At the end of each year I spend time reflecting on my 11.5 months of making as many mistakes as possible. I look back upon the year that has passed and its miscalculations with a degree of glee. With a bit slight demented smile I sit down, a pad of paper in hand, a good pen as my companion I narrow down a long list of misfires into something I can relate to others as my favorites of the year.
I say “Demented” because not all people relish the notion of seeing in positive the things we don’t do all that well. In my case I have grown accustomed to reflecting upon these faux pas in a positive light each year. I see my misfires as opportunities for learning. These are a means for growing ever smarter, more emotionally vigilant as I move into each coming year.
This year life is no different. These are now akin to the coming year of attractions in the theater of my life. I’ve done a decent job of continuing to make a sufficient number of mistakes that provide ample opportunities to fill the pages and a few minutes of what you’re about to participate in.
Maybe we are a little bit genius in our dementia – perhaps in our capacity to look back with the flow of positivity to it we have something going for us. It is in the positive reflection regarding mistakes that we learn our most powerful mistakes / lessons.
So for a few minutes let’s learn sit back, listen up and gather together to see what God has for us.
1: I concerned myself with the notion of the small-minded idea of “Excellence” instead of pursuing what God calls “Greatness.”
I’ve learned that as we pursue matters that begin with the notion of excellence we are in all likelihood going to talk ourselves into thinking of something that is utterly impossible for mere humans to accomplish
Some things are attainable. Excellence is something humans talk plenty about. We chat about it as though it is something we can set our sites upon then persevere on our “To do” list then to simply get there by human effort. No so. In fact, never so. When we begin to chat about excellence and we must understand what stands behind that notion – it is a notion that appeal to our lower, broken nature.
The concept of excellence is not biblical. Instead of the “E” word we are wise to align ourselves with the biblical concept of “Greatness” – a word God repeats many times in the scriptures and holds high as a concept that describes his character and that which he calls his people to develop as we walk increasing dependence upon him.
What is greatness? It is a location in our orbit of nearness with God where we realize that our life is making a difference because we’ve done all we can do – we’ve said all we can say – we have aspired to all we can – and now all that is left to happen is for God to show up and make the ultimate difference in things. He is God and we can never fake his works. A person who attains greatness has an ever-increasing notion of the vastness of the power of God.
What is greatness? What does the Bible mean when it holds up the word “Greatness”? It is the quality of having an enduring life. We do what we can do in human faithfulness. We walk as disciples of Christ – little replicas of the life of Christ. We do what we are capable of doing. We lean into the strength of God with all our hearts. We have done all we can do. All that is left is to trust in God – to see God show up to do what he and he alone can do.
We know from lots of Bible promises and biblical stories that God majors in the notion of holding high the theme of showing up in the nick of time to show himself strong in our lives. When he is called upon, and when we cannot go forward but by the appearance of God himself, God loves to show up and prove himself to be all he promises in his word.
Then greatness begins to happen at the next, deeper level in our lives.
In greatness God proves himself as the deciding factor. If God does not show up there will be no greatness. We show up in human faithfulness. Then there is the mere possibility of greatness being attained. But in the end that is still left up to God. We cannot control the will of God. God is God and we are not. We cannot force Gods hand. God will do as he pleases and only what he pleases. We can pray. We can show up on time we can do our part to be faithful. But the rest is left up to God Almighty. If God so wills greatness will occur.
There is a real problem today among many, myself included, with our times of operating on a small picture of God. My challenge is the same as yours I suspect. I operate continually on a too small picture / notion of God. It’s easy to become chummy with God and miss his grandeur. We are destined to be blown away by the amazing vast size of God on a continual basis. When I have a geeky itsy-bitsy picture of God in my mind and heart and I am operating that way in my dealings with him I run the risk of anticipating that at all times I can do things myself. I can anticipate that he will of course always do things that will cause me and my system and my church – all the works of my hands in fact – to be seen as something that is fantastic. It doesn’t work that way folks. The way that it works is it is left to God’s hands to decide how things land. Sure, I can do things to cause a crowd to come together but that does not mean that greatness attained. I can do lots of things in an attempt to jury rig the surrounding circumstances to make God do something that he may not desire to do. In the end nothing will be changed whatsoever. I will have done nothing to change anything. Things will continue exactly as they were from the beginning. “Same as it ever was” as David Byrne wrote. Excellence works that way.
