God never says NO unto nothing.

I have struggled, like many before, with God saying, “no.” In particular, when God declines to move, act, or allow what seems blatantly within His stated desires. Either God was inefficient or I misunderstood something.

I misunderstood.

Sometimes, I have found, God choosing one value over another. Often it feels like He will choose the “smaller” of the two (or three or ...). For example, God pushed the apostle Paul into a decade-long, desert experience (small, personal) instead of using Paul’s obvious talents and history to accomplish much (big, many people).

But God never says “no” unto nothing. He is always causing/creating something. Even in the dark times, God is often drawing with fluorescent ink :-) It’s not until we are given a black-light (i.e. God’s insight/illumination) that we can see what used to look like “nothing.”

When God says “no,” though, it’s still very difficult. Even when I know He’s drawing with invisible ink, it’s frustrating, hurtful, etc. [Note: especially when He draws in my kids’ lives]

So I struggle with God. I wrestle with Him and antagonize Him when He says, “no.”

Murray Moerman taught me something deep today. He said in regard to a particular frustration of mine, “Did God say ‘no’? In other words, did God say, ‘Stop praying’?”

Whoa. Sometimes God says, “keep praying but I’m not giving you want you’re asking for yet.” Sometimes God says, “No.” I am wrestling with this. Maybe God needed a break from me wrestling with Him.

VERY quotable article on Leadership / Management

Here's one small section of a great article:

• Shareholder Value: Is "shareholder value" new as well, or just another old way to sell the future cheap? Is this just an easy way for chief executives without ideas to squeeze money out of rich corporations? This mercenary model of management (greed is good, only numbers count, people are human "resources" who must be paid less so that executive can be paid more, etc.) is so antisocial that it will doom us if we don't doom it first.

• Empowerment: Organizations that have real empowerment don't talk about it. Those that make a lot of noise about it generally lack it: they have been spending too much of their past disempowering everybody. Then, suddenly, empowerment appears as some kind of gift from the gods.

In actual fact, real empowerment is a most natural state of affairs: people know what they have to do and simply get on with it, like the worker bees in a beehive. Maybe the really healthy organizations empower their leaders, who in turn listen to what is going on and so look good.

See the article here.