God Ain't Buying.
When I worked in media there was a small piece of paper hanging above my desk at eye level that said, "Place the needs of your clients in front of your need to sell them time."
Spirituality is like selling.
Both require listening.
Listening to the voices around us and setting aside our agendas, noise and interruptions so that we can focus on the client’s agenda, or in the case of spirituality, God’s agenda.
Selling isn’t manipulating, tricking, outsmarting or forcing solutions; it is listening to a prospective client and finding solutions to their problems. Selling is listening to the client’s voice and discovering what they want and need.
Selling isn’t talking; selling is listening.
Spirituality is listening, it is a lot like professional selling.
It is listening for God’s voice and discerning what God wants.
The Church often thought its role was to talk, to tell and manipulate rather than to listen, hear and discern.
Spirituality isn’t manipulating or attempting to force solutions, it is being still and listening to God who resides in your soul and the soul of another. It requires setting aside our agendas and becoming conscious to God and what God wants.
Selling requires setting aside my agenda, attitudes, thoughts, and opinions and to hear without interruption what the client is saying. We don’t have to force a "close" with clients. As a matter of fact, "forcing a close" isn’t selling, it is manipulation.
If you have ever encounter a person attempting to get you to buy something based on their needs versus your needs you know what I mean. It is an ugly, cheesy place to be.
Spirituality requires setting aside my agenda, attitudes, thoughts, and opinions to hear without interruption what God is saying.
Some salespeople are so afraid that they are going to "miss the sell" that they resort to all forms of manipulations in order to achieve their objective. While they may get their short-term objective met, it usually comes back to haunt them in the end.
We don’t have to do this with our spiritual lives. God is love and is not going to sell us a lemon. We don't need to fear "listening" God, especially if our desire God's desire. Most manipulation comes from attempting to get our agenda met and not God's. We can trust that God is in us and aware and conscious of us, we need to be still listen and become conscious of God. God has an agenda and it is for ultimate good. We are not going to "miss the sell".As a matter of fact, we don’t have to sell God.
We don’t have to try to force God’s hand or manipulate God with sales tactics, most of the time God ain’t buying.
4 Comments:
LOL!!! I remember that!!! That is great!
hey brother I'll be in your neighborhood next Friday. I want to come by the station and visit.
So, if God isn't buying our line or what we're trying to sell with that line, who is? Is anyone even listening to our line? Will this lack of success using this line compel us to change our line? Why aren't we listening well enough to actually produce a conversation that someone else would want to listen to? Do we even know how to listen anymore or even why it's important?
All that being asked, I really don't like business-world analogies all that much....
thanks N, I usually don't either.
N, the problem I see in church culture (I daren't call it Christianity!) is that people ARE buying the line, but the line isn't necessarily God's. So, people continue to not listen and to deliver the line that "works" so that folks will buy. This post has a shining (or should that be GLARING?) example of people buying just because they like the message.
What I get from this post is that really, there shouldn't BE a line, period, but rather just us, living in emulation of God as much as possible.
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