Today's Devotional
February 28, 2006
Subject: Your Final Performance Appraisal
Job 2:3 - "And the LORD said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil? and still he holdeth fast his integrity, although thou movedst me against him, to destroy him without cause."
Recently I had to gather up all of my "fitness reports" from my days of service in the military to review them. "Fitness reports" are the Marine Corps' version of performance appraisals. It's your boss's view of how well you have performed over a certain period of time, normally a year. It also talks about your character qualities and what kind of person you are and gives you a ranking against your peers. For instance, you might be 1 out of 5 or you could be 5 out of 5 as I was early in my Marine Corps career. At any rate, as I reviewed the reports, many of them for the first time, I was amazed at some of the things that my bosses said. In fact, I was actually shocked at some of the statements, but in a good way. One statement in particular stood out that read, "the Marine Corps should attempt to clone this officer." Really nice words. After reviewing these reports I thought about how the small words of these people made me feel and then I realized, God has said so much more about us.
Job's performance appraisal was quite a good one. Look at the verse. First you see that he was 1 out of however many there were to be ranked against him, (none like him). Then His boss said that he was "perfect and upright." Those are some great words from that Boss. He goes on to talk about Job's character qualities and mentions that he fears God and retains his integrity. What a report.
Today, consider your performance appraisal. What are they saying about you? The comments of people here on earth may make us feel all good and nice, but they mean little when compared against the words of The Real Boss. We should live so that at the end of our work He will say to us "well done thou good and faithful servant." That's a performance appraisal that we'll be able to review for eternity.
Carlen
