One of the phrases I dislike about this book is buried in the title of this net Chapter: The Executive Joy of Pleasantly Productive Leadership. Pleasantly productive seems to me to be like the luke warm water Christ spits out. Be hot, be cold, but do not be waffling between the two. Pleasantly is a nice enough word, but it does not seem like an acceptable goal.
I did find that this chapter was focused on leaders and wondered if the author forgot his target audience of people trying to get going. The pattern being described is Bathe in the Dead Sea and although the topic follows the joy of the first chapter in the pattern, the titles seem a mess.
This chapter starts with (or at least the first impact I saw was) giving joyful thanks. God has given us joy through our new life in Him, and now that we have the joy, we are to give thanks for it, joyfully. I have purposely looked at the moments of the week as little opportunities to be thankful for something. There have been a bunch even in the worst cold snap in a generation or so.
The author uses Proverbs 15 to make his points. I am going to pretend that the leadership focus of his words are really about how I am to try and lead others to Christ. Whatever my leadership scope, I have enough to work on before tacking that. Based on verse 13, the author says we need to have “an easy smile and a countenance of wisdom and winsomeness.” I like that and I do not think it is limited to leaders, but applies to every Christian. Ecc 8:1 says wisdom should brighten one’s face and I concur that any gruff faced person does not give off a vibe of wisdom.
We are to cultivate this inner joy we have and use it to convey our vision and our enthusiasm to inspire confidence and cheer. Who wants to be like us if all we do is complain? The last section mentioned how Jesus was joyful and if we are to be just like Jesus, we too should appear full of joy, which of course we are, even when we do not feel like it.
The follow-on phase is to accentuate the positive. We have been given a spirit of power, love, and sound thinking (2 Tim 1:7). The author uses Prov 15:15 to further these ideas and lays out a scripture filled ladder of progress along the path. The source of our joy is God. The source of our attitude is our choice to follow God and allow joy to live in us.
The third point (I wonder if this was a sermon he did) is based on Prov 15:30 and tells us that we will have success when we share this joy with others. Again, our lives do not need success, they only need us to follow, but knowing that God is succeeding, even if we do not see it, is enough. When we are positive, showing joy, we impact everyone around us. You know when your spouse is upset, you can feel yourself getting upset too. It works both ways. Our words and actions and facial expressions impact everyone around us. My expressionless demeanor has had negative impact on many occasions and a frown exponentially more. Our faces need to show joy and not just happiness.
The author uses a piece from Eisenhower to show a positive example “ “I firmly determined that my mannerisms and speech (in public) would always reflect the cheerful certainty of victory –“ We are certain of Christ’s victory over sin and death and we can chose to behave accordingly.
The best part of all this is that we do not have to come up with the strength to do all this. God has given us all the power we need, we just need to express the joy we have. This is not something that we can fake, but we do not have to. We have to cultivate the attitude and be joyfully thankful.