50 Sermon Illustrations on Effort

Soon after the completion of Disney World, someone said, "Isn't it too bad the Walt Disney didn't live to see this?"

Mike Vance, creative director of Disney Studios, replied, "He did see it -- that's why it's here."

When Bill Veeck, perhaps the most creative promoter that baseball has ever seen, bought the Chicago White Sox in 1975, he hired as coach Minnie Minoso, who starred for the Sox as well as other teams in the 40's, 50's and 60's. Always one for crowd-pleasing events, Veeck decided a year later to play Minoso, who was in his fifties, in several games.

Mike Veeck, Bill's son, recalls seeing Minoso bat in one of those games. "He hit a ground ball, a pitiful, routine, groundball with such a passion, with such a pride. It was stirring, inspirational, just to see him run. The fans gave him a standing ovation."

Minnie Minoso gave it his all, and in so doing made a ground out more inspiring and more significant for others than a home run.

At one time a group of men were attempting to raise an obelisk in Egypt to its base, and the work was under the supervision of a very exact and careful engineer. They had raised the great mass of granite to within a few inches of the level of the base and then were unable to lift it further. They could not get it up to the level of the pedestal by their utmost efforts. But there was a secret in nature that they did not know. There was a sailor there who knew all about it. He shouted, “Wet the ropes!” As they did so, the ropes began to groan, and strain, and shrink, and the great mass rose, and rose, till it came to the level of the base, and they could push it over and establish it firmly on its pedestal. It was a little secret, but it was an effective one. The men had pulled at the cordage and strained away at it, but the obelisk was in mid-air, and there it hung until the cry came to wet the ropes.

The instant you let the Holy Spirit saturate your soul, the Lord Jesus Christ brings into it all His infinite forces of love and power. One touch of God will do all that your tugging and struggling could not do.

TRY SOMETHING DIFFERENT

I'm sitting in a quiet room at the Milcroft Inn, a peaceful little place hidden back among the pine trees about an hour out of Toronto. It's just past noon, late July, and I'm listening to the desperate sounds of a life-or-death struggle going on a few feet away.

There's a small fly burning out the last of its short life's energies in a futile attempt to fly through the glass of the windowpane. The whining wings tell the poignant story of the fly's strategy: Try harder.

But it's not working.

The frenzied effort offers no hope for survival. Ironically, the struggle is part of the trap. It is impossible for the fly to try hard enough to succeed at breaking through the glass. Nevertheless, this little insect has staked its life on reaching its goal through raw effort and determination.

This fly is doomed. It will die there on the windowsill.

Across the room, ten steps away, the door is open. Ten seconds of flying time and this small creature could reach the outside world it seeks. With only a fraction of the effort now being wasted, it could be free of this self- imposed trap. The breakthrough possibility is there. It would be so easy.

Why doesn't the fly try another approach, something dramatically different? How did it get so locked in on the idea that this particular route and determined effort offer the most promise for success? What logic is there in continuing until death to seek a breakthrough with more of the same?

No doubt this approach makes sense to the fly. Regrettably, it's an idea that will kill.

Trying harder isn't necessarily the solution to achieving more. It may not offer any real promise for getting what you want out of life. Sometimes, in fact, it's a big part of the problem.

If you stake your hopes for a breakthrough on trying harder than ever, you may kill your chances for success.

_________________________

By Price Pritchett from Chicken Soup for the Soul, Copyright 1993 by Jack Canfield & Mark Victor Hansen

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[Article by an entrepreneur which can be used in Christian applications.]

The mark of the superior thinker is his or her ability to accurately predict the consequences of doing or not doing something. The potential consequences of any task or activity are the key determinants of how important it really is to you and to your company. This way of evaluating the significance of a task is how you determine what your next frog really is.

LONG TIME PERSPECTIVE

Doctor Edward Banfield of Harvard University, after more than 50 years of research, concluded that "long-time perspective" is the most accurate single predictor of upward social and economic mobility in America. Long time perspective turns out to be more important than family background, education, race, intelligence, connections or virtually any other single factor in determining your success in life and at work.

Your attitude toward time, your "time horizon," has an enormous impact on your behavior and your choices. People who take the long view of their lives and careers always seem to make much better decisions about their time and activities than people who give very little thought to the future.

THINK ABOUT YOUR FUTURE

Successful people have a clear future orientation. They think five, ten and twenty years out into the future. They analyze their choices and behaviors in the present to make sure that they are consistent with the long-term future that they desire.

In your work, having a clear idea of what is really important to you in the long-term makes it much easier for you to make better decisions about your priorities in the short-term.

DETERMINE THE CONSEQUENCES

By definition, something that is important has long-term potential consequences. Something that is unimportant has few or no long-term potential consequences. Before starting on anything, you should always ask yourself, "What are the potential consequences of doing or not doing this task?"

The clearer you are about your future intentions, the greater influence that clarity will have on what you do in the moment. With a clear long-term vision, you are much more capable of evaluating an activity in the present and to assure that it is consistent with where you truly want to end up.

MAKE IT A TOP PRIORITY

If there is a task or activity with large potential positive consequences, make it a top priority and get started on it immediately. If there is something that can have large potential negative consequences if it is not done quickly and well, that becomes a top priority as well. Whatever your frog is, resolve to gulp it down first thing.

