The flow of grace

I'm currently reading a book Lean Thinking, which is about helpfully enough Lean thinking. This is a philosophy that says cut out waste, achieve flow (i.e. don't just do it all in bulk but actually work in flowing processes) and achieve pull (that is let the customer determine what a company wants and be driven by that.

It goes against the logic of economies of scale and producing big batches and instead has an understanding of business and humanity that at times is totally surprising. While the conventional wisdom of the factory floor is line up the machines, make the workers work as fast and as hard as possible, and let it all operate like robots. Lean says forget producing batches, actually people want differentiated goods, so produce what people want. Don't produce 100 blue cars and then switch over and produce 100 red, and then be left with 50 blue cars which no one wants. Instead when someone orders a red car produce a red car.

What you end up with is a more skilled workforce who do not just produce a 100 red cars, and a 100 red cars, but produce one at a time products that people want. It seems like the system works.

So what on earth has this got to do with grace?

How much of what we do is really what God wants? How much of our lives are pulled by what God desires. We end up doing lots of things that "are right" but no one wants, not even the Almighty.

We need instead to be directed by the flow of God and the pull of His Holy Spirit. As Christians we need to stop producing lots of what God does not really want and start dynamically listening to Him and doing His will.

Jesus calls us to Follow Him, that is both pull and flow. Instead we get stuck in a religion of business, of doing stuff. Like the car company stock piling cars that no one really want, we produce stuff that no one really wants.

If we as churches threw off the waste that we spend so much of our lives on, then not only would we achieve so much more for the Kingdom, that is Kingdom value, we would have so much better relationship with God, because we would not blame Him for us spending our time and efforts doing stuff that He never asked us to do in the first place.

We need to learn to be followers, and followers do when Jesus does, but they also rest when Jesus would rest.

One of the biggest questions is do we really know what Jesus wants, and the probable answer for many of us, is that we do not. Isaiah (Is 55v2) commented,
Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labour on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of fare.

Many of us are fixated with doing, but that is not the point. There is no innate value in being busy, sometimes what we need to do is to take a break and work on our spiritual life. Jesus never said that we needed to get out of your comfort zone, instead He actually said, Matt 11v29 "Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls."

We spend so much of our lives trying to please other people, or in reaction to that.

We can become so competitive that we stop competing because we believe that we cannot win. We choose to opt out of the race because we do not believe that we can win it. We get left on the side of the losers.

In the end with God His love is not based on whether we win or lose.

The point about getting out of the boat is not about discomfort, it actually was not that comfortable in the boat. I'd be far more comfortable standing on the water than I would rocking up and down on the boat. The boat was being tossed about, Jesus was walking on the water.

The issue of getting out of the boat is the choice to follow the logic of the Kingdom and not the logic of the world. It is about putting our faith in the God who made the world, not in a man made boat. The issue in the story is about faith, not about comfort.

It is about seeing the world differently and obeying Jesus. Most of the time getting out of a boat and onto the water is only worth it if you want to go for a swim. The point about miracles is that they are special occasions. The point was that Peter did what Jesus called him to do, and put his trust in Jesus, thereby acknowledging who Jesus was.

Jesus loved Peter and He did this for a reason. Peter needed to know who Jesus was, and Peter learned to put His trust in Jesus, even when it looked stupid. He found the path of calm through the storm, the place of comfort in the pain of life. He found peace, he found the place of rest.

How much of our lives is wasted on the unecessary, and how much is given, really given to God.