DEFINING MOMENTS DROVE ME HERE

God give me the strength and I'll give you the effort

I believe that in everyone's lifetime we all must face phenomenal forks in the proverbial road of life. Hesitation and indecisiveness attempt to fog the journey ahead but we have the God given gift of decision this provides us clarity for our journey. We take for granted our internal power to alter the direction of our lives immensely with something as simple as a decision. From this one choice we can detour from lives of mediocrity and transfer to living lives of meaningful greatness. I define these tender turns as defining moments. God has graced you with a diversity of gifts but it is often through difficulty and pain that they are eventually transformed from embryonic and flimsy to totally developed.

Most people in this contemporary way of living are avoiders. They avoid conflict, they avoid problems, they avoid responsibility, they avoid accountability but as hard as you might try it is almost impossible for you to avoid pain in your life. It arrives warranted or unwarranted it comes with the package. If you want to use it or not that is your prerogative but you must deal with your pain and/or the pain in the lives of others that might affect you indirectly.

John Maxwell, while quoting C.S. Lewis, exclaimed that "Every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part that chooses, into something a little different than what it was before. And taking your life as whole, with all your innumerable choices, you are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature." (Maxwell 6, 2005)

Take a moment and think of a time in your life when you were precautious but hopeful concerning the next move for your life. These moments can consist of moments of embarrassment; moments of excruciating pain or moments of unexpected loss of a love one.

This moment could have been displayed in HD (High Definition) broadcasting your life through a devastating divorce, it highly defined you, a stinging separation; or a strange let down in life that left you shattered. These moments are painful yet pregnant with poignant possibility. We have the chance to cultivate our circumstances that shapes the pattern of our success. The defining moments of life bring into focus opulent objectives; that initially appeared to be blurry. Those opaque (dark) first impressions give way to some clarion canvases of a portrait of progressive purpose when you can push even in pain. Pain is coming. Les Brown says that there is too much pain for you to duck. While quoting another author he stated "we have to deal with unavoidable suffering".

In the defining moments of difficulty life is asking the silent question "How bad do you want it?" The casual pursuer will not claim this; the hardly committed get hung out to dry; the duckers and dodgers do not deserve its diamond like luster of accomplishment and fulfillment. There must be a knowing that overcomes any chaos that may arise that if no one else approves of it, if no one thinks you are qualified, if others think that it is a waste of resources, time, and effort, that you must continue to cultivate that knowing and not allow it to be suffocated by others who are trying to cause a self-imposed suicide to that strong feeling inside of you that sees more than what is current.

How will you answer Life?

Demonstratively, Eric Thomas informs us our attention needs to be given to daily improvement. Don't you hear ET (as he refers to himself) saying "I'm trying to tell you that you have to have an obsession with improvement?" So often people want to hit home runs in game time situations or refuse to show up to the stadium but that isn't the reality of life the batting cage is the greatest alley to advancement. Life is a tattle tell. The way that you prepare will tell on you; if you are cheating the process then life will tell on you. If you have tried to spend more time constructing short cuts then consistently crafting more ideas for impending opportunities your life will tell on you. If you have lacked enthusiasm in the preparation it will show up in the presentation. John Maxwell says that God chooses what we go through. We choose how we go through it. (Maxwell 2005 13) We have ownership in where we end up so we have to be intentional about our next moves that we are going to endorse.

Greatness is built daily through uncompromising discipline. One motivational speaker once said that if you go to bed with anything left in you then you ought to go to sleep in utter disgust. You have to ask yourself each day will you shroud yourself with discipline or will you accept a pass from your friends. In my elementary school we could not depart from the classroom without the wooden pass that was made by Mrs. Woods (go figure). During my early education while in the 3rd grade, some of my friends would go to the lavatory before me and they would hand off the pass to me to leave the classroom. There are some friends that are giving you a pass to get out of the classroom of pain but it is necessary for progress. They tell you everyone needs a break; don't be so hard on yourself; you have to have sense with it or maybe this isn't the way God wants you to go, and I believe this isn't your season yet.

If you take the pass then others will eventually pass you because there is someone whom the ticket of excuses is never punched they grind until they get what is sought after.

Remember, pain and hurt is apart of the defining moments! No one can rescue you from the debt of hard-work. There are not just dues you have to pay but there are also deposits that are necessary for withdrawal at the proper time because you've laid aside the time to invest in your life and your future which will yield lasting result and not just temporal teasers.

What is your real tolerance for pain? Do you even know? This question must be asked because there are some that don't know because they have not yet been tested to see just what they can take. I had one of many testing opportunities when working for American Red Cross. I had several accounts but one in particular was the "Big Three" account in Detroit; Fiat Chrysler, Ford and General Motors. During that time I was taken on a tour and there was one stage on the assembly line that I found to be amazing and that was the water testing for each car.

The Plant had an area that had power hose that would spray the car at very high speeds and spray huge volumes of water at the same time. They put a car inside and activated the water system and that room would soon have water flying everywhere. The purpose of this test was to make sure that the water did not make its way...