Fearlessly Courageous
Desk of Dennis Piller
12/28/2021
Measure to Learn, Not Judge
4 days left. What will you do with the 96 hours that are left?
For me, at this time of year, I like to make two lists.
One is a list of the people I’m grateful to have in my life…
I want to give thanks for them, and to them and pray for them
and bless them. This includes my family, friends,
and even readers like some of you I don’t know really well!
Without your words of encouragement and attentive ears, I wouldn’t be able to do what I love, which is to help you carve out a few minutes each day to navigate a better Christian life in the midst of this chaotic world.
Thank you. Thank you… and may God continue to bless you.
The other list consists of things I want to accomplish in the new year.
At the top of that list is helping you learn how to assess the year past and look forward to making the necessary changes going into the new year to make it different, exciting, and God-centered.
This might seem impossible given all the uncertainty in the world but consider this. Measure to learn…Not to Judge. Goals can often be daunting, and intimidating as it presents another opportunity to pour on more pressure and opportunities to fail and be judged by others and ourselves. I agree change is hard, it pulls us out of our comfort zone. But when properly administrated even at 10% improvement over each of the next five years, means we have radically changed to improve our quality of life and our quality of loving and giving. It is an opportunity to shape yourself and your life into something you want beyond the dictates of your job or society.
One of the rules is to come up with the ending before you come up with the middle or the beginning. It doesn’t seem right that we should be talking about what we should do without deciding on the definition of what we want to accomplish or become. When we invite in the Holy Spirit to these thoughts and aspirations there is no telling what great things He will accomplish.
When we begin to look at the results the most important part is what you have learned not whether you have succeeded or failed. There is something so much more than the statistics. But we say how discouraging it is to set goals and fail them or fall short. It is discouraging only if you permit conversations to focus solely on success and failure versus what you have learned.
We should always ask ourselves these three questions.
What did you learn?
What actions have you taken on the basis of what you have learned?
What results have occurred from those actions?
Identifying what you’ve learned, shows you’re paying attention. Naming the changes shows you intend to improve and illustrates that you have made progress, despite falling short of the original goal, and shows you are acting on the right learning. When we do review our numbers insist that we include the narrative of what we’ve learned.
Fruitfulness is vastly different from success. Goals help fruitfulness, but fruitfulness does not require the attainment of all our goals. Fruitfulness is not about personal or corporate glory but the advancement of God’s reign and his glory.
Col. 1: 9-10 “For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives, 10 so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God”,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pI2sYS3ov0w&list=RDMM&index=2 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pI2sYS3ov0w&list=RDMM&index=2)
Tremble Lauren Daigle
