Seize Today by John Mason

Author:John Mason
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Inspirational;Success—Religious aspects—Christianity;Questioning;REL012040;SEL021000
ISBN: 9781493413843
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2017-12-19T05:00:00+00:00

He who laughs, lasts. (Robert Fulghum)

Question 20

Are you choosing your story or someone else’s?

What you see is not always what you get. Nothing is as it appears. So be careful when you compare what you think is going on in another person’s life with what you know is going on in your life.

Nothing is more telling in this regard than the photos we present of ourselves. I’ve always said that a good picture is one that doesn’t really look like you.

Have you noticed people rarely look like their picture? I know I’ve been guilty of this. I left my thirty-something picture on my book cover for nearly twenty years. People who were sent to pick me up at the airport have walked right past me with my book in their hand, looking for the man on the cover!

I guess we all want to use the best picture, no matter when it was taken, because it looks good today. And it looks even better as the years progress.

Several years ago, I met with a friend I have known for over ten years. He said to me, “John, I see all the great things that God has done in your life and how He has caused you to increase in every way. But as I began to look at your life, I became full of doubt as to what God was doing in my life. I saw what He had done in yours, and I began to doubt that God was really working in mine, because I haven’t had the same success.”

I replied, “Well, if it’s true that you feel bad because God has been good to me, then would it be true that you would feel better if I’d had terrible failures and had been doing much worse over the past several years?”

He gave me a quizzical look and responded, “No, that would not be true.”

“Well, if it’s true for one, it’s true for the other,” I said. “Really, it shows how inaccurate your thinking is. What happens in my life has nothing to do with what God is doing in your life.”

You will find that God rarely uses people whose main concern is what others are thinking. I believe that judging others is a major waste of time. Judgment halts progress and always inhibits forward motion.

Some are inclined to measure their achievement by what others have not done. Never determine your success by that. You are either a thermometer or a thermostat. You register either someone else’s temperature or your own. Pat Riley said, “Don’t let other people tell you what you want.” No one can build a personal destiny upon the faith or experience of another person. “Don’t take anybody else’s definition of success as your own,” Jacqueline Briskin advised.

Your faults will never vanish by you calling attention to the faults of others. Many people have the mistaken idea that they can make themselves great by showing how small someone else is. Instead of letting their own light shine, some people spend their time trying to put out the lights of others.

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