Joyce Meyer daily sermon for today : The Habit of Excellence

Topic :The Habit of Excellence

So that you may surely learn to sense what is vital, and approve and prize what is excellent and of real
value… Philippians 1:10

It is very easy to be a mediocre person. All you have to do is make no extra effort of any kind and drift through life making
no difference in the world, which will guarantee that you leave no legacy behind when you are gone.

You probably won’t even be noticed or stand out because there are millions of
other people who are also mediocre. But if you will dare to form the habit of being excellent in all that you do, you will be a
bright light in the darkness, and that is exactly what God has called you to be.

God is excellent and we are created in His image; therefore, if we are to reach our full potential in Him we must also choose to be excellent. God has an excellent plan in mind for our lives, but a mediocre, lazy, and compromising person will not live in the fulfillment of an excellent destiny.

We all have a choice to make about how we will live, and I believe God wants to use this book to urge you to make your choice if you haven’t already done so. If you have already made your decision to be excellent, then use this as an opportunity to recommit, and keep pressing on.

Excellence is seen in doing the best you can in every situation, but it is not necessarily perfection. Excellence is
extremely high quality and a virtue to be pursued. Edwin Bliss said, “The pursuit of excellence is gratifying and healthy.

The pursuit of perfection is frustrating, neurotic, and a terrible
waste of time.” It is important that you see the difference between striving for excellence and striving for perfection. If
you don’t, you will be frustrated and feel like a failure every step of the way.

Did you know that most people who have the habit of procrastination are perfectionists? Because they feel
compelled to do a perfect job and fear that they won’t be able to achieve it, they put off the task.

We tend to think that procrastinators are lazy, and maybe some are. But most are
not lazy, they are fearful of falling below others’ expectations.

It is actually a wonderful thing to realize that as human beings with flaws and weaknesses we rarely do all things
perfectly or never make mistakes. That is the reason why God sent His Son as a perfect substitute for us. We should have an excellent attitude and desire in every situation to do the best we can do, and then trust God to do what we cannot do.

I always say, “Do your best and trust God to do the rest!” If you do what you can do, then God will do what you cannot do. Jesus told us to be perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect (Matthew 5:48). When I initially read that verse of
Scripture, I felt pressured because I knew I could not be perfect. But I discovered by reading the Amplified Bible that the word perfect in the original Greek language means to grow into complete maturity of character.

God wants us always to be growing and making progress, but He is never
angry with us because we have not yet arrived.

Even the apostle Paulsaid that although he pressed toward the mark of perfection, he had not yet arrived.
If we compromise it means that we do a little less than we know is right and proper, and to be excellent means to do a
little more than you might have to in order to get by.

It means to go the extra mile. There was a time in society when excellence was fairly normal, but that is not the case today.
Our passion for more, which is greed, has driven us to prefer quantity instead of quality, and that is sad. Stephen R. Covey
said, “Doing more things faster is no substitute for doing the
right things.”

When we had our home built we found out how difficult it is to find companies that have a commitment to excellence.
When an appointment was not kept the excuse was always,
“We are just so busy that we got behind and couldn’t make it to your home.” In other words, they had taken on more than
they could do properly, and in the process they did very little with excellence, including keeping their word.

Making the commitment to being habitually excellent and following through on your commitments will be very rewarding.There is nothing about mediocrity that makes us feel good
inside about ourselves or our choices.