In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth (Gen 1:1). God’s nature as the maker of the heavens and the earth gives Christians the unique advantage to draw revelational and executive insights from the scripture. A balanced spiritual experience is the interaction with both heavenly and earthly things. To relegate your experience to purely heavenly interactions with no earthly correlate is to be religious and to interact solely with earthly things is to be carnal. True spirituality is recognizing God as the creator of both realms and embracing the intersection between heaven and earth.
You can draw inspiration and divine instruction from the Word on how to stand in intercession concerning a certain issue, in the same breadth, you can also draw divinely inspired executive insights from the Word on how to act in the workplace, dress for an event, draft and make a presentation, prepare and be rightly positioned for a coming innovation, or break into a new sector. It’s all in the Word of God. One of the landmark events in our salvation experience was the torn veil signifying the desire of God that His Spirit straddles both the temple and world around it unhindered.
The Creation story in the book of Genesis is awash with many learnings on personal effectiveness. We see God create the heavens, the earth, and related entities in six days. According to archaeologists, the earth is estimated to be 4.54 billion years old +/- 50 million years. Imagine that! He created in six days what has lasted over 648 million cycles of the amount of time it took to create it. That is almost unimaginable! An unlearned person might quickly want to dismiss this thought and religiously explain it away by saying, “Oh, it is God now, only He can do these things”. Yes, while I do agree that God undisputedly exists in a realm of sovereignty and superiority that cannot be occupied by any other person or entity, He has also extended us an invitation into co-creation and co-operation through His Word.
I’d like to share with you a few insights on personal effectiveness we can draw from creation story.
The first insight we draw is the import of and constant exposure to light (Gen 1:3). No successful personal endeavour can commence and be sufficiently funded by ignorance. The consistent quest for illumination and pursuit of knowledge in any chosen endeavour is necessary for sustained growth and to avoid bankruptcy. What is that thing you want to do or create? What is your knowledge quotient on it, have you identified platforms for continuous learning and improvement?
Secondly, we learn the importance of organization and structure in the gathering of seas and separation of water from land (Genesis 1:7–10). The ability to separate, organize and group your thoughts, your plans, and processes will set you up for achievement and fulfilment. A very simple yet often underrated self-organization skill is drafting task/ to-do lists. It clears up your mind and dampens your anxiety of achievement.
Third thing we learn is the power of automation in the creation of day and night (Gen 1:5). Imagine God having to always show up and manually call forth day and night for over 4 billion years and then He has to do this in different regions and continents. How tiring would that be? What monotonous and repetitive tasks you do can be replaced by the click of a button or a few buttons or by a simple platform? Supercharge your productivity by automating them and freeing up your time for more strategic things. Maybe the reason you haven’t been considered for an upgrade is that your company thinks you’re so bugged down with monotonous tasks, automate it and enlist yourself as a candidate for the next level of assignment.
The fourth is the power of templating in creating everything after its own kind (Gen 1:11). You don’t always have to start from the scratch. Remember elementary quantitative reasoning where we learnt about Lowest Common Multiples? It applies to work packages as well. For a group of work packages, there’s always a lowest common task (LCT) that applies to all work packages within similar competencies. Identify the LCT for your workflow and make a template of it. Creating templates is a time management skill that helps you streamline your workflow and improves your productivity.
Finally, build a system of periodic self-improvement. Even though God created everything to produce after its kind, locked in their genetic technology is the ability to combine and iterate such that every offspring is different from its parents. The way you did something five years ago should not be the way you should do it now. Look for ways to innovate, iterate and improve on any task you’re given. Introduce a trademark of difference and a label of novelty in your assignments.
If the Word of God was the attendant wisdom He used to create a world that has lasted over 4.5 billion years, that same Word is waiting to hand to you the wisdom and the grace to power up your effectiveness and be successful in every endeavour.
Have a blessed week ahead!
Yinka Adebayo