“…but we run our race to win a victor’s crown … For that reason, I don’t run just for exercise or box like one throwing aimless punches, but I train like a champion …” (TPT)
In our last discussion, we acknowledged that the advent of every new year is associated with the inception another phase of life’s race, individualized to each person. The uniqueness of the human existence demonstrates the fact that at any given time, we are not only running the real-time race of life (like it or not), but we are concurrently training for that same race (each current phase or round serves as the training ground for the next). Paul illustrates this in 1 Corinthians 9:24-27, an excerpt of which serves as our theme Scripture. Another version states it in this wise:
“… So I run with purpose in every step. I am not just shadowboxing. I discipline my body like an athlete, training it to do what it should …” (NLT)
The Message translation expresses it as follows:
“… I don’t know about you, but I’m running hard for the finish line. I’m giving it everything I’ve got. No lazy living for me! I’m staying alert and in top condition. I’m not going to get caught napping …“
The emphases of each of these translations are self-explanatory and often form the basis of most new year resolutions, plans, and advice.
Motivational Mantras
I have observed that each new year is rife with motivational tag lines, goal-setting tips, and multi-pronged suggestions promoting the potential to advance, expand, or become elevated in some form or another. Many preachers and motivational experts share detailed prescriptions on how these can be accomplished. Personal, career, financial, specialty, spiritual, and many other types of coaching abound for pretty much everything under the sun. The average person with web or other avenues of knowledge easily encounters a plethora of daily advice on how to improve their circumstances and life outcomes. Indeed, a web search done with the hopes of quickly accessing our theme verse from which this post derives its title yielded an astonishing number of articles, media, blog and other posts of the same title. Although potentially overwhelming, it makes perfect sense – everyone wants to be, do and achieve the best!
Despite this overabundance of motivational information, and at the risk of sounding redundant, I would like to furnish some less-emphasized perspectives to those that already inundate the average reader, listener, surfer, podcaster, media socialite, or other knowledge-seeker. My hope is to summarize a few key points that are relevant to most people, goals and subject matters. The backdrop remains the optimization of our realtime race and ensuring progressive mastery/targeted training (to become and achieve the best) for the same. I will not repeat the most universal themes (e.g. goal-setting, time-management, discipline, etc.), but will rather highlight and try to fine-tune some of the accompanying themes.
A few champ-training nuggets are as follows:
Make Each Moment Count
As the NLT excerpt of our theme verse admonishes, every day should be lived and everything done with intention and purpose. There should never be a day or activity engaged in listlessly; even things as seemingly innocuous as recreation should be scheduled, purposeful, and regenerative. While I do not advocate the unnecessary expenditure of energy in frenetic activity, I do suggest that we schedule each segment of our day to ensure that the day’s goals are achieved. If your preset goals are achieved most days of the year, you will more than likely end your year on a highly successful and satisfactory note.
Be Ruthless With Distractions
The Scripture references “All things are lawful, but not all things are beneficial1“ and ” … ruthless men retain riches.2“ come to mind here. In our super-charged, hyper-informative and excessively social-and-other-media communications-ruled world, the average person faces a multitude of daily distractions, most in the form of electronic media communications and physical interruptions (e.g., unscheduled visits, instant requests or demands, pop-up invitations, etc.). While connectivity to friends, loved ones, and business associates is an indispensable gift, easy-accessibility has made this a potential form of constant distraction. Outside of an emergency or other urgency, if not on the day’s plan (schedule), wisdom suggests that one defers reading, responding or attending to such until you have accomplished all the other scheduled priorities. If necessary, distance yourself physically from the device(s) or spaces channeling the most distractions. The beauty of doing this amidst scheduling and pre-planning your time is that it often allows for unscheduled contingencies after scheduled priorities have been addressed.
This is not intended to champion self-absorption, insensitivity, a rigid lack of compassion or mindless inflexibility, but a mind geared in this direction naturally deflects or minimizes disorganized, distracted, or otherwise unsatisfactorily spent days. When a person is disciplined and ruthless with distractions, they are empowered to accomplish their daily assignments by retaining the focus, drive, momentum and energy their tasks require; and often have more than enough to spare for any extra demands. We can have the best of both honor and riches (success) if we manage potential distractions wisely.
Invest (Rather Than Spend ) Your Time
The summary of the purpose of man’s existence is to love God and serve Him by serving people, period. Any and everything a person does outside of this is a wasted endeavor. Every kind of positive impact obeys this basic law of creation. Every invention, innovation, form of positive entertainment, work of art, etc. is for this purpose. A person who lives to serve himself will inevitably encounter irrelevance, frustration and disenchantment, even if he initially seems successful. Everything a person does should glorify God by serving humanity. If you live by this principle, your life with be an investment of great worth and dividends, rather than an unprofitable expenditure with grave losses.
