Worthy Words

Do we really live in a world of limitations? We see athletes break records we once thought impossible. Some set goals to break record sales. Many of us push ourselves until the brink of fatigue and exhaustion. Just how far can we go and still remain healthy? Physical limitations are probably the ones you will first notice. As you live, you realize that aging is inevitable. You might ache more than you did last year. Your eyes might not focus as well as they did last year. You might not be able to eat the same way you did when you were a twenty-something and expect to maintain a healthy weight. Physical limitations are hard to accept, but truly a part of living and aging. Emotional limitations also impact your work. Your emotional involvement with your family might be too intense in crisis situations for you to truly function in the workplace. People in caring professions often become too emotionally involved in too many people’s lives, ending up fatigued and exhausted. We are...

Imagine if you were selected to participate in the Olympics. You received a call from the Olympic committee who through their records determined you were the most qualified to win a gold medal in the marathon. This is your chance. You picture yourself walking through the opening ceremonies with the most elite athletes in the world, waving to the crowds, and accepting your medal. In your head, you hear the National Anthem being played and know, without a doubt, this is your destiny. But then reality sets in. You can't run a marathon right now. You haven't trained. Even if you tried REALLY REALLY hard, the best you might do is crawl through the finish line. You can't even remember the last time you ran around the block, let alone around a city! In order to run the marathon you will have to turn your life around. You will have to enter into a life of strict and disciplined training. You will have to sacrifice. No matter how hard you try, you must train to be successful. ...

In February of 2001, national news media sources reported a man was arrested after trying to scale a prison wall—from the outside! Wayne Starkey was charged with burglary after trying to climb the west guard tower of the Volusia County Correctional Facility in Florida, according to police. Starkey said he climbed the tower in search of mail from his girlfriend who was detained in the prison. He claimed that her letters to him had not been properly delivered. While most folks want to stay out of prison, a story about someone breaking in grabs your attention. However, this bizarre event sadly reflects the spiritual habits of countless professing Christ-followers. Every day, multitudes of people climb back into prisons—prisons of addictive behavior and enslaving attitudes. Others live behind bars of abuse, pornography or even workaholism. Within these cells reside anger, bitterness and an unwillingness to forgive. Some are prisons of our own making. Others are prisons of our culture. ...

Author and public speaker Seth Godin says, "Persistence isn't using the same tactics over and over. That's just annoying. Persistence is having the same goal over and over." Not that it needs elaboration, but Seth is saying that persistence (and the success that persistence leads to) requires unwavering focus on the end result, not on the strategies we use for getting there. Are you driven by goals or strategies? When success is elusive, we're sometimes tempted to dump the goal: "I just can't get out of debt; I just can't improve my marriage; I just can't be effective in my Bible study skills." It's usually not the goal that needs to be re-evaluated, it's the methodology. Once you've nailed down a goal, and you know that it's worthwhile, don't abandon it. Just change your approach when you need to. Like apostle Paul says in Philippians 3:14, "I strain to reach the end of the race and receive the prize for which God, ...

A few weeks ago, as I was leaving the Home Depot parking lot, a fellow driver pulled up next to me and motioned for me to roll down my window. My thoughts raced. I didn't think I had cut him off and taken his parking spot, or gone too slow. What had I done? With some apprehension, I rolled down my window without any indication of the problem. The driver, friendlier than expected, informed me that my back right reverse light was out. As I drove away, I became aware that I would never have known my reverse light was out without that person making the effort to tell me. I needed someone with a different viewpoint and angle to see what I couldn't. I would have continued to drive unaware of any problem. The burned out light was in a spot I could not see. You and I both have blind spots in our lives, don’t we? Just like the driver who helped me in that parking lot, the Lord uses other people in our lives to give us wisdom and correction. It is easy to get so caught up in me, that I a...