Don’t you just hate when the person at work takes snippets of information, doesn’t have the whole story and then either tries to give advice, tell you what to do, or worse yet takes what he/she knows (which is not all the story) and goes and stirs something up by telling others? It happens all the time at work. We get an email that doesn’t tell everything that happened and we take the information we have and run with it. The same with conversations we have with others. We can take what we have heard and then because we are in a hurry, overwhelmed, up against a deadline, or just don’t care enough, we don’t dig in deeper and then we end up representing something not quite right and it ends up becoming a bigger issue than it needed to be. Part of working with purpose is being a person who stands for and represents the truth. Everyone can respect the truth. They may not like the truth, but truth cannot be argued against and those who tell and represent the truth will be respected. But to get to the truth, it can take work and patience. It can take having to listen longer, ask more questions, understand the context of the situation and ensure that all sides of the story have been revealed. We are to be truth seekers and truth advocates. When we don’t get the facts we run the risk of falling into the ranks of the foolish. Proverbs 18:13 says, “What a shame, what folly, to give advice before listening to the facts.” We can start right now, today, with building our advice on the facts and doing whatever it takes to get to the root of the situation or issue by relying on the facts and the facts only. The facts are the evidence of the truth and when both have been stood up for, we can expect that we have done the right thing to stand on the higher ground. So, know that we have to work a little harder and dig a little deeper. It is part of the responsibility given as God’s workers.

Reference: Proverbs 18:13 (New Living Testament)