Nov 19
I spent much of the day driving from San Francisco to Los Angeles today. While I was driving I began to pray and talk out loud to God. I was thinking about all the people that have been influencing S... and feeling like there was no end to those I could blame. The Lord corrected me, as He loves each of them too, and what I need to do is forgive them and pray for them.
For some reason my thoughts turned to the things I have learned in my journey with Christ and in life. I began to think about how the Lord had used numerous people in my life to draw me towards him. This reminded me of a technique in sales I had some training in and success with.
The technique is called “The Circle of Leverage.” When you are trying to put some buying decision pressure upon a certain individual in a typical corporate organization, the method has you do an exercise to determine who your primary decision maker is, and then identify the people whom he or she competes internally for his or her position, the people whom he or she would identify as their superiors, and also the people whom he or she would identify as their immediate subordinates.
The basic principle rests upon a few conditions that most of us have in our work lives and personal lives. Most of us have people in an equal power position that we are competing with for recognition and advancement. We have people who we view as having control in our future success or failure, our superiors. We have people who are subordinate to us who are vying for our positions. Each of these individuals exerts certain pressures upon how we make decisions in our lives.
Once you have identified as many of these people as possible, you will send a letter to each of them stating what problem you have identified in their organization, and a brief summary of how you can fix it. The letter is sent with an innocent sounding tone like “ I am not sure whom would address this problem, so I am sending a copy to Person 1, Person 2 and Person 3…” Your prospect in seeing this would be motivated by all the internal pressures from each of the persons surrounding him or her, whether perceived or real and would have to take action. Usually the action you want them take is suggested in the letter with, a request for an appointment.
I found it interesting as I began to think about the wonderful and persistent way in which the Lord ever kept himself before me as he was drawing me to him. My parents, were constantly in prayer for me to come to Christ—my superiors. When S... and I bought our home, the Lord surrounded us with Christian neighbors and friends—my equals. When P..... needed daycare and pre-school, we found that Westside’s KDO met our needs perfectly—my subordinates (the children). Each of these exerted pressure upon me to move toward God.
My thoughts in writing this are being directed to how to pray more effectively for the Prodigal. I have often prayed for God to sever un-Godly relationships, but think that having been corrected earlier, I should identify the Circle of Leverage around S..., and pray for each of those people to begin to hear the Holy Spirit in their lives and hearts, to pray for their salvation as well and the Holy Spirit’s leading. Wouldn’t that be amazing and fantastic, if not just one person comes, but many?
So I am sending this off to check myself, that my motives are right and not just my selfish nature and my desire to fix it speaking. I have an end in mind, but perhaps the Lord is saying “pray bigger.” I welcome your comments and thoughts
No comments:
Post a Comment