The Extent of Your Resources

   You will never know the extent of your resources until you are thrust upon them. You should never stop affirming that faith gives you the assurance that what you want to happen will indeed do so, even if you cannot visualize it for yourself. With that in mind, I want to recount to you a shining example of one man’s faith that took him on to fame and fortune.

   I was once asked, “Do you remember Ian, the young man who used to be our post boy many years ago?”

   “The one you fired?” I responded.

   “Yes, the one I fired. He’s now the highest paid corporate executive in the country. You might want to read this interview he just gave.”

   I put down my coffee, pushed back my chair and began to read.

   Reporter: “What were you doing before you joined your present company?”

   Ian: “I was a postboy at a manufacturing plant.”

   Reporter: “You must have been glad you left?”

   Ian: “I didn’t leave: I was fired.”

   Reporter: “May I ask why?”

   Ian: “I was accused of leaking confidential company information to a competitor.”

   Reporter: “And did you?”

   Ian: “No.”

   Reporter: “So what did you do about it?”

   Ian: “1 Peter 2:20.”

   Reporter: “I beg your pardon?”

   Ian: “1 Peter 2:20 is a verse from the Bible. ‘You get no credit for being patient when you’re punished for doing wrong, but if, when you do what’s right, and suffer for it, you take it patiently, this is pleasing to God’.”

   Reporter: “What made you take it patiently?”

   Ian: “First, outright amazement, not just at the accusation itself, but also the circumstances in which it was made. Second, the immediacy and power with which

   1 Peter 2:20 came into my head.”

   Reporter: “What were the circumstances?”

   Ian: “The chairman called an all staff meeting, itself a first, then publicly announced to all of us that we had just lost the opportunity to bid for our largest contract to date because I had leaked the amount of our bid to our keenest competitor.”

   Reporter: “What did you do?”

   Ian: “Just stood there dumbfounded; then 1 Peter 2:20 came into my head, closely followed by a very vivid recollection of the fact that, when the greatest man who ever lived, the Lord Jesus Christ, stood accused, He answered nothing.”

   Reporter: “Then what happened?”

   Ian: “Two security guards marched me to the postroom, watched while I showed them I had nothing personal there, and then escorted me to the front door.”

   Reporter: “Didn’t you feel like retaliating at all, either then or since?”

   Ian: “No; when you know what it is to trust in and obey our beloved Savior, to have complete faith in Him and Him alone as opposed to putting confidence in other people, you want to be as Christlike as is possible for a mortal, sinful person to be. Then you have no doubt whatsoever as to what is for you personally the only right course of action to take. I never forget God’s unfailing love knows no end. His mercies, which are new every morning, keep us safe: great is His faithfulness. The Lord is everything to me, therefore my hope is in Him. He is good to those who wait for Him, to those who seek Him. It is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.”

   Reporter: “But didn’t the gross injustice of it all get you down – ever?”

    Ian: “No; you see I do two things it seems to me very few people do. First, I fast and seek God when I need His help in a big way, knowing He will be intreated of me. Second, not only do I turn negative, disturbing thoughts into positive, uplifting ones, I make those positive thoughts a prayer.”

   Reporter: “Would you like to elaborate?”

   Ian: “Certainly; we all of us have two choices: either we can choose to see the good in something or someone or the bad. For me, there’s always the good, although I admit sometimes you have to dig a little to find it. But having found it, I make it a prayer. Read how fervently Nehemiah prayed when told of the affliction of certain Jews, of the wall of Jerusalem being broken down and the gates burned. Don’t bemoan your lot, wallow in self-pity or worst of all, blame God for what happened. Instead, thank Him for the very circumstances in which you find yourself, including in advance, the way in which you will benefit in accordance with His perfect will.

   “Remember, all scripture is given by inspiration of God. It teaches us the truth and makes us realize what is right and what is wrong. With this kind of attitude we may boldly say, the Lord is my helper: I will not fear what man (or woman) can do to me. You will very quickly develop a most healthy, vibrant and confident outlook on life; indeed it was the psalmist who said of the Lord, ‘You will show me the path of life: in your presence is fullness of joy; at your right hand there are pleasures for evermore’.”

   Reporter: “Is it that attitude that has bought you to where you are today?”

   Ian: “Not entirely, but it has unquestionably helped.”

