I had the good fortune to attend a local Sports Club meeting the other day where LaTasha Colander-Clark was the keynote speaker. She was a 2000 Olympian from our area. She won a gold medal in the 4 X 200 Relay and still holds the world record in the event. Verrrrrry impressive! and… a very impressive young woman.
It was admirable that she did not hide the fact that she is a born-again Christian from the audience when she first stood to talk. Making a “faith statement” lent credence to the powerful talk she subsequently presented over the next 15 minutes. This is a summary of the notes I took while she spoke. The theme is something that all of us should adopt. Her title was: “Have a Vision.”
A line from the movie Sister Act 2 has always remained a mantra for me. The character that Whoopie Goldberg played stated in front of her students one day that… “If you want to be somebody. If you want to go somewhere. You better wake up and pay attention!” Truth!!!
Ms. Colander-Clark was basically stating the same thing. If we want to be successful, we need to have a picture in our mind of where we want to go and what we want to do. Without that picture; i.e., vision, we are destined to fail. Why?
We are likely to fail because somewhere along the road to success there are going to be some speed bumps. There might even be a wreck. Do those obstacles slow us down? OR… do they cause us to give up; tuck our tail between our legs and… slink off to the Land of Quitters. That’s the place where people make all kinds of excuses for WHY they failed. The main reason they failed is because they lacked a vision. With that vision, you have a driving force that keeps you going. Without a vision, you’ll never “see” yourself succeeding. When the times get tough, the weak get going… right out the door!
One of my “life verses” from the Bible is Phil. 3:14. It paraphrases, “PRESS ON toward the goal!” Press… is short for pressure! Pressure will come to bear but I choose to remain strong and hopeful. I know that “God’s got this” and He will take care of me. For a Christian, surrender is just another word for VICTORY. We surrender means trusting the things/people/situations in our life to God. “I can’t do this on my own, Lord. I give (surrender) it to YOU!”
It took 10 years before my “vision” of what I wanted our football program to look like finally came to fruition. I had to “press on” through many trials and sorrows. But, I knew that God had given me a vision and He did NOT want me to give up.
Create a Vision Statement and live it out! Through thick and thin, God is with us!
