We talked about excellence a couple of weeks ago. Add to your faith, add to all your knowledge about Jesus. You’ve got to start building from there now. The first thing on that, the second gear, or the second—and we’ll call it destiny gears—the second destiny gear is excellence. I’ve got to be excellent. Excellence takes practice. I have to work hard to be excellent. I need to study, and I must give it all that I have. Let me just step back for a second right now and let’s ask the question: Am I excellent? Am I excellent? We talked about this. I’m not going to rehash what I preached a couple of weeks ago, but excellence is an identity. If it’s not excellent, it is not me. The third thing, and we’re talking about destiny gears, faith is gear one. We won’t even talk about that; it is what it is. Excellence is gear two, and gear three is wisdom and strategy. Where am I getting this from? Let’s go back to the text real quick. It says, «Add, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue,» which is excellence, «and then to virtue, knowledge.» I was studying—I’ve been really diving into Proverbs. Does anybody love Proverbs? I think that every believer who wants to learn how to live needs to read Proverbs. Proverbs uses the words wisdom and knowledge, but as I was studying it, I looked up one of those words, and it literally had the idea of strategy in it. So, not only do I have this foundation of faith, not only do I have a commitment to being excellent, but that’s cool because I’m only in second gear. But how many of us know you can’t win simply because you have faith and because you’re excellent in this life? You need strategy. When God says about you, «For I know the plans that I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, to give you a future and a hope,» what He’s saying to you is, «I’ve got a strategy for you.» Everything that God does, He does with strategy. That’s one of the things I’m learning about God—that this is connected to that, and this is connected to that, and so on. He is a strategic God; He is not a random God. Everything about your life—how you got here, the parents that you have—believe it or not, whether you have awesome parents like me or parents who struggled, there was still strategy even in the struggle. So, if strategy created you, then why would you not live with strategy? Is there a strategy for what you’re doing right now, or are you just doing whatever comes to you? Strategy necessitates you stopping and thinking about how this connects to that because, watch this: some of you want this; you have a vision for this; but your life strategy will never get you there. So, I have faith for God for this; God has spoken to me and told me that this is coming. But nothing in your life represents that strategy. And so, it’s kind of crazy, isn’t it? Because every vision must be realized by strategy. Are we tracking? I feel like we’re only going to get to three today. Have you mapped out a strategy? How is this connected to that? See, there are some things—there are some deals that I won’t take. And although those deals might be good and lucrative, they would throw off my strategy. See, if you don’t have the context of strategy, which is the big picture—saying that this connects to that and that connects to this—you may find yourself settling for less than what you could achieve if you stuck to the strategy. God wants to give you strategy; that’s the third gear. Strategy is what some of you are moving into right now. That’s why I’m pausing today—what some of you are moving into right now. God’s going to start giving you strategy as you worship Him and as you sit at His feet. He’s going to start giving you wisdom, and that wisdom is going to create strategy. There are some in here right now, and you’ve never had a strategic mindset. I’m not mad at you, right? Because you know what? The reality is, you have to be taught to have a strategic mindset. And if you don’t have the blessing and luxury of going to business school, or having mentors, or parents who talk to you about strategy, the truth is, you and I—all of us—will just be creatures of habit, not creatures of strategy. And what I’ve learned about being a creature of habit is that when you’re a creature of habit, you are in a strategy, but you’re in someone else’s strategy. I feel the Holy Spirit on that. I took my social media and moved it all the way back to the back of my phone. I’d have to slide my phone like 25 times to get to where my social media is, because I had a habit of going right to it and being distracted for 15 minutes. Someone made it easy in their strategy for me to not have my own. Everything in your life must have strategy. Everything that you do should have something connected to it, or you’re not going to be able to move forward. And I’m out of time.
