Joyce Meyer ‘daily sermon for today : Do Your Best for God

Topic :Do Your Best for God

Excellence is to do a common thing in an uncommon way.
Booker T. Washington

Henry Kissinger, in his book The White House Years, tells of a Harvard professor who had given an assignment and now
was collecting the papers. He handed them back the next day and at the bottom of one was written, “Is this the best you can
do?” The student thought no and redid the paper.

It was handed in again and received the same comment. This went on ten times, till finally the student said, “Yes, this is the best I can do.” The professor replied, “Fine, now I’ll read it.” We know in our hearts if we are truly doing the best we can do.

If we are not, then we should strive to do so.
It would seem obvious that there is no way we can love God with our heart, soul, mind, and strength (Mark 12:30) without seeking to do our very best to glorify God.

The pursuit of excellence is a mark of maturity if we seek it with the right motive. Our motive should be to obey and glorify God and to represent Him well on earth.

But a person can seek to be excellent merely out of his own obsession for significance, to be noticed and praised by others, or for worldly promotion.

Let’s do all that we do to glorify God, and He will reward us by giving us the other things that we desire.
When I began my own pursuit of excellence it was because God had challenged me to do so. In the beginning of
my ministry, God spoke three things to my heart and impressed upon me that if I would do those things for Him, I would be
successful.

The first was to keep the strife out of my life, the second was to do all that I did with excellence, and the third was to be a person of integrity, being honest in all that I did. At that time the extent of my ministry was teaching a Bible study
in my home, but I took the responsibility seriously and studied very hard each week for my lesson. I was also a wife and the
mother of three children at that time. I was not able to drop everything and head off to Bible school or seminary, so God taught me in my daily life.

He taught me to always pick up after myself and never leave messes for someone else out of laziness.

He taught me to put things back where I got them. God impressed on me to
always put my grocery cart back where it belonged at the grocery store after unloading my groceries into the car. When
I was shopping for clothing and knocked an item off the hanger onto the floor, He taught me that to be excellent, I had to pick
it up and put it back on the hanger and not leave it for someone else to do.

There were hundreds of seemingly little things like this that God dealt with me about during those years.
It was hard in the beginning, and one of the biggest excuses I used was that other people were not doing it, so why should I?

God reminded me that I had asked Him to do great things in my life and then asked me if I really wanted them or not. He was in essence saying, “We reap what we sow.”

Don’t ever be satisfied to be like everyone else, but instead choose to be the best you that you can be.
In some of these things I wrestled with my emotions for as much as two years before becoming fully obedient to God and
developing the habit of being excellent.

I learned that if we sow excellence, we will reap the most excellent reward. What
do you want out of life? Are you willing to sow the right kind of seed to get it? Ask yourself some hard questions and give
truthful answers.

Do you do what you do with excellence?
How often do you compromise and take the easy way out?
Do you drift along in life, or are you pressing toward the best?
Do you keep your commitments?

Do you always tell the truth?

Do you leave messes for other people to clean up?

If you accidentally get an item at the store that you didn’t

pay for, do you return it?
Do you put your grocery cart back in the space designated after you load your groceries into your car?
If you have put an item into your grocery cart and decide later that you really don’t need it, do you put it back where you got it or just leave it anywhere to get rid of it?

I could keep adding to the list, but I think you get the point
I am trying to make. We can never get to where we want to be unless we truthfully admit where we are right now. It is facing truth that makes us free.