Devotion Fall 2021
This is a different world than when I was your age. The pressure is greater to keep your eyes on the Lord and to stand for what you believe. One thing never changes – God. God is immutable. He never changes. Every time I see a rock or a boulder it reminds me of God’s immutability. Of course rocks/boulders do eventually change over time but they are one of the slower things to change. Hebrews 13:8, Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today, and forever. That means every part of God including his character or essence never changes. One of God’s character traits is integrity. So God’s integrity is immutable. It never changes.
What is integrity? Webster dictionary definition.
- The quality of being honest and having strong moral principles personal/professional/artistic integrity to behave with integrity a man of great integrity
- (formal) the state of being whole and not divided
Our ultimate goal should be to define integrity the way that God defines it. Not the relative way that the world defines it today. Our world is becoming more and more relative with people to finding things based off of what they want and what’s best for them but we’re lucky as believers in Jesus Christ we have the absolute truth we can define integrity through that truth. God has given us the ability to discern truth from lies integrity versus relative integrity by studying his word and his principles and his standards that are immutable and never change. They are true and no matter what age we live in.
I personally liked it if I integrity is what I do when nobody else is around and I often learn more about integrity and raise my standards after I’ve made a wrong decision. And none of those wrong decisions are life-threatening or life altering but the more we give into or justify the more we chip away at our overall character of integrity. I can’t imagine being your age again living in today’s world I’ve not done any research but I feel like you guys are under pressure to be perfect and too often just train yourselves on things and you know what to do. I feel like it’s an Internet thing where you can find any answers you want to so people don’t have to bother taking time out to train you.
Our hopes is to take that pressure off you here in Informatics. Covid kind of changed what Informatics was because we didn’t get to work with you or spend time with you but we spent a lot of time in the summer meeting and talking about how to help you and of course then help us in the long run.
We are going to try to be good leaders both positive and negative reinforcement . We are going to try to be more consistent and do more write ups to make sure we’re being fair to everyone . That being said the first two weeks will be considered training and correction weeks we will give you verbal or email warnings and just take away points for the first two weeks . This gives us an opportunity to express our expectations and standards and gives you a chance to learn and apply them.
We will work with you probably weekly or every couple weeks. The model will look different with each of us but we have the same goals we’re going to spend a little time talking to you Giving you an opportunity to talk about any troubles or struggles you’re going through and then we will talk to you about work performance will use whichever tool you’ve been instructed to use to review what you’ve accomplished from the last time that we met.
So our renewed expectation of you is not that you’re perfect but that you give us the integrity that you have and will continue to work and train you on what we think integrity means. Our first challenge to you is to follow our instructions and read the procedures we don’t wanna spend this whole meeting because we would have to meet tomorrow for sure to to teach you every single procedure that we have. One true test of your integrity will be the homework policy there will be no homework on library shifts anymore.
Our goal this year is to do our jobs as into the Lord.
Colossians 3:23 Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord and not for people, 24 knowing that it is from the Lord thatyou will receive the reward of the inheritance. It is the Lord Christ whom you serve.
