIBILITY
    • “Fools think their own way is right, but the wise listen to others.” Proverbs 12:15 NLT
    • Difficult people has “somehow” a truth in what they say
    • Listen to them
  4. CONTENTMENT
    • “Yet true godliness with contentment is itself great wealth. After all, we brought nothing with us when we came into the world, and we can’t take anything with us when we leave it.” 1 Timothy 6:6-7 NLT
    • Heavenly values and Earthly values are two different things.
    • Don’t be possessed by your possessions
    • Money won’t give you happiness. Ang trabaho, hindi nauubos yan.
    • When you’re contented, you let things pass, you let things go and you don’t look for trouble in the workplace
  5. ETERNAL PERSPECTIVE
    • “So we don’t look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever.” 2 Corinthians 4:18 NLT
    • Everything we see, they are all temporary.
    • 98% of people who are already on their deathbeds would not want to work a minute more but to spend more time with their loved ones. Should we wait for that time that we are on our deathbeds to spend time with our family?
    • Understand that we are made to be in eternity with the Lord
    • The more you understand how God loves you despite your sins, the more you can share that love with others
    • Grace at work can only happen when you have Grace in your heart
The formula to achieve PEACE:
  • Fix ourselves
  • Have that PEACE – Please God, Encourage People, Assume Responsibility, Have Contentment, and Have that Eternal Perspective
  • Find that PURPOSE to PLEASE GOD and that exudes PEACE.

 

 

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