Practical Application:
Morning routine:
Does your morning routine prepare you to face the demands of your day?
How much time (prayer/quiet time) does God get? How much time do you use putting on the armor of God?
Do you prepare for your day before the day begins? Do you do a "to do" list and make sure that the most important things in your life are on it (marriage, family, etc…)?
What will you change in the coming weeks about your work habits?
Lesson 5 - Focus on the Nail
Down went the hammer, clang went the nail, down went the hammer, clang went the nail. I have never seen anyone drive nails like the carpenter. One tap to set the nail and BANG, one hit to drive it all the way in. I have seen him drive nails faster than some people can use a nail gun. I have seen him drive a hundred nails and never miss. TAP, BANG, TAP, BANG, TAP, BANG, TAP, BANG.
As for me, it was more like TAP, TAP, TAP, TAP, THUD (sound of hammer missing the nail), BANG, PRY(to straighten the nail back out because I bent it), THUD, THUD, BANG, PRY (to straighten the nail back out again), BANG, PRY (to remove bent nail), CLANG (sound of nail being thrown away).
Learning to drive a nail was one of the hardest tasks in the world to learn. But after having bent a half a box of Richard’s nails, he showed me a secret. The secret to driving a nail is to look at where you want to hit. You cannot watch the hammer and drive a nail. You cannot look at what you are nailing together. You have to focus all your attention on the head of the nail if you want to hit it. Then, with eyes fixed, just grasp the hammer at the end of the handle and swing. You do not think about it, you just keep your eyes on the nail. That one little secret has saved thousands of nails.
This principle applies in almost every area of life as well. In baseball, how many times have you heard, "keep your eyes on the ball?" In basketball, you are taught to focus on the rim, not the ball or backboard. Golf is the same, eyes on the ball. But it is the same in life as well. Focus on what you want to hit and swing!
Zig Ziglar said, "If you aim at nothing, you will hit it every time." But almost no one sets goals. Studies have actually shown that only 3-5% of Americans set goals. I am sure that similar statistics could be found in just about every other country on earth. Human beings are not natural goal setters. Yet living life this way is like driving nails with a blindfold on. This is not about losing focus; it is about having no focus to begin with.
Do you have goals in life? Do you know what you are aiming at and what nail you need to hit today? On what do you have your eyes fixed? What are you nailing and where are you nailing it?
For me, I have to get up every day and focus my eyes on my goals. There are things in my character that I have to nail to the cross of Jesus. Impatience, pride, anger, irritation and selfishness are just a few. Eliminating these are some of my goals. This is not easy but I know that if I am not focusing on these "nails", they do not get nailed to that cross. The writer of Hebrews tells us to focus carefully.
Therefore since we also have such a large crowd of witnesses surrounding us, let us lay aside every weight and the sin that so easily ensnares us, and run with endurance the race that lies before us, keeping our eyes on Jesus, the source and perfector of our faith, who for the joy that lay before Him endured a cross and despised the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of God’s throne.
Hebrews 12:1-2
Focus your eyes on Jesus, it says. Know what you are aiming at or you have no chance of hitting it. You cannot drive nails by accident with a blindfold on. If you do not believe me, go try it. You would never try to drive nails with your eyes closed or drive a car with a blindfold over your eyes. So why do we try to build our lives without focusing on the nails that are going to hold it all together?
I try to be a goal setter. I try to set goals that are going to move me closer to where I want to be. For example, I want my children to grow up and love God. As a good, godly parent, this is one of my goals in life. What nails do I need to hit to achieve this? One of my goals is to spend one on one time with each of my kids every week. It is a goal that I focus on and try to hit every week. I try to do something spiritual with my kids every night they are with me. Sometimes this takes the form of prayer with them, sometimes we read together, sometimes I do a Bible study to teach them something, sometimes it is attending church or a church activity. I know that if I focus on and hit these nails consistently, I am more likely to achieve my bigger goal of having kids that love God when they become adults.
I have not always done a great job at focusing. When I don’t focus, that is when things in my life tend to get out of balance. I know that as a husband, I can be selfish and insensitive. These are sins that I must nail to the cross every day if I am going to be able to "love my wife as Christ loved the church." If I do not have my attention fixed on these sins, how can I drive these nails into the cross? I can’t. So every week I have sit down and try to come up with one thing, one goal, for that week that I can do to make my wife feel loved and appreciated. Without that forced focus on a goal, I know that I would never be able to love my wife "as Christ loved the church" given my nature as a selfish, insensitive man. When left to my own nature, I am not naturally a loving husband. That is why I have to focus.
