Do not merely listen to the word and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.

James 1:22, NIV

 

First habit: Be proactive. - Stephen Covey

 

If you haven't read Stephen R. Covey's "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" I would recommend you get a copy and read it. The book is primarily aimed at businessmen but has excellent application for people in all areas of life. The reason for that is it is not only businessmen who benefit from excellence, but everyone - from students to parents, from athletes to hobby enthusiasts, the pursuit of excellence will make you more effective, it will make you a better person in general, and it will lend to a higher degree of enjoyment in any area of life that you find worthwhile to pursue.

 

And excellence will make you a better servant of God!

 

I came across this book over twenty years ago, and was fascinated at its concept that you could acquire habits that would make you more effective in everything that you do. I have to admit that when I got the book, I just flipped to the part that listed these seven habits and found them to be so practical that I wrote them down on a 3x5 index card and started carrying them around. Soon I had committed them to memory, but I wasn't satisfied with just doing that. I wanted to know why these seven habits were so useful in making a person, as Mr. Covey put it, "highly effective".

 

After looking at it for a while I realized that the reason was that each one of the habits that he had come up with were actually ancient principles that were addressed long ago in the Bible. The first, "be proactive" is a truth that is repeated throughout Scripture. It is obvious that one of the requirements that God has for His people is that they have initiative enough to serve Him because they are motivated to do so. That motivation comes from a number of sources, but the primary motivating factor in wanting to serve God and Christ in the first place is that we love them. And this love is not just some kind of a surface emotion either. As God had Moses point out in the Book of Deuteronomy and as Jesus emphasized some 1,400 years later, that love is to be with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength! Jesus said that this was the greatest of all the commandments.

 

Given this highest form of love, how can a person not be motivated to do something about that love?

 

One of the saddest things in life is when a person is lukewarm and lackluster. They may intellectually know what they ought to be doing, but they don't feel like doing it. Because of this lack of desire, people live subpar lives. They don't excel at anything because they simply are not motivated to put the amount of effort into their pursuits to become excellent. These are the "settlers" in life. They settle for good enough on the job, good enough in the classroom, and good enough in their marriages. They might in fact do just enough to keep from getting fired or from failing or from having their spouse leave them, but they really have nothing about them that impresses others because they simply will not expend the effort it takes to excel at anything. 

 

They simply fail to see the point!

 

Not so with the highly effective person! They just seem to savor everything that they do. As a result, they pour all of their heart and soul into the task at hand. These are not the types of self-deceivers who merely acknowledge that they ought to be doing something. These are the people who jump into the work with gusto! As a result, they not only make themselves better, but they do the same for everyone around them. If you have ever engaged in a sport with someone who refuses to give anything less than their best effort, then you know that such effort has a way of spreading throughout the entire team. If you have ever worked with someone who has a high enthusiasm for the work, then you have witnessed for yourself just how contagious that enthusiasm can be. And if you have ever been married to someone who puts extra effort into treating you like a king, then you know that it makes you have a strong desire to treat them like a queen.

 

And, in the most important area of our lives - our service to God - we will find that if we love Him with every fiber of our being, that we will offer a service that is not just worthwhile to the Master, but one that is also highly enjoyable to ourselves. We will find if we do more than simply run our eyes over the words when we are reading the Bible that we will begin to hang on every word. We will find ourselves doing what the inspired writer of Proverbs instructed when he recommended that we search for God's truths in the same way that we might search for hidden treasure. 

 

This type of enthusiasm will spread to our families, to the church, and to literally everyone we come in contact with. It will keep us from being dull and ineffective. It will make others see the importance of God's way to our lives and it will make them wonder why. Further, when they see the effect that God's way of living has on our lives - from the joy we have to the confidence we exude, they will want this for their own life.

 

The fact is that when we become proactive, when we stop just listening to the Word without doing anything about it, it is then that life will become what God intended for it to be. This is why being proactive is so effective! It's not because Stephen Covey somehow managed to come across this secret in the 1980's. It is because God has desired such an attitude from His beloved creation since the beginning of time. And such an attitude of great devotion to God will indeed make us excellent. But, if we are ever going to achieve this type of service, we will have to at some point begin. Today would be a good time to do just that. wouldn't you agree?