The Management Style of God

People who have a low opinion of others will not expect much out of people.  Leaders with this mindset will not inspire others to perform at their best.  People know instinctively what we think of them.  If we have a low opinion of others, people will generally sink to that level of low expectations.

Confidence placed in us creates the potential to rise to the occasion.

The best managers I have worked with in building construction had the innate ability to place faith and confidence in other people to the point that subordinates did not want to disappoint that person, but would work willingly and diligently hard, to rise to the task at hand, to please that inspiring manager.

God has the highest opinion of people because He created us.  Only someone who had the highest confidence in the potential of people…empowered by His Spirit…would enlist them into precarious adventures of faith like that of Abraham, Joseph, Moses, David, Daniel, Deborah, Huldah, Esther, Ezra, Nehemiah, Peter, or Paul.

The creative component of invention in the narrative stories of faith in the Bible appears to us to be at the outer edges of innovative originality, precisely because these supernatural storylines rise to the highest level of faith and confidence God places in people…in the elevated realm of divine leadership theory where God lives, functions, and operates.

The biblical narrative stories of faith are at the top tier of creative imagination because they are simultaneously at the highest optimum pinnacle…the divine level of confidence and faith in the character potential of people (2 Th. 1:10)…when led and guided by the Holy Spirit.

By virtue of the individual callings and revelation of God-composed journey of faith life-scripts, God places confidence and validation in us.

The challenging elements of our adventure of faith tell us God thinks we can come through.

This validation from God at the outset of our adventure of faith, which is unconditional and not dependent upon future performance, is a part of the driving force that motivates people in the biblical narrative stories of faith to assume any challenge and take on any task…no matter how high is the personal cost or how thorough is the change in their worldly normative plans.

This is the positive half of the danger zone of surrendering up to God our entire claim to worldly conventional normalcy (Heb. 11:13-16).

This is a key element in an adventure of faith…that God’s faith in us makes us want to be better…to do better…willingly and voluntarily once we catch the vision of our calling of God.

This is an integral part of every biblical adventure of faith.

Amazingly, this universal concept also now emerges as modern discoveries in fields as wide-ranging as education, parenting, athletics, organizational theory, and business management.

This is evidence for the presence of God in the ancient callings of the people of faith…starting with the detailed life-script for Abraham.

This inspired, transforming concept in human experience does not occur in a vacuum.

Its origin is certainly not attributable to evolutionary gradualism…there being no transitional precursors leading up to it in recorded history.

The singular uniqueness of the concept of the cross of Christ that displaces our plans with God’s higher plans…to create a new context where God can place faith in us (not to be confused with the capacity for faith that God created within us…Rom. 12:3b)…is what separates these biblical narrative stories of faith from the rest of the field in religion and philosophy.

There must be an active force that propels pure motives and produces exceptional outcomes.  That force is the attractive good character and will of God…expressed through ingenious life-scripts exhibiting loving faith and confidence in people possessing new spiritual hearts capable of exercising faith…led and empowered by the Holy Spirit of God.

The angel Gabriel comes to the city of Nazareth to speak to Mary to tell her that she shall conceive a son in her womb who: “shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David: And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end” (Lk. 1:32-33).

Mary then asks the common question of everyone who is called of God: “How shall this be…and in her particular case…seeing I know not a man?”  The big question is how…how shall this be?

The answer to the question of how, for every biblical person of faith, then and now, is a supernatural, God-composed life-script…which becomes actualized into reality.

Assuming that Mary at this time is about fifteen or sixteen years old, the biblical passages here say that she is a virgin and espoused to Joseph.  She is too young to have done anything exceptionally good or bad on a large scale.  Her life up to this point cannot be classed in the categories of being a small, medium, or large “business” enterprise.

Her life is a blank canvas ready for God to paint a beautiful portrait.  It is a rough-hewn block of marble ready for God’s artistic imagination to chip and chisel away the horizontally conventional pieces of culturally accepted normalcy to create a timeless masterpiece.

Mary is about to enter into the largest imaginable enterprise of an adventure of faith…to rival any in all of human history.

The life-script for Mary the mother of Jesus Christ is complete, entire, and pre-written by God the Father, above anything Mary could or would have imagined.

The God-composed journey of faith life-script for the perfect Son of God, Jesus Christ, by definition would have to be exceptionally unprecedented, starting with a miraculous inception and incarnation into this world.

The very legitimate “how” question of Mary is answered through a supernatural, unparalleled adventure of faith that in the deepest sense confirms the words of Gabriel: “blessed art thou among women” (Lk. 1:28).

God knows in advance that both Joseph and Mary are able to rise to this occasion of enormous responsibility, and God the Father is there with them at each critical step of the way with His help, guidance, and provision.

This is the divine management style of God.