IH82LSE

Yet another license plate as I drive through life. I have wrote one other post a while back on another license plate that is interesting, you can read it, it is HVNCNW8. This license plate happened to be on a C300 Sport Sedan Mercedes Benz, but a few years older, new they are priced at a low $33,775, that does includes transportation and handling charges but not taxes, title registration or tags, smile.

Let's talk a little more about this. I am competitive, sometimes too competitive. I am the type that will go too far, run too fast, throw too hard, etc. This typically leaves me VERY exhausted and a few times in this past year out of breathe and wheezing, nurse Kathy told me I have sports asthma after I was out of commission for about 45 minutes this past summer at Youth Camp. Nothing is worse than having to walk off the court with your head down knowing you can't finish. Lack of strength, lack of breath, lack of motivation, simply the lack of something... this holds so many athletes back from reaching their potential, their best. How true is this for the Christian that has a lack of motivation, breath, strength, or anything else that holds him back from reaching his world, changing his world, impacting his world; the way 12 ordinary guys did 2,000 years ago. Creatives stop their creativity because lack of vision, lack of dreams, lack of sketching on their whiteboards of life. Pastors stop leading because lack of strength, lack of vision, lack of support, lack of encouragement. We lose because we lack.

There are so many excuses/reasons for this... LACK.

Proverbs 5:23 NIV - He will die for lack of discipline, led astray by his own great folly.

This past week I had given our interns a quote to dissect and we spent about an hour chewing on this and breaking it up. The quote is:

"Structure demands discipline, without it is chaos."

After we discussed it I had them write a one-page reflection journal to turn in this past Thursday. They got it! Each of the 6 seemed to really be able to grapple it and unserstand the depth and see how it can help them in college/ministry/causes/etc.

This is one simple straightforward quote, not many words but enough words that can put so much finishing in our life. Living with this simple concept apparent in our life, in all our decisions, can cause us to complete so many things in life and keep us from loosing out. As Proverbs says, we will die because of our lack of discipline, which will eventually lead us to major mistakes. Chaos breeds mistakes:folly! In order to make mistakes infertile, to destroy the ability to birth life of mistakes in our life, we must begin to bring discipline to the forefront of our minds and our decision making process. When we lack that ability we fail; we lose out on being great. We settle for being good and sell out for being great. Scott Gibbons in his book, Carry-On, said...

"Good things become bad things when they keep us from the great things."

The New Testament is scattered with passages of Paul referring to our life like a race and talking about not losing. He says things like keep pressing on, look forward, run with a pace, keep your eye on the prize, don't give up, run hard. These are not the words of the average, the bleak, the almosts, these are the words of athletes and the determined.

Do you have the heart of a champion, the heart of a lion, the heart of one who wants nothing out of life other than becoming the greatest that God can enable you to become? Quit lacking. I said it before in a post called Twitterranked and Self-Branding:

"Anyone doing anything better than you is providing you the resources, strategies, and ideas for you to be better than you already are." - Me

Allow me to be a little direct. Quit giving opportunity to lack, you have no excuses. Piggyback off the wins/experiences/failures of others, learn what they did(n't) do, spend time with them and ask them questions. Be intentional about your discipline. As you begin to find ways in your life to bring discipline into it you will see the chaos of loss begin to become impotent.

Have a passion that says IH82LSE!