How to Be Fulfilled
It is not possible for everybody to be the best at something, but everybody can be their best at everything.
Some of our limitations are a result of things we can’t control. Everybody has limitations. Got that, everybody! However, many of our limitations are imposed on us by us. It is amazing when a limitation like the husk on grain is shed. Some do the seemingly impossible, simply use the ability they have and don’t whimper because of their limitations.
Before going further note God doesn’t expect us to be the best at anything. He does expect us to be our best at everything.
Jim Abbot was born without a right hand. He didn’t focus on what he didn’t have, he concentrated on utilizing what he did have to the best possible. Courageously he concentrated on his left hand. He overcame his limitations and became the quarterback on his high school football team.
He excelled at baseball batting 427. Later he made the US Olympic Gold Medal team. He broke into the major leagues with the Angels in 1989. During his amazing career he pitched in 263 major league games. In 1991 he was 18-11 with an ERA of 2.89. Most remarkably of all while pitching for the New York Yankees this one armed phenomenon pitched a no-hitter.
He said, “My career wasn’t always great, but it was wonderful.” He had a right to say that. He used what he had without pouting over what he didn’t have.
George Washington Carver was born into slavery with an enquiring mind. As a slave child there was a lot he didn’t have but he used what he had. In young adulthood his inquisitive nature prompted him to pray as he said, “God show me the mysteries of the universe,” but God answered, “That knowledge is for me alone.” So I said, “God tell me the mystery of the peanut.” Then God said, “Well, George, that’s more nearly your size.” He made more than 300 products from peanuts, 118 products from sweet potatoes, and 75 from pecans.
Use what you have to the best of your ability and take pleasure in it. “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” (Ephesians 2: 10)
“Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms.” (I Peter 4: 10)
Personal Freedom
Three negatives erode our vitality and limit our joy. Control these three and you can live a better, more productive life. They are:
* Free your heart of hate. Booker T. Washington opined, “I shall allow no man to belittle my soul by making me hate him. Holding on to your anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.”
* Free your mind of worry. Shakespeare said, “There is a divinity that shapes our ends.” Joy dances in the corridors of our cranium when we come to trust the Lord God who loves us and watches over us. Then we can say with the poet:
“I say it when the storm is heavy.
I say it when night is on the land.
That behind the power is God’s kind hand.
And so I rest as a swan rests on a river
Calm amid life’s troubled flow.
For I know I am held by a power and a love
That will not let me go.”
* Free your life of guilt. Guilt is a load too heavy for you to carry alone. It is essential to have someone carry it for us. Our Lord does so when we confess our responsibility for our part in what caused the guilt and ask Him to cleanse us of it. So,
“…let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience….” (Hebrews 10: 22)
Then we understand what the psalmist meant when he wrote, “Blessed is the one whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the one whose sin the Lord does not count against them and in whose spirit is not deceit.”
What Is Your Attitude Toward Work?
“And whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance; for you serve the Lord Christ.” Colossians 3: 23, 24
For examples of workers with a right attitude we need look no further than the Seven Dwarfs of Snow White fame. Who can forget the little fellows? Joyfully they went to work whistling while they worked. What an attitude! Everybody has a “tude.” What is your tude toward your work?
When elevated to a spiritual level their spirit mirrors the lesson revealed in Colossians 3: 23.
Whatever you do, it should be done to the best of your ability. If it is sports, domestic duties, employment, or whatever it is, it deserves your best. Why? Because of the one for whom you are performing it “for you serve the Lord Christ.” He takes precedence even over the person who may sign your pay check.
Following is a class in Emotional Equilibrium 101.
If you do what you do to the best of your ability and people brag on you, pat you on the back, and compliment you, you don’t go on an ego flight. You didn’t do it for them, you did it for Him. If your performance is pleasing to the Lord you have reason to be gratified.
If you do to the best of your ability and people complain, criticize you and throw verbal bricks at you, you don’t get depressed. You didn’t do it for them, you did it for Him. If He is pleased you have reason to be gratified.
Thus, you have emotional equilibrium, contentment. That is only part of the payoff. The best part is “…you will receive the reward of the inheritance; for you serve the Lord Christ.”
