February 5: Unlocking Our Ambitions

Affirmation: I am not less for making mistakes. I am more because I am learning.

~~~~~~~

Ponder and Personalize: Continue to memorize these verses. Make it your prayer. This prayer focuses on who God is “…the Maker of Heaven and Earth.” Look around at the creation around you: mountains, lakes, rivers, plains, sun, moon… See Gods fingerprints in it all. Now look at yourself. See His fingerprints all over you and your life, too.

Make this your daily prayer. 

”I lift up my eyes to the mountains— where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth. He will not let your foot slip— he who watches over you will not slumber; indeed, he who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. The Lord watches over you— the Lord is your shade at your right hand; the sun will not harm you by day, nor the moon by night. The Lord will keep you from all harm— he will watch over your life; the Lord will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore.“

‭‭Psalms‬ ‭121‬:‭1‬-‭8‬ ‭NIV‬‬

~~~~~~~

Catching Whimsy by Bob Goff

                       February 5

Unlocking Our Ambitions 

Let your eyes look straight ahead; fix your gaze directly before you. Proverbs 4:25.

I wanted to learn how to pick a lock. I’m not sure why really. Perhaps it was all the time I have spent at San Quentin prison where I have taught classes for many years. So I purchased a transparent lock on Amazon, found a bobby pin, and started carefully pushing up on each of the pins, just like in the movies. And it worked; eventually, the lock sprung open. Then I decided to make it a little more challenging and put the lock underneath the table, so I couldn’t see its inner mechanisms as they moved. Opening a lock this way takes a lock picker’s touch.

Often times, we need a lock picker’s touch when it comes to getting moving on our ambitions. With every new year come new ambitions. The trick is figuring out how to take an ambition you’ve been batting around and act on it. I get it. There can always be more planning and tweaking, but at some point, we need to decide it is ready enough. Otherwise, what should be a launchpad for your imagination will become begin to look like a parking lot for your ideas. If your ambitions are stuck behind bars, perhaps what you need to do is hone your lock picker’s touch and move forward, even when you can’t see how everything will work. Ask yourself, What is keeping me from rolling my idea out right now?
Sure, it’s understandable to hit some snags and say, “I’m out.” Maybe you were looking for validation you didn’t receive. Perhaps someone you trusted let you down or you harbor a confirmation bias against success that you haven’t understood. I get it. But stop giving other people and your own latent biases that kind of control over you and your beautiful ambitions. If what you are looking for is applause, join the circus, but if you are looking for meaning and purpose, lift your ambitions up to Jesus and get after them. You are not going to get it right all the time, or even most of the time, but keep at it. Remember, you are developing a lock picker’s touch.

Write down four or five ambitions you’ve been thinking about, and drill down into them. Don’t just say, “I want to be happy.” Ask yourself, what does “happy” look like to me? Does that mean winning $1 million? Does it mean learning to sail? Does it mean reading a book?