Daily Devotionals

If you are confident that you have identified the proper processes required for accomplishment of your dreams, but failing to get the results, you might not be working hard enough. The other possibility being that you are doing everything right and only need to exercise patience with the process. You can find out what the case is by talking to your peers and mentors. However, most of the time, the challenge is with your work ethic. You are underestimating how much work is required for good success. Are you working hard enough for the results you want?

Back in 1997, Jeff Bezos (Founder, Amazon) told shareholders that employees at other companies “can work long, hard, or smart, but at Amazon, you can’t choose two out of three.” You want to work hard as smart as you can for as long as you can. If you are really a watchman trying to steer us towards a better future, you do not get to choose one or two, out of three. If working smart helps you to get done in six hours what others can only get done in ten hours, think about all the good you can do if you keep going for another four hours.

Working long, smart and hard is not meant for only stupid people or cursed people.  Apostle Paul made it very clear that he enjoyed the grace of God. And that he considered himself to have worked harder than any other Apostle (1 Corinthians 15:10). You must get clear on the exact result you want and the principles and processes that govern them. Then do the work. Extraordinary things happen when blessed and graced people put in the work required for the change we pray to see in our lifetimes. This is not the season for polished diction, but for thoughtful action.

Our times call not for polished diction, but for thoughtful action. It has been said that the two most important days of your life are the day on which you were born and the day on which you discover why you were born. If your sense of a glorious purpose has been awakened, you must give it all you have got. People tend to talk too much about the things they want to do and fail to generate enough productive activities around their dreams. You need to determine whether you are underestimating how much work it would take to achieve your goal.

When I study biographies, I am on the lookout for the years of preparation and also the work ethic of the book’s subject. Nikola Tesla wrote in his autobiography; My Inventions: The Autobiography of Nikola Tesla, that early in his life “the vision was clear enough but the knowledge of principles was very limited.” He then went on to describe how in another season of life, “I regularly started my work at three o’clock in the morning and continued until eleven at night, no Sundays or holidays excepted”. We see here that the commitment to study twenty hours a day made him master the principles required to actualize his dreams.

You have to position yourself for full pursuit of your higher vocations. You start by defining your goals in a specific, measurable and definitive way. This makes it easier to track your progress and when life becomes more comfortable over time, you would be able to continue to focus on what really matters. You must then take the time to pray, study, think and meditate upon your dreams. Your dreams will remain dreams and flowery speeches if you never master the principles required. We have to search out and master the practical aspects of the things we want to do. It will take a lot of work to accomplish this. It demands full attention.

The end goal of spirituality is intelligence. The intelligence that empowers you to better navigate this world. Anything else is a call to bland religion. Religion is important because it helps to give people hope and the strength to face tomorrow. However, a true spiritual experience is empowering and positions you to channel the light of heaven upon the dark world around you. It is time to move beyond vague spiritual experiences that are nothing more than cheap theatrics. The purpose of Christian life is not solely to die and go to heaven. There are great things that can be accomplished on earth, and spirituality has a role to play.

You cannot be spiritual just for the sake of being spiritual. Spirituality is not an end in itself, it is supposed to lead to something else. The outpouring of the spirit on the apostles and disciples was not the end, it was rather an empowerment to fulfil their assignment. The Holy Spirit does not kill people and send them to heaven. The Holy Spirit rather empowers people to get things done, on this plane of existence. Anywhere the Bible mentions a person being filled with the Spirit of God, we usually observe  an increase in productivity. Joseph, Bezalel, Daniel are three excellent examples from the Bible. You see how they were able to generate intelligence through their spirituality.

Your spirituality is expressed through service, craftsmanship and self-discipline which you master over time. Your pursuit of the spiritual will break you, humble you and then positions you for knowledge and truth. You are able to generate intelligence around the issues that are of interest to you. This enables you to demystify complex matters of life. The spiritual person is superior to the carnal person because there is a potency in their heart that manifests through superior thinking, genuine selflessness and superior works. It is not about mystic visions or babbling in unknown languages. At the end, spirituality must produce the intelligence required for greater productivity.

You need to look inwards and consider how prepared you are for the things you want to do. There are a lot of opportunities for you to succeed by your contribution to society, but it is the prepared person that can maximize such opportunities. A favourite example is Ezra. We learn that Ezra had devoted his life to studying the Law of Moses, and mastered it, so as to teach it to the people of Israel. (See Ezra 7:10) Ezra knew that someday, the captives would return to their homeland. And when that day came, he knew they would need a teacher and so, he positioned for that.

