So that you may surely learn to sense what is vital, and approve and prize what is excellent and of real value…
Philippians 1:10
It is very easy to be a mediocre person. All you have to do is make no extra effort of any kind and drift through life making no difference in the world, which will guarantee that you leave no legacy behind when you are gone. You probably won’t even be noticed or stand out because there are millions of other people who are also mediocre. But if you will dare to form the habit of being excellent in all that you do, you will be a bright light in the darkness, and that is exactly what God has called you to be.
God is excellent and we are created in His image; therefore, if we are to reach our full potential in Him we must also choose to be excellent. God has an excellent plan in mind for our lives, but a mediocre, lazy, and compromising person will not live in the fulfillment of an excellent destiny. We all have a choice to make about how we will live, and I believe God wants to use this book to urge you to make your choice if you haven’t already done so. If you have already made your decision to be excellent, then use this as an opportunity to recommit, and keep pressing on.
Excellence is seen in doing the best you can in every situation, but it is not necessarily perfection. Excellence is extremely high quality and a virtue to be pursued. Edwin Bliss said, “The pursuit of excellence is gratifying and healthy. The pursuit of perfection is frustrating, neurotic, and a terrible waste of time.” It is important that you see the difference between striving for excellence and striving for perfection. If you don’t, you will be frustrated and feel like a failure every step of the way.
Did you know that most people who have the habit of procrastination are perfectionists? Because they feel compelled to do a perfect job and fear that they won’t be able to achieve it, they put off the task. We tend to think that procrastinators are lazy, and maybe some are. But most are not lazy, they are fearful of falling below others’ expectations.
It is actually a wonderful thing to realize that as human beings with flaws and weaknesses we rarely do all things perfectly or never make mistakes. That is the reason why God sent His Son as a perfect substitute for us. We should have an excellent attitude and desire in every situation to do the best we can do, and then trust God to do what we cannot do. I always say, “Do your best and trust God to do the rest!” If you do what you can do, then God will do what you cannot do.
Jesus told us to be perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect (Matthew 5:48). When I initially read that verse of Scripture, I felt pressured because I knew I could not be perfect. But I discovered by reading the Amplified Bible that the word perfect in the original Greek language means to grow into complete maturity of character. God wants us always to be growing and making progress, but He is never angry with us because we have not yet arrived. Even the apostle Paul said that although he pressed toward the mark of perfection, he had not yet arrived.
If we compromise it means that we do a little less than we know is right and proper, and to be excellent means to do a little more than you might have to in order to get by. It means to go the extra mile. There was a time in society when excellence was fairly normal, but that is not the case today. Our passion for more, which is greed, has driven us to prefer quantity instead of quality, and that is sad. Stephen R. Covey said, “Doing more things faster is no substitute for doing the right things.”
When we had our home built we found out how difficult it is to find companies that have a commitment to excellence. When an appointment was not kept the excuse was always, “We are just so busy that we got behind and couldn’t make it to your home.” In other words, they had taken on more than they could do properly, and in the process they did very little with excellence, including keeping their word.
Making the commitment to being habitually excellent and following through on your commitments will be very rewarding. There is nothing about mediocrity that makes us feel good inside about ourselves or our choices.
If you want to form a habit of being excellent, develop some kind of system to help you remember to press past the point of comfort. It is easy to vacuum in the middle of the room, but to do an excellent job you may have to get under the furniture and move a few things out of the way. Pressing into excellence won’t be easy at first, but eventually it will become a habit and you won’t be comfortable unless you do everything you do in the best way possible.
I am a big fan of signs or notes to help us remember while we are forming new habits. Make five signs that simply say EXCELLENCE and place them strategically where you will see them several times a day. I also strongly believe in the power of verbal confession to help us form a new image of ourselves, so try saying out loud at least ten times day, “I do what I do with excellence.” Do that for a while and then expand your confession to “I am an excellent person, I do my work with excellence, I take excellent care of myself and all that I own, I treat people excellently, I think excellent thoughts, and I speak excellent words.” The confessions you make, perhaps totally by faith in the beginning of your journey, will help you not only remember to do things with excellence, but they will change how you see yourself. Once you see yourself as being excellent, it will be no struggle to do what you do with excellence.
Remember that habits are developed through repetition. As you repeatedly choose the more excellent way in every situation, you will not only form the habit of excellence, you will break the habit of mediocrity.
