Taking responsibility and risks (1)

One missionary evangelist wrote, “There are times and seasons in God’s will. And we can easily become frustrated if we don’t understand that just as there are times and seasons in nature, there are also times and seasons in the process of fulfilling God’s will for our lives. Years ago a group of senior missionaries came together to discuss life principles they had discovered…their purpose was to share this wealth of experience with succeeding generations…They had all encountered common stages of transition in their ministries, and collectively they identified a five-step cyclical process God had taken them through.” Bottom line: timing is all-important! When executives at Decca Records told the Beatles, “Groups with guitars are on the way out,” they signed up with EMI—and the rest is history! Don’t miss the lesson here. Each of us has been placed on earth as a caretaker of God’s business. And that’s true whether you are a judge or a janitor. You’ve been given an allotment of life and charged with the responsibility of taking care of it, investing it, increasing it, and presenting it back to God. Simply saying, “I was afraid of failing” or “I was worried about being criticized” or “I didn’t think I was good enough” won’t work. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Excuses always replace progress.” God will accept your trials and errors, but He won’t accept your excuses for not having tried. So pray, accept responsibility, and step out in faith. You may fail many times on your way to success, but if you keep trying and trusting God, you will eventually succeed.