Play to Your Strengths

In an old joke, people refer to seminary as cemetery. Attending one does feel like that at times, so the last thing I expected to discover in a dingy classroom in the basement of a Pasadena seminary some years ago was something huge. It changed the course of my life. The professor went off script that day and woke up our class by asking some urgent questions: 

• Do you want to have a life that is one level above the boring existence lived by the vast majority of people? 
• Do you want to live in such a way that when you get to the end of your life you have few regrets?
• Do you want to make a maximum impact with the one life you get to live? 
• Do you want to have a life where God actually uses you to change things? 
• Do you want to have a life that is exciting, fulfilling, exhilarating, and occasionally terrifying, but where you actually really matter? 
• Do you want a life where you are more encouraged and less discouraged? 

He closed with this dramatic statement: “All that and more will happen if you do this one thing . . . “Play to your strengths.” Then, like any good professor, he emphasized and expanded it. “Find out what your spiritual gifts are; then build your entire life around them. Anything else is going to take you down the road to misery and mediocrity.” With that one thought, my professor changed the course of my life. I have never recovered. Let me give you seven reasons why.