Goal setting, goals, vision, offers, journey
We All Have Something Important to OFFER in This Life! Ourselves!
Goals Are Wonderful. They Are the Destination We’re Headed For. But What We Offer on Our Life Journey Is Us to Others.
I’ve been talking about GOALS, and this is another facet of goals to think about. One of our goals should be to create the best version of SELF that we can produce at any given time. What we do is make offers to others when we OFFER ourselves to them.
You Can’t Leave Yourself Behind
“Wherever I go, there I am!” This is a popular phrase, and folks use it often.
All we have to OFFER in any situation is us— ourselves. We may take other things or other people with us, but when it comes down to reality, all we have to offer is us.
The truth is we take ourselves everywhere we go. It’s what we have to OFFER. We take the good parts of us wherever we go. It’s what we have to OFFER. We take the bad parts of us wherever we go. It’s what we have to OFFER.
We need to think of ourselves and try to put our best foot forward always. But sometimes we can get so introspective that we lose focus on what’s important.
Jesus Gives Us Some Good Advice
Jesus says to deny ourselves, and to consider others more important than us. We only connect with other people through our own selves. God gives us one mouth and two ears so we hopefully listen more than we talk. But the fact is we only connect with others through what we say and do.
So many preachers quote Jesus and say he says: ‘Deny sin.’ Well, that’s a good idea too, but it’s not what Jesus says. He says: ‘Deny YOURSELF.’
“Here I Am” Versus “There You Are”
When we don’t deny ourselves and prefer others more than we do ourselves, then our attitude is HERE I AM!
We want to be in the spotlight. We want to be center-stage. We want to be appreciated and have significance. Some refer to this as not being able to see past the end of our nose.
When we do deny ourselves and prefer others more than we do ourselves, then our attitude is THERE YOU ARE!
This is something I learned from the singer John Denver many years ago. John and I sang together some in his ‘BC’ days: before he was a celebrity. John was a hugger. We used to joke: “John would hug a tree if no one else was there.”
John lived the attitude that he never met a stranger. The first time I met him he made me feel like he’d been waiting for weeks — just to meet me. There was no one else in the world more important to John than I was at that moment in his life. John was on a journey to OFFER himself, and to offer others the best he had to offer.
He had a connecting talent about him I try to emulate and model after. All John had to OFFER was himself, and he offered it well. I can be said that wherever John went, he went with all his heart.
As I said, I try to model after him in some things he did. John had a profound impact on my life as he did on so many countless other people.
I read a story once that made the point all of us wear shoes (well, at least most of the time). And the story used this same line: “Wherever I go, there I am.” It made the point we should have this slogan printed on our shoes.
The Way We Act Is the Way We Think
A pet saying of mine is: “We cannot consistently act, on the outside, different from the way we think, on the inside.” We are inside-out creations and we are a chain reaction. “Today you are a delayed reaction of what you thought about yesterday.”
Another saying of Jesus is, “Love others as yourself.” It’s worth considering: we can’t really love others unless we do love ourselves. The saying is quite true: “You can’t give away what you ain’t got.”
Jesus is not mean an ego-inflated type of love that borders on narcissism. He’s not talking about PRIDE. Pride only tends to make everyone else sick except the person who has it. He’s talking about humility that works two ways: (1) We live in a love that comes from God. It is not self-generated. (2) We give away the love of God that we have been so freely given.
The Apostle Paul speaks to this: “May the LORD make you increase and abound in love to one another.” The picture is this: we INCREASE in God’s love for us until we’re so full we’re like a balloon that is ready to pop. Then we simply ABOUND in it: we spill God’s love over onto others around us.
Jesus says, “As you have freely received, so freely give.”
We Must Be Secure in Ourselves: In Who We Are
In my coaching sessions, I speak about our 7 human needs that we all must have filled — at least to a good extent — at least say 60–75%.
The top need is security. If we don't have security, we don’t have much else to OFFER. Like love, this is another blessing that should be received from God. If we try to manufacture our own security, we will eventually find ourselves failing. We all lose some strength we had in youth. We all grow older.
Living in the security that comes from God, nothing on earth shakes us.
Too often we tend to be ruled by circumstances we face in life. We are often so controlled by circumstances that we have trouble connecting with others. We have a difficult time being able to OFFER what we should to others.
“Life rains on the just and on the unjust.” It’s true that life rains on all of us at times. Our wood gets wet and we don’t want to OFFER wet wood to others. But when we know God’s security, we reign in life in Jesus (Rom 5:17). We reign in life more than life rains on us. When we believe and live in Jesus, we know his words first-hand: “I will never leave you.”
Life Is A Series of Choices, but the Decision is Ours
Often life has more choices than we want. We wish we had fewer to make. And it is true of everything in life: “This too will pass.”
If you think about it, life consists of four major elements: (1) birth, (2) times of happiness and joy, (3) times of sorrow and sadness, (4) death.
We all experience some very great times with family, friends, vacations, and other things. They are all enjoyable. But “This too will pass.”
And we all experience some troubling, hurtful, and bad times — sometimes even traumatic and tragic times. But “This too will pass.”
Our job is to OFFER the best we have to offer in any situation. And when we know God in us, we know we are more than just ‘a power of one.’
Thanks for taking the time to read! Roger