Edition 14 - When I Grow Up...

When I grow up...

I want to hear the words, "Well done, good and faithful servant."

The truth is becoming increasingly apparent to me. We never stop growing in knowledge, morality, and wisdom. I was discussing something similar with a fellow Marked Men For Christ brother just today. Most people have grown into this adaptive thought process...that once our last educational class is taken...we have somehow eclipsed the precipice of not having to engage in learning anything else from that point forward.

How simple minded of us is that?

We do get to celebrate that milestone...it's just not the celebration we need nor want. "Congratulations, you have done it! Well done...carry on living the rest of your life in naivety and complacency."

Who wants to hear that?

I touched on some of these things in Edition 13. If you missed it, go back, and check it out!

We need to go back to dreaming BIG.

Our doubts are bred from that place of naivety and complacency. Maybe, because of some setbacks, past hurts, or disappointments...you are doubting that your situation can ever really change.

Do you doubt that you could arrive at the point of being present during the intersection of your dreams becoming your new reality?

Do you doubt that you can get back in shape or in good health?

Do you doubt that you can ever gain the respect you desire again?

How about...doubting that you will ever be genuinely loved or appreciated?

Are you doubting that you will be able to fully provide for your family like you dreamed of?

When was the last time you took some time to learn something new or do something that you used to really enjoy doing as a kid?

A lot of people have chosen to drop out.

They have chosen to drop out of continual education and to drop out of the race to the finish line. Because of doubt, and deciding you are now 'grown up', you have subsequently dropped out of the race before ever being able to experience the true potential of your life at the finish line.

Deuteronomy 28:66 ESV

Your life shall hang in doubt before you. Night and day you shall be in dread and have no assurance of your life.

We need to start dropping the doubt, rather than dropping out of the potential journey ahead. Everything included. The good, the bad, and the ugly.

I believe strongly that it will result in a beautiful legacy if approached with dreams, discipline, intentionality, and accountability.

Knowing is growing and there is always more to know.

James 1:6-8 ESV:

But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.

I want to share a few excerpts from Ed Mylett's best seller, "The Power of One More":

"Although you're growing, learning more, and doing more, why aren't your emotions, productivity, and happiness changing? Because you're stuck in a thought pattern --- a replay loop continuously linked to your past. The worst part is that these patterns are unconscious. You could go for years and not realize you're stuck in them."

"By our nature, we crave order. We are hard-wired to be problem-solvers because solving problems feels good. And that's also why we're intimidated by our unknown futures. We can't apply the same level of certainty in our lives to things that haven't happened yet. But the truth is you're only hurting yourself."

Everything goes back to the need for growing in faith...at least to gain access to your true potential.

It comes down to two things. Growing in Spiritual Faith and Self-Faith (the belief in yourself).

It's even better than the joining powers to form Captain Planet.

With those two powers combined...you have unlimited potential to live life with what I like to call GODfidence.

We have also recently discussed in past editions the need to be more childlike in our interactions and how we view work, friends, family, our neighbors, and our world. Most of you reading have heard the old Toys R Us jingle, "I don't want to grow up...I'm a..."

Reflect on your past and current dreams/desires. Enter it into the last part of the jingle. Do it a few times.

"I don't want to grow up...I want to experience a full life done with GODfidence"

"I don't want to grow up...I want to see the culmination of true success"

Since we are always growing (or at least have the opportunity to grow), take advantage of each next breath you are gifted. Do so with intention and thirst. A thirst not only for knowledge, but also wisdom. Pray that you are again added to the roster of the wake-up team tomorrow morning. We are blessed to live in a time that gives us access to a plethora of the information needed to learn anything we desire from just the click of a button.

I will leave you this week with some applicable scripture and a quote from Martin Luther King Jr's Strength to Love sermons. Thank you for reading and for your continued support! Please don't forget to share with those you feel drawn to.

Matthew 28:17 ESV:

And when they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted.

Mark 11:23 ESV:

Truly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him.

Martin Luther King Jr., Strength to Love:

“One of the great tragedies of life is that men seldom bridge the gulf between practice and profession, between doing and saying. A persistent schizophrenia leaves so many of us tragically divided against ourselves. On the one hand, we proudly profess certain sublime and noble principles, but on the other hand, we sadly practice the very antithesis of these principles. How often are our lives characterized by a high blood pressure of creeds and an anaemia of deeds! We talk eloquently about our commitment to the principles of Christianity, and yet our lives are saturated with the practices of paganism. We proclaim our devotion to democracy, but we sadly practice the very opposite of the democratic creed. We talk passionately about peace, and at the same time we assiduously prepare for war. We make our fervent pleas for the high road of justice, and then we tread unflinchingly the low road of injustice. This strange dichotomy, this agonising gulf between the ought and the is, represents the tragic theme of man's earthly pilgrimage.”

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