Galatians 5:22, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.”
I facilitated a business course last week and what a blessing it is to be able to interact with people who are both creative and driven to success. Â Whenever I teach this course at some point I always pose the question, “would there be a National Football League if a score was not kept?” Â Seems like a pretty stupid question. Â I mean of course there would be no league because if a score is not kept what would be the use?
And yes, I am one of those old geezers who thinks it’s ridiculous when I hear of sports leagues for our wee little ones that do not keep score and all participants get a trophy.
Makes me wonder how competitive America is going to be against the rest of the world when our generation Y’s are in control. Â I know of at least two Y’s that were raised to be competitive just because of the environment they were raised in. Â One of my strengths is “compete” and unless I am sick I compete all day long and most of the time it is against the clock. Â How quick can I get a quality brush of my teeth done, how fast can I drive to work, how quickly can I understand a new concept? Â I don’t know how many times my wife has reminded me that driving a car does not always entail needing to beat all of the other cars.
Yes our strength can become a weakness and I try my best to not let my compete strength drive me and others nuts.
Bottom line for business people and anyone trying to make effective change; what gets measured gets done. Â If you want to win keep score.
A couple thousand years ago Paul gave us the scorecard to use as Christians when he shares the fruit of the spirit in the scripture verse from Galatians above. Â If you profess to be a follower of Jesus and want to measure your success as a follower, take the nine traits from Galatians 5:22, place them in your journal where they are readily retrievable and every morning read them and study them and challenge yourself to live those nine traits throughout the day. Â Then when your day is over, just before going to bed, pull out your journal and review the nine traits and ask yourself how well you’ve done.
This has become a safe competition for this competitive blogger as I try my best for His Spirit and the results of it to always exceed my spirit and its results. Â Amazing how much calmer I am when I am trying to win at God’s race instead of mine.
…now this is one race where I would like to see everybody win…imagine how much peace there would be in the world???
P.E.A.C.E.
jay@eaglelaunch.com
