Keith Battle - Proverbial - Part 4

Proverbs 14: I’ve been doing a series called «Proverbial.» It is just a look into the book of Proverbs. What I’m doing in this series isn’t really sermons, per se; they are just observations that I typically make when I’m reading the Word. Today, I want to look at two verses in Proverbs 14, and we are in part four. All I’ve been doing is saying, «Here’s what I see,» and I’ll share with you what I see. Today, I’m going to share two things: I’m going to talk about success and I’ll talk about grief. The two are not connected, so don’t leave and try to find the connection; if there is any connection, it was totally accidental. It was not a coincidence; it was not intentional. I’m just giving two different thoughts based on two observations that I made from the verses I read. What I try to do is write down stuff that jumps out at me when I’m reading the Bible, and I’m going to show you what jumped out at me. Hopefully, what jumped out at me will jump out at you and will be of help to you in your life. Maybe both observations will be helpful, but hopefully, something will be beneficial.

Father, please do that for us. Thank you for the privilege of serving. In Jesus' name, make us better. Amen.

Verse 4 says, «Without oxen, a stable stays clean.» I’m scared of noctus over; without oxen, a stable stays clean, but you need a strong ox for a large harvest. Now, stay with me; that may not mean anything to you, but think agriculturally. If you have a stable, that means you have a farmhouse, which means you probably live in an agricultural environment. If you don’t have an ox in your stable, the stable is clean. That’s pretty good! I don’t like messes—no mess, nothing to manage, nothing to stress me out, and nothing to clean up behind. But then the verse gives a contrast: if you’re going to have a harvest, you need a strong ox. Here’s my first point. I want to emphasize that success is messy. I’m stunned by people who want success without mess. There is no progress without mess. Progress and mess are married. Anyone who has been successful at anything had to have an ox in their stable. Well, if you don’t have an ox in your stable, you don’t have any drama; you don’t have to feed dogs, and you don’t have to clean up after it—your stable is clean. It’s all right if you don’t want any drama, but if you want a harvest, you have to have some mess. Because if you’re going to have an ox, you have to feed it, and if you feed it, it’s going to do stuff, and you’ve got to clean up. What this verse is teaching is that there is no growth and progress without an investment—you have to be willing to sow. If you’re going to reap, Ecclesiastes 11:1 says, «Cast your bread upon the waters, and in many days it shall return to you.» There is no return without an investment. You have to have an ox, and you have to deal with the mess that comes with an ox. Any organization, any business, any company, or any ministry that is not growing—I’ll guarantee you there’s somebody leading it. They don’t like mess; they prefer stability; they like cleanliness, no noise, no drama. But anything that grows does so with drama. If you’ve got a singing group and it’s just you, you call yourself the Jacksons, and it’s just you. In your vision, you have a singing group—you have sopranos, you have altos, you have background singers, you have dancers, you have lights, you have instruments—but in reality, it’s just you. As soon as you add one person to your team, you’ve just added a personality; you’ve just added requirements, entitlement, and chaos. You can go from having a little quartet to having a choir; the quartet used to get along, but now you’ve got two tenors, and they’re fighting. You have two sopranos, now one wants to sing solo, and the other is mad at her because she thinks, «I could do that better.» Anything that grows will grow with mess. Swift success brings demands, deadlines, struggles, and challenges. There is no progress without mess; get used to being uncomfortable if you’re going to be successful.

Anybody that has ever grown anything grew it not with the absence of mess but in the presence of mess. Watch this; go back to verse 4—it says, «And what’s this? If you’ve got a strong ox.» It’s one thing to have an ox; it’s something else to have a strong ox. Some of you are ox-less, but you’re not making any progress. If you get yourself a strong ox, you can have a large harvest. The quality of your ox matters; the quality of the team you add matters. Some of you don’t have a strong ox, which means you might have the wrong ox. Some of us have built teams that we can’t grow with because we’ve got incompetent people on the team. A strong ox is built for this; a strong ox can make moves in this season. Some of you have people on your team who should have been gone, but because you have a greater dedication to loyalty and faithfulness than to competency, that organization can’t grow. Because you don’t have a strong ox, you really have the wrong ox. I don’t know who I’m helping, but you can just holler at your boy later, just saying, «Yeah, that’s me.»