Excellence is to do a common thing in an uncommon way.
Booker T. Washington
Henry Kissinger, in his book The White House Years, tells of a Harvard professor who had given an assignment and now was collecting the papers. He handed them back the next day and at the bottom of one was written, “Is this the best you can do?” The student thought no and redid the paper. It was handed in again and received the same comment. This went on ten times, till finally the student said, “Yes, this is the best I can do.” The professor replied, “Fine, now I’ll read it.” We know in our hearts if we are truly doing the best we can do. If we are not, then we should strive to do so.
It would seem obvious that there is no way we can love God with our heart, soul, mind, and strength (Mark 12:30) without seeking to do our very best to glorify God. The pursuit of excellence is a mark of maturity if we seek it with the right motive. Our motive should be to obey and glorify God and to represent Him well on earth. But a person can seek to be excellent merely out of his own obsession for significance, to be noticed and praised by others, or for worldly promotion. Let’s do all that we do to glorify God, and He will reward us by giving us the other things that we desire.
When I began my own pursuit of excellence it was because God had challenged me to do so. In the beginning of my ministry, God spoke three things to my heart and impressed upon me that if I would do those things for Him, I would be successful. The first was to keep the strife out of my life, the second was to do all that I did with excellence, and the third was to be a person of integrity, being honest in all that I did. At that time the extent of my ministry was teaching a Bible study in my home, but I took the responsibility seriously and studied very hard each week for my lesson. I was also a wife and the mother of three children at that time. I was not able to drop everything and head off to Bible school or seminary, so God taught me in my daily life.
He taught me to always pick up after myself and never leave messes for someone else out of laziness. He taught me to put things back where I got them. God impressed on me to always put my grocery cart back where it belonged at the grocery store after unloading my groceries into the car. When I was shopping for clothing and knocked an item off the hanger onto the floor, He taught me that to be excellent, I had to pick it up and put it back on the hanger and not leave it for someone else to do. There were hundreds of seemingly little things like this that God dealt with me about during those years.
It was hard in the beginning, and one of the biggest excuses I used was that other people were not doing it, so why should I? God reminded me that I had asked Him to do great things in my life and then asked me if I really wanted them or not. He was in essence saying, “We reap what we sow.” Don’t ever be satisfied to be like everyone else, but instead choose to be the best you that you can be.
In some of these things I wrestled with my emotions for as much as two years before becoming fully obedient to God and developing the habit of being excellent. I learned that if we sow excellence, we will reap the most excellent reward. What do you want out of life? Are you willing to sow the right kind of seed to get it? Ask yourself some hard questions and give truthful answers.
Do you do what you do with excellence?
How often do you compromise and take the easy way out?
Do you drift along in life, or are you pressing toward the best?
Do you keep your commitments?
Do you always tell the truth?
Do you leave messes for other people to clean up?
If you accidentally get an item at the store that you didn’t pay for, do you return it?
Do you put your grocery cart back in the space designated after you load your groceries into your car?
If you have put an item into your grocery cart and decide later that you really don’t need it, do you put it back where you got it or just leave it anywhere to get rid of it?
I could keep adding to the list, but I think you get the point I am trying to make. We can never get to where we want to be unless we truthfully admit where we are right now. It is facing truth that makes us free.
Every good choice brings a reward and, unfortunately, so does every bad choice. The rewards of excellence are wonderful. I recall a woman who told me she had listened to my teaching on excellence and integrity and that it had totally changed her approach to life. She said she’d had no teaching in this area previously and had no idea how mediocre and subpar she was. She thanked me and said, “It was challenging at first, but becoming excellent has changed my whole life.”
When we are excellent, we feel better about ourselves. We have confidence that we are doing what God would want us to do. We become a good example to other people. This is especially important for parents to model in front of their children. It is important for those who are in leadership of any kind to set this example for all those under their authority.
A woman sent in this testimony regarding how her decision to be excellent affected her.
Dear Joyce,
Just a testimony of how God gave me the “opportunity” to apply your teaching this morning on television, to a situation in my life this afternoon. This was in regard to your talking about how God dealt with you about being excellent and always cleaning up your messes.
