The integrity of the upright guides them, but the unfaithful are destroyed by their duplicity. Proverbs 11:3
This is the third in a series of posts in a book I am reading on my Philippines trip. It contains leadership insights from the most victorious team in sports history (winning percentage = 86% as of the writing of the book): The All Blacks, The New Zealand National Rugby Union Team.
“The way you behave will either bring out the best or worst of your capability, and this applies to businesses and teams as well as individuals…Behaviors exist in two domains: public and private.
‘The Public Domain’ means those areas of a player’s life when he is under team protocol — whether at training, during a game, or on promotional duty. Professionalism, physical application, and proficiency are demanded here.
‘The Private Domain’ is the one in which we spend time with ourselves and where our mind-game plays out. This is the biggest game of all, as daily we confront our habits, limitations, temptations, and fears.”
Owen Eastwood as quoted by James Kerr in Legacy: What the All Blacks Can Teach Us About The Business of Life (London: Constable, 2013) 10-11.
There’s a link between integrity and generosity. The connection fosters trust. In contexts characterized by duplicity, trust erodes and generosity wanes. This explains why God’s workers must exhibit integrity in the management of churches and ministries.
So, what’s the application for Daily Meditations readers on Father’s Day? We must make sure our public domain and our private domain match. This is especially true for fathers as our children will tend to do what we do and not what we say.
How do we win the mind-game? It is not won with determination. Life is hard and navigating it alone is impossible but with God all things are possible. The only way we win it is to follow the example of Jesus: fast, pray, and confess what is true as we face life’s challenges.
But this way of thinking and living only works if we do the same thing in both public and private settings. If our lives are characterized by duplicity, we must repent (or change directions) today. We must ask God to help us exhibit integrity as a basis for encouraging Christian generosity.
How we live teaches people to live, give, serve, and love like Jesus more than what we say. When our words and actions match, our testimony is maximized. We must assess our public and private domain and get them in sync to grow in generosity and point others that way.