Made to Count!

W Publishing Group

Contents

Foreword....................................................................................xiIntroduction................................................................................xiii1 Made to Count!............................................................................12 Designed for a Destiny....................................................................113 God's Calling Is for Everyone, Not Just for Ministry Professionals........................214 Finding God's Unique Plan Outside the Box.................................................395 "The Power Lies Within You" and Other Self-Help Lies......................................576 "It's All About My Strengths," Another Self-Help Lie......................................677 A Life-Changing Mission Bigger Than You...................................................858 On Mission at Home........................................................................1019 Your Home as a Nerve Center for Ministry..................................................11310 On Mission at Work.......................................................................12111 Understanding How God Wired You..........................................................14112 How God Reveals Your Mission.............................................................14913 A Fleece, a Closed Door, a Sense of Peace- Does God Guide Like That?.....................16114 God at the Crossroads....................................................................16915 In Step with God.........................................................................18516 Follow God's Plan and Experience His Pleasure............................................20117 Follow God's Plan and Change Your World..................................................20918 The List.................................................................................231Appendix A..................................................................................237Appendix B..................................................................................243Notes.......................................................................................247

Chapter One

Starting books is hard. So we sought some sage advice. Authors and editors, publishers and readers-they all told us basically the same thing: Start with something that draws the reader's attention, something unpredictable, something that makes a big stink.

"Are you sure?"

"Yep, we're sure."

Okay, you asked for it:

Andy was building a new home. As often happens, his construction crew was having an awful time with their subcontractors, suppliers, and schedule. Nothing was going right, the boss was frustrated, and the men were grouchy. The weather was hot and humid, smothering the men like a wet blanket. To add to the misery, the construction site's port-a-john reeked with odors that made the crew gag. The company that was charged with keeping it serviced hadn't been heard from for days.

Suddenly, blaring music pounded the air as a truck rolled down the street toward the site. The music seemed to fill the block with its rock beat, and everybody's attention shifted to the vehicle that slid to a stop in front of the partially completed house. They noticed that it wasn't the regular maintenance man who got out of the truck. Instead, it was a big, burly guy, covered with tattoos, flashing a huge smile, and singing at the top of his lungs. He greeted the entire crew with a contagious grin, grabbed his materials and headed-enthusiastically!-into the odiferous disaster. Just before stepping in, he yelled across the yard that the former man had quit, and he would be taking over. Then he disappeared into the four-by-six-foot cubicle. Rumblings began inside the port-a-john and grew louder and louder, as though he were attacking every inch of the relief station. It almost sounded like he was wrestling with a tiger in there.

The construction crew suspended work temporarily, their gazes drawn to the spectacle of the port-a-john. A few snickered. They knew that the only thing worse than the smell of a port-a-john that hadn't been maintained well was the smell of cleaning that same port-a-john on a hot and humid day. But this guy seemed to stay inside forever. Every man on the site wondered how he could stand it and thought of how quickly they would have raced in and out just to escape the stink.

After a while the crew noticed something radically different. An inviting smell drifted across the yard. Then Mr. Good-natured finally emerged with his smile still intact. "Hey," he said, "the guy taking care of this for you wasn't doing a very good job. From here on out, I guarantee this will be the best it can possibly be, because I'm here to serve you." With that, he hopped in his truck, grinned, waved, turned on the blaring music once again and began to back out of the driveway.

Dumbfounded, one man yelled to the driver, "How can you do that? More important, why did you do that?"

"Oh, it's simple," replied Mr. Good-natured. "You see, I work for the Lord. And I do every task as though I were doing it for Him. See you next week!" And with a smile, and singing at the top of his voice, he drove away leaving the awestruck crew with their mouths on the ground.

* * *

Making life count is not so much about what you do as how you do it. And why. And, most important, for whom you do it.

This book will outline some principles designed to make your life count. The temptation for those of us who want to make a difference is to jump right into the what or at least the how. But we started this book with our friend from the cleaning crew for one very critical reason. We can know the eight principles of this book by heart, backwards and forwards and in three different languages, but if we don't have the right motivation for doing what we do, our lives will never make an eternal impact.

The ironic thing about the way God works is this: If you yearn for an important position, a major platform, a lot of fame, or massive power, He won't use you. We didn't really start with the port-a-john story because it made a "big stink"; we started with it because the cleaning guy illustrates a foundational issue about motivation. To make life count, we must first die to ourselves and be willing to do whatever God asks us to do. In the words of Paul, we must be "crucified with Christ." For some that means doing for the glory of Christ a job that might make others turn up their noses. For others, it might mean following God's call into an arena of life they feel totally unequipped to handle.

Death to self. It sounds so hard. And if we're not careful, it brings about images of God as a big ogre in the sky, consigning each of us to a mission in life that will make us most miserable. But that's not the God of the Bible nor the God who caused our friend to have so much enthusiasm when he cleaned port-a-johns. When we trust God's plans even more than our own, we discover a...