From Ordinary to Extraordinary

 

Complacency kills. As parents, teachers, coaches, employers, or whatever position it is you hold, it is critical that we do not get lulled into accepting being average. Now don't get me wrong, there are some among us that want their child to be the best and they are willing to do whatever it takes to assure that happens. Think lawnmower parents, "Whatever gets in the way of my child's success, at whatever endeavor they are pursuing, I am going to make sure they are successful, whatever it takes!" Yet even in that unhealthy scenario, basically what a "lawnmower" parent is saying is my child can't navigate and negotiate for him/her self so I'm going to intervene since they aren't capable of doing it on their own. In other words, accepting average, but expecting excellent. There's a problem in there, but that may be more for another time. We as a society should expect more of our children, who wants to be ordinary, when you can and should be extraordinary!

I recently took part in a conference where the keynote speaker was Dr. Kevin Fleming, a true advocate for student success, speaking about careers and how we get caught up focusing on the "average" pay for various career fields ranging from a student holding a bachelor’s degree in Business to a plumber working as his own boss. The message was that when we look at those two career paths the main number that is associated with income is the average or median salary for each particular job. The gist of the discussion was that on the average, someone with a four-year Business degree may make more than an average plumber, but who wants to be an average anything? An above average plumber earns considerably more than an average person working in a "business" setting as a manager, department head, etc... That's where we have got to focus our attention in life as we teach, encourage, coach, or support our children. We all need to find where our strengths lie that make us unique then build and grow them in that area. They are not average! 

I started today's message with the statement, complacency kills. Believe me it does. If we sit back and accept being average, then don't expect progress to be achieved at the rate necessary to be successful. Each and every person is unique and special, point blank. That isn't the issue, I believe we all can agree that we are uniquely created. What I'm not as sure about is whether we all understand that in our uniqueness each of us was created to do something amazing and world changing, you just have to find out what that "something" is and then do all you can to become the best at whatever it is that you have the potential to be the best!

Don't force a round peg to fit in a square hole, but do find round holes everywhere you go for that round peg to work itself into and through that hole! Once a child realizes what their true strengths and aptitudes are then pour on the opportunities to learn, experience, and excel in related areas. Turn passions into pathways, and then turn a pathway into a career. Teach them to be lifelong learners and to be resilient to the point of earning the nickname "True Grit". Falling down through the process is completely acceptable, staying on the ground is totally unacceptable. Make them get up with your encouragement, but on their own. Don't sit there and catch them every time just before they hit the ground. Lessons learned, make for future success just as much as winning the race. 

In Colossians 3:17 Paul encourages us, "And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him." Paul said "whatever you do" do your best. Give it your all, don't accept complacency, being average, or being ordinary. If you do all you do with the mindset of I am doing this for my God, then you should not just do an average job doing it! You definitely want to be extraordinary and to do that you can't sit around being ordinary. Give the extra, do a little more than expected, dig in and lock down. It may get tough, but that is when it gets good! Be extraordinary!

Coach Carter

Dadication

 Dadication, I'm not sure if that is a real word, but if not it sure should be. In my dictionary the definition of dadication would be, look up the word dedication and combine it's definition with the word dad and you've got it, dadication. Dedication, committing yourself to something and then sticking to it. So, if we apply the word dad to that you'd end up with something like "a man who commits his life to something, his family, and then sticks to it." In society today, that lack of commitment is taking a toil on our families, to the point that if men overall don't pick up their slack, our children's children will definitely be paying the price for our negligence. 

Before we go any further, I want to make clear that I'm not lessening the role of a mother, but really in way too many homes, the mother is the one providing the bulk of the parenting already. Today's FTM is meant to get men to man up and do what they were placed here on earth to do. It isn't just the men who abandon their families in search of something "better", this also applies to men that are living with their families, but their influence or presence is almost transparent. Gone fishing would be a pretty good way to describe a bunch of dads. Gone fishing, gone hunting, gone golfing, gone playing something or with someone, but the key word is "gone". This term dadication speaks to the idea that once you are a dad you don't get to pick and choose where your focus and attention should go, it goes directly to your family. Remember our definition? Committing to something and then sticking to it. 

When you decided to get married, you committed to love your spouse through thick and thin, sickness and in health, till death do us part. That means you don't get to check out just because you aren't "happy". Get happy, just like you were the day you got married. You loved her enough to say you would commit to her for life, so set self to the side and think about your commitment to make things work and do it. What about your commitment to your children? Men, you don't get to have children and automatically get the right to be called dad. You earn that title through your commitment to your wife and your children, dadication. Show up at the ballgame, be in the front row at the school play, apply correction when they turn the wrong direction, and support your kids when they fall or when they reach the top of the mountain. Be the dad our Heavenly Father showed us how to be. 

