Direction Over Intention

Hey, this is Tim Pratt Jr. I want to welcome you to the podcast Student of Life. I pray that you hear something that will add value, shape, develop, and cultivate your faith in order to be the person that God desires you to be, as well as the application to see it through. Enjoy. What's up everybody? So this is episode 13 of season 3, and we're going to call this one Direction Over Intention. Before I get into the foundational text, I just want to say this. I don't believe many of us get up with the perspective on life, or the just the desire, attention to say, I want to suck today. I don't want to be successful. I don't want to be a great husband. I don't want to be a great wife. I don't want to be a great father. I don't want to be a great mother, friend, or whatever, worker, owner, entrepreneur, whatever. I don't believe many of us get up with that desire, but however, many of us still do. We have good intentions, but we lack the wrong— or we lack direction. This is the thing. Zig Ziglar said it best: if you aim at nothing, you'll hit it every single time. If you aim at nothing, you will hit it every single time. You can have good intentions, but with no aim, no sense of direction, you will miss out on a lot in life. Now, many people can stumble up on things, true enough, but sometimes that's just an exception. It's not the norm. So our foundational text reads as— and this, I'm sorry, this is Ephesians 5:15-17 ESV. Look carefully then how you walk, not as the unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. Two things I kind of want to unpack in this verse, by the power of God, real quick, is that look carefully then how you walk. So we have to examine, we have to be very careful. And just to kind of give you some context, this was more so talking about the consistency in Christian life, consistency in being a Christian. So we have to look carefully how we walk in life. We just, just shouldn't be moving, just moving to be moving. If you're just moving and not really examining to have a sense of direction, I truly don't believe that you're looking carefully how you walk, as the scripture has directed us to. Because we don't want to be unwise, but we want to have wisdom, and we want to make the best use of time. We are— we have a specific window here in this world. True enough, we, we all do. We all have a window. Okay, this is how long that we're going to be here. We're all going to die. That's just the truth. It's not— if it's— if you didn't know that, breaking news, we're all going to die someday. We're getting older. We're in this flesh. It's very much known that we are in the flesh, in, in the flesh. But however, we are spirit beings, and so we have to have a sense of direction. Lord, where do you want me going? He doesn't just want us stumbling through. So although it's possible to do, I don't think— as the scripture say— I don't think that's making the best use of our time. That part of that verse is very important: making the best use of our time. And although we can have great intentions, I believe having a sense of direction is what helps us make the best use of our time. Small choices with application is what leads to results. What am I saying? Okay, just think of it. I'm not saying you have to go to college to be successful, but I just want to use this example. I personally don't have an issue with some people, you know, going to college and they're kind of— they're undecided, especially if they're taking a bunch of general education. But eventually you need to pick something. Even in that first year, you should be— you can go back to the first two episodes and listen to kind of unpack that, to kind of give you guidance on why. But you should pick a career that you want to be in if you're going to be in college, especially if you're paying afford out of pocket because it's expensive. And Lord knows if you're taking student loans, you really need to be— but I don't, I don't recommend that. But especially now— oh, and Anthony O'Neill has a great book, Debt-Free Degree, for people that, that's trying to pay for college out of pocket and go to school debt-free. But this is the thing, If you are in college, you need a sense of direction because you need— direction is what leads to destination or results, as we just said, those small choices. If you're just going to go through, just go through college with no sense of direction, you're not making the best use of time. You're just basically out here, you just living. You're— yes, you can say, okay, oh cool, you might get a Bachelor's of Arts, a Bachelor's of Science in general education, but you still don't really know what you want to do in life. So now let's say, for instance, like you're trying to be an engineer or something like that. Yes, I understand you can learn certain skills on the side, you know, you might be a project manager, um, going to criminal justice, whatever, but think about what you could have done if you would have just made those decisions early on in life and been more intentional. The preparation. Because kind of like I open up, it's not that we lack intention. I think many of us get up with the right intentions, but we lack the preparation in order to get the results