John Maxwell, the worldwide acclaimed leadership expert wrote about his journey in his book; Leadership Gold. “In 1964, at the age of seventeen, I started reading and filing thoughts on the subject of leadership, because I knew leading was going to be an important part of my career. At age twenty-two, I held my first leadership position. In 1976, I became convinced that everything rises and falls on leadership. That belief was accompanied by a passion to be a lifelong student and teacher of this vital subject.” John Maxwell had positioned himself for effective leadership from a young age of seventeen, even though the first opportunity to lead did not materialize until five years later.

When you think about your life’s journey and the things you want to do, a big part of the conversation should revolve around your preparation. It is not enough to watch the world and identify the defects, problems and opportunities. You should also think about what kind of interventions would be needed, and prepare yourself for execution. A lot of countries (like Nigeria for example), suffer from a lack of mighty leaders that understand stewardship and governance. It is not enough to know this as a fact. Like Ezra and John Maxwell, you should prepare yourself for leadership. If you are convinced that the future needs a witty inventor that can design and create anything, start preparing yourself right now.

We need to distinguish between having the vision for positive change and having the power to effect such changes. It is not enough to know what needs to be done. You need the power to do what needs to be done. You have to realize early in your career that your divine assignment to steer the world towards a better future requires you to have the means to do so. We cannot watch our world effectively, if we lack the economic might required to drive our agenda. You must develop the necessary intelligence to exert a socio-economic influence over your world.

David Green is an American businessman, and founder of Hobby Lobby, a chain of arts and crafts stores. He is 80 years old, a billionaire worth around seven billion dollars and a major financial supporter of Evangelical organizations. David Green sued the US Government in 2012, claiming that a new law was at odds with his Christian faith. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court, where he won the case. The reason he could do more than pray for the law to be repealed was because he had the economic, social and political powers necessary to influence his world. Hobby Lobby operates over 900 stores in the USA and a staff strength of over 43,000 employees (2020 figures).

Unless you can exert economic influence over your world, you will not be able to do much besides prayer. Praying over matters of your watch is a good habit, but it should not stop there. You and I know that the pattern as revealed in the Holy Bible is for God to send a leader in response to prayers of the people. And you can position yourself to work with God for advancement of kingdom values in your community. We need you to develop the necessary intelligence and influence required to tackle challenges head on. We need to control the companies that serve our world.

The quest to solve problems and improve the human condition is what fuels exploits of creativity and inventiveness. Without such a mindset, you will not get into the deep end of creativity. The challenge here is that you have not been taught to solve problems. The prevailing mindset is to make money and then buy whatever is needed. You seem to have very little need for craftsmanship or any sort of original thinking. As long as you continue to think this way, you will not be empowered to tackle problems.

Technology is nothing more than a technique for solving problems. Technology solves problems in a way that is consistent, sustainable and scalable. That is all there is to technology. It cannot be a coincidence that the wealthiest people in the world are considered to be technology entrepreneurs. If you take a step back from drooling over their billion-dollar net worth, you should see that they are tackling the biggest problems in the world. Elon Musk is solving problems around energy, transportation and increasing mankind’s productivity. Jeff Bezos works in retail, commerce, media and space colonization.

African nations are poor because they do not have a culture of problem-solving. Centuries of slavery and the associated colonization seems to have subdued the African to resort to seeking help from external influences, rather than developing solutions internally. Africans are not trained to invent technology, they seem content to buy solutions and technologies from you-know-where. I hereby challenge you to change the narratives by embracing problem-solving in the true sense of it. The first step is for you to understand that money doesn’t solve problems. Money helps you to buy the time of someone who can solve the problem, or a solution packaged as a product. Problems are solved by application of knowledge and wisdom. Both of which are available to any serious minded person.

One key to unlocking greater effectiveness is to define your goals and then determine what a numerical representation of that goal would look like. If your goal is to raise the leaders that will transform a society, you want to determine how many leaders you have to train within a time period. The watchman that cannot state their objective and attach an exact number will be busy, might even be efficient, but will never really impact their world in a meaningful way. For effectiveness and not just efficiency, your change projects and initiatives must be driven by numbers.

Your work would benefit a lot from the precision and structure that comes from driving your work by numbers. A business-minded person is able to identify the most important number to them in their projects right now and optimize for that number. Paul Graham thinks it is good to grow your numbers by 5-7% every week. A growth rate of 10% every week is considered exceptional. With 10% weekly growth, you will do 1420% in a year, and you’ll be on a path to become huge. If you currently serve 100 people, a 10% weekly growth requires you to get 10 new people this week. In a few weeks you’ll need to add 20 per week, and so on.

