Dreams Don't Have Deadlines (The Prequal)

Okay, I'm a wrestling fan, I mean a huge wrestling fan and one of my favorite wrestlers is DDP, Diamond Dallas Page, the one who will make you feel the bang!  And his whole story is very motivational and one time he did a very good promo when he was about to wrestle one of the all time greats in wrestling, Macho Man Randy Savage.  In this promo, DDP said that his first 79 matches, he lost (and as a kid I remember him losing a lot and just to say he lost is being kind).  Anyway, he lost his first 79 matches and one time he was stripped naked in the ring at a live pay-per-view, and whatever you think about wrestling, clearly, no one wanted DDP to be in the wrestling business but the thing is, just as bad as people did not want him to succeed in wrestling, his desire was even greater that he pushed through those barriers.  Keep in mind, Dallas Page was 40 when he lost his first match and continued in this streak, and this was after he had been managing other wrestlers for about fifteen years.  Years later in an interview Page said what helped him through everything was that it was his dream and "you can't put your dreams on anyone else, you have to do it yourself."  And that statement stuck with me.

Taken that into consideration, there is never a deadline on what God has given you to do.  If you want to do something bad enough, something that drives you, a purpose that you cannot deny then there is no time limit for it.  George Elliot says, “It is never too late to be what you might have been,” and its true because if time is our only limit, we have our whole lives to fulfill our dreams.  When Joseph had the dream about being a ruler over his family as a young man it did not happen till he got older.  When David wanted to build a temple, he gathered all the money and materials together and his son Solomon built it.  Simeon literary waited his entire life just for the birth of Christ.  These few and many more had dreams to keep them going and the thing is, through everything, they never gave up on their dream no matter how long it seemed to take.

The old statement of Rome not being built in a day is true.  It started with Romulus, one man with a vision of a city and after thousands of years, one man's dream became realized.  Of course Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream for the future of the people in the US and worldwide and even though he knew he probably not be alive to see it come to pass, he was willing to do whatever it took so that future generations would see it happen.  In all that, we should not put a deadline on our dreams.  If we are 40 years old trying to be wrestler or leader with hope for all people to love one another, there is no time limit on what we can accomplish.

Opportunity Knocks or Invite Opportunity

Recently, I had a conversation with someone that had a great opportunity slip through their fingers.  This person played in a marching band in high school and transferred and stop playing because of the lack of skill level of the band.  Now, in the back of the mind of some of us is, if you love doing something, those little things do not matter right, well to this person it did, and who knows where that road could have gone.  So this person comes to my alma mater, Georgia State University, who in the last few years, launched a football program and along with that came, guess what, a marching band.

Now, this band is not on the level of some other major universities just yet but that will come with time.  At any rate, this person, once again, did not join this the GSU band because it was not up to the level of expectation so being apart of it was out of the question.

Here is the kicker to this filibuster if you will (thanks Dusty Rhodes), Georgia State University just celebrated 100 years of being in education and the marching band was invited to be apart of the inauguration of the re-elected President Barack Obama which I must say as an alumni, I am proud of that fact and I am proud of the band members that were able to have that opportunity and experience; a rare, even once in a lifetime opportunity, that the person I was talking to missed out on.

As the old heads say, the only thing between us and success is opportunity and air and its true.  The thing is, opportunity comes to our house very little and accepts our invitations even less and rarely invites over for that matter so we need to take heed to Ecclesiastes 11:4, instead of waiting on right conditions to do something, i.e., a better marching band, better job, right background, or whatever we come up with, we will never do what God put on the inside of us to do because we are looking at what is going on around us instead of what is in  us.

Ecclesiastes 11:6 says that we should be working at one thing in the morning and working on another thing in the evening because opportunity could happen for either one or both but the thing is to be prepared when God sends opportunity to our house or when He tells us to call opportunity up and invite opportunity over.  I will close by saying that time is precious and opportunities are few so we have to treat it all like a lightning bolt that we can grab on to and ride it because it is no guarantee that we can put that lightning in a bottle (yes it is cliche but it fit right?)  God gives us the skill and ability, provides the opportunity, but its up to us to make the choice if answer the knock on the door or send out invitations for it.