KEEP MOTIVATED

Motivation requires motive. The greater the positive potential impact that an action or behavior of yours can have on your life, once you define it clearly, the more motivated you will be to overcome procrastination and get it done quickly.

Thinking continually about the potential consequences of your choices, decisions and behaviors is one of the very best ways to determine you true priorities in your work and personal life.

ACTION EXERCISES

Review your list of tasks, activities and projects regularly. Continually ask yourself, "Which one project or activity, if I did it in an excellent and timely fashion, would have the greatest positive impact on my life?"

Whatever it is that can help you the most, set it as a goal, make a plan to achieve it and go to work on your plan immediately. Remember the wonderful words of Goethe, "Just begin and the mind grows heated; continue, and the task will be completed!"

Gary Parsons trotted into Brisbane, Australia, after a run of 19,030 kilometers. The effort earned him sole possession of world record for a continuous run. The previous record of 17,071 kilometers, was held by Robert Sweetgall, an American, December 1999.

Under the rules, Parsons could not miss a single day of running; and a minimum of 20 kilometers must be run each day. The Australian ran for over a year to achieve his record and "wore out about a dozen pairs of running shoes", resoling some shoes up to forty times. He also suffered from dehydration and a bout with a virus.

Application: Christians are not required to do anything to earn their reward. We don't have to run continuously or even win the race, only to "run as if to win." [1 Corinthians 9:24b] Nonetheless, we're told to "run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of faith." Hebrews 12:1b,2a

Source/Attribution: John Gillmartin

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Sir Winston Churchill took three years getting through eighth grade because he had trouble learning English. It seems ironic that years later Oxford University asked him to address its commencement exercises. He arrived with his usual props. A cigar, a cane and a top hat accompanied Churchill wherever he went. As Churchill approached the podium, the crowd rose in appreciative applause. With unmatched dignity, he settled the crowd and stood confident before his admirers. Removing the cigar and carefully placing the top hat on the podium, Churchill gazed at his waiting audience. Authority rang in Churchill's voice as he shouted, "Never give up!" Several seconds passed before he rose to his toes and repeated: "Never give up!" His words thundered in their ears. There was a deafening silence as Churchill reached for his hat and cigar, steadied himself with his cane and left the platform. His commencement address was finished.

Subject: A Matter of Due Diligence

Date: For the Week of July 5, 1999

It's an old story that bears repeating. A country parson was making his rounds, visiting the souls under his care. As he neared the farm of one of his newest members, he could not help noticing the improvements the hardworking man had already made in what had once been a poor piece of farm acreage.

Where there had been dilapidated outbuildings, there were now a new shed and a freshly painted barn. All the equipment was obviously being maintained well. The animals were healthy, and the fields were under cultivation. The place could hardly have looked better. So the preacher was determined to praise the farmer's hard work -- being careful, of course, to acknowledge the hand of the Lord in it all.

"Russell, you and the Good Lord have worked wonders with this place!" he allowed. "I've not seen a better looking farm anywhere in the county this spring."

"Thank you kindly, parson," said Russell, "but you should have seen the place when the Lord had the whole thing to himself. It was a disaster."

The fellow meant nothing irreverent by his comment. He took his partnership with God seriously, believing that it really mattered -- and affected the outcome.

By his precious grace, God gives human beings the power to identify with him in exercising sovereignty over Planet Earth. And he wants us to be as earnest in our part of the task as he has been in his. Thus the Bible's Book of Proverbs is filled with counsel about diligence. "Lazy hands make a man poor, but diligent hands bring wealth" (10:4). "The sluggard craves and gets nothing, but the desires of the diligent are fully satisfied" (13:4). "A sluggard does not plow in season; so at harvest time he looks but finds nothing" (20:4).

Work is not a curse, but unemployment or idleness is. Adam was to tend, subdue, and master the Garden of Eden. Yes, sin made Adam's task harder by virtue of the "thorns and thistles" it introduced into his environment. But work was part of the original and ideal arrangement of paradise.

Cervantes said, "Diligence is the mother of good fortune." In spite of the pronounced tendency in our time to doubt such a maxim, it is true nonetheless. Rather than envy the person who somehow manages to get by without hard work, pity him instead for having failed to develop a primary habit that is necessary to virtue.

God saves us by his lavish grace; that affirmation is good theology. People saved by grace partner with God in productive work; that behavior is noble character.

Arthur Brisbane, the newspaper editor, was heard telling his best cartoonist, Windsor McKay, that he was the second greatest cartoonist in the world.

A reporter standing nearby, his curiousity aroused, asked Brisbane who was first.

"I don't know," said Brisbane. "But it keeps McKay on his toes."

-Bits & Pieces Tan 5257

Singer Johnny Cash says religion has kept him inspired during his 36-year career. “I make my daily commitment to God. And so long as I keep the commitment, the day goes really good,” said Cash. “If I try to break it and run everything myself, I usually mess it up.” The 59-year-old country singer was addicted to drugs in the 1960s and was jailed several times. Cash says he overcame his addiction by renewing his faith.

He tells how a shoeshine man taught him a lesson for living back in 1956. “I was expecting a fast, snappy job like the young folks do, and he was going real slow, and I said, ‘You don’t seem to be doing too much snapping.’ He said, ‘That’s the problem with the world today -- there’s too much snapping and not enough shining.’”

