Prepare to be Favored

If "Luck favors the prepared," then how do you prepare so that you'll be ready when luck happens?

The first thing to do is also one of the The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People from Stephen Covey: Begin with the end in mind. Essentially, prepare for what you want to happen. So, your first step is to figure out what it is that you want to happen due to your work, your preaching, your presenting, your writing. What's the best possible scenario that could come from your work? That's what you want to prepare for.

Imagine that your best case is that your church will explode with growth as people pour in to get on board with your mission. What would it take to prepare for that? I would think that you would need to have a clearly articulated mission that could be shared by anyone in the church using no more than a pen and the back of a napkin. You would need to have leaders in place to train and equip all the people coming in. And you would need to have the materials to educate new comers about your beliefs and culture. So you would want to prepare by equipping leaders and teachers to share the mission that you clarified. Until you have those things in place, your preferred outcome can't really happen. Now, there's no guarantee that it will happen if you prepare everything just right, but you can make it almost impossible to happen if you don't prepare.

How does the end you have in mind affect the way you preach now? What changes should you make today to prepare for the future you want to see?

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