THE APPRENTICE
How To Achieve Great Things
9/15/04
I. Introduction
NBC’s hit reality show, The Apprentice, entered its second season last week. Eighteen candidates were selected from all walks of life to compete for the prize of becoming Donald Trump’s apprentice.
Each week, these candidates will endure rigorous business tasks while living together in a hip Manhattan loft apartment. Prominent Fortune 500 companies were enlisted to participate in many of the tasks. The tasks will test their intelligence, nerve and street-smarts. They will face the challenges of living in close quarters and must complete sometimes humorous, but always difficult, job assignments and will be forced to think outside the box in order to outshine each other to get to the top.
How many of you guys have seen The Apprentice’s first season?
Well, if you’ve seen the show, then you know that these contestants have to do some pretty challenging things. And so, tonight, I want to inspire you to achieve great things and show you some principles that I believe will help you do just that.
The first thing that happens each week on The Apprentice is that a Project Manager or leader is selected to lead each team. In your life, you’re that guy or gal; you’re the leader; you’re the PM. After that, the teams are given a task to complete or a job to do. Last week, their task was to create a new toy for Mattel. In your life, you’ll always have things you need to do. Some may be dull, routine, or commonplace. Others may be extraordinary or challenging. But no matter what it is that you’re doing, you have the ability to do it with excellence and to be a success. The first thing you need to do to avoid the Cobra and be a success is get a plan.
II. Get A Plan
Each week, after the tasks are given, the teams meet together and devise a plan of action. There’s an old proverb that says, “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail,” and it’s very true.
A number of years ago, my dad was in the market for a Jet Ski, and he was looking at one that we thought we’d buy, and so of course, he wants to take it for a test spin out on the lake before we purchase it. So we decide just to make a day out of it and we invited some friends of ours that had a boat to go out on the lake with us over the weekend. We get to the lake and help our dad unload the jet ski from the trailer into the water. Dad cranks it up and he’s getting ready to take off when I say, “Hey Dad, let me go first.” And dad, being the good father that he was, hopped off and helped me on. I was pumped. So I revved up the engine and took off across the lake. I was having the time of my life until I tried to do some fancy spin-out trick and sent myself flying through the air into the water. I tried to get back on, but this particular jet ski was built for racing and therefore had a thinner body, which meant it was harder to balance on. Well, after trying to get back on unsuccessfully for about 5 minutes, I noticed that the jet ski had gotten deeper in the water than it was before. And within another 30 seconds, it was even deeper. And I thought, “This is NOT good.” And so I’m trying to hold the jet ski up and keep it from sinking and like a true captain, I was prepared to go down with the ship. Now, I’m out here in the middle of the lake, all alone, with a sinking jet ski, so I had to get together a plan because the whole “trying to hold the sinking jet ski up by my lifejacket” wasn’t working. So I did the thing that came most naturally to me at the moment, and I yelled, “HELP!” When only the nose of the jet ski was sticking up out of the water, my friends had just gotten their boat in the water and drove over to me and tossed me a line that I hooked to the jet ski and they pulled it in and saved it and me. Well, what had happened was, there’s a plug that keeps the water from coming into a watercraft, and apparently it was missing. But the point is, we didn’t have a plan for what we were going to do when we got to the lake, I just took off and went. And it could have cost me my life, not to mention a very sporty jet ski.
If you don’t have any idea what you want out of life, then you won’t get anything. You have to get a plan, and part of that is deciding what you want. What do you want to accomplish? What’s your dream?
A. Decide What You Want
And when you decide, search through the Bible and find scriptures that definitely promise these things.
I John 5:14-15 14Now this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. 15And if we know that He hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we have asked of Him.
III. Claim It In Prayer
Once you’ve decided what you want to do, ask God for what you want. Ask Him for help, wisdom, the resources you need.
John 16:23-24 23"And in that day you will ask Me nothing. Most assuredly, I say to you, whatever you ask the Father in My name He will give you. 24Until now you have asked nothing in My name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.
Matthew 7:7-8 7 "Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 8For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.
A. Believe God
Mark 10 27Jesus looked at them and said, "With man this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God."
When you ask God for what you want, you gotta believe not only that He can do what you want, but that He will and that He wants to. This is all a part of faith- faith is believing.
Hebrews 11:6 6And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.