________

Columbus Dispatch

Some years ago in Northwestern University, near Chicago, a rescue crew was organized. Their purpose was the rescue of the drowning on the lake. One day the news came that a magnificent vessel was wrecked just off the shore. The young men hurried at once to the scene of the disaster, and plunged into the angry waters to rescue those who were going down. Soon they all returned, but one. Finally he came in bringing one man with him. Immediately he returned, and soon brought another, and then another, and so on until he had rescued ten. During this time his mates had built a fire and were warming themselves, all the time trying to persuade the young hero against his conviction of duty.

By the time he had brought the tenth man he was completely exhausted, and had to rest for a while. Regaining sufficient strength, he again plunged into the water and brought another man. Now he was completely overcome. During the night he lay dying from exposure. It was a sad scene. While friends stood around weeping, and his fellow students were regretting that they had not forced him to do as they had, he called one of them to his bedside, and said in a low subdued tone, just before he died:

"Did I do my best?"

Instantly his friend said: "Yes, I should think you did do your best. You saved eleven, but you have lost your life."

"But," said he, "did I do my best, my dead level best?"

"Yes, you did your dead level best."

Then a smile seemed to come over his face as if to say: "Then I am satisfied to die."

Oh, my friends, this will be something of our experience when we are in the presence of God in eternity! "Did I do my best, my dead level best?"

________

L. G. Broughton

AVOIDING TEMPTATIONS

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AVOID THE TEMPTATION to get rich quick.

Everybody wants everything instantly - instant rice, instant pudding, instant success - served in pabulum form. My father was from Germany, and he said, "Always take time to be an apprentice and learn the whole job." I did this ... and it worked!

AVOID THE TEMPTATION to take shortcuts.

Taking shortcuts cutting corners is a character flaw. You will be building on sand, and it will surely collapse. It always has. It always will.

AVOID THE TEMPTATION to believe that "The grass is greener on the other side of the fence."

We need to stay focused on where we are now, what we are doing now, our present opportunity, our present job, our present activity. We need to be able to make our present responsibilities work, whatever price we have to pay.

AVOID THE TEMPTATION to quit too soon.

History books, story books, and movies are filled with illustrations and parables of people who quit "three feet too soon digging for gold." Just one more try to complete an invention; just one more call to make a sale.

COLLECTIVELY WHAT DO ALL THESE TEMPTATIONS CAUSE?

They cause you to ...

Lose sight of your goals,

Develop a lack of confidence, and

Suffer from an eroding self-esteem.

HOW DO YOU AVOID THIS?

1. Commit to a singleness of purpose.

2. Set and put into writing specific and clearly defined goals.

3. Outline exact action steps you must take to achieve your goals.

4. Repeat daily affirmations to support your goals.

5. Form a support group of your spouse, friends, associates, and

work partners.

6. Create an accountability factor.

I don't have enough paper to write or tell you the thousand sad stories I know about from my lifetime of all the educated, gifted, and talented people who fell into the temptation to get rich quick, looked for something for nothing, ceased to persist and do, believed false promises, and took a shortcut.

It is very sad to watch people chase false dreams - or their tails, the wind, and rainbows.

A solid life of personal success, family success, and business success is built more like climbing stairs than by mounting a rocket ship.

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Paul J. Meyer Copyright (r) 1999 Paul J. Meyer ALL RIGHTS

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QUOTES ON ACTIVITY/LABOR

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“There should be less talk. What do you do then? Take a broom and clean someone’s house. That says enough.”

-- Mother Teresa

“Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds you plant.”

-- Robert Louis Stevenson

“Well done is better than well said.”

-- Ben Franklin, QFTM 11/15/02

“You see, in life, lots of people know what to do, but few people actually do what they know. Knowing is not enough! You must take action.”

-- Anthony Robbins

“One of the marks of superior people is that they are action-oriented. One of the marks of average people is that they are talk-oriented.”

-- Brian Tracy

“Inspirations never go in for long engagements; they demand immediate marriage to action.”

-- Brendan Francis

“The most drastic and usually the most effective remedy for fear is direct action.”

-- William Burnham

“What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.”

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The path to success is to take massive, determined action.”

-- Anthony Robbins

“God gives every bird its food, but He does not throw it in the nest.”

-- unknown, cited in More of… The Best of BITS & PIECES

“For all sad words of tongue and pen, the saddest are these, ‘It might have been’.”

-- John Greenleaf Whittier, Quotes From the Masters, 2/26/02

“Words without actions are the assassins of idealism.”

-- Herbert Clark Hoover, Quotes From the Masters, 2/26/02

“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”

-- Theodore Roosevelt, QFTM, 3/15/02

“How can you come to know yourself? Never by thinking; always by doing. Try to do your duty, and you’ll know right away what you amount to. And what is your duty? Whatever the day calls for.”

-- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749-1832), poet and philosopher, BP 7/30/02

“Life is a compromise of what your ego wants to do, what experience tells you to do, and what your nerves let you do.”

-- Bruce Crampton, professional golfer, B&P 9/26/02

“Work is effort applied toward some end. The most satisfying work involves directing our efforts toward achieving ends that we ourselves endorse as worthy expressions of our talent and character.”

-- William J. Bennett, QFTM 11/15/02

“All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.”

