Nobody's thinking about you.
So you think they're thinking about you.
You think they care about how you look.
You think they care about what you say.
They don't.
Most people are so selfish
that all they're thinking about is themselves.
So why compare?
There's one animal that all other animals fear.
It's not the largest.
It's not the smartest.
It's not even the strongest.
But every animal in the animal kingdom
fears and respects this animal.
He's the lion.
The lion has confidence like no other.
The lion has the respect of other animals
because he has an attitude and a confidence of a king.
Why do you think they named the movie Lion King?
The difference is the way the lion thinks.
It's the way the lion works.
He works as a team.
And we're talking about lions, demons, and blood.
And I'm hoping that in your mind and heart,
you're learning to discern who you are in Christ,
how to break the power of shame,
and how to be lion-hearted in your spirit.
Your heart keeps you weak or strong,
but your heart can be lion-hearted
without transforming your habits.
You cannot be lion-hearted without transforming your habits.
And this only happens through your daily routine
that you develop in your own life.
You show me a man who has a beautiful marriage.
You show me a man who's successful in business.
You show me a man who's influential.
And I'll show you a man who's got good habits.
Habits define a man.
The legendary coach Vince Lombardi once said,
Watch your actions, they become your habits.
Watch your habits, they become your character.
You'll never change your life
unless you change something you do daily.
Forget about feelings, forget about emotion,
forget about inspiration.
Habits determine your future.
Lion-hearted men have something they're living for
that's greater than themselves.
It's not about them, but it is about them.
In other words, a man with strong habits,
a man who wants to be successful,
a man who wants to be effective,
a lion-hearted man is one who's living for greater purposes,
greater significance for his life
than just living for himself.
But he also understands that it's about the life
that he chooses to live through the habits that he forms
that he becomes a man who God can mightily use.
Proverbs 28, 1, we read,
The wicked flee when no one pursues,
but the righteous are bold as a lion.
What will set you apart, men, from others
is your lion-hearted habits that you develop every day.
The lion-hearted are whole-hearted.
They have certain habits in their lives
that drive them forward.
They've surrendered their flesh, their demons,
to the blood of good habits.
Their personality becomes their habits.
Their habits become their personality.
Today, I couldn't work out
because I had surgery on a tooth two days ago,
and I was reading the guidelines from my dentist,
and it said don't work out for two days.
That's the hardest thing for me
is not to get up at my regular time,
which is about 4.30 to 5.30, right in there,
and I just go straight into my workout room,
and I work out, and I love that.
So I miss that today because what's happened
is my habit of working out is now my personality.
It's part of who I am.
It's part of my character.
So I want to tell you about six habits,
six habits of the lion-hearted
that I found in working with men
to be crucial in developing the kind of heart
and the kind of success that you want in your life
through the habits that you've harnessed
to a greater purpose than just living for yourself.
So here's habit number one,
and this is the most important habit.
This is foundation laying.
Habit one is do the first thing first.
Do the first thing first.
From the greatest leader and coach of all time,
Jesus Christ, he said,
seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.
That's the first habit.
Learning, starting each day,
to seek God first in everything you do.
Seek the kingdom of God first in your life.
Jesus, in his most focused poignant sermon,
the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5, 6, and 7,
He's coming to the conclusion of that sermon and he says,
look, you're worried about this,
and you're worried about that,
and you've got all these worries in your life,
but God knows you need those things,
but you have to get the priority right,
and that is seek first.
See, we're an aiming people.
Every person aims at something.
Are you aiming for success?
Are you aiming for wealth?
Are you aiming for friends?
Are you aiming to get married?
Whatever your aim is, everybody aims.
Jesus says, quit aiming at all the wrong things
that cause all this worry.
Aim at me.
Aim at the kingdom.
Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness,
and then he says all these secondary things
that you've been aiming at,
that you're worried about,
will take care of themselves.
In other words, Jesus is saying,
get the primary right,
and I'll take care of the secondary.
Let me take care of the secondary
by you putting me on the throne of your heart
every day as your primary,
and so I discovered that
when I was at University of Georgia.
I was an athlete there.
I was a gymnast,
and my freshman year, I was on floor exercise,
and I was doing a back somersault with a full twist,
and I landed just a little bit off,
and I tweaked my knee,
thought I had torn my ACL.
Actually, I dislocated my knee,
went down in agony.
They rushed me over to the hospital,
and then later into the training room,
and I had a period of time
where I didn't know if this was career-ending or not,
and that's when I really began to seek the Lord.
I had never sought the Lord before.
I grew up in a Christian home,
but I'd never received Christ.
I'd never given my heart to Christ.
