From Graham’s book: “Qualities of a Spiritual Warrior”:
“Warriors stoke the atmosphere. They inflame passion by the way they live their own lives. What you are in your own destiny you exhibit quite naturally. Warriors are unconscious models of a kingdom that is far above all principalities and powers.”
When I first read this wonderful book of Graham’s, and later on attended one of his “Overcoming Life” conferences, it hit home how simple Papa’s request to me was:
“Kern, will you show up at work and in your life’s circumstances, with the heart of love, kindness and generosity that I have created in you?”
At first, I struggled with a performance mindset on what that would look like. Was there a checklist God was holding me accountable to? If I showed up one day with only love and forgot kindness and generosity, was I two strokes behind? At the end of the week, was I over or under par for Papa’s course?
Pretty quickly, Papa made it clear that I could throw out all those scorecards, checklists and worries about how I was performing. Instead, I turned my focus into a daily practice of distributing love, kindness and generosity everywhere I went. Whether at work, home, with family, the guy stuck in traffic beside me on the way to work, the cashier and person ahead of me at the grocery store– ALL of them were eligible recipients of what God was abundantly pouring into me to share out every day.
It was a fantastic year-long experience with Papa and His goodness, faithfulness and humorous creativity, challenging me with new ways to practice “re-distributing Heaven’s resources” to those around me.
After two years of intentionally showing up at my workplace differently, I found myself sitting in a leader briefing by our Human Resources department as they were preparing us for the launch of a major, company-wide employee initiative. And what was the first slide emblazoned in bright lights?
“Rather than negative feedback on past performance, we want to instead focus on these positive outcomes.”
Wait…what happened to performance? What the heck, Papa. I’ve been practicing what you’ve asked, showing up here in my identity for the last two years, and HR comes up with this cut-and-paste of Graham instead of me?!?”
For the next 45 minutes HR continued to take us through a huge culture and philosophy change for the workplace – we would abandon performance metrics– in favour of a new employee engagement and encouragement model. If Graham had suddenly jumped out from behind the presentation screen, and hollered: “Yahoo!”, I would not have been more surprised!
Not too long afterward, I heard the Father chuckle, “Maybe, the changes and transitions that your work has been going through are because of your daily presence there, in obedience to Me; choosing to be and become who I have called you to be… MY Kern.”
The reality was that God did all the heavy lifting in making this corporate shift. All I had to do was simply show up every single day as He created me to be—and the rest was my joy to watch unfold.
1 John 4:4 – “You are of God, little children, and have overcome them, because He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.”
Kern Pegg
Warrior Commission Member