-- Martin Luther King, Jr., QFTM 11/15/02

“Women now have choices. They can be married, not married, have a job, not have a job, be married with children, unmarried with children. Men have the same choice we’ve always had: work, or prison.”

-- Tim Allen (http://www.bigwacko.com/)

“Inspiration usually comes during work, rather than before it.”

-- Madeleine L’Engle, Wit & Wisdom 4/26/04

"Resolve that whatever you do, you will bring the whole man to it; that you will fling the whole weight of your being into it."

-- Orison Swett Marden

"Unless you are willing to drench yourself in your work beyond the capacity of the average man, you are just not cut out for positions at the top."

-- J.C. Penney

"There has never yet been a man in our history who led a life of ease whose name is worth remembering."

-- Theodore Roosevelt

I'm not really excited about telling you this frankly - but, then again, maybe you were as psycho about trying to get out of school as I was sometimes. There were just days when, well for one reason or another, I just didn't want to go. Which meant, of course, that I had to be sick. Which I wasn't - at least physically. And at our house, being "sick" meant having a fever. Which I didn't. But I thought I could change that. I sat on a radiator. There - I said it. Now, in case you weren't alive during the Ice Age, radiators were these iron structures that sat on the floor and radiated steam heat into the room. And, of course, they became very hot in the process. And, yes, I sat on one. Did I get a fever? No. Did I get blisters where I sit? Yes. Did I need my head examined? You decide.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Making It Happen, Making It Worse."

Now, that's what happened to me. I tried to make a school absence happen. Instead, I made some pain happen - and I still had to go to school. I wish that was the only time in my life when I tried to make something happen and only made a mess instead. Maybe you know the feeling.

It is, in fact, a mistake repeated all too often, even in the pages of Scripture. And we have a lot to learn from the "make it happen" choice Abram made many years ago. It's recorded in our word for today from the Word of God in Genesis 16, beginning in verse 1. It comes in the context of Abram and his wife Sarai being promised a son in their old age - a promise that was pretty hard to believe for a couple far beyond their childbearing years. It was all part of God's promise that he would raise up a nation through Abram - a man who at the time had no children. Well, they'd been waiting a while, and the son God promised had not come.

So, the Bible says, "Sarai, Abram's wife, had borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian maidservant named Hagar; so she said to Abram, 'The Lord has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my maidservant; perhaps I can build a family through her.' Abram agreed to what Sarai said ... He slept with Hagar and she conceived. When she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress." Well, of course that was only the beginning of hostilities. Hagar gave birth to Ishmael. Thirteen years later, Isaac, the child God had promised was born to Sarai. And the sons of Sarai - the Jewish people, and the sons of Hagar - the Arabic people - have been fighting it out ever since. Our world is still torn apart by it. The world has paid the price for Abram and Sarai's "make it happen" scheme for 4,000 years.

The story is a mirror for you and me - especially for those of us who have a tendency to be "make it happen" people. You may be there right now -scheming, pushing, manipulating, organizing - doing your best to make sure the "right thing" happens. But when it's not God's time ... when it's not God's way ... when it's not God's will, you're "making it happen" will ultimately make a mess that may take a lifetime - or more - to clean up. Trying to make it happen - romantically, financially, parentally, organizationally, relationally, spiritually - may keep it from ever happening.

Wait for God to do it His way, in His time. Trying to make it happen just makes it worse.

________________

Copyright © Ron Hutchcraft Ministries, Inc., PO Box 400, Harrison, AR 72602. Used by permission. Written by Ron Hutchcraft. 'Practical Answers to Real Life Issues'

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[This is a motivational piece for salespeople but can be adopted by pastors]

First of all, I am not a psychologist. However, I am something better - I have over 50 years experience from:

Watching,

Asking questions,

Taking risks,

Facing obstacles ...

Plus the most important thing:

Praying and asking God for WISDOM & UNDERSTANDING!!

From this lifetime accumulation, I have learned the following to be ABSOLUTES concerning people:

1. People act in their own self-interests! I have never perceived this as bad. I believe we are inherently made that way.

2. There are only TWO REASONS that ninety-nine percent of the time anyone does anything:

a) Either to gain a benefit, or

b) To avoid a loss.

3. There is no Santa Claus! (He isn't coming!) And yet, it's sad to say, so many people are sitting around in their offices procrastinating, making excuses, thinking that something magical is going to appear.

4. There isn't a free lunch! Too many young people have developed a "lottery mentality" - If they could just hit the BIG one! The truth is, we are only going to get what we go after ... inch by inch ... step by step ... day by day.

5. Everybody has a hot button! The only way we, as sales people, know where it is and what it is, is to ask questions, listen, and be empathetic, seeing things from their point of view. What is your hot button?

6. People respond to those who have "SERVICE ATTITUDES." All sales people should possess a service awareness, a service consciousness, a servant's heart ... conveying a subliminal message that says, "Your needs and wants are my purpose of calling you and making this presentation."

Abraham Lincoln said:

"If you want to win a man to your cause, you must first convince him that you are his true friend."

7. You must be sensitive and empathetic. Empathy is the imaginative projection of yourself in the other person's shoes.

People respond to those who have loving attitudes. This means thinking more highly of others than yourself ... putting other people first.

"ACHIEVE SUCCESS BY USING THE GOLDEN RULE PHILOSOPHY!!"

