As you keep growing and learning, you’re building and refining all kinds of new skills. And when that’s combined with a heart completely aligned with God, with a desire to help others, all those skills give you things to bless other people’s lives with – a big, but amazing, responsibility. So what can you do to stay fresh? Be like a bee. Bees spend their lives moving from flower to flower, carrying pollen from one source to another. And what’s the result? Growth. Because bees keep spreading pollen around the garden, more flowers start growing and the garden flourishes. What does this look like for us? It’s living a life where you’re constantly looking up to heaven and asking ‘What’s next, Dad?’, staying curious, learning from lots of different sources, and then sharing what you’ve discovered with other people. Paul writes, ‘Stir up the gift…which is in you’ (2 Timothy 1:6 NKJV), otherwise it’ll stay unused and you’ll get bored. Dedicate some time every day to personal growth. Read. Listen to wise people you’d usually not understand easily, from a whole bunch of different fields. Discover where you do your best thinking, and go there regularly. Get up earlier, use your lunch break, turn off the TV in the evening. The time and place don’t matter – the important thing is that you stick to it. Worrying that studying is not your thing? Personal growth isn’t about IQ, it’s about curiosity. Start asking questions, be prepared to learn and get committed to your curiosity.
What Now?
Is there a part of the Bible that you usually skip over? Make a commitment to rediscover that bit and look at it with fresh eyes. (Even the genealogies can teach us a lot about God.)
