I came across a quote by nineteenth century steel giant Andrew Carnegie a couple of years back and what he said has not left me, “At root, compensating for disadvantage is more useful developmentally than capitalizing on advantage”.Few months ago, I learnt this from Joseph, Jephthah and David in WHAT TO DO WHEN YOUR PAST THREATENS YOUR FUTURE; Here are excerpts: “Joseph tested his ability to interpret dreams with fellow prisoners; Jephthah built an army, learnt how to lead a troop and developed military skills using worthless men. David also trained himself with 400 men comprising of distressed, broke and discontented men.” I have been emulating these men and I won’t stop. NOTHING IS WORTH NOTHING (HOW TO ATTRACT HONOR) First thing to take note of in this message is that there is nothing in this world that is useless. Everything and everybody that God made is useful. The word ‘useless’ is relative based on your perception of that thing. What you consider as useless may be very useful to the person who can perceive usefulness in that thing and knows how to deploy it. Therefore the use you deploy something to depends on your perception of the service that thing can render. Let me illustrate this point with this example: I’m sure nobody reading this prays for traffic jam. You can’t be leaving your house in the morning and your prayer is “God lead me into a good traffic jam”. But what do you think is the prayer of the guy who makes his living selling in traffic? Your guess is as good as mine. NOTHING IS USELESS; IT ALL DEPENDS ON YOUR PERCEPTION. To convey the weight and the importance of the things you see around you, Jesus in some instances used different things to perform miracles; He used spittle to heal; He used fish to produce money; God used the rod of Moses to wrought miracles and deliver Israel. Anything and anybody can provide value for you if you learn to attach value to what you see around. If you want to go far in life, you must learn to attach value to the things and the people around you. The bridge between where you are now and where you will be tomorrow is constituted by those you find around you and those opportunities you tend to ignore. Don’t trivialize the challenges or problems you face in life. Life is full of challenges but those challenges could be your testimony. Don’t joke with issues and problems that come your way, they just might be open doors or miracles waiting for you. Something very interesting happened in 1 Kings 22: 19 -22; God needed a project to be carried out on earth and guess you stepped forward to do the job? A lying spirit. Therefore by implication, among the host of heaven was a lying spirit. God is a God of purpose so anything you find in existence has its use. There are things God cannot do Himself so He needs the devil to do the dirty jobs. So to God, even the devil is not useless, the day he outlives his usefulness, God will take him out completely and that day is coming. In 2 Timothy 2:20-21, the Bible acknowledged that there are vessels of honor and vessels of honor. But it didn’t stop there; it made it clear that even though some vessels are for ignoble use, you can make yourself a vessel of honor. It goes to say that no matter your present circumstances in life, you can redesign and reinvent yourself to be fit for noble use. Being a person of honor or dishonor lies in your hands; it depends on you. From the day of your birth God deposited in you everything you need to become great, what you become afterwards is up to you to decide. The circumstances of your birth, the neighborhood you grew up in can make you a person of dishonor but you can decide to become a person of honor. HOW TO ATTRACT HONOR The secret to becoming a person of honor is something you have heard before but this constant emphasis only goes to show how critical it is to your success in life. The level of honor that is upon a man is dependent on the level of service he renders. The level of service you can render is dependent on your level of development or training. For emphasis sake, let’s summarize it thus: Your level of training determines the level of service you can render; the level of service you can render determines the level of honor you carry; the level of honor you carry determines your value and how much you are paid. If you want to attract honor, use every single day to work on the project ‘you’. There’s no project as important as you. Use your time to develop yourself because you can never rise beyond your level of your personal development. You could be born to a poor family, grew up in the wrong neighborhood or received the wrong education but it doesn’t matter if you start today to plot the graph of the future you want to live. Begin to look for ways to enhance yourself through association i.e. keeping company with people you can learn from (see THE LAW OF DIFFUSION for more on this). While still in school, get profession certifications in your area of interest. The responsibility to develop what God has put in you is yours not God’s. As you grow in life, the difference between you and others is what you have done with the deposits of divinity inside you. Set a target for yourself and put yourself under pressure to cultivate the resources within you. You can have anything you want in life if you can help others get what they want in life. If you can help as many people as possible to achieve their dreams, yours will not go unachieved. You don’t need to go far to become a success in life, the people around you today constitute all the opportunities you need. Never call yourself or your circumstances useless, God has packaged us in different instances to bring out the best in us. A word for unmarried men: Don’t go about looking for a wife, if you locate your passion in life and face it, your wife will show up. In fact, you passion will close the door to every other woman not meant for you. Only your wife will embrace your passion with you. Actions I need to take immediately: • I will ask God to open my eyes to see the usefulness in seemingly useless things or circumstances. • I will stick to my personal development goals and make sure I do whatever it takes to actualize them. • I must not let a day pass without doing something to develop myself no matter how simple it is. • I must continue to live a life of service Changes I must make: • I must change the perception I have about some things because nothing is useless, it all depends on how I choose to see it. Thank you so much Sir. Chuma Eziashi
Posted on: Mon, 30 Sep 2013 19:05:43 +0000
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