Excellence is an attempt to manipulate the end of things without taking into account the totality of the equation. Not greatness occurs because we operate in our strength only. My role is to give God my best, my highest then to lean back and say “God do with this what you will as you will and I will be satisfied.” He tends to take us at our word when we pray deep prayers of honesty from the heart.
2: I concerned myself too much with where finances were headed.
Sometimes it’s possible to not necessarily worry about something but to merely focus on it and to haphazardly become negatively ensnared. It’s possible to become preoccupied with a matter that may be neutral then you become waylaid in the process. So it has been for me with money at times this past year. I don’t consider myself to be in financial straits. However I do feel the pain of a lot of people – that just goes with the territory of my current roles in life. I live life as a professional people connector. With that territory comes worry for others. Sometimes I tend to concern myself too much about the things people are going through. Other’s difficulties naturally become my difficulties. Perhaps you go through that to a degree. With me it is increased because of my Tye A and my role in life.
Regarding money, I focused too much about where it would come from especially. I have a feeling this burden was shared by a lot of others in the US in 2008.
The year 2008 was a negative banner year for us as a country. We dug down deep end and not yet found the basement of our emotional house. Most are still digging. For someone to walk past our emotional house they will see the dirt flying out from the basement windows today. The digging will cease soon I believe. It must stop soon. There’s not much dirt left to dig
It’s safe to say in many of our cases 2008 has been an economic emotional roller coaster.
When it comes to rightly relating to money, we don’t lack information so much as we lack emotional stability. We need a soothing voice that is reassuring us that everything is going to be okay. Right now many are looking to our new president to speak hope and peace to us among other things. We’re looking to the feds to say that to us as. But what we really need is encouragement from God – day after day – in each step of our day in fact. But no president can provide that kind of reassuring voice to mankind.
Ultimately only God can make a difference of any kind in our financial standing. God is the only difference maker when all is said and done. I’ve heard plenty of sermons about the source of all funds – God on high is our supply. All funding flows from him no matter what the local expression appears. I’ve heard the right information for years – perhaps you have as well. But it’s one thing to hear the right info. It’s another matter to take into our hearts how that works. We need great application wisdom.
Have you noticed that? Just because we have the right information we don’t necessarily get it right when it comes to the outworking of how that works.
I know my heart is thick more often than sensitive especially when it comes to the matter of the resourcing of finances. My heart is more difficult to be gotten a hold of that it is delicate and easily touched by God’s power when it comes to funding.
What I am in constant need of is a touch from God. His touch needs to penetrate my heart. Once that occurs I am able to make progress in life. God is always ready to penetrate our hearts. His power is sufficient to touch our hearts at the deep down level. Our God is a God with invasionary power. We must not be naïve about the need for God’s Spirit being present for progress to be made. God’s presence by his Spirit is necessary for us to gain any kind of traction in the realm of financial perspective. God gets our attention first through the pain of finances it seems. Then he gains power in our lives by the presence of his Holy Spirit that allows us to make commitments that we are able to follow up on the gaze of his indwelling Spirit. It’s a simply profound interaction.
3: Concerns about future momentum ensnared me.
The future is headed in a direction that is precisely where God is. If I am spending time and energy connecting with God and working on my capacity to connect with God above all else I am making my strategic moves forward in the right direction. For me to dwell, that is to worry, about the small itsy-bitsy meanderings in the road instead of to stay at the center path of the dotted line in the road I am making strategic errors in my navigation of things.
Amazingly it is easy to see that God has been the author of momentum in my life consistently all these years but this year it was easy to question whether that would continue another year or two down the road.
When I look at the pattern of faithfulness of God it seem ridiculous to question God for even a nanosecond. Yet still I found it difficult to hold off the questioning voices that seemed to return until I “Journaled” them away with the comparisons of God’s faithfulness in the past (as David did so masterfully in the Psalms) to the immediate concerns I have. With this technique in hand I have been able to quiet these clamoring voices.
