‘As iron sharpens iron, so a friend sharpens a friend.’ Proverbs 27:17 NLT
When you stop growing, you stop enjoying your co-workers and associates. In most cases it’s another symptom of lack of growth, and it’s directly linked to your lack of influence. When you’re the ‘go-to’ person, everyone seeks you out. They want your advice and expertise on a myriad of issues and concerns. But once you stop growing, the focus shifts to someone else. Personal growth keeps you focused on people, and keeps them focused on you.
So what can you do to stay fresh? Start cross-pollinating. Bees spend their lives moving from flower to flower, carrying pollen from one source to another. And what’s the result? Growth! Because bees continually spread pollen around the garden, more flowers start growing and it becomes a more beautiful environment. In life, cross-pollinating means identifying valuable information from multiple sources and spreading it in various ways to different people. So start looking for answers in unexpected places. Paul writes, ‘Stir up the gift… which is in you’ (2 Timothy 1:6 NKJV), otherwise it’ll lie dormant and you’ll become bored. Dedicate some time every day to personal growth. Discover where you do your best thinking, and go there regularly. Get up earlier, use your lunch break, turn off the TV in the evening. The time and place don’t matter—the important thing is that you stick to it. Eugene S. Wilson said, ‘Only the curious will learn, and only the resolute overcome the obstacles to learning. The Quest Quotient has always interested me more than the Intelligence Quotient.’ Often innate curiosity will tell you more than intelligence.
The point is, you must be committed to personal growth in order to succeed.
SoulFood: Is 12–16, John 6:35–51, Ps 98, Prov 27: 23–24
The Word for Today is authored by Bob and Debby Gass and published under licence from UCB International Copyright 2023
