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. 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?” Seems like a pretty stupid question. 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. I know of at least two Y’s that were raised to be competitive just because of the environment they were raised in. 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. 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? 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. 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. 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. 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. 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
