Sermon on the Mount-- doing it our own way

Depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.

Several years back I received some good advice from a friend. “If you want to get ahead in your career,” he said. I told him I really didn't, but he kept talking. “Then you need to do whatever you can to make your boss look good.”

I didn't argue, but it sounded to me like he was telling me the way to get ahead was by sucking up. Which everyone did. But I was a Believer and this did not seem like the honest thing to do.

But then I became a supervisor. Suddenly I learned to appreciate employees whose first concern was to please me. These employees would get the job done so much better than employees who insisted on doing things in a better way—their own way.

The Lord has gifted us humans with an amazing amount of intelligence. But, our bottom line as Believers is, are we going to do things the way the Lord tells us in His Scriptures, or are we going to try to figure out how to do everything on our own?

If the latter, we are working against the Master and we're not much use to Him.