You see, you’ve got an advantage because all of heaven is backing you up. Many of these candidates on The Apprentice are limited to what they know and what they can do. But not you. You gotta believe that there are no limits to what you know and what you can do because God is the unlimited source and He wants to help you accomplish great things.
B. Believe in Yourself
A lot of people believe that God can do something impossible and incredible, but they leave it up to Him to make it happen. But what they don’t realize is that God uses people to make it happen. He works in and through people to perform the impossible. And He’ll work in and through you, too.
Philippians 4:13 I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.
What’s that word all mean? Is there anything that you can’t do? When you think about it, you might say, yeah, there are plenty of things I can’t do, but that’s not what the Bible says. The Bible says, you can do ALL things through Christ.
Mark 9 23" ’If you can’?" said Jesus. "Everything is possible for him who believes."
If you don’t believe in yourself, no one will. You have to have the confidence that you can do what it is that you want to do. You gotta have this revelation on the inside:
1 John 4:4 4You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.
IV. Work Your Words
The Bible says that God framed the worlds by His words.
Hebrews 11:3 “3By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible.”
In Genesis, you see this point in fact, God said . . . and it was.
Psalm 33:6,9 “6The LORD merely spoke, and the heavens were created. He breathed the word, and all the stars were born. 9For when he spoke, the world began! It appeared at his command.”
God spoke and things came into existence. Out of nothing, came something. Out of darkness, came light. Why? Because God said, “Light, BE.”
Because God spoke things into existence, and created the natural realm with His words, natural things respond to the spoken word.
Luke 17:6 “6So the Lord said, "If you have faith as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, "Be pulled up by the roots and be planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.”
Throughout Jesus’ ministry, we see him speaking to natural things and getting results, and not only that, but he tells us we can do the same thing.
We gotta make every prayer a statement of faith. We gotta continually say the things that we want. If your dream is to have your own business one day, then start saying it, “I’m gonna have my own business one day.” Name what you want. You want to be a successful athlete, say it. You can do whatever you want to do. You can be whatever you want to be. If you can see it, then you can be it. If you can say it, then you can have it.
When you see The Apprentice candidates in the boardroom, many of them are building themselves up by how they talk about themselves. They’re saying what they can do and what they’ve achieved. We need to keep saying who we are and what we can do. Because the truth is, we are who the Word says we are, and we can do what the Word says we can do, and we have what the Word says we have. We can accomplish great things by simply opening our mouths and saying that we can.
V. Act Like It’s Yours
Mark 11:24 24Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them.
The very first time you ask God for whatever it is that you want and that you want to do, believe you receive it right then and there. It may not automatically appear. God doesn’t work like a genie in a bottle, and the thing you ask for may not appear that instant, but whether it appears or not has no bearing on the fact that you have what you’ve asked for.
You ask God for wisdom, it’s yours. You ask Him for help, you have it. You ask Him for what you need, He’s given it to you. It may take some time before it actually shows up, but as of that moment that you prayed, you believe that it’s already yours and in your possession. Faith is now, not “I’ll believe it when I see it.”
Smith Wigglesworth said, "If you pray seven times for any one thing, you prayed six times in unbelief."
You don’t have to continually ask God for something. The first time you asked, you received, and you have to believe that. Every prayer from that moment on is a statement of faith or a confession of possession, meaning that you’re going to confess that you possess that thing you asked for…and you’re making your words work for you.
Let’s say that you prayed for a new idea about a skit for church. At that moment you prayed, that idea is yours. Well, maybe it’s been a week and that idea hasn’t come yet. Do you pray again thinking that God didn’t hear you? No. You thank Him for it and make that your possession confession. Father, I thank you that you’re giving me a new idea about this skit. Whatever it may be, use this as a model for what you’re asking of God.
And don’t say it with this ho-hum it’s never gonna get here attitude. How’s your reaction going to be when the manifestation occurs? When that thing you’ve been believing for actually shows up?
You’re not going to be sad and gloomy. You’re gonna be excited. Well, if that thing you’ve asked for is yours, act like it. Thank God like it’s yours. Act like it’s already here.
So, how are you gonna achieve great things?
1. Get a plan
2. Claim It In Prayer – believe God, believe in yourself
3. Work your words
4. Act like it’s yours
Let’s pray.
