“QTMs”, again, stands for Quiet Time Musings. And, yes, playing with titles that reach out and shake you does make a difference – and takes some creative thought. I hope this one’s more so than most.
It’s time to get real.
Yeah, you. Put down the pen and notepad and step away from your list of 16 New Year resolutions. I don’t care how many cross-outs, scribbles or corrections you’ve made. The chances are you’ve already 86ed at least half of them.
Know why?
Your heart’s not really in this thing. You’re doing it because everybody does it. They’re all going to ask and you don’t want to look or sound foolish or indecisive. For every ‘resolution’ you write down, your heart is busily whispering, “BUT . . .”
Suggestion? Get a little hot at yourself.
- Nobody’s going to trim extra pounds off other than YOU.
- Nobody’s going to improve Time-investing strategy FOR you.
- Nobody’s going to exercise more faith in God FOR you.
- Nobody’s going to help you become a better employee than YOU.
- Nobody’s going to make a gnat’s-hair difference in your personal habits, no matter what they are or how they affect you, than YOU.
This list could go on, itemizing specific things you KNOW you need to do or need to quit doing. You get the point.
Why do you keep up this foolishness of pretending every new year you’re going to do this or stop doing that? You and I both know you don’t really mean it.
Why can I say that?
If it’s worth doing to help you move beyond where you are right now to where you know you want to be, why wait until January 1st to start?
You’re going to have to find out where you want to go. And then you’ve got to start going there. But immediately. You can’t afford to lose a minute. – J. D. Salinger
Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin. ~Mother Teresa
YOU WERE CREATED TO SERVE.
If you knew, say, in June what you needed to do to improve your serve – in terms of your personal faith, your work and leisure habits, your self-talk or any other part of your life that is less than you want it – what were you doing from July on?
“Serve?” Yes. Think about it. You weren’t put here to vacuum up accolades and get warm fuzzies from everyone around you. Your purpose in life isn’t to have everyone fawning over you and amused at your Gimme hand always being out. You were created to serve.
Seriously. Give this some thought. What you daily see and hear from every direction is the inevitable result of immature thinking that believes self is at the center. “It’s what I want, who I am, how comfortable or special or pampered I am. Whether I get my way.”
You’ve been around self-centered people. They’re in your family; you work around them; you worship with them and you certainly see them during the commute to and from work.
“Well, enough about me. Let’s talk about you. What do YOU think about me?”
That gets as tiresome as quickly as the screaming 3-year-old at the table next to yours in the restaurant.
Chase. Let’s cut to it.
If you know what you need to be being and doing to make the changes in your personal life you know you must, you’d already be getting after them. Overweight or underweight and out of shape. Wasting time no matter how you do it or pleasant-seeming it is. Crummy eating habits. Better financial stewardship of what God’s put in my hands. Hardening of the attitudes. Critical spirit. You could make a list that’s just like
“This is the song that does not end, yes, it goes on and on, my friend …”
If there are more than two or three, you’re wasting both of our time even bringing them up. You won’t do them.
You don’t need ’em written down. You need them memorized, branded right in the middle of everything about which you think, talk, laugh and pray.
“What if I only have one that I really want to make happen?”
You’re my kind of guy or gal, because you’ll almost instantly start seeing growth in that area. You’re serious about 2015 being your year.
It’s for you I write – to lift, encourage, edify and challenge to personal and spiritual excellence. That’s what this blog is all about; it’s why I post what I do. There are a lot of blogs; you don’t owe me your attention to this one. You keep reading after me because what I write resonates within you. For that I thank you.
You see, my list of 1 is to give you here what makes you tell others to read it, to read after me. To do that, I need to be giving you what you need.
This is a personal message for you who are still reading. It doesn’t matter
- where you are right now
- what’s happened in your life
- who you’ve listened to that you shouldn’t have
- who you’ve ignored to whom you should’ve paid attention
Today’s your day. This is the day to start. The only thing you can do with your past is learn from it. It is what it is, and you may want with everything inside you to make it different.
You can’t. There are no do-overs. This is real life. It’s not a vid game or a scripted series that way too many who should know better sit and feed upon. It’s not a fantasy love story or action movie where the good guy always wins. This is the real deal. You can make amends, forgive and be forgiven. You can’t change what’s happened nor pretend it doesn’t exist. Some things can’t be fixed.
But you can. Beginning today, you can with God’s help and the encouragement of the few, the climbing, the growing ones shrug off who and where you’ve been and get back to pursuing His best for you.
“What if no one wants to go with me?”
Their loss. You focus on becoming one of the few, the climbing, the growing ones somebody else needs to gather around them to do what you’re doing. The only ones you want following you are those you trust to have your back when life gets troublesome.
Beginning today, you can with God’s help and the encouragement of the few, the climbing, the growing ones shrug off who and where you’ve been and get back to pursuing His best for you.
Your home, relationships, job, and church all need that ‘you’. They’ve all needed that ‘you’ for a long time. 2015 holds a lot of unknowns for us both, but no matter what changes are in store for you this year, we all need you to break out of the mediocre, regular, same-ol’ same ol’ shell in which you’ve become way too comfortable hiding from where you know you need to be – and who you know God needs you to be becoming.
Get to it.
I love you, and I believe in you.
Dan
© D. Dean Boone, January 2015