How Do I Achieve Excellence?

They were completely amazed and said again and again, "Everything [Jesus] does is wonderful. He even makes the deaf to hear and gives speech to those who cannot speak." (Mark 7:37)


Imagine this: you are at a training session at your job that could potentially result in a promotion, and that boss stands before you holding six ping-pong balls. He tosses the first and you snagged from the air. Before you can blink he makes the next toss...all five remaining balls have been gently lofted in the air at once. Panicked, you immediately try to gather all five and in the process you drop the one you have already caught. Afterward, you meet the newly promoted assistant manager, who had also attended the training session. Wondering how she won the job so quickly you ask her about it. "I was the only one who reached out for just one ball when all five or tossed," she says.

I hope you want to be regarded as living with excellence in this world where most people settle for average. The key to excellence is identify your two ping-pong balls so to speak. That's all you can catch. The areas in which you can excel are endless. You may be a gifted evangelist. Perhaps you have a gift for math are you would like to write. You may love cars, hair design, or dog training. Any of the above can be done to the glory of God's kingdom. Any can be done with the utmost excellence...that is if you're willing to let the other balls drop. 

It is possible to live a life of excellence and today we want to key in on one element of such a life: simplicity. You cannot be good at everything but everything you can be done well. The main thing keeping us from being good at everything we do is that we don't know how to say no!