William Bruce Cameron wrote, “not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.” This is true, but you will perform better if you choose to count something in your work. And then commit to grow that number over time in a way that is consistent, sustainable and scalable. The first step is clarity around your goals. You must pick a clear goal. Then interpret that goal in terms of a number you can track and count. You can then commit to a growth rate. An evangelist that commits to preaching to 10% more people every week will enjoy greater success than the person that has not picked a number.

The president of a third world country once asked his pastor, “Who is more powerful? The president or a spiritual leader like a pastor in this case?” This certainly makes for a good debate. There are very interesting points to be raised on both sides, but I think the spiritual leader has an edge. Everyone needs a “spiritual well” from which they can draw energy, strength and warmth. You need someone that is there for you in that sense. Stimulating your spirit and helping you activate your latent spiritual potentials.

It is not everyone that is able to, or willing to grow their spirit to the level of not needing any intermediary at all. You are always going to need someone functioning at a higher consciousness than you to help you activate and stimulate your spirit. You need to engage with a true master in some form of apprenticeship. The fellowship will transform you in a profound way and you will unlock greater productivity. That is what the right apprenticeship and mentorships do for people. However, your mentor is not to replace God in your life, and such authority should never be abused.

We know that God wants people to work together. The goal is not dependency or independence. The real goal is INTERdependence, a state whereby we depend upon each other and neither can succeed without the other. We see then that the president needs the pastor as much as the pastor needs the president. If everybody insists that they do not need anybody else to grow into their full potential, we will have a cruel society. There will be no checks and balances to serve as a guardrail against our more sinister tendencies. To grow into your most powerful and effective person, you need to be connected to a spiritual well somewhere.

You can execute your vision at the “lizard” level or execute your vision at the “alligator” level. In case you do not understand the reference, let me try again. You can decide to be powerful enough to lead a dozen people or become powerful enough to lead fifteen thousand people. Still not getting it? Here: will you become powerful enough to impact your world positively at a scale that matters? Will your work bring you the joy and fulfillment you crave for? Then understand that to become your very best, you need someone to drive you, use you and discipline you at that level.

I found it interesting when Robert Greene asserted in his book Mastery that one of the steps to mastery is apprenticeship. He insisted that nobody becomes a true master of their craft unless they apprentice under another master. There might be exceptions to the rule, but more often than not, our potentials are maximized through apprenticeship and service. Joshua had Moses. Leonardo da Vinci had Verrocchio. Infact, the university doctorate (PhD) system is still more or less an apprenticeship. Your PhD supervisor is expected to provide guidance and practical support all the way.

You would be making a great mistake when you shy away from apprenticeship under the pretext of being used. You are been shortsighted when you fixate upon the fact that your master is using you to achieve their goals. While it is true that they are using you to get things done, you should also realise that you are getting better. The goal of apprenticeship is the transformation of your mind and character. It is difficult to refine your character without the tough love feedback from a master that cares. It is nearly impossible to redefine what is possible to your mind without tapping into the consciousness of someone else that is operating at a higher frequency than you.

When we become serious with our assignment to watch the world, we would realise how important companies are. Our world revolves around companies; for-profit businesses. Companies are the backbone of society. If you really think about it, you see that your life revolves around companies. Your daily needs are met by companies that offer you products and services in exchange for your time, money or other resources. Businesses hold significant power in our world today. For-profit companies are able to leverage their marketplace power and influence to drive any agenda they like. And so many times, their agenda is at odds with the watchman.

The idea that large corporations are simply focused on making money is not true. The biggest companies in the world today sponsor and reinforce ideas they want. When your favourite social media platform moves away from the traditional gender options of male and female. Offering you over fifty gender options, you can see the agenda. Al Jazeera, the pan-Arab channel has been criticised by some organisations as well as nations such as Saudi Arabia for being “Qatari propaganda”. They actively push the Arab agenda to their millions of viewers. It is the same way “western” media houses such as CNN also push their agenda.

The world revolves around for-profit companies. If you desire to change the world, do not start a nonprofit organization. Start a for-profit company. Do business, build out an influential business. Bonus points if you can build it within ICT, media, education, commerce/finance or energy. Some of the greatest impact you can have in your world is to make people exchange their time, money and resources for your products and services every day. This places you in pole position to drive kingdom agenda within your areas of influence. We must control the companies that serve our world.