Work Hard...Even without a Crowd (10,000 Hours)
Channel: Cross Allegiance
Date: 2012-07-06

An encouragement for you to work with all your might at whatever the Lord brings, regardless of whether you have a crowd watching you or not.  Focus on an audience of One! ...

Speaker: S. Franklin
Special thanks to B. Puckett at Black Hole Sound studios for sound work, http://www.blackholesound.com/
Prayer?  Show Booking?  Info?  Support?  www.CrossAllegiance.org

Translation used: The Holy Bible, New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. All rights reserved.

Subtitle Text:
Some say that sports bring out the best in people.  Many thousands of people go to games to see their favorite athletes perform against what they deem as adversity.  Fans try to cheer their teams to victory.  Who will fold?  Who will prevail?  Regardless of who wins and loses, or how loud the fans cheer, it's important for each athlete to prepare well beforehand in order to achieve excellence.  Success is never maximized without hard work.

Many use a Malcolm Gladwell book to say that 10,000 hours of practice at something makes you a world-class phenom at it, though that's slightly misused -- in actuality, Gladwell studied many ultra-successful people in their trades, and the common denominator was that they put countless hours into honing their skills, regardless of whether they were on a big stage or not.

Just as sports requires its athletes to prepare well before a game, we need to be disciplined and work hard in preparation of what the Lord has given us to do.  If you're a Christian and yet never take time to study the Bible, how can you expect to give a good answer to those who want to know what it says?  An approved workman is not ashamed!  So work hard.  Work SO hard.  Work even when it doesn't make sense to you. ...But what about when you mess up?

Practice never makes perfect -- we're human!  When we mess up, we need to show good character.  We don't need to storm around hurting ourselves, making a fool of ourselves, raging about and showing a lack of self-control, or even ruining things that are important for the future.  Instead, we need to honor God by our actions.

Many times when we flop, we need to go back to the drawing board and work hard again.  Ecclesiastes 9:10 says, "Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might" -- my prayer for you is that you can enjoy blessing from the hard work you put in, and that you have real focus in developing what God has given you.

...and you know what, that clip was also not supposed to go that way.  Maybe I need to work some more.  But work hard, and God bless you!

Quoted Scripture taken from both the KJV and the NKJV, Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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