that we need, that leads to the results that we need. We lack the preparation that helps give us direction that leads to a destination, is what I'm trying to say. So therefore, desire is never enough. You can have a deep desire to be successful but don't have the direction that backs it. And so when it comes to that, when it comes to that, like, that paradigm, when you start to understand that, that's why a lot of us are out here just existing. We have good intentions. I want to do this, I want to do that, I want to be this, I want to help this person. I want to do this for my kids. I want to do this for my husband. I want to do this for my wife. I want to do this for my parents. So we have all these great intentions. I want to do this for my ministry, the local church that I attend. But you don't have direction, and so you're just not making the best use of time, as it said in Ephesians 5:15-17. You're not being productive. And like I said, you might stumble upon a lot of things. But you're gonna keep hearing me saying this, it's not the best use of time. You have to have that direction over intention. Because like I say, many of us don't just wake up and intentionally want to suck in life. But when we prepare, when we do aim at something, and we make those small choices with application, So that's like, all right, I'm aiming, I'm aiming. You don't want to spend too much time because sometimes as we get into this, uh, this thing of analysis paralysis, that you just aim, aim, aiming but never pull the trigger. But you want to aim, you want to set your target, look at your target, set your sights, and go. For example, if I was traveling here to California, New York, or whatever— I live in Arkansas— and I just got up in the morning and said I'm going here Now, yes, I can read, I can have some type of sense of like, you know, okay, east and west, I know this way, this way, or whatever, and just go. True enough, I'll probably eventually stumble up on it. But if I would have done a little preparation, maybe looked, okay, I know I had to hit this highway, this highway, got to go through here, bypass this, all this. Yes, I know we have our phones now, but even getting in our car and putting the destination in our phone, we have set a destination which gives us the direction that we need to go. Now, I don't know what's in between here in New York right now or here in California right now. It could be some storms, it could be some delays, it could be road detours, construc— all this type of stuff. But however, I have a destination because I've planned and prepared, and I have direction, and I also have a desire to go there. So it's not so much just saying, oh, I shouldn't have no intentions. No, I'm not saying it. I'm just saying you have to have direction over that as well. You— yet it has to partner with it because a lot of times we just stop at intentions. You have intentions to be all this type of stuff but no direction. So that's why you're not getting to the places that you want to get in life. And it's all inclusive, it goes for me too. And so all these things I want to do, I have to have a sense of direction, and that can come from mentorship, just studying books, virtual mentors, whatever. Like I said, talked about this a lot in the previous two episodes, and if you want to dive into that, I highly recommend that you go listen to those. But you have to keep in mind that desire is never enough. And I believe it was Andy Stanley that said it best: direction, not intention, determines destination. So direction is what gives me the endpoint. Intention is just the starting point, but direction is what leads to the endpoint because it's the destination in life. So if you're struggling with some things, man, and you just like say, man, I, I have good intentions— intentions is not an excuse. Good intentions is not a lack of— it's not an excuse for a lack of results. You have to aim, you have to pull the trigger. Too many of us are just pulling the trigger and not aiming. And like I say, too many of us are aiming and not pulling the trigger. Both should partner with each other. So you want to have that sense of direction in life. You need it. You can look through scriptures, you can read like in Genesis with Abraham. You have to have that sense of direction in life because, as I said, even if I was going on my way to that destination, whatever I have to go through I have direction. So yes, I might be roadblocked, might have to pull over and sleep at a hotel due to being exhausted, might whatever, have to make some adjustments, but I have direction. That's the thing. So as a recap, remember, we want to make the best use of time. As we read in our foundational text, we want to make sure we're aiming because like Zig Ziglar said, if we aim at nothing, we'll hit it every single time. We just— we're not— because we don't have no direction. You want to make small choices with application over time. We got to be content. It's over time that's what's going to lead to results. Desire is never enough. Desire by itself is never enough, but it's direction Not intention that determines destination. So intentions, or being intentional, is a starting point. That's great, but back it up with direction.