Our Mission 

To present Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord to business and professional men and to develop Christian business and professional men to carry out the Great Commission.

Ezekiel 7.19 describes, they will throw their silver into the streets, and their gold will seem like something filthy. Their silver and gold will be unable to save them in the day of the Lord’s wrath. They will not satisfy their appetites or fill their stomachs, for these were the stumbling blocks that brought about their iniquity.

It is our love for money that keeps us from loving God. We say we love God not money yet our love is proved by our deeds and not by our words. We don’t skip work, we work to earn the money we need to buy the things we want. Yet we skip church, we skip prayer, we skip Bible reading and study, we skip sharing Jesus with the world around us. Why?

God paves His streets with the commodity we most value. Those who walk those streets will be those who value now what God most values now. God has commissioned us to build His kingdom, to make disciples, to teach, even as we follow, all the commands of Jesus. We are to live as Jesus did while He lived on this earth.

Though He is King of kings and Lord of lords He came here as neither King nor Lord. Jesus lived among us as servant of God and sacrifice for humanity. This is how we are to live.

We are to live as servants of God, meaning we give as much as possible of our time, talent and treasure to seeing people come to salvation and grow in obedience to God. We are to live as a sacrifice for humanity, meaning we serve all men in all possible ways in order to win all men to acceptance of the gospel. We do as much as we can for others so as many as possible receive our message and become reconciled to God.

The road is narrow that leads to life and few are those upon it. Few are those who truly live as servants of God and sacrifices for humanity.

Our Opportunities

  1. A mission opportunity is available to you every third Wednesday of the month at the new Rescue Mission Drop-in center. We are looking for one or two men a month to share their story of God’s work in their lives for about 20 minutes from 10-10.20ish. Interested in encouraging the homeless by sharing what God has done in your life? Next opening, November 20. Email Mike to sign up.

  2. Our final outreach luncheon for the year is Thursday, October 17th at the View from 11.45 -1pm. If you have not shared your relationship with Jesus with anyone this year, or even if you have, this is your best opportunity to change the eternal destiny of your unchurched friends through the testimony of a man whose destiny has been changed by Jesus Christ. Mark your calendars, start praying for men and register here.

  3. We need rain to overcome our summer drought, support CBMC today. https://give.idonate.com/cbmc-inc/lansing 

CBMC Central Michigan 4407 W. St. Joe Hwy. Lansing 48917  / 517 481 5996 www.lansing.cbmc.com 

MONDAY MANNA

A service to the business community

A Publication of CBMC International

September 9, 2019 

The Business of Brokenness

by Robert J. Tamasy 

What do you typically do with something that gets broken, like a smartphone, a watch, a pen, or even a car? Try getting it repaired? Dispose of it? Or find a suitable replacement? Such responses are common, but recently I was reading about a better way of repairing cherished possessions that can actually make them more valuable. 

Have you heard about “Kintsugi”? Also called Kintsukuroi, it means “golden repair.” It’s a centuries-old Japanese art for restoring broken pottery with lacquer dusted or mixed with precious metal, such as gold, silver or platinum. This process is rooted in a philosophy that regards breakage and repair as part of the valued object’s history, rather than something to be disguised or forgotten. In effect, this amounts to a celebration of the brokenness. 

This caused me to think about the episodes of brokenness we experience throughout the course of this journey we call life. No matter how much we try to avoid it, failure figures as prominently in our careers as does success: Job interviews for promising jobs don’t work out. Much-anticipated promotions don’t come. Well-conceived business ventures don’t succeed. Sales contracts are not finalized. Entrepreneurs have to file for bankruptcy, sometimes more than once, when risks are not rewarded. 

What if, instead of trying to ignore or conceal such failures and broken times, we gave them the Kintsugi treatment, seeing negative experiences as opportunities for growth, to persevere until we achieve success? 

Brokenness can serve valuable purposes in our personal lives as well. In fact, the Bible teaches that God uses it to build us into the men and women He desires for us to become. Psalm 51:17 says, “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” Why is this? Let’s look at some other Scripture passages to find an answer: 

Brokenness develops necessary humility. Success has the tendency to make us feel puffed up, filled with pride and thinking more highly of ourselves than we should. “For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: ‘I dwell in a high and holy place, and with the oppressed and humble of spirit, to restore the spirit of the lowly and revive the heart of the contrite’” (Isaiah 57:15). 

Brokenness gets our hearts back on the right course. Sometimes our outward actions seem right, but deep down we realize they are based on the wrong motives. Being broken can cause us to reexamine not only what we do, but also why we are doing it. “Does the LORD delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold, obedience is better than sacrifice, and attentiveness is better than the fat of rams” (1 Samuel 15:22). 

Brokenness can turn our eyes back to God. When things are going well for us, both professionally and personally, we can become tempted to forget our reliance on God. “So rend your hearts and not your garments, and return to the LORD your God. For He is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, and abounding in loving devotion”(Joel2:13). 

Brokenness helps us learn to be dependent. The business and professional world often promotes an attitude of, “I can do this all by myself.” Experiencing brokenness can bring us to the end of our trust in self-sufficiency. Jesus declared, declared, “I am the vine, you are the branches…apart from Me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). 

© 2019. Robert J. Tamasy has written Business at Its Best: Timeless Wisdom from Proverbs for Today’s Workplace; Tufting Legacies;coauthored with David A. Stoddard, The Heart of Mentoring, and edited numerous other books, including Advancing Through Adversityby Mike Landry. Bob’s biweekly blog is: www.bobtamasy.blogspot.com. 

CBMC Central Michigan 4407 W. St. Joe Hwy. Lansing 48917 / 517 481 5996  lansing.cbmc.com 

 MONDAY MANNA

A service to the business community

A Publication of CBMC International

September 9, 2019 

Reflection/Discussion Questions 

  1. What do you usually do with things once they become broken? Do you opt for trying to repair them, discarding them, or replacing them? Give a recent example.
     
  2. Had you ever heard of the Kintsugi process for repairing valuable broken pottery? What do you think of letting broken areas remain visible, recognizing them as part of the object’s history? Are there areas of your life and career that you would be willing to have treated with the Kintsugi approach? What about areas you wouldn’t want to be seen?
     
  3. How do you think God uses a process similar to Kintsugi in making needed repairs in our lives in a spiritual sense? Read 2 Corinthians 5:17 and Galatians 2:20. What do these verses tell us about how the Lord deals with brokenness?
     
  4. Psalm 12:6 tells us, “the words of the Lord are flawless, like silver refined in a furnace of clay, purified seven times.” How might this relate to our desire to overcome brokenness in our lives? 

NOTE: If you have a Bible and would like to read more about principles it presents, consider the following passages: Psalm 51:10-12; Proverbs 15:33, 16:18, 17:3, 27:21; Isaiah 40:28-31; Philippians 4:13 

CBMC Central Michigan 4407 W. St. Joe Hwy. Lansing 48917 / 517 481 5996  lansing.cbmc.com

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