This has been a year of over concern and under influence. I’ve come to realize that I have been preoccupied with many things I cannot change – at least not now. I’ve come to realize that the future has loomed overly large in my mind and heart. I have had dreams repeatedly about the future. I’ve worried about the future and my capacity to meet the future. What is worry exactly? It is the emotional state I end up in one distressing, emotional state where the inner pressure is more than I can bear and it begins to drain me to a level of overall systemic debilitation. I’m not wired for this kind of emotional configuration. As my focus shifts to this I began to lose it and begin to be draining beyond words description. Ultimately I grow ill all around.
None of us are wired to grab onto the future and steer it way it needs to be steered. When we try to steer what we cannot our lives suffer. The quality of life in our souls grows weak and we begin to fade away.
To simply be alive causes one to be a bit preoccupied with such things. However the thin line of what is reasonable and proper with this and what is over the top is easily crossed due to human preoccupation.
We tend to be caught up with what we focus upon. That is, we tend to become embroiled with the very things that we gaze upon.
If we are not careful we will fall in love with the very things that intimidate us. We can become enamored with the things that scare the daylights out of us. Thus we have a love-hate relationship with things in life. How maddening is that? I do not know about you but I am not all that interested in having it any more such relationships. My life has been drained already by such arrangements. I’m ready to move on and have just strong love relationship the rest of my days.
4: Concerns about criticisms from the small minded ensnared me.
That is, in 2008 I got caught up the times in worrying about what other people thought about me. It’s not that all who are potentially critical of me are necessarily small minded. It just so happens that most of them are such! Is it so in your life as well?
There were times in this past year when I was caught up in the notion that a lot of people were thinking some pretty critical things about me. When you take risks, when you’re out on the front lines doing things that are not commonly done by other people it is easy to begin to think that your target of other people’s criticisms. It is easy to think that other people are thinking thoughts of slander, thoughts of, "Man that guy is off the wall. What is he thinking? Why is he doing what he’s up to? Who does he think he is? Somebody ought to tell him the right way to go…" It’s easy a conger up in this inner conversation when you are convinced other people are focused upon you.
At an emotionally strategic time a significant conversation with my grandmother came back to me. She told me, "If you only knew how little other people think about you – you would be liberated to take a lot more risks! If you only knew just how seldom other people think about you in general in life you would be so much more capable of taking risks. I would guess the risk taker in you would be out there jumping on top of all sorts of new ideas all the time."
This lady, my grandma, went on to explain she was convinced that nearly NONE of us are on the minds of other people. We are VERY RARELY in the thoughts of others. We simply don’t rank that highly. Others don’t have the space to think about us because they are preoccupied with their preeminent thought – thinking continually about themselves every minute of the day. That it is highly unlikely we will ever become so famous that other people are openly critical of you. It is highly unlikely that you are ever to become so famous that other people actually spend a fraction of a second in a given day ever thinking about you and what is it you’re up to even if you are the head of something or other in life. There just isn’t the brain space for them to be caught up with you and your stuff. You just aren’t that important. Get over your preoccupation with yourself.
Then get on board the risk-taking part of life. Start living life the way life was designed to be lived. Let’s move on with it. Life was meant to be lived out loud – boldly, profoundly, sustainably, wonderfully – all the things that we are a incapable of doing when we think other people are preoccupied with us. Guaranteed they are not. Life is a lot bigger than other people’s critical thoughts – how exciting is this!"
Final Thoughts
As we move into the coming year let’s remember the common thread of what we have learned from our favorite miscalculations for this past year. I wish for you that this coming year- 2009 – be a year not free of mistakes but a year that is enthusiastic as you run not walk toward it. Possessing more exciting things than this past one. Let’s break into this coming year with the greatest enthusiasm we’ve ever known.
How amazing it is that God allows us to get a brand new year to try out each time Jan. 1st rolls around. No matter how we handled the past one we still get a new one to try out. His mercies really are new every morning – and every year. He is just that kind of God. He is just that kind of Merciful One.
Let’s run not walk into this with heart, soul, mind and strength.
I am excited to share this with you. I do this with you because you are the people who have supported me through thick and thin these many years. I don’t think I could do this without you – nor would I want to or even imagine trying!