God is committed to us, He was, He is, and He always will be. God's commitment is on display to us through the sacrifice He made allowing His only Son, Jesus, to be crucified on Calvary's cross. God's commitment, even when it would take the life of his son, was so strong that he gave us the true definition of the word dadication. It was hard, no it was gut wrenching, to allow Jesus to be tortured, humiliated, and then hung on a cross to die, all so we could have a path to being saved. It would have been easy for God  to have said, "This is asking too much so I'm checking out before it falls on me.", but he didn't do that. Instead, God stayed committed to Jesus and lifted Him from the grave, and God is committed to each of us in just the same way. If God is committed to each of us, then how should we pay him back for His commitment?

Teach your child or children to have a strong work ethic, give them your faith and assure them that they shouldn't be a Sunday only Christian, be at the table for supper, and be there to help your child with homework and projects. Don't place priority on sports, hobbies, or your wants, stick to teaching the lessons that you have learned to your children, and support them with guidance, correction, and yes even discipline. Be the man you signed up to be when you had a child. "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." Proverbs 22:6. The key is that if you are going to train up a child, you have to be there with that child. Don't misplace your responsibilities, and don't even start to think that you don't have responsibilities, dadication. What if God would have said, "Well, they'll be alright without me, I'll check in on them once a month." Bottom line, God created man and He has committed to stick with us whether we choose right or if we steer in the wrong direction. He loves us in spite of our sin and waits on us to turn from our sins and turn towards Him. Dadication. 

My challenge to dads everywhere, you made a commitment to your wife and to your family stick to it! Be the picture in the dictionary beside the word dadication. It is the most important thing you will do in your life, and the investment of the time you commit will pay the best dividends possible!

Coach Carter

Taking the Governor Off

I'm not mechanically inclined, I'll be the first to admit it. I hate it because I would love to be that guy that can come up on a stranded vehicle and upon raising the hood listen to what happens when the vehicle attempts to start, and be able to diagnose the problem and then proceed to fix it. Not me. The extent of my mechanical expertise ends at placing battery cables on a stranded car and boosting their car off of my vehicle's battery. I will say that has come in handy on numerous occasions over the years, but it really just adds to my vision of me under the hood of a car, tinkering with the motor until it ultimately starts. Side note, I am a pretty capable flat tire changer, experience is the ultimate teacher! 

I say all of this as a lead into today's Flat Tire thought. There is a certain vehicular component called a governor. Now, my knowledge of governors has to do with the ladies and gentlemen that lead our states across our great United States of America. But growing up I often heard friends and fathers of friends talking about cranking up or possibly removing the governor off their dirt bike, four-wheeler, or some other type of recreational vehicle. In my mind, I just couldn't get the image of a mechanic trying to remove something that somehow resembled a 50-year-old man in a suit and tie. Like I said I wasn't very mechanically inclined! What I finally pieced together without wanting to look really auto illiterate, was that a governor on a vehicle limits the speed that the engine can attain.  I'm thinking something along the line of a restrictor. (Listen to me sounding all mechanically inclined)

Governors for someone that is just starting to ride motor bikes or some other type of recreational vehicle offer an additional layer of safety. One of the worst things possible for an inexperienced operator is to speeding out of control headed for a tree and not remembering how to slow down or stop! (Personal experience) As the rider improves their skill set and become more comfortable with some additional horsepower, then the governor can be relaxed or even removed if so desired. 

For motorcycles or four wheelers governors are necessary and an important feature for new riders. When it comes to our faith, we shouldn't ever place a governor on what is possible with God. Too often, we fail to believe in His omnipotence and omniscient presence in our lives. In Matthew 19:26 Jesus reminds us that "with man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible". Jesus' statement didn't say some things are possible with God, unless they are too big of a challenge, no what He said was ALL things are possible with God. Healing from a disease or medical condition, ALL things are possible. Overcoming relational challenges, ALL things are possible. Release from drug addiction, financial avalanche, or even a lifetime of abuse or neglect Jesus says that with God ALL things are possible. Us on our own, impossible. 

