I’m no Ferarri, but even if I were…

From the beginning, God has always been able to do things in and with my life.  Either by his design or by his desire, though, the magnitude of those things has always correlated very closely with my willingness to change myself to be more like who he wants me to be.  And not surprisingly, those changes become harder and harder to make as they cut closer and closer to the very foundation of who I am.

What is surprising to me, though, is how unwilling I can be to make those changes.  Not that I outright refuse to do what he wants me to, but rather I am one of the world’s great rationalizers — finding “good” reasons to do something just a little differently than he wants me to do it.

It’s surprising to me because I have for years acknowledged that the success that I have had was not based on my performance at all — so much so that I took the name of my consulting company from Ephesians 3:20:

Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think

However, it’s not surprising to me because I have had a very difficult time translating that from something I know to be true intellectually to something I know to be true deep in my soul — moving it from head knowledge to heart knowledge.  I can tell by the way I act that — while it is definitely becoming more of a truth to me every day — it’s still largely something I think rather than something I believe, and there’s a huge difference between the two.

The picture at the top of this post is a Ferrari Scaglietti 612. I have it on my desktop to try to remind me constantly that my ability to accomplish things that have an eternal value has very little to do with me.

Top Gear host Jeremy Clarkson called it one of the most astonishing cars made the year he tested it, but as amazing as it is, it won’t even start without gas in it.  Even the Bugatti Veyron, the world’s fastest street-legal car, won’t do much for you without fuel.

To think that I can accomplish the things that I want to accomplish without the one who makes it happen is as inane as the guy who buys a Veyron thinking that the 6 MPG in city driving is a non-issue because gas is really optional anyway.