Lou Holtz uses the jargon of sports to define for us the difference in losers and winners. “Winners embrace hard work. They love the discipline of it, the trade-off they’re making to win. Losers, on the other hand, see it as punishment. And that’s the difference.”
That is true in the workforce, family life, and all of life.
If you ever feel you have more to do than there is time in which to do it, you need to realize God will not give you more to do than He gives you time in which to do it. Hence you are trying to do some things He doesn’t want you to do.
Those who look upon work as punishment are revealed in the story of the supervisor who was asked, “How many people work here?” His response, “About half of them.” Which half typifies you?
Everyone wants to be happy, but few learn how to be happy.
Happiness is a beautiful byproduct of a job well done.
Do what you do as to the Lord, not unto people.
Childhood as a Classroom
Inside of each of us is our little boy or girl self. They often come out through the portal of our memory to play in the realm of our recall. Indulge my little boy self a moment to reflect.
The school was sponsoring an outdoor re-enactment to raise funds. It was the Pied Piper of Hamelin. My older brother was cast and costumed to be a rat. On the day of the big event he broke his collarbone. The cast needed a replacement. I fit his costume and some said the role. Thus began my short lived acting career.
The set included tables with long table cloths that overhung to the ground on all sides. Darrel Tate, my fellow rat, and I were under a table awaiting our big moment which involved coming out on cue. When the piper came around the corner of the building playing the clarinet, no one played a flute, we were to scamper out and follow him to the back of the campus. There was no river, so we were to jump into the ditch.
The lilting notes of the clarinet filled the air and rats ran out from beneath tables as prompted. Two bewildered mothers didn’t see their little rats. Finally my mom raised the table cloth and there sat my older friend, Darrel, and me staring at each other. Darrel’s mother had told him to watch the little Price boy and to come out when he did. Guess what, my mom said, watch the little Tate boy and come out when he comes out. Thus, the stalemate. Following a friendly nudge by our mom’s we scampered out and caught up with the rat pack just in time to jump in the ditch. All’s well that ends well.
Subconsciously, that experience has lived with me as a motivating influence to know life’s cues and act timely, understand your role, and act independently responsibly.
Learn the wisdom of the great minds of Bible characters who’ve been there, and be a living demonstration of what it means to take responsibility for your actions. Your life takes meaning when you take responsibility for it.
Solomon wisely cautioned against inaction: “I observed and took it to heart; I looked and received instruction: A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and poverty will come upon you like a robber, and need like a bandit.…” (Proverbs 24: 33) Lethargy is a bandit robbing us of opportunities.
Abraham Lincoln said, “Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.”
Action requires faith in God and trust in His word to accomplish great things for the kingdom. The faint-hearted will always struggle with taking action. “Git ‘er Done” is more than a comic line, it is a launch pad for faith/acts.
Bookmark that in your memory.
The Man in the Arena
On April 23, 1910, Theodore Roosevelt gave what would become one of the most widely quoted speeches of his career. The former president—who left office in 1909—had spent a year hunting in Central Africa before embarking on a tour of Northern Africa and Europe in 1910, attending events and giving speeches in places like Cairo, Berlin, Naples, and Oxford. He stopped in Paris on April 23, and, at 3 p.m. at the Sorbonne, before a crowd that included, according to the Edmund Morris biography Colonel Roosevelt, “ministers in court dress, army and navy officers in full uniform, nine hundred students, and an audience of two thousand ticket holders,” Roosevelt delivered a speech called “Citizenship in a Republic,” which, among some, would come to be known as “The Man in the Arena.” Following is the most popular extract.
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
This shouts encouragement of involvement and is a denunciation of lethargy. The late great coach Vince Lombardi expressed a similar thought in athletic terms “I firmly believe that any man’s finest hour, the greatest fulfillment of all he holds dear, is that moment when he has worked his heart our in a good cause and lies exhausted on the filed of battle — victorious.”
If this philosophy typifies your lifestyle, “And whatever you do, [you] do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance; for you serve the Lord Christ.” (Colossians 3: 23, 34)
Regarding any worthwhile adventure
it is better to try
and fail than to fail to try.
A worthy theme song is found in these words of an old hymn: “Give of your best to the Master; Give Him first place in your heart; Give Him first place in your service; Consecrate every part. Give, and to you will be given; God His beloved Son gave; Gratefully seeking to serve Him, Give Him the best that you have.”