Focus on Your Strengths #1

1 Corinthians 15:10 But by the grace of God I am what I am … (NKJV).

You’ve heard it before. “You can be anything you want to be, if you just try hard enough”. The intent is good, but the message isn’t. It is a myth. It just isn’t true. It is not possible. And most of us — if we’re honest — will testify to the fact that it doesn’t work.

Sadly though, so many people believe it and spend a lifetime trying to be something or someone they are not. Do we spend a lifetime trying to strengthen our weaknesses, or, enhancing and making even better our strengths?

Let’s be clear on one important thing in this Brief Word. I am NOT referring to character weaknesses. Of course we are to and can, with God’s grace and help, overcome our character weaknesses.

Paul knew who he was, he knew his strengths, his gifts given to him by God’s grace. Do we?

This is such an important subject I am devoting two Brief Words to it.

A brilliant story, or fable, originally written by George Reavis in 1940 illustrates the issue.

“Once upon a time, the animals decided that they should do something meaningful to meet the problems of the new world, so they organised a school. They adopted an activity curriculum of running, climbing, swimming and flying. To make it easier to administer, all of the animals took all of the subjects.

“The duck was excellent at swimming. In fact, he was better than his instructor. However, he made only passing marks in flying and was very poor at running. Since he was so slow in running, he had to drop his swimming class and do extra running. This caused his webbed feet to become badly worn, meaning that he dropped to an average mark in swimming.

“Fortunately, ‘average’ was acceptable, therefore nobody worried about it — except the duck.

“The rabbit started at the top of the class in running, but developed a nervous twitch in his leg muscles because he had so much makeup work to do in swimming.

“The squirrel was excellent in climbing, but he encountered constant frustration in flying class because his teacher insisted that he start from the ground up instead of from the treetop down. He developed cramps from overexertion, so he ended up with a C in climbing and a D in running.

“The eagle was a real problem student and was severely disciplined for being a non-conformist. In climbing class, he beat all of the others to the top, but insisted on using his own way of getting there!”

After struggling and trying extra hard to master what they just couldn’t do — they could no longer excel in the things they could before school!

The principle here is that we each have our own strengths and we need to be working hard to maximise them, not handicap our potential by becoming good at something that isn’t natural for us.

God has gifted us in certain areas. He’s given us talents to use, that are different from others. We do well in life and in our ministry and calling to discover those gifts and talents, and strengthen our strengths, that way we’ll be more effective. Invest time to improve the areas that are already relatively strong, and find ways to compensate for the gaps. That could be leveraging technology, partnering with someone, delegating or even reassessing our role.

Then, rather than struggling to be what we never were going to be, we become better at the things we’ve been designed to be and do.

Rick joiner says,

“The more undistracted devotion we can give to our strongest talents the more effective we will be”. — Leadership, Management, and the five key essentials for success.

So, a far more truthful thought is this: “You CANNOT be anything you want to be — but you CAN be a lot more of who you already are”.

The thing is, the Christian life is all about that very thing! Discovering more and more of who we are, and the way God has wired us up. In that discovery is immense freedom. It happens in the growth of the relationship we have with God. As we get to know more and more of God, we get to know more and more of who He has created us to be. We find amazing joy and fulfillment in the strengths He’s given us.

It’s true. “… you CAN be a lot more of who you already are”.