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Mission: Mindset Week 7 - Excellence
Welcome back to Mission: Mindset! This week, we are striving for excellence...
Recap from last week: The “S” in M.I.N.D.S.E.T. stands for Suffer. A Mission Mindset understands the true meaning of passion. It embraces suffering, without complaint, with strength, perseverance, and endurance because the mission is worth it.
Recently, I was reading a speech that 27-year-old Martin Luther King Jr. gave at a church in Montgomery, Alabama titled “Facing the Challenge of a New Age.”
I was intrigued by the three major challenges he addressed (which would have been in 1956). The first, was learning to live together as one unified world. The second, was understanding that sacrificial love -- the love that God has shown us -- should be at the center of our lives. Which it should be. And the third, was the challenge of achieving excellence in all we do. This one really stood out to me. I love what he wrote,
“We must set out to do a good job...and do it so well that nobody could do it better. Whatever your life's work is, do it well. Even if it does not fall in the category of one of the so-called big professions, do it well...If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, like Shakespeare wrote poetry, like Beethoven composed music; sweep streets so well that all the host of Heaven and earth will have to pause and say, ‘Here lived a great street sweeper, who swept his job well.’”
Well said!
But this is hardly a new idea. Roughly 1,900 years before MLK wrote this, Paul penned something similar in his letter to the church in Colossae. He instructed them, “Whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus” (Colossians 3:17).
And then six verses later he reiterated his point by saying, “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters” (3:23).
See, there’s something innate about wanting to be excellent. It’s a part of who we are. I’m not sure if we can ever achieve it (since it’s a relative standard), but I do believe we can pursue it. We can strive for it.
The ‘E’ in M.I.N.D.S.E.T. stands for Excellence.
One of the biggest lies I hear coaches and parents tell their kids and athletes is that they can be ‘the best.’ I never want to tell anybody that. Why? Because not everybody can be ‘the best’.
There can only be one ‘best’. But you can be your best. A Mission Mindset is about doing your best in whatever you do for the glory of God. That’s excellence. It’s deciding to go above and beyond the status quo. It’s fighting the voices in your head that say, “Just do enough to get by.”
Excellence is not a one and done type thing. You may think, “Oh, once I complete this project with excellence, then I’ll go easy on the next one.” No. Striving for excellence is an all-the-time type thing. It’s an every-task type thing. It’s for an audience-of-1 type thing. You don’t strive for excellence for anyone else. Just for you and God. Working hard with joy, knowing that your effort will not be wasted.
Part of having a Mission Mindset is pushing yourself to be the best you can be – in every moment. The funny thing about excellence is that it’s a constant moving target. The very nature of the concept is a bar that keeps on being raised. And it should. As we grow and get better through trial, through success, through maturity – our excellence standard changes. We never fully get there. But our aim shouldn’t change.
Let’s be excellent in all we do. I promise you, when you do this, others will take notice.
Go create a life that counts,
Timmy
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Dig Deeper: Think through areas of your life (school, work, marriage, parenting, athletics, friendships, etc.) that you’re pursuing to be excellent in. What areas do feel strong in? What areas do you feel you’re not doing your best in? What changes can you make in your pursuit of excellence?
Sneak peak @ next week: T – To the End