I was taking out my recycling cans and glasses to the community receptacle, and as I went to open the lid, the paper bag in my hand ripped and a glass jar dropped to the cement floor and shattered. I was real tempted to pick up the big pieces and leave the little dangerous mess. All sorts of excuses immediately raced through my mind. “I shouldn’t leave the baby alone. I’m so tired. I have a broom, but I don’t know where the dustpan is. It is hot outside.” However, your teaching was too fresh in my mind; so I told my feet to take my flesh back up to my apartment to get the broom and dustpan and clean up my mess.
The nice thing about cleaning up the mess was the freedom of just forgetting about the whole thing once I chose the more excellent way.
Her excellence was rewarded with peace in her heart. I think peace is one of the greatest rewards we receive when we make an effort to do things the way we know they should be done and don’t compromise and do a little less than we know is right. It is wonderful not to feel condemned by what we allow ourselves to do. Sometimes the feelings of guilt or lack of peace are vague, but they are nonetheless present and they disturb our freedom.
The name Stradivarius is synonymous with fine violins. This is because Antonio Stradivari insisted that no instrument constructed in his shop be sold until it was as near perfection (excellence) as human skill and care could make it. Stradivari observed, “God needs violins to send His music into the world, and if any violins are defective God’s music will be spoiled.” His work philosophy was summed up in one sentence: “Other men will make other violins, but no man shall make a better one.”
Stradivari had a commitment to excellence because he wanted to do his best for God. His reward is that his violins are still known worldwide today as being the best.
We can never become excellent in our actions if we don’t first make a commitment to become excellent in our thoughts. The Bible teaches us to think on things that are filled with virtue and excellence (Philippians 4:8). Things like believing the best at all times, things that are honorable, just, pure, lovely, and lovable. I talk about our thoughts in all of my books and most of my messages because of their importance. We become what we allow our thoughts to be (Proverbs 23:7).
What kind of thoughts do you entertain? When you recognize that your thoughts are not good, do you take action to cast them out of your mind, or do you lazily let them remain? It is impossible to become an excellent person without first developing an excellent mind.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking that your thoughts don’t matter because nobody knows them anyway. They do matter and God knows them. Wrong thoughts can poison our lives and attitudes. Since they are the forerunner to all of our words and actions, we must deal with them first. You can think what you want to think. You are in control, and even though Satan will try to put wrong and deadly thoughts in your mind, you can cast them out and choose right ones. Your mind and thoughts belong to you, and you should not allow the devil to use your mind as a garbage dump or you will end up with a stinking mess of a life.
The psalmist David says, in Proverbs 8:6, “Hear, for I will speak excellent and princely things; and the opening of my lips shall be for right things.” He was making a decision about how he would talk and we should do the same thing. Just as we can direct our thoughts, we can also direct our words with God’s help. The power of life and death are in the tongue, and we eat the fruit of them (Proverbs 18:21). Our words affect us and the people around us. They also affect what God is able to do for us. We cannot have a negative mouth and a positive life.
The apostle Peter teaches us that if we want to enjoy life and see good days even in the midst of trials, we must keep our tongue free from evil (1 Peter 3:10). To me this Scripture says something extremely important that we want to pay attention to. What kind of life do you want? Do you want an excellent life? If so, then you must develop the habit of being excellent in your choice of words.
We cannot merely say whatever we feel like saying, but we must choose our words carefully because they are containers for power. They can carry creative or destructive power, and the choice is up to us. The tongue is a tiny organ, but it can cause great trouble or bring great blessings. Change your words and your life will change!
As far as I am concerned, it is a privilege to understand the power of words. I spent the first thirty-five years of my life not having any idea that what I said made any difference to the quality of my life. Your words and mine affect us in greater ways than we can possibly imagine, and we are challenged in Scripture to let them be excellent.
Make it a habit to say nothing if you cannot say something that is worth saying.
Finally, let me say that it is important that we learn to treat all people excellently. God loves all people and does not take it kindly when we mistreat anyone. Be polite, respectful, and appreciative. Be encouraging! Everyone in the world wants to feel valuable, and many are struggling with feelings of low self-esteem. We are in a position to be used by God to help them by treating all people with excellence.
The apostle Paul teaches that we are to pursue love and that it is the most excellent way to live.
But earnestly desire and zealously cultivate the greatest and best gifts and graces (the higher gifts and the choicest graces). And yet I will show you a still more excellent way [one that is better by far and the highest of them all—love].
1 Corinthians 12:31