living out of the heart

One of the first real jobs I had was at a large bank that shall remain nameless.  As an employee of a federal bank there are very strict guidelines.  Obviously, at any time you could have a half a million dollars in cash that you were responsible for.  The bank wanted to keep their money, so they had you do certain things in order to keep it that way.

This was a particularly difficult job for me because it was the exact same thing all day long, which, if you know me at all, drives me crazy.  I was a loan specialist at the bank when all the interest rates went so low a few years ago.  And in keeping with the strict robot-like personality that we were supposed to have, we had to say the same thing to every customer. “Would you like to hear about how we can save you money each month on your mortgage?”  to which most people would answer, “No, stop talking to me just cash my check!”

It didn’t help that most of the people that I worked with didn’t really like their jobs.  It was basically a temporary thing for all of us.  So all day, we would ask the same question.  Not really caring if the person took us up on the offer, because that just meant a ton more work for us and the bonus was hardly worth the extra effort.

The thing is.  I knew that refinancing would potentially save people hundreds of dollars each month. But I didn’t really know any of them, so I didn’t really care if they saved money.  I was just there collecting my 11 bucks an hour.

A couple months into the job things really started to change.  All of the sudden I was doing a million dollars a month in loans, which was 10 times my goal.  It took me a while to catch on, but I figured out what was happening.  I was seeing the same people each day and really started to enjoy our short conversations we would have.  I learned about their lives and they learned about mine.  I would remember things going on in their lives and ask about it and they would do the same.  So we moved beyond our customer/employee relationship to the point where I actually started to care about some of the people that were my “customers”  my “potential clients.”  They noticed it, I noticed it, my boss noticed it.  What happened was that my “Would you like to hear about how we can save you money each month with your mortgage?” Turned into me wanting to save my friends money.  It turned into, “Hey, we’ve got this thing going on and you really need to check it out.” I stopped caring about following the rules for the sake of being a robot.  I started caring about the people. What happened is I started living that part of my life out of my heart, rather than out of being forced to perform, forced to follow the rules.

And this makes sense?  We want to learn more about those we are close to.  We want to do good things for those we love.  We think of those who we care for more than we do complete strangers.  Our actions follow where our heart is.

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This has been on of the most valuable lessons I have learned about being a follower of Jesus.   And this is huge for the church as well.

It is this, “The way of Jesus means living out of the heart He is molding”

It also happens to be one of things Jesus addressed the most.  It’s the idea that actions, and knowledge are not the goal.  They are merely byproducts of having your heart in the right place.   What would our actions, knowledge and life looked like if having a heart that is seeking after God was our primary goal.