If you can master the above, and go out of your way to articulate and communicate it, with a golden-rule philosophy ... doing unto others as you would have them do to you ... then I promise you that the world will become your cornucopia and you will set records you didn't try to set! You will achieve goals beyond your wildest expectations!

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Genius is only the power of making continuous efforts. The line between failure and success is so fine that we scarcely know when we pass it: so fine that we are often on the line and do not know it. How many a man has thrown up his hands at a time when a little more effort, a little more patience, would have achieved success. As the tide goes out, so it comes clear in. In business, sometimes, prospects may seem darkest when really they are on the turn. A little more persistence, a little more effort, and what seemed hopeless failure may turn to glorious success. There is no failure except in no longer trying. There is no defeat except from within, no really insurmountable barrier save our own inherent weakness of purpose.

________

Source: Light from Many Lamps by Lillian Eichler Watson (Editor)

The Japanese word is gambate. It means, roughly, "Try with everything you have." ABC missionary Kari Davidson says the expression is used "in just about any situation, from toilet training your kid to making a lovely swan from a small square of origami paper."

Kari says the idea of "trying hard" is a cultural norm "so engrained that you stick out like a sore thumb if you're not, say, a businessman who stays at the office for 12 to 16 hours a day or a mom who spends hours painstakingly making beautiful boxed lunches for her children." She adds that there are both strong group expectations and a sense of personal perfectionism that are intense in almost every area of life.

"One of the most valuable things God has taught our little family is to keep right on laughing at ourselves," she says. They may not be able to blend in with Japanese culture, but "there are ways to meaningfully relate to people who have been informed by radically different ideas about what's 'normal.'"

When you're five years old, you have a number of those milestone experiences - lots of “firsts.” Like your first soccer game - which our five-year old grandson had not long ago. I reminded our daughter that she has just joined that much-talked about tribe called “soccer moms.” Well, our grandson had never played soccer before, and he doesn't have an older brother or sister to learn from. So his first game was a great learning experience. And he did a good job. But not good enough for the kind of performance most firstborns expect of themselves. Though he got the ball several times for his team and moved it down the field, he didn't score any goals - and he was bothered that he missed one. Right after the game, he gave his mom his two word summary of how he thought he did. He just said, “I tried.”

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about “It Really Is 'How You Play The Game.'“

Well, at least on God's team. That's why Jesus' finish line commendation for His players will be, “Well done, good and faithful servant” (Matthew 25:21), not “Well done, good and successful servant.” What God cares about - what God rewards - is an all-out effort. The results are in His hands. The effort is in yours.

What impresses God about His players is clear in our word for today from the Word of God. He says in Colossians 3:23 and 24: “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.” You're not playing for the applause of the crowd or even the approval of your teammates. As far as you're concerned, there's only one Person in that stadium - Jesus, your Coach. If you've got His smile, you're winning - not if you're winning, you've got His smile. He wants you to be able to honestly say, “Coach, I really tried.”

If you're playing your position with all your heart, you are pleasing Jesus. Your wholehearted effort may mean you get A's or it may mean you get C's, that you're the best one they've got or just considered average, or that you get amazing results or you seldom see results. You can't give any more than all your heart. And though we live in a world that cares only if you score, only if you look good, only if you win, you can be free inside knowing you're playing for the One who gives the biggest rewards. And Jesus rewards relentless faithfulness. That means you're still in there fighting when everybody else has dropped out.

Maybe God has assigned you to play a position on His team that's behind the scenes, doing things for Him that few people notice or value. And even you feel like what you do doesn't matter much - even to God. Surely, it doesn't matter as much as the big, public things some of your brothers and sisters are doing for God. But remember who gets the Super Bowl ring - every member of the team, not just the guys who scored the points. That's how God looks at all of us. Your part, your reward, matters just as much to Him as that of some great pastor or evangelist. In fact, the less glory you get on earth, the more He will give you in heaven for your all-out effort for Him.

So hold your head high, no matter what position you play. Don't let that discouragement wear you down any more - not if you're giving it all you've got. If you are, then in God's eyes - the only opinion that ultimately matters - you are a champion. Earth may not have many rewards for you. But God's gold medal will one day hang around your neck!

__________

Copyright © Ron Hutchcraft Ministries, Inc., PO Box 400, Harrison, AR 72602. Used by permission. Written by Ron Hutchcraft. "Practical Answers to Real Life Issues"

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John Glenn said this about space: “You don’t need a cane or walker or wheelchair — you just float.” I could like that. Truth is — some folks just sort of float through life anyway — no direction, no goal.

In Psalm 118:16 (NIV) we read: “The Lord’s right hand is lifted high; the Lord’s right hand has done many things.” Some may flippantly say, “See, that proves that the Lord is right handed” and then totally miss the impact of that verse which is, the awesome power and majesty of our God.

You may be facing a difficult day. You may even be one of those who is drifting through life without focused goals. Read thast verse again and realize that the same all-powerful God who created “space” for people like John Glenn to explore is available to help you through today. As Christians, we have an extra resource to help us face each day with renewed courage. Tap into that resource as you face today with your head held high.

When we’ve dedicated our bodies as living sacrifices to Christ, we don’t just sit around and enjoy the experience. We constructively go out and serve.

