Be A Finisher II

"Do not plan for ventures before finishing what's at hand," the playwright Euripides says. I had come face to face with this very thing the other day in two ways. I started to clean my place and make room for new things but getting rid of some the old things that I had packed up over the years (it is very easy to get attached to certain things even at the risk of it cluttering your life but that's another story). As I was cleaning, I got tired and wanted to just do it another time even when the best time to do it is now (Ecclesiastes 9:10). Now during this time of cleaning I was also keeping score of the Falcons-Saints game the whole evening because I felt cleaning my place was more of a priority than the prime time game. Now me being a big Falcons fan, I was delighted to see the score for pretty much of the first two quarters until the last few seconds of the first half. Needless to say, the second of that game made me glad I chose to spring clean than to watch my birds get their feathers plucked in the second half. But that was very motivational and it is something that I have been hearing strongly all year, especially from sports analyst Skip Bayless, and that is you must have or develop the "clutch gene." It does not matter how well you start off, God and all of us look at the finished product. Champions, business, relationships, and other things we think of are modeled after the score after the buzzer and the product sold; they are not modeled off of first half scores and blueprints because those are the times when things should be adjusted for us finishing. Remember to be a great finisher we need patience to see it through to the end because it will not always look great at the beginning (Ecclesiastes 7:8). But we have to keep in mind that God has given us all the tools to finish the work He has put before us.

We Need To Super Size

Last night I was at church (Gospel of Faith Worship Center: http://www.gospeloffaithwc.org) and we all became a part of a transformation. We didn't have a church service but what we did do is come together for a cause to build and make where we dwell even better. All year our motto has been "a temporary discomfort for a long term success," and today I had to step back and look at some things to see that God wants us to maximize our entire land before He expands it. If you think about it, no one ever really moves out of a place if it is still spacious for them because there is still more to do in that particular place. Bringing those beams in last night reminded me of 2 Kings 6: 1-3 in a way when the people needed to upgrade from a 3G to a 4G but before they could do that they had to recognize that they were in a place that reached its full potential. See, its a cardinal rule that God puts in place that you have to take care of the little things first before you go on to the bigger things i.e. learning your ABC's before you write a novel. The other cardinal rule is unity because no matter how much we think we're moving from somewhere, in truth, its all of us moving somewhere if we share the same dream and purpose (and lets be honest, it is always better to have family and friends to help you move because when you move its like they're moving too). If you break it down, to reach that next level we have to push ourselves to make the place where we are now small and we will need to have people along side of us to help us carry those beams for the place we are building next. One more thing, along with maximizing our potential and having the spirit of unity, we also need a visionary, a leader among leaders that will give us counsel and guidance and let us know if the picture we are painting is a masterpiece or if we're painting off the easel because God never wants your good to be taken the wrong way. The next level is here and it is up to us to step up to it.