Human Effort: A lesson from Luke LeFevre

:: This is a guest post by Luke LeFevre, Senior Web Designer for FPU. By far, one of the most down to earth, hardest working dudes at Lampo! ::

Human effort. I have been thinking a lot about these 2 words recently. At the end of most of our company staff meetings, Dave prays, “Lord we can do it by ourselves, but it is sure better when you do it.” There are a lot of go-getters here at Lampo that have been gifted in so many different things. Leadership, creativity, productivity. These are all great things, but what happens for me is that I start comparing myself to this person or that person. Thinking, “So and so is doing all these great things and probably making tons of money and is driving that sweet (insert awesome car here) and I am still driving my crappy 95 Honda and I’ll never get there, I need to try harder!” Then I start leaving the flow of the spirit and start putting my own human effort into it and end up doing something stupid. God has me right where he wants me and I need to be present in that. He will work out the rest (hopefully “the rest” involves a sweet new Infinity).

It goes the same with working out our money at home. Yes, I work for Dave Ramsey and Financial Peace University, but it is still a struggle to make sure my wife and I stay on the same page (Especially because I am always right and she needs to get on the same page as me!) This month is a tight one for us because we keep spending the money we are supposed to set aside for renters insurance. Starbucks in the morning doesn’t taste so good when that bill comes. Ugh.  So, I was going to go through this months budget and I thought to myself, “I will get up early on Saturday and figure it out myself! Me so smart!” Then God whispered, “Luke, that never works.” So, I begrudgingly said, “Your probably right.” I waited for my wife to get up, we prayed about it and went through it together and figured out a solution I had not even thought of. Rock it.

Don’t take my statements the wrong way though. I am not discounting the value of hard work, we have to work hard and put effort into things to make them work. My wife and I ran the Nashville half-marathon last year and we would have been puking our guts out on the side of the road if we had not put in some work ahead of time. The key is to listen to Gods voice first and then put the effort in, not the other way around.