Thought Line on Success

I know the thoughts i think toward you ... thoughts of good and not of evil. - God

I often pride myself with the following tagline: “I am a writer.” By this I mean I write or something like that). There were many times I make this statement and pray my audience don’t get bold enough to ask what I have written. A friend once told me, “Leinge, a writer writes.” Well that went a long way in sinking into my mind that he intended to say, “Leinge, you are not a writer!”

I have learned that public opinion is very important. It is just not as important as personal opinion. A songwriter said of Joseph, “Until his (Joseph’s) opinion of his future became a reality, God tested him.” Joseph’s family’s opinion was not near as important as his own and the opinion that God would have of him after he tests him. Successes listen to understand public opinion of them but they do not meditate on them until they become crippled by external opinions that have become internalized.

It is fun to say you are something. We hear, “I am an Engineer,” “I am a Pastor,” “I am great person (as though that were a goal),” daily, but the problem really comes to bear when we try to actually be “Engineers,” or “Pastors,” or “Great persons”. This is where the cliché, “Talk is cheap,” applies. Luke (M.D.) wrote a letter to his friend Theophilus, and he said, “I once wrote to you about the things Jesus began to do and to teach.” Notably, doing came before teaching because it is important, indeed more potent, to proclaim what you do.

Young folks should learn to begin small. My pastor, Chris Olamor, once said, “God never starts small things in a big way but rather starts big things in a small way.” How true! Zachariah (a prophet) once noted, “Do not look down on small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin, to see the plume line in [your] hand.” So you want to be an actor, or a singer or a movie director, or a writer, or a doctor? Begin! Start! Do something – anything – that etches you closer to your goal! It is far better to do it wrongly than not do it at all.

Finally when you get yourself to start something, do not stop. Keep at it. You will get tired – possibly as tired as I get posting daily in my blog – but do not stop. It is in stopping for a rest that you fail.