One Sunday in Copenhagen, Corrie ten Boom, 80, spoke from Romans 12:1, urging her audience to present their bodies to Christ as living sacrifices. After church, two nurses invited her to their apartment for lunch, and Corrie went with them — only to discover they lived on the tenth floor, and there was no elevator. The task of mounting those stairs was almost more than she could stand, and she wondered if she might die en route. “Perhaps I am leaving earth to go to heaven,” she complained to herself.

Finally arriving in the apartment, Corrie found the parents of one of the girls waiting there, wanting to be saved, and both gloriously received Christ as their Savior.

On her way down the steps, Corrie said, “Thank you, Lord, for making me walk up all these steps. And next time, Lord, help Corrie ten Boom listen to her own sermon about being willing to go anywhere You tell me to go — even up ten flights of stairs.”

Lord, make me willing, get me going, and take me higher!

________

Source: Turning Point Daily Devotional

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[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #20888]

David’s victory over Goliath, in the Biblical account, is held to be an anomaly. It was not. Davids win all the time. The political scientist Ivan Arreguín-Toft recently looked at every war fought in the past two hundred years between strong and weak combatants. The Goliaths, he found, won in 71.5 per cent of the cases. That is a remarkable fact. Arreguín-Toft was analyzing conflicts in which one side was at least ten times as powerful — in terms of armed might and population — as its opponent, and even in those lopsided contests the underdog won almost a third of the time.

In the Biblical story of David and Goliath, David initially put on a coat of mail and a brass helmet and girded himself with a sword: he prepared to wage a conventional battle of swords against Goliath. But then he stopped. “I cannot walk in these, for I am unused to it,” he said (in Robert Alter’s translation), and picked up those five smooth stones. What happened, Arreguín-Toft wondered, when the underdogs likewise acknowledged their weakness and chose an unconventional strategy? He went back and re-analyzed his data. In those cases, David’s winning percentage went from 28.5 to 63.6. When underdogs choose not to play by Goliath’s rules, they win, Arreguín-Toft concluded, “EVEN WHEN EVERYTHING WE THINK WE KNOW ABOUT POWER SAYS THEY SHOULDN’T.”

Consider the way T. E. Lawrence (or, as he is better known, Lawrence of Arabia) led the revolt against the Ottoman Army occupying Arabia near the end of the First World War. The British were helping the Arabs in their uprising, and the initial focus was Medina, the city at the end of a long railroad that the Turks had built, running south from Damascus and down through the Hejaz desert. The Turks had amassed a large force in Medina, and the British leadership wanted Lawrence to gather the Arabs and destroy the Turkish garrison there, before the Turks could threaten the entire region.

But when Lawrence looked at his ragtag band of Bedouin fighters he realized that a direct attack on Medina would never succeed. And why did taking the city matter, anyway? The Turks sat in Medina “on the defensive, immobile.” There were so many of them, consuming so much food and fuel and water, that they could hardly make a major move across the desert. Instead of attacking the Turks at their point of strength, Lawrence reasoned, he ought to attack them where they were weak — along the vast, largely unguarded length of railway line that was their connection to Damascus. Instead of focussing his attention on Medina, he should wage war over the broadest territory possible.

The Bedouins under Lawrence’s command were not, in conventional terms, skilled troops. They were nomads. Sir Reginald Wingate, one of the British commanders in the region, called them “an untrained rabble, most of whom have never fired a rifle.” But they were tough and they were mobile. The typical Bedouin soldier carried no more than a rifle, a hundred rounds of ammunition, forty-five pounds of flour, and a pint of drinking water, which meant that he could travel as much as a hundred and ten miles a day across the desert, even in summer. “Our cards were speed and time, not hitting power,” Lawrence wrote. “Our largest available resources were the tribesmen, men quite unused to formal warfare, whose assets were movement, endurance, individual intelligence, knowledge of the country, courage.” The eighteenth-century general Maurice de Saxe famously said that the art of war was about legs, not arms, and Lawrence’s troops were ALL legs. In one typical stretch, in the spring of 1917, his men dynamited sixty rails and cut a telegraph line at Buair on March 24th, sabotaged a train and twenty-five rails at Abu al-Naam on March 25th, dynamited fifteen rails and cut a telegraph line at Istabl Antar on March 27th, raided a Turkish garrison and derailed a train on March 29th, returned to Buair and sabotaged the railway line again on March 31st, dynamited eleven rails at Hediah on April 3rd, raided the train line in the area of Wadi Dhaiji on April 4th and 5th, and attacked twice on April 6th.

Lawrence’s masterstroke was an assault on the port town of Aqaba. The Turks expected an attack from British ships patrolling the waters of the Gulf of Aqaba to the west. Lawrence decided to attack from the east instead, coming at the city from the unprotected desert, and to do that he led his men on an audacious, six-hundred-mile loop — up from the Hejaz, north into the Syrian desert, and then back down toward Aqaba. When they finally arrived at Aqaba, Lawrence’s band of several hundred warriors killed or captured twelve hundred Turks, and lost only two men. The Turks simply did not think that their opponent would be mad enough to come at them from the desert. This was Lawrence’s great insight. David can beat Goliath by substituting effort for ability — and substituting effort for ability turns out to be a winning formula for underdogs in all walks of life. You need to be relentless.

