You cannot effectively run a marathon on the training and preparation it takes to run just 6 miles

You cannot effectively run a marathon on the training and preparation it takes to run just 6 miles.

Skillful Living Series – Message #8

The message today is Qualifying Yourself.

Many of us find it difficult to live skillfully because we have not prepared ourselves to do that. We marry before we prepare ourselves to be great spouses. We have children before we prepare ourselves to be good parents. We actually believe it is encouragement to tell others they can have or do anything they put their minds to. Please don’t be offended with me but that is not encouragement, it is foolishness.

We have become a people with an unhealthy sense of entitlement. We feel like we don’t have to work for or earn many of the things we want. We may want respect, but we don’t want to be expected to act in respectful ways. We may want love but we don’t believe we have to be loving. We want position and status, but we do not believe we must work for either. The entitled do not work to earn; they work at being given.

We cannot learn to live skillfully when we have not prepared ourselves to recognize and to stop the unskilled behaviors we have. We do not like the idea that we must be or do something to qualify ourselves to have what we want or need. But qualifying ourselves is exactly what we need most. Skillful people never stop working to qualify themselves for the roles they play.

We get our feelings hurt when anyone to tell us or even to think that we are not qualified to be or to do the things we want. Living unskilled successful lives is what we believe everyone else does. We don’t want to accept that we may not be ready, we may be too young, or we may not be strong enough to do the things we want. All we need is for you to stop believing what we can’t do, so we can do what we want to do.

Well, having the qualifications to be successful matters. Immature and unprepared people usually do immature and unprepared things. We have many examples of this in the bible. On several occasions, we had young men made kings over the Israel at a very young age. Kings Joash and Josiah were 7 and 8 years old respectively when they were made kings.

Were they prepared to be successful kings? I don’t know. God does. He had a hand in making these two boys kings. So, God was there to support and prepare and qualify them to be kings. Because of God’s leading, these two kings had more success than failures in their times. But they are the exceptions.

There were many other very young kings at that time. And more of them failed during their times because they were not qualified to be kings and they did nothing to prepare themselves to be skillful beyond being selected kings. We are not much different in our thinking and in our ways today.

Preparation is the actions we take to skillfully handle what we cannot yet do or be. Still, we want the world to give us what we have not prepared to earn. Qualification is what we do with ourselves to be what training and experience cannot make us to be.

2 Timothy 2:15 tells us this about preparation and qualification. “Be diligent to present yourself approved to God; a worker who does not need to be ashamed rightly dividing the word of truth.” Paul is telling Timothy, though you are a minister, study the Word so that you prove to God and to others that you are qualified for the things you will be called to be and to do.

That is advice we should all take. If we do not prepare to be successful, it is not likely we will enjoy much success at all. A skillful person is a person who doesn’t try to make great things happen from mediocre efforts. People who are skillful in the roles they play spend their lives preparing and qualifying themselves over and over again. They never stop this.

Here are a few things skillful people do that indicate to others they are qualified for the roles they are asked to play.

When they are the axe, they sharpen themselves before they put themselves to the tree. Sharpen yourself before you bruise the trees that are the lives of others.
When they are the pencil, they sharpen themselves before they put pencil to paper. A dull pencil will write but a sharpened pencil will write better. Be better.
When they must do anything, they learn to do successful things. They do not try to be successful at all things, they simply learn to do what is successful all the time.
When they take on a role of any sort, they learn to be productive. They don’t just do jobs; they use jobs to demonstrate to others how to be productive.
When they are called to be something like a spouse or a parent, they learn what it takes to do that well. They become great at being, so they perform great in doing.

A college degree will not make you qualified for any role or any position. Remember that. Qualifying yourself is not the same as the qualifications you have. Qualifying yourself allows you to do more with the qualifications you obtain. Qualifying yourself means you are willing to spend a lifetime doing whatever it takes to be skillfully great at whatever you are called to be.

Skills and talents are never enough to make you skillful at life. But learning to prepare yourself and to qualify yourself to be successful at life will help you do amazing things with the basic skills you have.

Live a Delivered Life. Love you.