Don't limit God in your circumstances, scripture is true, if you don't ask for it don't expect to get it (Matthew 7:7). Don't let your lack of faith become a governor that hinders God's power in your life. We ask in faith, we trust in faith, and our faith comforts us knowing that when prayers are answered God has intervened. But know this, that same faith is reinforced when our prayers are not answered in the manner we ask. Faith tells us that God is bigger than anything we can imagine, and the answers to our prayers may be delayed, modified, or completely opposite of what we asked, but faith tells us to trust even in those instances. ALL things are possible with God. Ask Lazarus. Not on his own, but through divine intervention Lazarus walked out of his tomb! Lazarus would tell you just as the Apostle Paul proclaimed "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me" Philippians 4:13. I don't know what tomorrow holds, but I do know who holds tomorrow! Trust and believe. My God is bigger than anything this world can throw my way and He will be there for you just the same! Amen.

Coach Carter

 

Investing in Your Garden

 

Normally we don't associate the word "investment" with planting a garden, but I would suggest to you that the success of any garden, is directly related to the investment you make to assure there is a bountiful harvest at the appropriate time. You prepare the ground, plant the seeds, nurture the garden with water, fertilizer, and constant weeding all so the tender plants that emerge from the soil have the best opportunity to grow and eventually produce their intended fruit. The majority of people no longer plant their own fruit or vegetable gardens, yet with this same principle in mind, we need to be cognate that our investment into the garden of our families or circle of influence is just as relevant and comparable. The time and attention needed to assure your "garden" grows is an investment well worth your efforts.

Think about it for just a moment. What do you suppose would happen if you went to your local farm supply store, bought some starter plants and a variety of seeds, and upon arriving back at your home you just pick a spot to plant the tiny seeds and plants in your backyard? No ground prepping, grass still growing, just dig some holes and drop those seeds in the ground. Tomato plants? Just plop those into a hole, and add some water for good measure. Then just sit back and watch it grow until the time comes to harvest what you planted. How successful do you think that would be? Based on what I know and the memories I have of how my grandparents and parents raised a garden, that plan isn't much of a plan at all. Pretty much destined to fail. That is not how you nurture a garden and it definitely shouldn't be the way we invest our time into the garden of a family.

Even if you’ve never planted a garden, and then tended to a garden as it grows and prospers, it is pretty much self-evident that things aren't just going to grow the way you hope if you don't invest ample time and effort. To assure your garden grows to maturity and produces an abundance of fruit on the vine it takes time, attention, care, and guidance along the way every day. Understand this, the same principle applies for your family and those you influence along the way. 

Looking at the analogy of investing in your garden, my hope is that you would quickly see the similarities into the investment we should be making into our families, as they are the garden of our life here on earth. Ponder for a moment the steps mentioned above that lead to a disastrous vegetable garden. No preparation of the soil assuring the ground is fertile with nutrients available. Planting the seeds among the grass and weeds forcing the seeds to fight for nutrients and space to grow. Then, after the seeds or plants are in the ground being left to fend for themselves with no investment into the nurturing process, all the time expecting the harvest to be bountiful. That sounds ludicrous even if you've never had a garden you should be able to agree that will never work!

Then why do we do this with our children and our marriages? How can we justify being a coach, a teacher, a parent, a spouse, or a servant to our Creator and believe that the aforementioned process will work without investing properly into our garden of life? What do you want your family to look like ten years from now? How do you want your children to behave? What do you hope they are going to be doing on Sunday mornings ten years from now, and what are you investing in that will assure they are doing what you intend them to be doing ten years down the road? Are you nurturing your garden daily with your own example of what you want their lives to look like ten years from now? Just as in our garden analogy, don't expect a bountiful harvest in the lives of those you have been entrusted to nurture if you don't make an investment in their lives now while the opportunity is in hand. 

Seeds need a safe environment to grow, so do children. Seeds need the proper nutrients to be strong and healthy, so do those we are tasked to nurture. Plants such as tomatoes and beans need guidance and support to assure they grow in the right direction, most certainly so do those we love. You get the point, if it is good for a plant you can pretty much guarantee that the same rules will apply for those we love and care about each day. Investing into the lives of those we love and care for means we are not just caring for them today, it is so much more about what their lives will be like ten years from now. Proverbs 22:6 gives us this directive, "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." 

I'll close today by asking you to do one thing for me. Stop what you are doing for a few minutes, close your eyes, and imagine your family or that circle of influence you have in your current position in life. See the young people you have been entrusted? Good, now think about ten years from now. What do you see? Or better yet, what do you want to see? Then ask yourself, "What type of investment am I making to give my garden the best chance to grow and be bountiful? Am I even investing or am I just hoping things will turn out the way I hope they do? That type of plan doesn't work with a vegetable garden and I'm certain it doesn't work with those we love. Work in your garden, the investment of your resources, time, love, and care make a difference!

I planted the seed in your hearts, and Apollos watered it, but it was God who made it grow.
I Corinthians 3:6 

Coach Carter