Invest For Maximum Returns
People are not dispensable objects to be used, drained and discarded on another’s pleasure or whim, so this is by no means promoting a utilitarian mindset. That said, never waste time with people with dissimilar values, mindsets or subliminal destinations, especially in regard to life goals and spiritual proclivities, unless the time spent is proactively geared towards influencing such people for good. The people you should invest your discretionary time with should be people you glean from, who glean from you (in a positive, healthy manner), and/or people from whom mutual benefit is derived because of shared vision, values, goals and inspiration. Any person, activity or setting that fails to accommodate any of these categories will likely drain your focus, creativity and time, so it is strongly advisable to avoid such. These should include negative, toxic or limiting social, spiritual, professional people, settings and atmospheres. A good rule of thumb by which you can assess the suitability of your associations is this: do you feel edified, inspired, encouraged, motivated, enlightened, joyful and amplified in your knowledge of God and/or other meaningful subject, or do you feel drained, defiled, like you’re wasting valuable time, or lacking in growth, edification, inspiration or shared values when you are around such people, activities or environments?
In assessing this, beware of people or environments which purport one thing but constantly demonstrate the opposite (i.e. talking the talk but not walking the walk), most often identified by a pattern of misguided pontification, tag lines, or braggadocio. Any person, activity or setting that is not actively building or adding to your life is silently destroying and detracting from it (even if just from the perspective of wasted time and energy that could have been invested in some other profitable person, organization, activity or venture). This is true of friendships, professional and religious settings, etc. Too many people remain loyal to a person, cause or organization that God’s guidance system has long since ousted from their lives because their values or focus no longer align. Such people end up frustrated, disappointed and sometimes broken-hearted when they realize how much time, virtue, and other assets they have lost because they did not separate themselves from unprofitable associations when they should have.
The Bible’s account of the relationship between David and Jonathan highlights this most poignantly. Disregard to this crucial principle of ill-placed allegiance cost Jonathan his life and glorious destiny as David’s right-hand man. Misplaced loyalty to his father set him at odds with God’s dynamic superlative plan. The man of such great valor, nobility, and potential who had been David’s best friend and assuredly would have been his second-in-command during the latter’s forty-year reign as God’s chosen ruler died a violent, premature, and ignoble death … on the wrong side of God’s purpose. How tragic!
Keep The Main Thing The Main Thing
Although these multifaceted principles can be applied to most aspects and walks of life, please keep in mind that a dynamic personal relationship with God through His Son Jesus Christ is God’s ultimate for every person who has ever graced the face of the earth. As such, pursuing and honoring God should remain our top priority and must be reflected in all we do, including how we invest our lives and time. If we seek3, love4 and serve5 Him above all else, every other aspect of our lives will readily fall into place3.
Protect Your Assets – Create A Happy Balance
Next to God, our families and loved ones are vital aspects of our existence, and are precious assets we’ve been entrusted with. We must ensure we prioritize them while pursuing our life’s purpose. If we get the previous point right, God’s Spirit gives us the wisdom to maintain the right priorities and balance with other key responsibilities in our lives. Our life’s work should never take precedence over our families and loved ones;6 indeed the latter are vital to the successful execution of former, not to mention integral to the assignment itself.7
Maintain Momentum
The best of humanity fails and falters even at the best of times, never mind the average individual in adverse circumstances. No one gets it right all the time, nor does anyone attain 100% of his goals and expectations 100% of the time. Life happens, and human limitations may interfere with our best laid plans and intentions. Perfectionism would be unrealistic and in gross denial of the most basic fact of the human existence, i.e., to err (or fail) is human. If this were not the case, we would live in a perfect world and live independently of a perfect, infallible God.
With that in mind, we need to learn to assess our failures and successes as they occur, take responsibility where we are wrong, repent and regroup (as discussed in the last post), grow from our mistakes, and then move right along. Remember Pity and Patty? This is usually where either of them shows up to try to push their agenda for a raucous party. Adamantly decline their invitation and get moving again. Never build a monument of any kind to failure or success; it may end up becoming the mortuary in which your life and destiny are buried.
Friend, 2024 lies before you ripe with great promise, possibilities and potential. Train like a champ by running with purpose in every step, avoiding pointless punches, aiming hard for the finish line, giving it everything you’ve got, and staying alert and in top condition, never lagging behind … You CAN run and win the year’s race in grand style, accomplish the goals for this phase of your life, AND enjoy your accompanying awards!
For questions on how to know God personally, grow in Him, or any other inquiries, please email: [email protected]
For Your Listening & Champ-Training Pleasure
https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwigoJUkpNjUn7J1NAqk-CVxTJgrbHot4&si=81l1AD0mWaKTp6u4
Bibliography
- 1 Corinthians 10:23
- Proverbs 11:16b
- Matthew 6:33
- Matthew 22:37
- Exodus 23:25
- 1 Timothy 5:8
- 1 Peter 4:10