Jesus, outliers, and Malcom Gladwell
Happy New Year! Here’s wishing you the best year of life ever in 2010. I pray that your life is exhilarating and rewarding and that you make great progress toward your dreams.
This being New Year’s Day, it’s a good time for taking stock and re-ordering your world. We all need it. Most of us live 90% of our lives out of habit. Given that fact, if you were to re-set your life and you could do absolutely anything, what would you do? Would you become a more radical follower of Jesus?
Malcolm Gladwell says it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become an “Outlier” – someone who is expert in their field. I figure that if Jesus spent three years equipping his disciples for life as followers, that means they racked up about 15,000 hours with him. So Gladwell’s estimate has it about right.
Outliers spend time actually learning about and doing the stuff that they hope to master. If you want to succeed as a discipler or as a disciple, you may want to take a hard look at the time you’re willing to invest. It’s not an excuse, but if you’ve not been given the chance to focus on Jesus and how he lived his life for an extended period of time, you’re probably going to have a hard time making a go of the Christian life in this secular society of ours.
Take a look at your life – you’ve only got one shot at it. I try to do that regularly. I want to live life on purpose. I want to live sold out. I don’t want my past to define the scope of my possibilities in the future. And that is my prayer for you too. As good as you are, you probably have much more potential than you are realizing. You probably could change the lives of thousands if you really understood all that God has given you. Your life is an amazing gift, but you’ve got to go for the gusto. You can’t wait for life to just happen – you have to press into God and his dream for you.
So my recommendation is to not slouch through life, defaulting to how you lived life in 2009. You were made for more and probably need help to get there – someone to mentor you and help you wake up to the kingdom of God. If you suspect that that this is true, that there is more, then why not make that a priority in this next year?
Begin with a decision to start following Jesus with a renewed focus.
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We only live when we love without conditions.
Thanks Seth.
Great words, Seth! I suspect we were all made for so much more than what we are experiencing currently… may 2010 be the year we learn how to give our all to follow Him. Jesus said, “If you love me, you’ll obey me” (John 14:15)
So using this prayer from Richard Rohr, I pray with him: “We now hand over to you the blessed year, 2009, with all that it gave us and all that it took from us, knowing that both are necessary, just like our breath. We trust you in both the givings and the takings, the inhalings and the exhalings. May every breath of 2010 be a breath of the Holy Spirit, joyfully received and joyfully returned, beginning with this one right now. Amen.”
thank you
I blogged some on this at the man hikes page: http://www.manhikes.myadventures.org
Making life long resolutions…with an eternal perspective.
Dear Daddy Seth,
Thank you for this wonderful message.
May the abundantly life of our Lord Jesus Christ bless you today
with all spiritual blessings as the manifestation of His resurrected body and Life!
Emmanuel Sadiq.
Amen.
Thank you Seth! Many blessings to each during this wonderful year! Let us all let God rock our world!
Thank you!