We are more than conquerors through him who loved us. (Romans 8:37)
If I could go back to the early 1990’s I would work more during my college years and buy a house . . . even a small house or a condo . . . somewhere in the Bay Area. Then I would rent it out and sit on it until I graduated from seminary in 2001. Then I’d move back to the Bay Area with my wife and live in it. Within a few short years, I’d sell it and take the substantial amount of equity I would have accrued from it and put it into a single family home. If I could have done all of this by 2003, I’d be sitting pretty right now. But I didn’t do it, because I didn’t recognize the fact that I had the opportunity to do just that back in 1994.
Opportunities: they are everywhere, and everyday we are confronted by them. But seldom do we recognize them when we meet them for the first time. Mark Twain said that he seldom recognized an opportunity until it had ceased to be one, and this is the plight of most all of us. Opportunities don’t look like opportunities in the present; they look like pipe dreams, like overzealous foolishness. Recognizing and acting upon an opportunity in the present takes courage, and it takes resolve.
Here are three things that prevent us from recognizing and seizing life-changing opportunities:
1. Fear of Failure: So often we let golden opportunities pass us by because we are afraid that we’ll fail. But what’s so bad about failing? Failing simply means you tried something that had real potential. I have far more respect for failures than I do for people who play it safe, risk nothing, and therefore have no real chance of ever achieving anything. Failure is a stepping stone to high achievement, and those who have the courage to try and fail are the real builders of society.
2. Low Self-Efficacy: Self-efficacy is the confidence in your ability to complete tasks and accomplish goals. Fear of failure will prevent you from even stepping out to seize an opportunity. Low self-efficacy will prevent you from following through once you’ve stepped out.
3. Bad Theology: Believing in God’s sovereignty is good, but allowing that belief to lock you in a prison of inaction gives God a bad name. So many of us are waiting on the Lord and doing absolutely nothing. In the meantime, opportunities are passing us by everyday. Did you ever stop to think that perhaps God is the author of opportunity? Yes, there are limits to this idea. But trust in God is not a recipe for apathetic inaction. Trust in God should activate us to try things that we otherwise would not have the confidence to try.
How do you overcome these things? Its easy; you’re more than a conqueror! Get up and do something! Stop believing that you’re stuck! Stop praying for God to send you money, and start praying for the wisdom to recognize the many opportunities that surround you, and for the courage to act upon one of them.
In the year 2023, what will you wish you would have done in the year 2013? If you can answer that question, you will have discovered what you should be doing right now!
