Hi guys, I trust you had a great week while journeying with the Lord.

This is my attempt at part 3 of this series, “What is your Strategy for Spiritual Success?”. For those who want to follow the series chronologically you can view the links below:

  1. What is Your Strategy for Spiritual Success–Part 1
  2. What is Your Strategy for Spiritual Success–Part 2

After reading part one and two, I trust that you began putting pen to paper and you have your documented strategy and even began executing it. Hooray for you, excellent job! Both God and I are excited and glad 😊. Now let’s continue and jump straight in by providing more tips in bullet point form.  

ADOPT THE KISS METHOD

I would like to introduce you to a concept called KISS. KISS is an acronym which stands for “Keep, Improve, Start, Stop”. It can apply to business and what better business to use it for than the business of the Lord.

Let’s say I am the manager of a department, I can use KISS in the following way as it relates to evaluating my department to develop and seeking growth:

  1. KEEP–examine your department and see what works well. It is about celebrating success and highlighting what is working for you. It is about giving yourself a pat on the back.
  2. IMPROVE–here is where you scan your environment to see where improvements can be made. Some areas might go ok, but improvements can be made. Therefore, the intent is to identify those areas and what specifically should the improvement be.
  3. START – this is where you need to begin a totally new initiative, idea, process, attitude, or behaviour. This is simply something new you need to bring to the table that has not been done before. For example, writing your plan for spiritual success.
  4.  STOP–now here is where you have to stop something that is not working or not adding value. Maybe the level of effort does not produce the equivalent reward or benefit. Or maybe it is something wrong that is being done that just needs to stop.

Of course, this same concept can be documented and applied to our personal and spiritual lives. How about trying it?

Out of the four acronym elements, I want to zone in on the fourth (STOP). When developing our Spiritual Strategy, we must pay particular attention to what we need to stop. The Apostle Paul stated he died daily. Meaning, every day he was dying to self and the things that do not profit.

In the same way, we as believers must take a hard look at what we need to STOP doing no matter how hard it may seem. We have to stop spending hours on the internet and on social media, reduce the amount of TV viewing time, stop having certain relationships/friendships that dishonour God, and the list can go on. Just as much as we are going to document a strategy, we need to identify the things that we need to disconnect from and stop.

Put another way, we have to list down our obstacles and hinderances. If you do not seriously consider them, then how are you going to address them? Let nothing be an obstacle! Also, sometimes things such as past failings and errors can stop us from wanting to move forward. Do not let past failings prevent you from possessing your future  purpose!

WE ONLY MAKE TIME FOR WHAT WE LOVE

Recently, I was speaking to my cousin who was telling me about a friend of hers who wants to build a better relationship with the Lord, but with a new-born baby, a job and family to take care of, it all seemed daunting. While I fully understand the challenges of modern-day life, I had to say to my cousin, “We only make time for what we love”. Do not get me wrong, we make time for other things as well, even though we do not love them. But in the strictest of sense, when we love something it is always easier for us to do.

If you love exercising, then no matter how tired or busy you are, you make time for it. If you love playing music, then time and space will be made for music and it will be played all the time. If you love your girlfriend/boyfriend, then no matter how tired you are, you will still call or visit them. This is just how it is with us. In like manner, if we say we LOVE the Lord, then it should become easy and automatic for us to do the things that relate to Him. Now, if we are not doing this, what does that say?

If we truly love the Lord as much as we claim we do, then so many things will become easier and more natural. So, writing and documenting a strategy is all good, but if we are not changing our hearts to a true love relationship with God, then we can have the best strategy on paper and that is all it will ever be, the best strategy on paper.  

Do everything in love, for love will make it easy.

1 Corinthians 16:14 (NIV)–“Do everything in love”.

This can be summed up in a nice quote from Austin Kleon where he states, “Discipline without Desire is Difficult”. Desire makes the discipline easier. Your love and desire for God will make executing your strategy much easier.

If you currently feel that the passion and desire to truly have a love relationship with the Heavenly Father is not present at the moment, then simply use this opportunity to stop now and pray, asking God to help you love Him with your whole heart, mind and soul. It is this love that would propel you to into action to execute your strategy and spend that quality time with the Lord and the things that pertain to Him.

As the expression goes, “There is a difference between the people that see you in their free time. As opposed to people who free their time to see you”. Lets free our time to expel our energies with the things of the Lord.

REVIEW & RECOVER IMMEDIATELY

I have heard people say many times that they had a hard day and just want to reach home to relax and sleep it off. Their intention being, tomorrow they will start anew and face the challenges which toppled them the day before. While this sounds good and might have worked sometimes, I want us to know that this approach is not biblical. For starters, we do not know what will happen tomorrow (Proverbs 27:1, James 4:13-15) nor what it will  bring. We might not live to see tomorrow and it is only because of His mercies that we are not consumed (Lamentations 3:22-23).

Therefore, we need to do all that we must today and not wait for tomorrow. I say this in relation to executing your strategy and going about our daily lives. If things are not going according to plan in the moment, then learn to recover quickly and not put it off until tomorrow. God even told us to not let the sun go down on our wrath. In short, repair and fix what needs to fix immediately.

An excellent technique for recovering in the moment is suggested by Gretchen Rubin.

“Instead of feeling that you’ve blown the day and thinking, “I’ll get back on track tomorrow,” try thinking of each day as a set of four quarters: morning, midday, afternoon, evening. If you blow one quarter, you get back on track for the next quarter.”

Your strategic plan should be monitored monthly or quarterly. The plan should be reviewed to ensure you are keeping on track and if not, take immediate steps to recover. These review and recovery cycles should not only take place at 30-day intervals but also daily by splitting your day in quarters.

As Philip Dormer Stanhope said, “Take care of the minutes and the hours will take care of themselves.”

CLOSING

I would like to end here for now and I hope and pray that something that was said in this blog blesses your heart. In 1 Corinthians 3:10, God instructs that each one of us should build with care. The intent of this blog series was to try and do just that, allow each of us to examine ourselves in terms of how careful we are building our Godly relationship.

I think it is fitting to close by highlighting a post that someone left after reading part 1 of this series.  The poster Leaderspush said,

“This piece had me introspecting from start to finish. If you are a believer and you read this blog and do nothing differently, it speaks volumes as to your spiritual condition. I strongly suggest that you don’t wait to read Part 2, without putting into action the “course correcting” measures contained in Part 1. We must remember that the devil walks about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he would devour. It is easier to destroy a person who has no plan for an attack that is eminent, than one who has a defence strategy in place or is battle ready. So, let us strategize to materialize all God has in heaven’s storehouse for us.”

In my final words I say to you, go hard and execute, “for one never procedures excellence by accident”.

PS: Dane Miller was last seen putting his strategic plan for spiritual living into action.

Your Brother in the Lord,

Dane Miller | Author

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