by ALCAP | Monday, January 27, 2014
As businesses around the nation prepare to take inventory this month, it would be good for us to take stock of our own individual life. As I check my own life, I am encouraged by some things I encounter and discouraged by others. All in all, I know that I seek greater spiritual maturity in this New Year.
How can I become more than I am spiritually and emotionally? There are three keys I see in moving upward and onward.
1. A dissatisfaction with the present. Whatever my level of spiritual attainment I must sense that I have not attained my personal goal. Dissatisfaction with the present spurs us on to higher achievement and development. Every great gain grows out of dissatisfaction. No one who is satisfied with the present will ever move beyond where he is.
2. A good memory is quite valuable, but a good “forgetter” may be even more valuable. A person must forget the past if he or she is to make progress in life. No one can move forward while hitched to the past. We need to forget what is behind us. Dig a mental grave and bury the failures to which we are fettered. Few things stunt growth more than brooding over past failures. Everyone has a few skeletons in the closets of memory. It is good to put aside how you did not measure up last year. Now is the time to try again. It is no use to be forever doing nothing because you once did badly.
3. Getting ahead in the New Year means seeking and setting for yourself a new goal. Often people do not improve at whatever they do because they try to do too many things at once. Purpose and power are found in the fulfillment of God’s will in your life.
I read in a gun magazine recently, “Send me one dollar, and I will tell you how to keep any gun from scattering buckshot.” My neighbor had a shotgun that would put buckshot in every plank on the side of his barn from 20 feet away so he sent in the dollar. A week later he got the answer. “Load your shells with just one shot!” He may have felt cheated, but he wasn't. He who wants to move ahead this year powerfully must load life with one supreme purpose. Good luck in finding yours.
