The past several weeks for me has been one long, continuing journey towards excellence, and as I grow, I find myself at odds with old mindsets that no longer make any kind of sense to me, as well as being at odds with those closest to me.
In that journey I’ve had to learn about getting started, staying motivated and being persistent – the drive of course is to achieve success, not just financially but in lifestyle.
As I was focused on closing the gap between where I am currently and where my potential lies, this email comes across my inbox, and I almost deleted it and I’m glad I didn’t because now I have something else to focus on – how I finish this journey I’m on, with a simple question…
Are You Finishing Well?
Not enough is said about finishing well. You can find tons of material on getting motivated and finding creative ways to spark initiative, but let’s hear it for the opposite end! Let’s extol the virtue of sticking with something until it’s done . . . of hanging tough when excitement and fun fade into discipline and determination.
We’ve become a people who embrace the “let’s-just-quit” mentality. Dieting requires discipline, so we stay fat. Working through conflict is wearying, so we divorce. Sticking with an occupation is tough, so we resign. It isn’t long before apathy sets in.
It’s no different with spiritual matters. So many Christians start like lightning—hot, fast, and dazzling. But how many continue the course with sustained enthusiasm and vigor? Oh, there are some, but why so few?
Our problem isn’t that we’re ignorant of God’s expectations. His standard stretches from Genesis to Revelation. His command is clear: “Be holy, because I am holy” (Leviticus 11:44). God calls us to live holy lives, and most of us know it . . . but we don’t know how. Holiness is tough to attain, so we quit.
I love the metaphor Jerry Bridges uses in The Pursuit of Holiness. He writes about how a farmer plows his field, plants his seed, and waters his crop, even though God is the One who causes the germination, the growth, and finally, the harvest. The farmer cannot do what God must do, and God will not do what the farmer should do.
Holiness requires cooperation. God has made it possible for us to walk in holiness, but He has given us the responsibility of walking. That relationship is exactly what Jerry’s book, The Pursuit of Holiness, is all about.
Every week, Insight for Living reaches millions who need encouragement to keep going—to keep pursuing holiness. For many, hope is wearing thin, and some are wondering if it’s worth it all. We need to let them know that it is! Will you give a donation to help us encourage them? When you do, as an expression of our appreciation, we would like to send you a special edition of The Pursuit of Holiness.
This need is universal, reaching across barriers of culture and language that we are committed to crossing. One way we’re doing that is through our Spanish-language ministry, Visión Para Vivir, which joins us in proclaiming the necessity of holy living to millions of Hispanics worldwide through a daily broadcast and a brand-new Web site.
There’s no such thing as accidental holiness. It takes deliberate, daily decisions for singles to remain pure . . . for parents to keep training their children . . . for all of us to continue pursuing godly living. To help you with this effort to gain an understanding of how to apply God’s holiness in your life, please request The Pursuit of Holiness when you give your much-needed donation.
I urge you to finish well by pursuing holiness every day you walk with God on this earth. As you do, let me also urge you to come alongside me as I encourage others to do the same.
Whether it’s spiritually or not how you finish the journey you’re on counts…
But are you on a journey of excellence?
My Journey Toward Excellence
I started the most recent leg of my journey in the last quarter of 2011. I had just come off of being a full time uncle raising my nephew and niece while my sister was in college and working a full time job, (proud of her by the way), and about that time I lost all of my clients.
It was a terrible situation and everything just hit me all at once and it really overwhelmed me. I’m not even sure I can explain how I changed.
Years earlier my car was sold for whatever reason I can’t remember, and living out near the country without a car and helping raise two kids basically ended any kind of social life whatsoever. There aren’t any words to explain the loneliness. It felt for a long time like my life and identity were stolen from me.
Here I was a single guy, just turned 29, finally finding direction in my life and then someone locked me in a box and threw away the key – trapped for the next 5 or 6 years and I hard a hard time even dealing with that.
So I decided to endure it and along the way that emptiness was replace with a kind of devotion and sense of purpose. The resentment passed and I loved being an uncle full time and working from home.
But at the same time, I was still dealing with a lot of the effects of being lonely all the time and not having a life outside of my immediate family. I didn’t have an avenue to release my frustrations or my anger and anytime I did manage to go anywhere, I’d be hounded literally to the point of exasperation.
People were leaving messages for me everywhere, looking for me, at times cursing me out in voice mail messages and all I really wanted was a moment of peace to get away from it all and have some semblance of a life.
By the time 2011 came around and I lost my clients (budget cuts) and the kids were gone, I was dealing with this overwhelmingly turbulent time in my life.
Bills were piling up and I had no money coming in; I couldn’t find work, and when I did I couldn’t take the job if it wasn’t in walking distance because I didn’t have a car, and on top of that I was going through this “empty nest” stage, which was something that I NEVER expected. Once those kids were gone any sense of purpose I had in my life was gone.
No money coming in, no job, no kids around, no social life, hardly any friends, I was still single and battling intense loneliness at 34, my family was dumping on me about how I was a failure and worthless all day – showing absolutely no respect when they talked to me at times…
I thought, if they knew how I felt and what I was going through maybe they would understand, but when I tried to tell them I was quickly met with, “stop being a baby,” or “just grow up,” so again, I didn’t have an avenue where I could even express myself, which, being a musician was incredibly difficult.
If you’re a musician you’ll understand this – we feel things differently than most people and our emotions are always close to the surface. When the world teaches people to suppress and don’t show your emotions, “men don’t cry,” and so on, musicians are taught to do the opposite because we have to express our emotions through our music so that others can feel what we’re feeling – all artists and performers do.
… so being robbed of that capacity to express made everything infinitely worse and it would just build up, and when it did come out, it would be in bursts of almost uncontrollable rage with all of that caged anger and frustration and loneliness and loss of purpose breaking through all at once.
The best way I could say it is to say that it was like a war going on in my head ALL THE TIME, and there was no good side fighting. Every side was bad and the worst of the bad was winning.
There were very few things that kept me grounded. The biggest was my faith in God, those moments of light in the darkness where everyone in my family seemed very supportive, and the dream i had ever since I was a little kid.
My family will tell you that I’ve always said I’d be a millionaire, but it wasn’t about the money. The money was just a means to an end. To this very day I have a clear picture of what I want my life to be at the end of it from the kind of car I want, the kind of house I want, what the estate will look like, the kind of family I want… every detail.
And those three things are what kept me going and gave me hope, so when I started my journey all I needed was the right engine to take me there, and the right team to support me.
I think I joined every MLM and work at home deal I could find, failing at all of them, and one day my friend and soon to be mentor, Chris Record said, “Here. Take a look at this,” and he gave me this link to the cheesiest landing page I’ve ever seen.
BUt, I entered my email anyway and watched a video with this long-haired dude in sandals and a wife beater drawing on a white board, and at the end of the video, he jumped into the pool to show it wasn’t a green screen, that he was actually doing this.
This blog post would turn into a novel if I explained what I went through for the next year – my ups and downs, my falls and my breakthroughs, so I’ll leave you with this.
Where I was at the start of 2013, compared to where my life was when I started 2012, was a complete 180 degree turn. That isn’t an exaggeration either. I had found purpose in my life again and re-connect with those dreams that I had, the resentment and the anger was gone and I was in control of my life again.
… and because of this one email I received today, I am reminded of how I want to finish this journey – excellence.
What journey are you on?
I challenge you to join me on my journey. Let’s strive for and achieve excellence together.
Watch the video below to learn how to start your journey, then click the button below it and embark on that journey…
~ Love you guys!
Dexter ‘the Titan Bulldog’
