If your dream is a book, you make it obedient with a keyboard.
If your dream is playing professional sport, you make it obedient at the gym.
If your dream is making music, you make it obedient one note at a time.
Your dreams will never exceed your imagination. You can’t achieve what you don’t believe. So idea generation is important. But idea execution is where the rubber meets the road.
Via Chase The Lion - Mark Batterson
Scripture doesn’t explain what Benaiah was doing or where he was going when he crossed paths with the lion. We don’t know the time of day or his frame of mind. But Scripture does reveal his reaction, and it was a gutsy one.
Put yourself in Benaiah’s snowshoes.
Your vision is obscured by falling snow and frozen breath. Out of the corner of your eye you detect movement. Pupils dilate. Muscles flex. Adrenaline rushes. It’s a prowling lion stalking its prey, you.
In the wild, man vs. lion scripts the same way every time. Man runs, lion chases, King of the Beasts eats Manwich for lunch. But Benaiah flips the script. That’s what courage does! I don’t know if it was the look in his eye or the spear in his hand, but the lion turns tail and Benaiah gives chase.
He tracks paw prints in the freshly fallen snow, finally coming to the place where the ground has given way beneath the lion’s five-hundred-pound frame. Yellow eyes glare back from out of the pit. Benaiah takes a leap, disappearing into the darkness. A deafening roar echoes off the walls of the cavernous pit, followed by a bloodcurdling battle cry.
Then silence, dead silence.
What has happened? Who has won?
At last a human form reaches up and climbs out of the pit. Drops of blood color the snow crimson. Claw marks crisscross Benaiah’s spear arm.
Against all odds, the valiant warrior from Kabzeel has earned an epic victory.
In every dream journey, there comes a moment when you have to quit living as if the purpose of life is to arrive safely at death. You have to go after a dream that is destined to fail without divine intervention.
You have to go big or go home.
You have to take the road less traveled or settle for status quo.
You have to bite the bullet or turn your back on your dreams.
If you find yourself in a pit with a lion on a snowy day, you’ve got a decision to make. A decision that will determine your destiny. You can run away from what you are afraid of, but you’ll be running the rest of your life. Or you can face your fears, taking a flying leap of faith, and chase the lion!
What is your “lion”? What are you going to do with it?
Having recently accomplished one of the greatest discoveries in my lifetime, I find myself being re-submerged into the last 45 years of successes and failures alike. I float through a cloud of memories stored deep within my mind, encountering a 7 year old boy standing barefoot and staring deep into his reflection on the shallow green waters of a small creek, just off of the Pecos, Texas River. Lost in the puzzled gaze of his reflection, a tear sends a ripple through the calm waters. Struggling even a murmur, I hear the boys soft voice as he whispers a question into the Creek, “Who Am I?”
Fading back into the cloud of memories, I then find myself overlooking the same boy standing high above a natural spring fed Creek on the Red Bluff Cliffs of Texas, just south of Carlsbad New Mexico. The boy, now a young teenager, with long dark brown hair blowing in the wind, stood on the cliff as the summer sun baked a golden brown tint across his face and shoulders. He looks down to brace himself before he dives into the clear waters below him. When the boy emerged from his plunge he came to a pause. Standing in wonder, a familiar reflection is being cast onto the surface of the Creek. Only three words in mind, he questions “Who Am I?”
Immediately I am pulled upward into a thunderous storm cloud over Elk City, Oklahoma where the same boy had just been thrown through the glass door of a house on 5th street. A large older man angrily stood over the boy with a balled fist and flared nostrils. Filled with adrenalin, the boy climbed to his feet and ran into the stormy night. He found refuge in the doorway of a small shelter he had built out of tree branches on a previous fishing trip to Elk Lake. Although the boy often found peace in this Creek-side shelter, I don’t recall any source of peace on this lonely night. As the boy stood to his feet and walked into the Creek, he looked up to the pouring sky and screamed the same three words: “WHO AM I.”
Today, some forty years later, I stand here in the calming waters of a creek leading to a pond just outside of my home in Norman, Oklahoma. Although I still see the eyes of the young boy from my memories deep within, the reflection in the water seems different. With the wisdom of grey in my beard and the age of crow’s feet around my eyes I stare into my reflection cast upon the surface of the Creek. Looking down with the very same question I asked so many times before, but on this day knowing the answer, I ask: “Who Am I?”
I am the boy by the “Creek”.
Not the same creek waters that I often turned to for peace, comfort and exploration as a boy, but through the gifts of advanced DNA testing technology I can finally say after 46 years that I am the boy by the Creek Indian named Bill Glisson, born 1929 and died in 1996.
Although I would have loved the opportunity to have met the man behind the name, if given the chance, I’m not sure I would have changed a single day of my life. No, Bill may not have been the father by my side in the flesh, but I do think that it was him that was looking back at me from the reflection of the Creek and began pushing me at a very young age to be the man I have become today. A husband, a father, a Glisson, a Creek Nation Descendant.
Bill Glisson was born in Sneads Florida by his mother Robbie Mae and father Bill (Davis) Glisson, a descendant of the of CubaHatchi Lineage Clan and Creek Nation Chief, Peter Anderson of the 1832 Census.
He had three brothers, James, Charles and Edgar with one sister, Fannie Lee. He also had two other children, a daughter Debra Glisson and a son, Dale Glisson, both still alive today. All that I have spoken to thus far have welcomed me as a part of their family with open arms and I look forward to the day of meeting them all face to face very soon.
If you consider yourself a hard worker, you've probably had a lot of people tell you you're going to be a great success. To be honest, you should also listen to those who will tell you hard work doesn't guarantee success, but lack of hard work certainly guarantees failure.
Whether you're just starting off in your career, or considering making significant changes, remember always to combine hard work with smart work. Get close to people who can add value to your skills and other resources. Never waste mistakes but use them to get better.
Making Wise Decisions
Have you noticed how some people take longer than others to make up their minds? Not because they want to make sure their choices yield the best results, but because of fear of the consequences of a bad choice. It might be fear of criticism, fear of failure, fear of losing money or power.
Author Elizabeth Gilbert wrote, "We live in danger of becoming paralyzed by indecision, terrified that every choice might be the wrong choice."
In my work, I have to make a number of command decisions, as well as a number of consultative and collegial decisions. One of my trusted tools in making them is a clearly defined set of values. I've discovered it's not hard to make decisions when you know what your values are.
Look at your own values and use them consistently until you are hardly conscious of the process. Soon, making value-based decisions will be second nature.
“The Ingredient for Success”
A young entrepreneur approached a corporate leader after a seminar and asked, "I'm not very smart but I'm hardworking. Will I ever succeed?" Without blinking an eye, the expert said, "You will definitely succeed! You have three of the most important traits for success: hardworking, knowing what you don't know, and asking for help."
I must say I agree with that answer. Intelligence seems to be quite over-rated as an ingredient for success. In fact, intelligence can mean trouble for the young, because it can often make one lazy, over-confident and proud. The most successful people in any field are those who ask for help because they know what they do not know. And they work hard.
Keep that in mind the next time you're tempted to doubt if you'll ever make it in a world where everybody seems to value degrees and titles above everything else.