Annual Review
By Shauna Leis
“Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord; O Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive to my cry for mercy. If you, O Lord, kept a record of sins, O Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness; therefore you are feared.”
Psalm 130:1-4
Recently at our company, I was asked to change positions and move to a new area. In this new role, I would be in management again, responsible for a group of extremely high level individuals doing Marketing Intelligence. At first, I was a bit unsure of this new move, but God confirmed this move several different ways. In this new position, my managerial responsibilities would include leading this team to turn a corporate vision into a team mission, prioritizing all the different requests coming through the team, and even working with other teams overseas to better leverage resources across multiple teams.
However, one of the main areas of responsibilities when it comes to the employees themselves is an annual review of their past work. With our company being a performance management driven compensation organization, each manager is responsible for ensuring that the team members understand their objectives and perform their job to those objectives. We also help employees understand that it is also not just what they do, but how they do it that is important. Therefore, we keep a record of both the “rights” and the “wrongs” throughout the year for each person. Then at the end of each year (or sometimes even throughout the year if it becomes necessary), we review all these activities and talk about which actions/attitudes should continue and which need readjusting before continuing into the new year.
As I was planning to move into this new role, God really spoke into my heart about this and asked me, “What would you do if I gave you a ‘Spiritual Annual Review?’” I will admit that I began to cringe under that thought. What if at the end of each year, God sat down with us and began to list out each selfish thought we had, each selfish action we took, each discouraging word that we spoke, and each time we were filled with rage or envy or jealousy? What kind of review would that be if we had to list out all the positives and negatives regarding our spiritual lives? Would we have more positives than we would negatives? Would God need to do some serious redirection with how our lives had been going? You see, nothing is hidden from God as He knows every move we have made – good or bad. Psalm 69:5 indicates, “You know my folly, O God; my guilt is not hidden from you.”
Thankfully, God did not leave me in this depressed state going through all of my inadequacies as a person. He reminded me that with Him there is only grace and forgiveness. As the psalm above indicates, God keeps no records of our wrongs, only our rights. Also, in Psalm 103:11-12, David says “For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.” When we know Jesus Christ as Lord of our lives, then confess our sins, and repent fully from our transgressions, God completely removes our sins from our lives as far as the east is from the west. God does not want us to badger ourselves with our sins; He only longs for us to learn from them and confess them to Him so that His mercy can be revealed through our lives.
Although there may not be an annual review each year with God, there will be a final review when we pass from this life into the next. It is up to you and me what kind of review we will receive when that happens. In 2 Timothy 4:7-8, Paul says, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day – and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing.” Will each of us be able to say the same things as Paul? Will we be able to enter into the presence of the Most Holy God and say that we, too, have kept the faith throughout our lives? God wants to award to each of us our own crown of righteousness in that final review. Will you be ready?
Pray with me: Precious God, oh how we long to hear that in our final review with You that we have been faithful and deserving of a crown of righteousness. Lord, we are so thankful that You do not force us to do an annual review with You where we must call to mind all of our rights and wrongs throughout the year. But God, we confess to You now that we are sinful creatures and beg for Your forgiveness and grace. There are so many times when we know that we have gone our own way instead of Yours, and we pray that You will gently bring us back into Your path instead of ours. We long to be faithful to You throughout our lives. Lead us by Your Word. We love You so very much and pray all of this in the name above all names, Jesus Christ! Amen.