A twenty five year old sales-marketing professional has everything going for him.  Matthew has earned top sales within his team, been awarded the employee of the year, and received a recent bonus to boot!  He also had been promised a job promotion within the next six month.  Before that could happen, Matthew was told by the executive team to present a new sale concept to the company’s Board of Directors.  From the executive team’s stand-point, the sales concept will increase the overall business profits and they are advising Matthew to promote the initiative.

Matthew’s inner being is starting to trouble him.  The sales concept offered by the executives fall short of his own confidence in taking the company to a higher level.  He’s challenged by wanting to share his own sales qualities versus having doubts in his own executive team’s concept.  Does Matthew have the courage to tell the executive team the concept lacks potential, or does he go along with this lackluster sale opportunity and pray the Board will buy into it?

We’ve all had this unsettling feeling in our everyday lives.  We tend to stay close to our own strong convictions of inner qualities versus other foreign qualities formed by others.  Other uneasy examples come in various forms:

• A love-struck teenage girl has strong heart-felt feelings of a new boyfriend while everyone else thinks the ‘boyfriend’ is a jerk!
• An elderly father who believes he can still drive while family members cringe with agony of their father’s stubbornness to give up his driving privileges.
• A son who recently graduated from high-school and now has a desire to go to a community college while his parents want him to enroll into an Ivy League institution.

When you’re standing on one side with your own inner qualities and everyone else is firmly on the other side, it feels lonely.  Yet those inner qualities you chose in life really matters to you.

Self-Improvement Expert Author Connor R. Sullivan wrote the 2008 article “Four Traits of a Person Who Wants to Develop Inner Qualities as Well as Physical Attractiveness” says this – “A person who has developed inner qualities has the benefit of being greatly self-assured because he or she has chosen their priorities.  It is so freeing to be able to act on principle and have the knowledge that you are living according to your chosen value system.  It is called being ‘true to yourself’ and that knowledge carries over into every area of everyday life and influences every relationship a person has.”

I further challenge the idea by asking you the question: Beyond the ‘self-assuredness’ of your own inner qualities, are these qualities adding value to those around you?  Are you translating those qualities into others that should:

• spark a form of passion and excitement in their life?
• grow a stronger positive culture around you?
• develop a pursuit of purity?
• tailor your conversations to influence those around you?
• establish an excellent work ethic at your job?
• allow your friends/neighbors to become more involved in church?
• build a long-lasting marriage?
• foster a true-connection with your children?
• make a better home for your family?

What kind of inner qualities you think are useful to God?  Christian Author Jim George in his book entitled “A Man After God’s own Heart” provides several qualities:

1)      Not given to drunkenness – Godliness and drunkenness are not compatible.

2)      Not violent (meekness) – this is the quality of keeping yourself under control

3)      Not quarrelsome – a Godly person will not participate in arguments.  Rather, the person’s conversation is always full of grace (Colossians 4:5)

4)      Not a lover of money – a Godly person is not pre-occupied with amassing material possessions or becoming ‘greedy’ with money

5)      Not overbearing – we should be humbled servants at all times

6)      Not quick-tempered – we avoid having a ‘short-fuse’ attitude

7)      Not pursing dishonest gain – a Godly person is careful not to get involved in anything that might appear to be dishonest or illegal

8)      Just – we are to do right and fair; a person of integrity

9)      Loving what is good – a Godly person has a passion for what is good and wholesome, whether in the books and magazine one reads, the movies and TV shows one watches, or the friendships and hobbies one cultivates

When evaluating my inner qualities, I find a comfortable downtime of space toward the last week of every December.  Normally I reflect on what has transpired over the year and ask God to show me ways to improve as I prepare for the new year.

The evaluation of your inner qualities may happen more often than mine.  Whatever the case, it’s always helpful to examine your inner qualities.  This examination process will allow you to become more passionate and purposeful to the things God has in store for you.

Let’s go people and do some good!