Reality - Leadership Prayers
Reality
Show us what is real, God. We have to know the truth.
Fix your thoughts on what is true and honorable and right. Philippians 4:8
Unless we are sure of our starting point, we can never chart a correct course to our goal. There is no alternative to the freedom and power of the truth.
HELP us to agree on what is true about who we are and where we are, God, so that we may agree on where to go and the best way to get there. Though we will not all look at our reality in the same way, help us to see the same reality and agree on its meaning for us, whether or not we like what we see. Otherwise, God, we will waste precious time and energy arguing from different assumptions.
Obviously, you love variety! You made us so diverse that all we can do is laugh and wonder. That in itself is part of the reality we must understand. We each have our own reactions and feelings about everything. This wonderful range of perspectives helps us excel, as long as you help us to respect each other.
On my own it is not at all clear to me what is true, God. Often when I have felt the most certain, I have been deceived. So much in this world is merely a façade, not what it seems, and things change so fast that reality shifts like a moonlit shadow in the wind.
Somehow, God, in all our differences, and despite all the informational vagaries, give us a shared reality, a similar idea of how things truly are for us. Lead my spirit to the truth about our situation, so that I can describe it in a way that leads us to consensus.
Some of us cannot see the truth because we fear it. Some of us invested heavily in another view of reality, and we may feel shamed if it turns out we were wrong. Some of us actually worked to build a different reality and do not want it to change.
Some of us cannot see the truth because we fear it.
I know that the truth tends to win in the long run, but I need to see it early enough to act wisely. Help us to understand our situation accurately so that we do not waste this opportunity for greatness. We want the truth because only the truth can free us to achieve our mission.
Show us what is real, God. We have to know the truth.
Reflections
Standing under the brick arches and soaring columns of McDonald Hall, it was hard to remember that twelve years before I had sat cringing in a chapel service as I watched the rain drip from the roof directly onto our guest speaker.
It was my first year at a small college so poor that it couldn’t even afford to repair its roofs, and I was charged with writing an institutional plan stating what it would take to survive. So many people had sacrificed so much for so long to keep the dream alive that my criticism seemed grossly unkind. But I believed that it was the truth of the situation and that we had to agree on our reality in order to focus our efforts.
We identified twelve barriers to our survival, agreeing that any one of them was potentially fatal if not reversed. I feared that complete demoralization would follow, key people would resign, donors would despair and then disappear, and I would attend a collegiate funeral.
Then an English professor named Wilfred Martens took me aside and said, “It really helps to look this all straight in the face and give it names and know what we have to do to succeed. We are not too tired. Now that we see it, I believe we can do this.”
He was right. Twelve years later, Fresno Pacific was ranked fourth by U.S. News & World Report for overall best value among western regional universities.
