What would Robert Reid think?
According to Business Insider:
Robert Reid is the CEO of the financial management software company Intacct. [When interviewing people for open positions at his company], Reid likes to flip things around by asking candidates what they want to talk about to start the interview.
In an interview with The New York Times’ Adam Bryant, Reid explains that asking someone the question, “What do you want to talk about?” allows him to gauge their priorities and understand the flow of their thought process.
“I’m looking for someone who is naturally curious and has a good business mind, and is asking questions to understand how to win,” Reid tells The New York Times.
Reid also uses the interview to ask what people think they bring to the table and which skills they need to improve upon…
Finally, he tries to get a sense of their long-term goals by asking what the inscription will say on the gold watch they get from their last employer when they retire.
“It allows me to understand truly what they really think of themselves,” Reid explains to The Times.
While reading Reid’s comments, my mind transformed the hiring scene depicted in the Business Insider article into something remarkably different. No longer was Reid asking a candidate questions about employment. Now, in my mind, God was interviewing us about how we’re living our lives today. The questions were the same as Reid’s:
- What do you want to talk about?
- What do you bring to the table?
- What skills do you need to improve upon?
- What do you want your gold watch to say?
God already knows our answers, so He isn’t asking them for His benefit. He is asking them for our benefit. He knows what we really think of ourselves, but sometimes we are blind to our own self-perceptions. The sum of these answers will help us understand where we are in our walk with Christ.
If we are walking with the Lord, what should our answers be? I suggest the following
- What do you want to talk about? We should want to talk about Christ, His love for us, and His saving grace. He is, after all, the Alpha and Omega, so what else is there to talk about?
- What do you bring to the table? We bring nothing to the table, for it is God who supplies us with both the will and the power to do His good works. The sooner we can recognize this, the sooner our pride will cease to impede our impact for Christ.
- What skills do you need to improve upon? Loving Christ. The victorious Christian life is all about obeying God’s Word. As Christ stated in John 14:23, obedience is dependent on love, so the more we love Him, the more we obey Him. How do we love Him more? Spend more time with Him in Bible study and prayer.
- What do you want your gold watch to say? “(Fill in your name here) recognized that he/she was saved by God’s grace alone plus nothing, and he/she was a good and faithful servant who obediently did the Lord’s will.” There is no greater prize than to hear God proclaim to you, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant!”, so make sure this is what you strive for.
In sum, God wants to hear us say, “We love You, and we want to obey You.” If we do not truthfully wish to do these things, then it’s time to understand our thinking is worldly-focused rather than God-focused, and it’s time to change the way we think.
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