What are your goals? What do you need to hit this week, this month, or this year? If you do not have them, it is time to set them. Writing down your goals is one of the most powerful, life changing things that you can do. Write them down and put them where you will see them every day. Fix your eyes on them and focus. Grab your hammer and go!
My goals:
To be obtained this Year:
To be obtained within 5 years:
Lifetime Goals:
Focus:
Of the goals above, which ones are most important to you?
How are you going to focus on hitting the mark this week?
*See appendix 1 for goal planning worksheets to help you plan your goals.
*See appendix 2 for some suggestions for output goals that can improve your relationships with God, spouse, children, and family.
Lesson 6 - No Pain, No Gain
There was a time when I was helping the carpenter tear a roof off a house and put a new one on it. The shingles that we were removing were old. The house itself was old. I do not know how long those shingles had been on that roof, but I remember being up there with a pry bar just ripping them off and throwing them down. I was not the only one up on that roof, there was another helper named Leroy working with me. The carpenter was on the ground.
Tearing stuff apart is always fun and it goes a lot quicker than building something. So there I was, fairly young, tearing off shingles when this horrible pain shot through my arm. It was excruciating and it would not stop. I did the only thing a young boy could think of to do, I screamed at the top of my lungs and ran away from the pain.
Running around in a panic on the top of a house is not the wisest thing that I have ever done. But at that time, I was not really thinking all that clearly. All I knew was that I had to get off that roof, away from the pain, even if I had to jump. Hearing my cries of anguish, the carpenter yelled, "Grab him Leroy! Grab him!"
I ran toward the edge and probably would have leaped off had not the carpenter’s helper grabbed me and threw me down on the roof. A few swats of a hat and the giant bumble bee that had decided to use my arm as a pin cushion lay dead beside me. We soon discovered that the roof of this house was home to an entire nation of bumble bees. I am not talking about little bees here; I’m talking about the ones that are the size of golf balls! Why they chose me to announce their presence to I will never know. But it did hurt!
Thinking back to that encounter with the bee, I see a pattern of behavior to which I think we all adhere. You see, all I wanted to do was to run away from the pain I was experiencing. I know very few people that enjoy pain and that goes for me most of all. Whether it is physical pain or emotional pain, I avoid it all like the plagu
e. We all do this, do we not? If something is going to hurt, we tend to run as fast and as far from it as we can. If I had ran off the roof that day to get away from the pain of the bee, I have no doubt that the pain I would have experienced when I hit the ground would have been a hundred times worse. When we avoid the painful things in life, we often run into even greater hurt and suffering later.
One of my favorite (and also least favorite) sayings that I learned when I was in the army was "No pain, no gain." It is also a popular motto in fitness circles as well. "No pain, no gain!" Or how about the chant, "More PT (Physical Training), Drill Sergeant! More PT! Make it hurt, Drill Sergeant, make it hurt!" It seems that to condition the body, it must be pushed to where it hurts and then pushed beyond. If the body is not made uncomfortable with a little pain, no growth occurs. Have you ever tried an exercise program where you stopped when the pain and discomfort started? I bet you did not lose much weight. I guess there is some truth to "no pain, no gain."
I can look back on my life and identify the times when I have had the greatest growth, whether physically, spiritually, mentally or emotionally. Each and every time it involved some type of pain which I had to push through. Sometimes the pain was looking at myself in a mirror and acknowledging a painful truth about my character. Sometimes the pain was crying tears to God because my heart hurt so much. Sometimes the pain was when I had to push through a fear in order to accomplish something that I thought I could not do. Sometimes it was dealing with the pain caused by other people to myself or those I loved.
When my arm stopped hurting from the bee sting and I faced the ladder to go back up on that roof to finish the job I had started, I was afraid. There was no reason for me to believe that I would not be stung again. I do not think that anyone would have blamed me if I had refused to climb that ladder. But I could not let the fear of pain paralyze me. So I grabbed the ladder and back up I went.
I have realized that there is much pain in life. One of my favorite movie quotes comes from "The Princess Bride." As Princess Buttercup is justifying her decision to marry Prince Humperdinck, she blames it on the pain she felt when she learned her true love, Wesley, had been killed by the Dread Pirate Roberts. The pain of her loss killed her, she claims. Roberts (really Wesley in disguise) says bluntly, "Life is pain, your highness. Anyone who ever tells you differently is selling something." How true those words ring. Life is pain; we can either run from it or embrace the growth that it brings.
As I go throughout my day, I see face after face pass me. Each face is like a mask hiding pain and tragedy. I meet people every week that are recovering from pain so horrendous that many of us could not even imagine. Some have been abused by those that should have loved them. Some are going through divorce. Some are grieving lost loved ones. Some have watched their loved ones descend into the darkness of sinful places like alcoholism or drug use. I have felt pain in my life but even my greatest pain does not come close to some.
