John Chapter 7
Part 2
INTERACTION
CHECK:
Old School Transactional
or
New School, Grace filled, Relational
Interaction
WHAT MAKES JESUS TICK ?– He always exemplifies the Love of God and seeks heart to heart relationship. It’s time for new and improved loving relationships. Jesus said that the world would know we are Christians by our love for each other. May God’s people be such examples all over the world. Keep in mind, there is one critical transaction everyone must make to receive eternal life - surrender your heart with all its junk, in exchange for the love and goodness of God expressed in John 3:16.
This blog starts with some of my personal
testimony, my journey from transactional to relational interaction as a
professional. I hope it gets your juices flowing as you see the Master in
action, changing lives. We then dive back into John chapter 7 and watch the Master
demonstrate HIS relational interactions.
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I’m publishing this on April 1, 2020, in the
midst of This Covid -19 virus crisis. It will end. Our interactions will restart face to face. When that
happens, may we restart with a new (or renewed for many) NORMAL: consistently
relational interaction.
Reminder: PLEASE, add your insights in the box
at the bottom of the blog, LIKE AND SHARE the blessing.
Testimony: My transactional
Old School background and becoming much more Relational. (Remember, I’m retired now and looking back over a long career.) This will help us understand the Grace Filled Relational
New School of the Spirit compared to the Transactional Old School workplace ways
to interact with people. Jesus always seeks to be relational. So should we.
My career in manufacturing began as a machinist
in a union machine shop in central New York state. The labor/management
interaction was Transactional Old School, strictly reinforced by the adversarial
law of the union contract. There was never trust between the workers and upper
management. There was no positive relationship. That fostered some very bad
work ethics for the selfish and lazy. The Union boss told me early on, “always
keep a rag in your hand so it looks like you just did something.” I learned a
lot by negative example without realizing just how drastically negative it was
at the time. I hated the environment for 2 years until accepting that God
placed me there to reach some people.
10 years later, I was given the opportunity to
combine my machine shop experience with a BA in Secondary Education. I took
over as a Computerized Numerical Control (CNC) Training Supervisor in a technical
school. The Lord helped me to develop a 4 month “hands on” program to prepare adult
students in all aspects for success in CNC machine shops. The students mastered
the technical skills, excellent work ethics and soft skills for working in any type
of workplace culture. One week I would be myself, the nice guy (some semblance
of Relational New School management). The next week I would come off as
a mean nasty ogre (Transactional Old School management). They never knew
what to expect. After 2 years, area shop owners were eager to hire my students.
For the next 13 years I was an engineer and
trainer for a Japanese machine tool company. The culture had pretty good relational
management in this Japanese / American culture. I had excellent
relationships with coworkers and the distributors I supported all over the US,
Canada and Mexico, many of the customers I helped and the vendors who called on
me.
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I also learned transactional interaction
at a whole new level from our automotive manufacturing customers. My role was
to provide technical expertise for the sales people as we visited potential
customers all the USA, Canada and Mexico. More than half of the customers were well
trained automotive engineers and managers. Their concept of vendors was totally
transactional and often hostile. They were highly skilled in beating up
their vendors at every step of the project. Their goal was to get the most out
of them for the lowest cost. Not a fun part of the job, but the Lord gave me
wisdom and grace to be successful on those projects.
The Lord gave me a new heart and I always
loved people, doing everything possible to point them to Jesus and strengthen
them in their walk with HIM. BUT, I had some hard lessons to learn after the
big downsize of 1999 when my career moved to the other side of the table. From
then until retirement in 2018, I worked closely with every type of personality
and attitude, from blue collar to white collar people in a number of different
companies, each with its own culture.
The first time I was tasked with buying a
machine tool, {Confession time} I approached the task with that automotive
hostile transactional style. Here was my chance to “get even” with vendors (BAD
ATTITUDE). The relearning process began with my first discussion with a
potential machine vendor. I came on very strong and he let my boss know it. I
almost wrecked a long term great relationship the company had with that vendor.
I was called on the carpet. L My approach was
“transactional,” not “relational.” Hard pill to swallow, but HIS Grace
was there. I spent close to 20 years on that side of the table, changing
from that legalistic transactional approach to the Grace filled, relational
ways of interacting with people.
Bottom
line: Good relationships require trust and we can always trust in Jesus.
With all that said, let’s get back to John 7
and look at Jesus who is, always in
pursuit of heart level, relational
interaction with the entire human race.
The crowds were still trying to figure out if
Jesus was the Messiah or not. Jesus didn’t explicitly answer the question. Instead,
HE demonstrates the wisdom of God by dropping a loaded statement. He wants them
to base their understanding of Who HE is on relationship, not intellectual
assent.
John 7:24 Do not judge according to appearance, but
judge with righteous judgment.”
How many wrong decisions do we make because we
don’t consider the whole story? Snap, knee jerk reactions always have bad long
term results. Righteous judgments require Godly understanding and consideration
first. We must hear from the Lord. Relate to Jesus as the “lover of your
soul” and then hearing Him is not so hard. HE always has His eye on HIS long
term goal for each one. These verses are a key to keeping our interaction, in the
decision making process, relational interaction. This is the bottom line
of WHAT MAKES JESUS TICK:
1 Cor. 13:4 Love is patient and kind. Love is not
jealous or boastful or proud
5 or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not
irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged.
Note: A very in-depth Bible lesson on decision making is at: Making-Smart-Decisions.html
Let’s see more of Jesus in relational action.
Jesus brings a fundamental Kingdom principle
again. HIS statements go beyond the petty discourse to the heart of the matter.
Jesus is after hearts, not
intellectual assent. When HE responds to the crowds He describes Kingdom
realities; relationship with God. His statements often aggravated the
legalistic, transactionally minded Pharisees. Jesus ends the crowd’s debate
by answering the question about who He is. He points them to His
relationship with the Father.
John 7:28-29 That
provoked Jesus, who was teaching in the Temple, to cry out, “Yes, you think you
know me and where I’m from, but that’s not where I’m from. I didn’t set myself
up in business. My true origin is in the One who sent me, and you don’t know
him at all. I come from him—that’s how I know him. He sent me here.”
A transaction was occurring due to the
relational approach Jesus took. These Old School Legalistic Pharisees attempts to do away with this threat to their position were thwarted
again. Follow this in selected verses from the Message Bible:
John 7:30-31 They
were looking for a way to arrest him, but not a hand was laid on him because it
wasn’t yet God’s time. Many from the crowd committed themselves in faith to
him, saying, “Will the Messiah, when he comes, provide better or more
convincing evidence than this?”
32-34 The
Pharisees, alarmed at this
seditious undertow going through the crowd, teamed up with the
high priests and sent their police to arrest him.
45 … when
the Temple police reported back to the high priests and
Pharisees, who
demanded, “Why didn’t you bring him with you?”
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46 The
police answered, “Have you heard the way he talks? We’ve never heard anyone
speak like this man.”
47-49 The Pharisees said, “Are you carried away
like the rest of the rabble? [MSG]
The reason for the Pharisees failure to take
Him is so simple yet so profound. Jesus neither defended Himself nor tried to
escape. He wasn’t done with the task at hand and had angelic protection.
In conclusion, we should stand back for a
minute after a conversation with someone and ask ourselves, and the Lord, if
that was a transactional or relational conversation. If your attitude
is. “What’s in this for me?” than you
have a problem.
Prayer: Jesus, please
help us to always interact relationally with people. No matter the circumstance,
let our relationship with You shine through every interaction. May this day be
a new day in our attitudes and communications so that all we speak with will
sense your unbounded love for them.
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