Be All You Can Be: A Challenge to Stretch Your God-Given Potential (24 page)

Don’t make a commitment today to win your world for Jesus. That’s idealistic and unreasonable. Make a commitment to win one person to Jesus. With the confidence you gain from winning that one, you can win two more.

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego started out on the right foot by refusing to eat the king’s food. If you can’t stand up and say no to the king’s food, you can’t stand up and say no to the king’s idol. You don’t all of a sudden get that kind of courage; it starts with the little things. You realize that when you said no to the king’s food, God blessed you, and you prospered. If God helped you on the food issue, he can help you on the idol issue. And step by step, we begin to build a foundation underneath us that gives us strong character for strong commitment.

This principle also works in reverse. Herein lies the danger of sinning: When you sin once, it’s easier to sin twice. That’s why we ought to have a healthy fear of temptation and a healthy fear of sin. Sin breaks down the walls of resistance. It causes our focus to become blurred, and all of a sudden we’re doing things we shouldn’t be doing. If you didn’t make any strong commitments yesterday, it will catch up with you today.

Settle the issue of commitment before it arise
s. Don’t get caught up in the emotion of the moment, because then your commitment will waver. Make your decision before the issue arises. The battle is won before the battle is begun. That’s the secret behind the three Hebrews’ success. They already knew what they were going to do. They didn’t stand there and listen to the music and look at each other, wondering what to do. They had already settled the issue, so they didn’t have to think about it.

Trust in God
. In Daniel 3:28, after the Hebrews had been rescued and delivered, Nebuchadnezzar made an interesting statement. “Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego, who has sent His angel and delivered His servants who put their trust in Him.” Great commitments are built on trust in God.

Be single-minded
. In Daniel 3:28, Nebuchadnezzar made another comment about these three guys. Not only did they trust in God, but he said they “yielded up their bodies so as not to serve or worship any god except their own God.” Single-mindedness.

In his book
Choices
, Frederic Flach writes, “Most people can look back over the years and identify a time and place at which their lives changed significantly. Whether by accident or design, these are the moments when, because of a readiness within us, we are forced to seriously reappraise ourselves and the conditions under which we live to make certain choices that will affect the rest of our lives.” We are never too old for that to happen.

There are some of you reading this book today, and you’re thinking,
My Goodness, I’ve already been in this rut for twenty-five years!
Make some choices, make a commitment, take a risk—that’s where the fruit it. It’s never too late. Go for it! Don’t allow circumstances or age or whatever to limit you. Only you can limit yourself.

In 1970, I read a book by Oswald Sanders,
Spiritual Leadership
. I became convinced after reading that book that the only people who are going to affect their world for God are those who become leaders and take a stand on principles that perhaps the rest of the world doesn’t stand on. I can remember writing in the back of that book that regardless of the size of my congregation and regardless of the opinions of others—and I even wrote that regardless of what my father says, and my father is the greatest influence and the most important person in my life—there are some things I’m going to stand on and believe in. I’m still living off of that decision.

I was reading recently about John Wesley, a favorite hero of mine. He was writing a letter of encouragement to a fellow named George, who was leaving England to evangelize the new frontier. He wrote, “Dear George, the time has come for you to embark for America. I let you loose, George, on that great continent of America. Publish your message in the open face of the sun and do all the good that you can.” I love Wesley’s liberating phrase, “I let you loose.”

Commitment will free you and let you loose to do great things for God.