   Reporter: “There’s more?”

   Ian: “There’s much more. First, there are the examples in the Bible of people who were themselves victims of gross injustice. Joseph, wrongly accused of trying to rape Potiphar’s wife; Naboth, stoned to death because he would not let the king have his vineyard, and, of course, Jesus Christ himself, who gave His life a ransom for many. Second, in my prayers, I like to ask God for guidance, wisdom, knowledge, understanding, largeness of heart and discernment of judgment, not for one moment that I would lean upon my own understanding. “What a friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and grief to bear; what a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer.” Third, I never forget the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before – and he lost more than you or I ever could – after he prayed for his friends. There are just so many positive, uplifting stories in the Bible, no one, and I mean no one, need ever be downhearted in this life, especially when there is the promise of an even better life to come.”

   I could not read further without asking the chairman how he came to fire someone who clearly had so much potential.

   “He betrayed us.”

   “How can you be so sure of that?”

   “Because he was the only one to whom I mentioned our quote. I remember it as clearly as if it was yesterday. I regretted doing so the moment the words were out of my mouth but I just got carried away.”

   “Why do you think he betrayed us, as you put it?”

   “I don’t know: I just know he did.”

   “Well, think about it. Only two types of people would have leaked our quote to the competition: those who wanted to do us harm and those who did not see the contract as being in our best interests. Ian just wasn’t in the picture when it comes to a motive for doing us harm. I recall your telling me yourself he had a great future with us. He had just had a most encouraging annual review, the promise of both promotion and increased pay, and immediate acceptance of some of his very practical suggestions as to how to improve some of the things we did. It’s all coming back to me now. So the long and the short of it is he had nothing whatever to gain from leaking our quote if, as you say, that is what he did.”

   “I never mentioned that quote to anyone else so he must have done it. Why, I don’t know. All of this is making me feel very uncomfortable.”

   “And so it should. If he had nothing personally to gain from leaking that information, is it just possible he had the vision to see what would happen if he did? That the contract was not in our best interests and that by leaking it to our main competitor, it would bring about their downfall, lead directly to their financial ruin and ultimately bankruptcy, leaving the field wide open for us, from which we have never looked back?”

   “Put that way, it would have been strategic thinking at its best but Ian did not have that degree of insight or anything like it.”

   ce to collect appendix B to the contract to read on the plane at the start of my six month overseas trip establishing the international organization into which we have long since grown. I heard your upbeat conversation with Ian, read that appendix, realized from the geologist’s report that the contract was most unlikely to deliver what it promised, that it could in fact bring us to our knees. It was precisely that thought that gave me the idea of leaking our quote to the competition with the results we’ve been applauding ever since. I felt at the time it was one of my better, more farsighted decisions, as indeed it proved to be. But with being away so long, being so busy as we both were, I forgot all about it.”

   “If only I had known,” said the chairman at length.

   Driving home that night, I marveled at how anyone’s faith could be that strong, how anyone’s trust could be so implicit.

   1 Peter 2:20. For a great many years I had tried to right injustices I felt had been done to me, instead of taking them patiently. How different, how very much better things might have been had I done so.

   But it is never too late to try, indeed it is incumbent upon us to do that which is pleasing to God. So I took as my inspiration the Song of Solomon which so beautifully and poetically describes love as God intended it to be. Might there one day be an analogy there for me in my very own home? As I pulled into the driveway, I resolved to put into practice the lesson of 1 Peter 2:20.

   As I look back over the years that have since passed, at the manifold blessings that flowed from the decision I made that night, I thank God with all my heart for teaching me this arguably most valuable of all lessons. I no longer regret the earlier years, for the subsequent blessings put what preceded them into such wonderful perspective. The most I allow myself to say on occasion is, If only I had known.

   If you could benefit from the message of 1 Peter 2:20, remember this: you will never know the extent of your resources until you are thrust upon them.

For further reading: 1 Peter 2:20; Matthew 27:12-14; Psalms 118:8; Lamentations 3:22-26; Ezra 8:23; Nehemiah 1:4-11; 2 Timothy 3:16; Hebrews 13:6; Psalms 16:11; Genesis 39:7-23; 1 Kings 21:1-13; Matthew 20:28; 2 Chronicles 1:10-12; Proverbs 3:5; Job 42:10; The Song of Solomon 1-8