Michael Josephson tells how "management guru Peter Drucker advocates a practice he calls planned abandonment. He stresses how important it is that managers develop the wisdom and courage to regularly review what the organization is doing and determine whether it's worth doing. He urges executives to note and resist the systemic and emotional forces that make it difficult to abandon activities that drain resources, detract from central goals, or otherwise impede progress."
This same principle needs to be applied, not only in the business world, but
also to many areas of life. Some of us, for example, who are codependent need to come to our senses and abandon our neurotic need to rescue an addict from the natural consequences of his / her self-destructive behavior.
Sadly, some so-called Christian churches that teach a toxic type of religiosity that controls people and keeps them in the bondage of legalism also need to be abandoned.
Remember the religious people of Jesus' day. They were expecting and waiting for their long-promised Messiah (Savior), but, because Jesus didn't come the way they expected him to come and do what they expected him to do, they failed to recognize their Messiah when he came, rejected him, and had him crucified. They were blinded by their own man-made religious traditions and, instead of abandoning them, they clung to them tenaciously. How tragic.
Unfortunately, many are still doing this today.
If our religious beliefs and/or traditions are man-made and are not in harmony with God's Word, we need to summon our courage to abandon them and come to Jesus, the Savior of the world, and follow him.
Loving God means keeping his commandments, and really, that isn't difficult. For every child of God defeats this evil world by trusting Christ to give the victory. - 1 John 5:3-4.
Though Fifteen-year-Old Shannon Miller won a silver medal in the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, Spain, she returned home disappointed-she had not won a single gold medal. Four years later, however, at the age of nineteen, Shannon captured two gold medals in Atlanta for her effort in the team gymnastics competition and for her performance on the balance beam.
A few days after her thrilling victory on the balance beam, she was asked by a television reporter how hard it had been to keep practicing and working in the years between the Olympics.
Shannon shrugged in response to the question and answered that she loved
gymnastics. Because she loved it so much, she hadn't minded the toil of training for the Olympics. The work that might have seemed hard and unpleasant to someone else was not so hard for Shannon because of her love for the sport.
It's kind of the same with obeying God's commands. People who don't know God or His Son, Jesus, often look at the commands he has given to his people and think, Thou shalt not this! and Thou shalt not that! They may say, "There are too many 'thou shalt nots'! I don't see how you Christians can stand all the rules and stuff you have to obey. That's too hard for me." Or they may say, "I could never keep all those commands."
But such thoughts and statements show that they don't really understand how the Christian life works. Like Shannon Miller, who trained hard because of her love for gymnastics, Christians obey God's commands because of their love for God. God's commands are not burdensome to his children. Obeying him isn't torture. It's not even difficult for those who rely on the Holy Spirit's power because the Spirit does all the work-we just have to trust him moment by moment.
REFLECT: Compare the ways the following translations phrase 1 John 5:3:
For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not grievous. (KJV).
This is love for God: to obey his commands. And his commands are not burdensome. (NIV).
Loving God means keeping his commandments, and really, that isn't difficult. (NLT).
How does your love for God make you more willing to obey him? How does your love for God make you more able to obey him?