Insurgents also need to operate in real time, not ploddingly and methodically like the powerful. Lawrence hit the Turks, in that stretch in the spring of 1917, nearly every day, because he knew that the more he accelerated the pace of combat the more the war became a battle of endurance — and endurance battles favor the insurgent. “And it happened as the Philistine arose and was drawing near David that David hastened and ran out from the lines toward the Philistine,” the Bible says. “And he reached his hand into the pouch and took from there a stone and slung it and struck the Philistine in his forehead.” The second sentence — the slingshot part — is what made David famous. But the first sentence matters just as much. David broke the rhythm of the encounter. He speeded it up. “The sudden astonishment when David sprints forward must have frozen Goliath, making him a better target,” the poet and critic Robert Pinsky writes in “The Life of David.” Pinsky calls David a “point guard ready to flick the basketball here or there.” David PRESSED. That’s what Davids do when they want to beat Goliaths.

Lawrence attacked the Turks where they were weak — the railroad — and not where they were strong, Medina. Lawrence extended the battlefield over as large an area as possible. It is an exhausting strategy. It is based on a willingness to try harder than anyone else.

Arreguín-Toft found the same puzzling pattern. When an underdog fought like David, he usually won. But most of the time underdogs DIDN’T fight like David. Of the two hundred and two lopsided conflicts in Arreguín-Toft’s database, the underdog chose to go toe to toe with Goliath the conventional way a hundred and fifty-two times — and lost a hundred and nineteen times. In 1809, the Peruvians fought the Spanish straight up and lost; in 1816, the Georgians fought the Russians straight up and lost; in 1817, the Pindaris fought the British straight up and lost; in the Kandyan rebellion of 1817, the Sri Lankans fought the British straight up and lost; in 1823, the Burmese chose to fight the British straight up and lost. The list of failures was endless. In the nineteen-forties, the Communist insurgency in Vietnam bedevilled the French until, in 1951, the Viet Minh strategist Vo Nguyen Giap switched to conventional warfare — and promptly suffered a series of defeats. George Washington did the same in the American Revolution, abandoning the guerrilla tactics that had served the colonists so well in the conflict’s early stages. “As quickly as he could,” William Polk writes in “Violent Politics,” a history of unconventional warfare, Washington “devoted his energies to creating a British-type army, the Continental Line. As a result, he was defeated time after time and almost lost the war.”

It makes no sense, unless you think back to Lawrence’s long march across the desert to Aqaba. It is easier to dress soldiers in bright uniforms and have them march to the sound of a fife-and-drum corps than it is to have them ride six hundred miles through the desert on the back of a camel. We tell ourselves that skill is the precious resource and effort is the commodity. It’s the other way around. Effort can trump ability because relentless effort is in fact something rarer than the ability to engage in some finely tuned act of motor coördination.

There is a second half of the insurgent’s creed. Insurgents work harder than Goliath. But their other advantage is that they will challenge the conventions about how battles are supposed to be fought. You have to be outside the establishment to have the audacity to play it that way. George Washington couldn’t do it. His dream, before the war, was to be a British Army officer, finely turned out in a red coat and brass buttons. He found the guerrillas who had served the American Revolution so well to be “an exceeding dirty and nasty people.” He couldn’t fight the establishment, because he WAS the establishment.

T. E. Lawrence, by contrast, was the farthest thing from a proper British Army officer. He did not graduate with honors from Sandhurst. He was an archeologist by trade, a dreamy poet. He wore sandals and full Bedouin dress when he went to see his military superiors. He spoke Arabic like a native, and handled a camel as if he had been riding one all his life. And David, let’s not forget, was a shepherd. He came at Goliath with a slingshot and staff because those were the tools of his trade. He didn’t know that duels with Philistines were supposed to proceed formally, with the crossing of swords. “When the lion or the bear would come and carry off a sheep from the herd, I would go out after him and strike him down and rescue it from his clutches,” David explained to Saul. He brought a shepherd’s rules to the battlefield.

A lesson in “heart” is my little, 10 year old daughter, Sarah, who was born with a muscle missing in her foot and wears a brace all the time.

She came home one beautiful spring day to tell me she had competed in “field day” – that’s where they have lots of races and other competitive events.

Because of her leg support, my mind raced as I tried to think of encouragement for my Sarah, things I could say to her about not letting this get her down – but before I could get a word out, she said “Daddy, I won two of the races!”

I couldn’t believe it!

And then Sarah said, “I had an advantage.”

Ah. I knew it. I thought she must have been given a head start… some kind of physical advantage.

But again, before I could say anything, she said, “Daddy, I didn’t get a head start… My advantage was I had to try harder!”

Hey sports fans, it’s quiz time. Who broke Muhammad Ali’s jaw during one of the biggest boxing upsets ever?

Ken Norton did. And there’s a truth behind his victory we need to remember.

Norton, who died Sept. 18 [2103] at age 70, was a heavyweight fighter during the sport’s last golden era. He wasn’t as famous as Ali or “Smokin’ Joe” Frazier. But Norton, a three-time boxing champion in the Marine Corps before he turned pro, was for real. In his prime, he was a 6-foot-3-inch, 210-pound, one-man wrecking crew who kept coming at you. He won 42 fights, including 33 knockouts, and lost only seven over a 14-year pro career.

Marines don’t go down easy. Norton sure didn’t.

