Benchmarking

“Lord, how can I love You today?”

“What act of worship can I do?”

“What words can I utter that will honor and bless You?”

“What act of service can I do to represent Your love?”

“How would Your Spirit inspire me to pray today?”

These five questions were the topic of this weekend’s devotional in December’s issue of Journey magazine (which I love. I keep my copy on my desk at work). I thought they were great questions to ponder over.

Where I work, we are driven and graded by satisfaction scores. Those scores are then compared and evaluated against other benchmarking facilities within our peer group. The goal is always to be performing at the highest percentile of your benchmarking group. Maybe one facility has high employee turnover. That facility can in turn, contact someone within their peer group who may be performing at a much lower turnover rate and ask, “What are you doing to encourage employee morale? What benefits are you offering to retain employees?” so that they can try new methodologies to improve their own satisfaction scores.

Another thing that we pride ourselves on is customer service. We are training our employees to ask, “Is there anything else I can do for you today?”

When I read over the five questions above, I thought of them as benchmarks to my own prayer life. How often do I tell God that I truly love Him? Do I just rattle through my prayers and then go about my day as I want? Do I really put God first in all that I say and do? Is God honored with my actions and words? Do I magnify the name of Jesus with my life or do I belittle it? Do I hinder others from knowing the Lord?

I admit, when I benchmark my prayer life against these questions, I feel so inadequate. I am so careful to pray for the protection of my family through out the day and wisdom for myself for my job, but I never stop to ask, “Lord, what can I do for you today? Is there anything else I can do for you today, Lord?”

Stop. Ponder. Benchmark. Improve.