The very nature of a human being is to have unending potential…God designed us this way but it is up to us to constantly discover more of it...new potential is found through being intentional about our development as a person.
Our Potential has a self-imposed lid on it. The lid is based on our current development as a leader, as a person. To change our current potential we must be purposefully trying to grow as a person. Current Development = Current Potential
In the pursuit of our development we develop more potential for all that we want to accomplish and all that God wants us to be.
This is why we feel certain levels of confidence about achieving things…We may know what we want but lack confidence in pursueing them….think of your goals for 2008 and dreams beyond...
If we don’t seek personal growth our potential stays right were we are in our own eyes. Our view of our potential keeps us here…in our comfortable place
It takes a proactive approach to growing personally…It doesn't happen automatically……choosing the right books to read, calling people and asking questions, putting plans on paper and thinking through them….implementing what we are learning constantly…..
Why do people come up so short from their goals?….they didn't grow to the level of their goals…they didn’t commit to that growth before the year even started.
NOW IS THE TIME TO COMMIT TO WHAT IT WILL TAKE FROM YOU TO ACHIEVE WHAT YOU WANT.
It’s okay not to feel confident…our confidence grows as we do things that cause us to grow …confidence is found through action…Action must come before confidence most of the time. This is why so many stagnate in their growth as people because this is hard to do. It’s hard to make yourself take action when we don’t feel the confidence to do so.
What dreams do you have that you won't take action on?
I believe doing despite our lack of confidence is easier when you surrender to the Lord because when we are walking close with the Lord there is less to worry about. In fact the closer we are to Jesus the less we worry. The opposite is also true..the more distant we are from Him the more we worry. The more self absorbed we become…focusing on our fears vs what we want or even better what God wants for us. Focusing on our challenges vs our opportunity..focusing on existence vs thriving working for the lord…
See it’s a huge advantage for people that have a relationship with God because the less our lives are about us the more we charge ahead with faith vs. our personal confidence. We get used to living by faith vs our own capabilities. It’s an amazing way to live, with a faith in our Creator we can rely upon Him vs ourselves. What an amazing opportunity to rest upon the Lord…to push forward despite our insecurities because we know God is with us and God is for us.
This is a major difference between those that truly love life and don’t. We love life when we are forging new ground, when we are stimulated, when we are developing. We love life when we are close to God and doing His work in all we do.
The biggest excuse people use is the lack of time…I tell people I will have read 30 books by year end…the common response is “I just don’t have the time to do that”. The biggest mistake people make is to not find time for their own development. What’s amazing about time is when we make time for our development it creates time. How? We have more energy and passion in all that we do when we are growing so things don’t take so long. We become twice as effective as we were.
So much time is wasted by our lack of passion and energy. Without passion and energy we waste time with unimportant tasks that create the least amount of results. We don’t do the most important things but feel we are working hard. We don't attract people to our products or cause as well. People make this same excuse about reading the bible consistently. What’s amazing is when we put God first, when we give him our firsts; Our first fruits, the first of our time…he blesses that.
If you say “I don’t have enough time to read the bible daily” I would say back “That’s exactly why you need to do it daily so you get more time” It’s a paradox isn’t it..the very thing we use as an excuse is the thing we get more of if we just did it.
So as 2007 comes to a close think about the year. How have you grown this year? Are you happy with that? What were your goals at the beginning of the year? How did you do? If you are far from what you would of liked to have happen in 2007 then I think you will agree it’s time for a change. It’s time to get angry..get to a point of disgust about it so we do something about it that’s drastic.
We’ve gotta get disturbed before we make real life changes. Get serious about your growth in 2008. It’s a clean slate, a brand new year that can be your best year ever!!
In fact I started a journal this time last year…On the first page I wrote “This will be my best year ever” I then made commitments for the new year, dreams and goals. This has been the most extraordinary year of my life. Why? because I got intentional about how the year was going to be, committed to paper. Shared them with people and pursued them daily.
More importantly I was willing to do when I didn't feel like it. I was willing to take action when I felt I couldn't do it because I trusted that God would show up and guess what...God showed up in amazing ways in 2007. I believe He will show up for you too if you take leaps in faith towards your dreams this year.
It’s time to be unreasonable
• About what you are willing to do
• About not joining the crowd
• About your personal development
• About your vision
• About the moment
• About your relationship with Christ
12.21.2007
"How an Extroardinary Year Happens"
12.05.2007
"It Doesn't Matter What I Want"
It doesn’t matter what I want....
We often want things because God puts them on our heart, puts the desire there for good things, great things, big and small things. When it comes down to acting on this desire we often don’t want it anymore, we don’t want to do what we need to in order to achieve it. But that is living a life of doing only what we want to do versus what God wants us to do.
When something good is put on our heart…fed into our mind….no matter how difficult we must push forward to do it. See, when it gets tough our desire gets overwhelmed by fear…our insecurities and doubt…we often turn our back on that desire placed by God in us.
I believe the most important reason God puts good desires into our heart is the growth that will take place in us when pursuing it…whatever "it" is….and even more important is that we will have to rely upon God to push forward...
If God called us to only do things that we thought we could do then we wouldn't need Him, we wouldn't have to rely upon Him. Instead we must push forward and rely upon Him...not only do we learn a ton about ourselves in the journey but we strengthen our faith and relationship with Him.
God loves us no matter what and no matter what we do good or bad it doesn’t change that love…He doesn’t love anyone more then another…we are all His children but God doesn’t want us to stay the same….He is a God that expects growth.
The journey is more important to God then the destination sometimes. I think if we look at it this way then we will charge forward despite our hesitations…we won’t do what we want but we will do what God wants which is to persevere…stay the course..charge forward and become more of what God wants us to be.
The greatest blessings in life come to those who aren’t living for themselves and what they want but instead are servants first to Christ and then to others around them….when we serve Him and others, we get blessed beyond what we could of ever wanted or thought of.
It takes seeing the big picture…why are we on this earth?…for ourselves? Nope…a life focused on ourselves is a miserable life. Our culture constantly is pushing people towards focusing on our selves..God is constantly trying to focus His people off of themselves
We have to listen to Him to hear Him though...without listening we just call what culture hands us as normal and accept it as the way to live...never accept normal...go for abnormal
Who are you going to let win this battle, this war against your focus? Our culture or God?
