Begin With The End In Mind
Habakkuk 2:2
Although this applies to many different levels of life and faith and circumstances, the most fundamental applications of beginning with the end in mind is to begin today with the vision of the end as your frame of reference by which everything else is examined. Each part of your life - yesterday’s mistakes today’s decisions and tomorrow’s consequences - can be examined in the context of the whole of what really matters most to you. By keeping that end clear in your mind, you can make certain that whatever you do on any particular day does not violate the plan defined as the way to the vision you have for your life.
To begin with the end in mind means to start with a clear understanding of your destination. It means knowing where you are going, so that you can better understand where you are now, so that the steps you are taking are always in the right direction.
Look at somebody and tell him or her, "ALL THINGS ARE CREATED TWICE!"
Beginning with the end in mind is based on the principle that all things are created twice. There is a mental or first creation, and a physical or second creation to all things.
Take the construction of a house. You create it in every detail before you put hammer to nail to board. You try to get a very clear sense of what kind of house you want kind of house you want. If you want a family-centered home, you plan to put a family room where it would be a natural gathering place. You plan to put sliding doors and a patio for the children to play outside. You work with ideas. You work with your mind until you get a clear image of what you want to build.
Then you reduce it to blueprint and develop the construction plans. All of this is done before the earth is touched. If not, then in the second creation, the physical creation, you will have to make expensive changes that may double the cost of your home.
The carpenter’s rule is "measure twice, cut once." You have to make sure the blueprint, the first creation, is really what you want, that you’ve thought everything through. Then you put it into bricks and mortar. Each day you go to the construction shed and pull out the blueprint to get marching orders for the day. You begin with the end in mind.
Look at somebody else and tell that person, "IT’S BY DESIGN OR BY DEFAULT!"
It is a principle that all things are created twice, but not all first creations are by conscious design. In our personal lives, if we do not develop our own self-awareness and become responsible for first creations, we empower other people and circumstances outside our circle of influence to shape much of our lives by default. We are reactively living the scripts handed to us by family, associates, other people’s agendas, and the pressures of circumstances - scripts from our training and conditioning.
These scripts come from people, not principles. And they rise out of our vulnerabilities, our deep dependency on others and our needs for acceptance and love, for belonging, for a sense of importance and worth, for a feeling that we matter.
Whether we are aware of it or not, whether we are in control of it or not, there is a first creation to every part of our lives. We are either the second creation of our proactive design, or we are the second creation of other people’s agendas or our own past habits.
The unique human capacities of self-awareness, imagination, and conscience enables us to examine first creations and make it possible for us to take charge of our own first creation to write our own script.
Look at somebody you haven’t talked to and say "BECOME YOUR OWN FIRST CREATION!"
Proactivity is based on self-awareness. The two other endowments that enable us to expand our proactivity to exercise personal leadership in our lives are imagination and conscience.
Through imagination, we visualize the uncreated worlds of potential that are within us. Through conscience, we can come in contact with the principles of God with our own singular talents and avenues of contribution, and with the personal guidelines within which we can most effectively develop them. Combined with self-awareness, these two endowments empower us to write our own script.
Because we live with so many scripts that have been handed to us, the process of writing your own script is actually a process of re-scripting. And re-scripting must be the center our new script on Jesus.
Jesus you are the center of my joy.
All that’s good and perfect comes from you.
You’re the heart of my contentment,
The hope of all I do.
Jesus you are the center of my joy.
