The Need For A Personal ‘Margin Call’
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.
Judges 21.25 records, in those days Israel had no king. Each man did what he considered to be right. Not much has changed in 4000 years or so. People are people with the same propensities from generation to generation and from nation to nation. It is because our origin is from God through His creation of one man and one woman from whom all the peoples of the world have their beginning. This ideology is unique to Christianity and explains why in precept, not always in practice, Christianity stands alone in its teaching that all people are created equal regardless of gender, race, income or intelligence.
Christianity also teaches that our ancestors rebelled against God resulting in the successive transfer into our very DNA, a natural propensity to reject God and elevate our self. Simply put, we begin with no king and each one does what is right in our own eyes. The infant child teaches us this truth as they move through the toddler years into adulthood. Parenting is the hard work of instilling values that will harness the natural rebellion in order to produce people who love their neighbor because they love their God.
Christianity is the recognition that God has come to earth in a Man in order to set the table for His return as King. While He was recognized by a few foreigners as a king upon His birth, the God-Man was rejected as king by the people who were looking for His arrival. While men thought they had successfully killed this king they were sorely mistaken when after three days He rose from the dead appearing to more than 500 people over forty days. After this He ascended to heaven from where He promises to return again not in obscurity as a servant-sacrifice but as a triumphant King and Judge of all humanity.
This time He will stay upon the new earth with all those who have also been given new bodies to live eternally with God in their midst, whom all will recognize as King of kings and Lord of lords. Until His return, the Church works to encourage people to stop doing what is right in their own eyes but instead humble themselves before God to do what is right in His eyes. If we live based upon our own interpretation of what is right then we in essence make ourselves god. If we reject the Bible as something written by man so that we do what we think is right instead of what it teaches as right, we make ourselves god. If we reject the Church because we believe all religions are the same and are made by men, choosing instead to live how we decide is best, we make ourselves to be god.
The One True God allows us to make these choices but He will not be persuaded by us that we were correct in our thinking on that day when we meet face to face. The One True God has told us what is required from us and recorded for us so that all people in all places for all time can know what He demands from us so that when we meet Him we are without excuse for obeying His will. The question everyone answers by the way they live their lives is who is god? Themselves or the God-Man Who lived 2000 years ago and promises to return again?
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MONDAY MANNA
A service to the business community
A Publication of CBMC International
August 14, 2017
The Need For A Personal ‘Margin Call’
by Rudolfs Dainis Smits
The word “margin” has many meanings and applications. Even for the workplace. The Merriam-Webster dictionary, for example, says it can mean, a bare minimum below which or an extreme limit beyond which something becomes impossible or is no longer desirable. It can mean the difference between profit and loss. If equity in your account – value of securities minus what you owe the brokerage) – falls below the maintenance margin, the brokerage can issue a “margin call.” This forces the investor to either liquidate his/her position in the stock, or add more cash to the account.
Problems arise when due to a lack of margin we cannot cover losses or exceed specified limits, when we fall short on cash or no reserves to meet the demand. Without a built-in buffer (margin), results can be stressful, painful, and even catastrophic. There is a different kind of “margin,” however, that applies to each of us regardless of how much we have in financial resources. In his book, Margin, Richard A. Swenson, M.D. writes: “Margin is the space between our load and our limits. It is the amount allowed beyond that which is needed. It is something held in reserve for contingencies or unanticipated situations. Margin is the gap between rest and exhaustion, the space between breathing freely and suffocating.”
Many things compete for our resources today, causing many of us to live outside of a reasonable margin in terms of time and personal resources. Full schedules, families, businesses, ministry, demanding goals, the speed of progress, technology, and our desire for success also have depleted us emotionally, physically and financially. Pursuing material things, we have sacrificed our cognitive (mental and emotional) needs. This has left us short of uncommitted personal time necessary for well-being.
Swenson writes, “The disease of margin-less living is insidious, widespread and virulent.” He explains most of us do not even know what margin is; we don’t understand what margin-less living means, but we certainly feel the pain. The physician offers this description: “Margin-less is being thirty minutes late to the doctor’s office because you were twenty minutes late to getting out of the bank because you were ten minutes late dropping the kids off at school because the car ran out of gas two blocks from the gas station and you forgot your wallet.” Can you identify with this?
Margin has been sabotaged by progress and demands of success. We hear talk about sustaining a green Earth. But how about a “sustainable” and “green” lifestyle? Margin has to be supported which requires living contentedly in the shadow of progress and supposed “better living.” The Bible tells us true peace of mind with God and spiritual well-being require contentment: “…constant friction among people who are depraved in mind and deprived of the truth, imagining that godliness is a means of gain. But godliness with contentment is great gain, for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world” (1 Timothy 6:5-7).
Margin does not just happen – we must fight to keep it. My work in the construction industry has taught me to bid on projects and allocate work resources with sufficient contingencies and funds for unforeseen obstacles that inevitably arise. Our work, business budget, or family schedules should also include buffers and time margins to accommodate unexpected expenses and developments. The Scriptures advise us, “For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it?…what king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not sit down firstand deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? (Luke 14:28,31).
© 2017. Rudolfs Dainis Smits, MATS BArch Dipl. Arch architect & business owner; currently Design & Technical manager for Hill International – Project and Construction Risk management; former chairmen and board member of CBMC Latvia; founding member of Reformed Baltic Theological Seminary, Riga, Latvia and former Europartners board member.
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