• The Inner Need For Excellence

  Contributed by Josh Hunt on Apr 3, 2012 (message contributor)

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  Scripture:  Malachi 1:7-8

  Tags:  Attitude General

  Denomination: Baptist

THE INNER NEED FOR EXCELLENCE

Years ago during a speaking engagement, I stayed in a hotel in Dallas. It was late at night, and after flipping channels for a while, I landed on ESPN, which is how I learned that tennis legend Martina Navratilova had just won a grueling match in Florida earlier that day. I drifted off to sleep.

The next morning, I got up early and headed to the hotel’s gym. It was barely five thirty when I stepped onto the indoor track, but I wasn’t the only one there. A woman was coming through the double glass doors. It was Martina Navratilova. She’d been in Florida the day before, she was in Dallas now, and she was up at the crack of dawn, eager to hit balls back and forth in a hotel gym as if she had nothing better to do. Like sleep.

It’s just a guess, but I don’t think anybody told her to do this. I think she crawled out of bed and pulled on workout clothes before the sun was even up because of an insatiable inner need for excellence. She wants to win that badly.

(Hybels, Bill (2008-09-01). Axiom: Powerful Leadership Proverbs (Kindle Locations 3043-3051). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.)