The only consolation that we have for the pain in our lives is that it can help us grow. It can help us develop completeness and maturity. It is not easy. In fact, it is very painful.
Consider it a great joy, my brothers, whenever you experience various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. But endurance must do its complete work, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking nothing.
James 1:2-4
All growth in life involves pain of some sort. Whether it is physical conditioning, spiritual growth, character growth or career growth, gain must be accompanied by pain. You must be willing to endure the pain associated or you have grown all you are going to grow.
Someone once told me that there are only two things that come from the past: pleasant memories and lessons learned. At first I thought this a very simplistic approach to pain. Were we to dismiss the pain that others cause us simply as a lesson to be learned? Was pain something that God used to teach us something? Not necessarily. In God’s ideal environment, there is no pain. God created man in the Garden of Eden and man was without pain. When God restores all things in the end and we are with God, there will be no pain. Pain was never God’s idea for His children.
I came to realize that most pain was and is the result of sin. Sometimes it is our own sin that leads to painful consequences like divorce or alcoholism. But sometimes it is other people’s sin that hurt the innocent. Children are abused. The innocent are robbed. Good people are murdered or raped. Families are hit by drunk drivers. All is the result of sin. Should not this bring us all to the point where we hate sin?
So often I see pain from our past crippling us. It cripples us, our relationship with God, our marriages, our families, our careers. Pain from our past that is not dealt with gives Satan a foothold to tear down everything that we are trying to build. For years, my relationship with God would grow only so deep. I kept running into this wall where no matter what I tried I could not emotionally connect with God. What I realized was that I could not relate to God as my heavenly Father because of unresolved pain in my life concerning my relationship with my own real father. My parents got divorced when I was really young and I grew up with almost no emotional connection with my father. Before I could gain the relationship with God that He desired me to have (and that I wanted), I had to open up my heart and deal with the emotional pain that I kept locked away. Thank God I did. I now enjoy a better, closer relationship with both God and my dad.
How many people struggle in their relationship with God because of abuse from a father figure? How many struggle with relating to God because they never had a close emotional connection with a parent? How many people struggle with trust in a marriage because of the betrayal of trust in their past? Pain is real and it hurts to deal with.
God promises us that even through our trials, through our pain, there can be gain. He can use our pain to bring us closer to Him and closer to the enduring character that He wants us to have. We cannot run from pain, we can only learn from it. I have learned a great deal from pain. Divorce, sexual abuse, alcoholism, death…in some form or another, either through my own experience or those that I love, I have felt the pain of it all. My heart is broken on a regular basis by pain through my work in helping others. I see those that come through it on the other side. It is not easy for people to deal with their pain, but unless they do, there will be nothing to gain and we will continue to be victims of sin.
Remember the words of Paul:
We rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.
Romans 5:2-5 (NIV)
Are you willing to endure the pain required for personal growth or do you tend to run from it? God does not promise us a life free from pain. Pain is a fact of life. God does promise us that there is hope and that hope will not disappoint us. You cannot gain the hope without persevering through the pain.
(Jesus) went out and made His way as usual to the Mount of Olives, and the disciples followed Him. When He reached the place, He told them, "Pray that you may not enter into temptation." Then He withdrew from them about a stone’s throw, knelt down, and began to pray, "Father, if You are willing, take this cup away from Me — nevertheless, not My will, but Yours, be done."
Then an angel from heaven appeared to Him, strengthening Him. Being in anguish, He prayed more fervently, and His sweat became like drops of blood falling to the ground. When He got up from prayer and came to the disciples, He found them sleeping, exhausted from their grief. "Why are you sleeping?" He asked them. "Get up and pray, so that you won’t enter into temptation." Luke 22:39-46
God did not take away the pain of His one and only son. It was only by fighting through the pain and dealing with it that Jesus was able to gain the hope of the resurrection and eternal life for all those that would follow him. He set
the example for how to deal with life’s pain and overcome. What example did Jesus set? Fervent, anguish-filled prayer. Is this our first response to pain?
Practical Application:
Relationship with God (What pain in your life has hindered your relationship with God? Is there anything that keeps you from trusting Him completely? How will you deal with this pain?)
Marriage (What from your past is affecting your relationship with your spouse? Is there anything that keeps you from trusting him/her completely? How will you deal with this pain?)
Past (Are there any horrible events (abuse, etc…) from your past that you know you must deal with because it is affecting you negatively? How will you deal with this pain?)
The House that Richard Built Page 3