The first time he fought Ali, in 1973, he was a 5-to-1 underdog. Ali, who was looking ahead to a big title shot at then-champ George Foreman, expected the upstart Norton to be a punching bag. Big mistake.

Norton came out firing, pounded Ali and took over the fight. Ali might have been “the greatest of all time,” but he didn’t see Norton’s determined assault coming.

“Godzilla couldn’t have beaten me that night,” Norton said in an interview years later.

How did he do it? Simple: work, work and more work. Norton trained relentlessly for the fight. He allowed no distractions. He believed he could win and prepared for battle. Once the bell rang, he didn’t listen or respond to his opponent’s legendary trash talk. Norton talked with his fists. Chastened by that painful wakeup call, Ali won two later fights against Norton by razor-thin decisions, but never knocked Norton out in the 39 total rounds they fought.

Hard work doesn’t always triumph over hype. But it wins more often than you might think.

“Success depends on effects,” observes James McIntosh, who coaches leaders and executive teams in the business world. “Do you do things for effect or do you do things for effect? To help you to decide, I’ll ask the question differently. Do you do things mainly to impress others or do you do things to accomplish something of consequence? ... Your choice of effect determines whether your success is flash-in-the-pan or sustainable.”

We live in a flash-in-the-pan culture. Commitments and loyalties shift like the wind. People want something for nothing. Short-term profit rules. Make a splash, take the money and run. Let somebody else clean up the inevitable mess.

Children raised to believe they are extra-special expect straight A’s in school just for showing up. They think they’ll breeze through college and into great careers, without years of hard work and despite all economic indicators. Psychologists call this “magical thinking.” It flies in the face of reality, experience and common sense.

Tragically, this mentality has seeped into our spiritual lives. We want closeness to God without prayer, Bible knowledge without study, church growth without missions, and blessings without obedience.

God’s economy doesn’t work that way. Grace is free, but it isn’t cheap. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who died at the hands of the Nazis because he refused to submit to their evil, regarded cheap grace as the “deadly enemy” of the church.

“Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ living and incarnate,” Bonhoeffer wrote in “The Cost of Discipleship.” “Costly grace,” on the other hand, “is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of His Son ... and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. ... Costly grace is the incarnation of God.”

There are no shortcuts to becoming a disciple. Don’t get me wrong; it’s not the spiritual equivalent of an exercise or weight-loss plan. God provides the power and brings the results -- not our puny efforts. But He requires commitment and obedience.

The apostle Paul, master missionary and disciple maker, put it this way:

“So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure. Do all things without grumbling or disputing; so that you will prove yourselves to be blameless and innocent, children of God above reproach in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you appear as lights in the world” (Philippians 2:12-15, NASB).

Paul turned the world upside down, one disciple and one church at a time, through relentless work, prayer, teaching and missionary activity, even in his last days in Roman chains when he wrote the above words.

If you’re looking for flash-in-the-pan success, Christian discipleship isn’t for you.

If, on the other hand, you want to participate in the only enterprise that will produce eternal results, get to work.

William Carey is well known for saying “Expect great things from God. Attempt great things for God.” Is that biblical?

Yes. Here’s one passage that gives the foundations for Carey’s words:

Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us [the same power that raised Christ from the dead — Eph 1:19], to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen. (Ephesians 3:20-21)

There are two noteworthy things about this passage in regard to Carey’s statement: who said it, and what it says.

First, what does this passage say? It says that God can do far more than we can ask or think of. And he can do this abundantly. So God is able to do great things.

But is he willing to do them? That seems to be Paul’s reason for pointing out that God is able to do this “according to the power at work within us.” Note also the connection here to prayer. God is able to do “more abundantly than all that we ask.” His point is: Pray and ask for God to work — and he will do far more than what you ask!

So it seems biblical that we should indeed expect great things from God, just like Carey said. But should we therefore also attempt great things for God?

This takes us to a second observation about this — namely, who said it.

The one who penned this passage, of course, was the apostle Paul. And Paul accomplished far-reaching and incredible things for the gospel — to the point where he was even able to say that “from Jerusalem and all the way around to Illlyricum I have fulfilled the ministry of the gospel of Christ” (Romans 15:19). In other words, he attempted great things for God (and accomplished them!).

So, Paul’s words and example demonstrate the truth of William Carey’s statement. His words affirm that we should indeed expect great things from God, because God is “able to do far more abundantly than we ask or imagine.” And his example affirms that, from this expectation, we should indeed attempt great things for God.

The most important thing is to get the order right. Notice that Carey did not say: “Attempt great things for God. Expect great things from God.” He said the reverse. So, attempt great things for God — grounding all of your efforts and labor and dreams in God’s grace, supported by prayer, just like Ephesians 3:20 says.

A lesson in “heart” is my little, 10 year old daughter, Sarah, who was born with a muscle missing in her foot and wears a brace all the time.

She came home one beautiful spring day to tell me she had competed in “field day” – that’s where they have lots of races and other competitive events.

Because of her leg support, my mind raced as I tried to think of encouragement for my Sarah, things I could say to her about not letting this get her down – but before I could get a word out, she said “Daddy, I won two of the races!”

I couldn’t believe it!

And then Sarah said, “I had an advantage.”

Ah. I knew it. I thought she must have been given a head start… some kind of physical advantage.

But again, before I could say anything, she said, “Daddy, I didn’t get a head start… My advantage was I had to try harder!”