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.

Be A Finisher

Recently in my personal life, I have been faced with this statement that seems to stare everyone everywhere in the face and that is "finish it!" Now let me give a proper applause to the Ladies of Prayer, Praise, and Purpose at Gospel of Faith Worship Center for repeating their change drive championship drive this year. It was a hard pill to swallow for the men but we were reminded by Pastor Burns (http://twitter.com/gospeloffaithwc) that its okay to start out good but if you do not follow through to the end it will do you no good. Starting is important and I would imagine that some people have a hard time starting anything they sit around talking about and we generally call those people "talkers" because that's what they are good at more than anything. But I would be willing to bet that the people that actually start something they talk about, more than half of them never finish what they start. We can just call those people "starters" because they can start one project but never see it through to the end, mainly because those people probably thought someone else's idea and thought it was good but never planned anything for themselves. But if it is one thing I'm sure God appreciates is a "finisher" because they are able to sit back and realize that what they have started can be self-sustaining. If you read Luke 14: 25-35 you will see that you have to go into whatever your dreams are prepared to start and planned out to finish and always prayerful that God will give you guidance throughout the work. Steve Jobs said you have to have a passion for what you are doing otherwise you will quit what you started working on in the first place. That's what God asks of us when He gives us a work to do: have a purpose, have preparation, have a plan, have passion, and above all be in prayer that God will give you the strength to see it through to the end.

Getting "The Job" Done

Alright, today I ran across this post on facebook from youtube entitled I Don't Need A Job from Pastor Jamal Bryant [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJuhivnGcDw&sns=fb] and curiosity led to me being doubtful until I heard what he had to say and it is very profound. To sum it up, we are wasting our abilities God gave us on jobs we should not be working because they are out of our sphere of purpose and takes us further away from what we really should be doing. Now he says a key that rings in my ear is that God calls us to work and not to get a job and for those old enough to remember Arsenio Hall's phrase, "things that make you go hmmmm." So let me give you a strange definition on the word "job" and this comes from a wrestling definition and not Webster's Dictionary which is to have a losing performance or basically to be a jobber. Now a jobber is different from a worker because a jobbers "job" is to lose to make the workers look good-let me say that again, a jobbers "job" is to lose to make the workers look good. It sounds harsh but we work our fingers to the bone to make someone else look like a million bucks and get very little reward from it if any to do performing the job. Some might say, what about stewardship (Luke 16:10) but that is speaking to people that being stewards in a cause or a purpose that God has set them on. You have to remember that "whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might" (Ecclesiastes 9:10) is talking about your destiny. So if you're supposed to be a teacher, you shouldn't be managing at a grocery store, if you're supposed to be sanitation worker figuring out how to make a cleaner environment, you shouldn't be in a cubicle crunching numbers, etc. We only have one life to live and very limited opportunities to gain talents for God's glory with the talents He gave us to use. This is something we really need to take to heart and applying it because God is giving us our opportunities right now to use the gifts He placed in us to the max of our abilities and we can not afford to miss what is coming towards us. Check out Jon Acuff's book Quitter: Closing The Gap Between Your Day Job & Your Dream Job.

Find Your Life

So in studying Matthew 10 (focusing on verse 39) and getting wisdom from Pastor Burns (twitter.com/gospeloffaithwc), it is clear that you cannot do anything without Christ. I think often times we say that and repeat that in our affirmations or have it in our cubicle or on a bumper sticker but we do not really apply it. Personally, I started to take it out of context until I got the understanding of it: if you try to find your life, you will lose it, but if you lose your life for Christ’s sake, then you’ll find out. If you notice before that statement He said you have to take up your cross and follow Him and right before that He says if you love your family more than Him then you are not even worthy of Him. It sounds harsh but notice the things we have to give up in this chapter to gain the life God has put in us that we have been seeking for our whole lives: we have to let go of having fear of people and we have to let go of fear we have of losing our family. The old saying comes to mind, the tighter you hold on to something the easier it is for it to slip through your fingers. And honestly, our natural instincts are to go with popular opinion and to love papa, mama, big bro, and baby sis above all others so that is why Jesus says you have to crucify that along with other things so that you can put it out of your mind to not seek for your own life but seek Him and He will give you an even greater life. Check this out, if Christ is not the center and the guiding force in what you do, whatever you put your hands to do will be meaningless and it will come to nothing (Psalm 127). We can do all things through Christ which strengthens us only if we are willing and obedient to do all things He leads us in.

What Is Your Cause?

So early this week I was randomly thinking about Dragonball Z, more specifically Vegeta (yeah, real random right). Anyhow, I was thinking on how he is always fighting and training just to prove how strong he is and if anyone proved to be stronger he questioned himself and self-worth. That made me think that the reason why he struggled with that throughout the series is because he did not have a real purpose outside of himself. In reading this book, Finishing Well by Bob Buford (well I haven't gotten to the end yet), he talks about having a purpose that goes beyond yourself to having a purpose that serves other people. Check this out, if your purpose in life is just for you and your goals then it will never be good enough because someone else will come along and prove to be better than you are everytime; and once that happens, you'll constantly have to keep proving yourself because you're only living for yourself. The truth is, God has given us all a purpose, a cause that is bigger and more meaningful than ourselves and it supposed to extend to other people. When David went against Goliath his brothers got mad because he was showing them (indirectly) that he was braver than them because they were only in battle for themselves not for God or the nation that was depending on them. But David asked is there not a cause (1 Samuel 17: 29) because he knew that this battle was about something bigger than him. So we have to find out what's our cause and purpose and we have to search ourselves to see if its bigger than us; that is how we can truly count ourselves strong because God put in us a purpose that will makes us strong for us and others.

Five Second Rule?

What do you do when you're eating something you really like and it slips out of your hand and drops on the floor (oh no)? Do you apply the five second rule to it? I try to think of it as the grace period between the crash landing on the ground and your reaction time to pick it up. So let's imagine it for a second (1, 2, 3, 4, and 5) and know you didn't pick it back up in time, whomp, whomp, whomp! But if we do make it and blow on the food a bit that makes it better (like our germs are any better right). Well in an episode of Food Detectives, the five second rule is no good because bacteria goes to the food immediately but I think in our mind we try to say we still have that grace period. Sometimes we try to abuse God's grace like its a five second rule because we use it as an escape for going the wrong way instead of using it when we hit a bump in the road towards our destination. Just like the five second rule for food we try to justify doing the wrong thing and then pray for God's grace and mercy immediately after but the truth is, once it hits the floor it just became dirty and asking God to blow on it won't make it better because the truth is, He won't blow on it. But the beauty of His grace is, He will start over with you because unlike the five second rule, He has a grace period that will allow you to ask for forgiveness and to start over brand new, as long as you are willing to go through that process.