I was just like anybody else,
but it was during that time
that I discovered how fleeting
and how shakable my life was,
that, I mean, just by missing a twist
by a degree or two,
my body could fail me,
my career would be over,
and everything that gave me happiness and joy was gone,
just like that,
and so I began to think about the externals of my life.
I began to think about, okay,
success as it's related to shakable things
that I have no control over.
I mean, it's wonderful
when you have control over everything,
but there's so many things you don't have control over,
and an injury is actually one of them,
so a guy shared with me at that time
about a personal, vital, dynamic,
growing relationship with Jesus Christ,
the kingdom of God.
I was interested,
and so for months,
while I was in recuperation
and I'm going through the training to get my knee back,
so I did realize that it wasn't gonna be career-ending,
one night, after a lot of investigation,
a lot of prayer and thinking about it,
I went into a little chapel at the University of Georgia,
and I gave my heart to Christ.
I surrendered to him,
and literally overnight,
I mean, because this was at night,
I mean, literally overnight,
I was a different person the next day.
I was born again.
I was transformed,
and I gave my life to seeking the kingdom first
from that day forward,
so that was my freshman year,
so here we are over 50 years later,
and everything in my life,
the whole trajectory of my life
has literally been transformed
by that one decision
of seeking the kingdom of God first,
how I met Liz, my wife,
the vocation I chose,
the money I've made,
the security I feel,
all of that's related to making the priority
the kingdom of God,
and so I'd be remiss
if I didn't say to you,
man, if you're Lionheart,
and if you wanna be a Lionhearted man
for the rest of your life,
you gotta lay the right foundation
in that seeking first the kingdom of God.
It was Jordan Peterson,
who's the famed psychologist from Canada
who said that the most noble,
the most earth-shattering statement
ever made to humankind,
and he's not even a Christian,
but he said the most noble,
the most earth-shattering statement of all time
is by Jesus of seeking first the kingdom of God.
He said you get that right,
and there's nothing more noble,
there's nothing better than that.
So aim, man, start off as a Lionhearted man
by aiming for the kingdom.
You're gonna aim at something,
and it's either gonna be you
and your little life,
which you think so great and so significant,
and it is to you.
It isn't to anybody else,
but it is to you.
Or you aim for the greatest power,
the greatest cause,
the most noble endeavor
that the world has to offer.
offer the kingdom of God and God will take care of these secondary issues in your life.
It's really, really exciting.
So that's the first law of leadership.
That's the first law of friendship.
That's the first law of marriage is to seek first the kingdom of God.
And so how do you seek first the kingdom of God?
That's a great question.
And I would say it's two things.
One, it's giving your heart, surrendering your heart to Jesus Christ.
That's the first thing is completely surrender to him.
He is the kingdom, but he also gave us a kingdom.
And so the kingdom is more than just Jesus is Jesus and his righteousness.
So it's the whole law, it's the Bible.
So when I was a freshman, I started each day with spending time in God's word in the Bible.
And now I've given it a term, PB&J, prayer, Bible, and journal, not peanut butter and
jelly, but prayer, Bible, and journal.
I've talked a lot about this on some of the other broadcasts, but starting the first thing
in your day with opening the word.
So I drink a glass of water when I first wake up in the morning early, I go work out.
So I go work out.
I go into the living room or the den and I open the word and I read at least one chapter
of the Bible.
And then I have a journal.
I've got my journal there with a pen, and when I read the word, like I begin the day
and I end the day in God's word, like last night I was in Daniel chapter four.
And then this morning I actually went back to Daniel, to Daniel chapter five, and you'll
see all these underlined places with some notes on the side and then stuff that I wrote
in my journal, prayer, Bible, journal.
And so that's how I start my day.
I've been doing it for 50 years and it's awesome.
What I found is that when you make PB&J, the first thing you do in the day, it just sets
the day.
It sets your trajectory for the day.
So remember I talked about the trajectory of your life, seek first the kingdom.
Well that doesn't mean anything unless you develop a habit that's daily that sets your
life for the day.
And so that's PB&J.
So that's the first habit of the lion hearted is prayer, Bible, and journal, seeking first
the kingdom.
Habit number two might surprise you.
Be the best you.
Learn to compete against yourself.
Quit comparing yourself to others.
Quit comparing yourself to people who are smarter than you or people that are dumber
than you.
It does no good at all.
And a lot of times we think, well, I wonder what people think about me because we're comparing
ourselves with other people.
Let me just tell you, give you a little hint.
Nobody's thinking about you.
So you think they're thinking about you.
You think they care about what you, how you look.
You think they care about what you say.
They don't.
Most people are so selfish that all they're thinking about is themselves.
So why compare?
Why compare yourself to other people who don't give a rip about you anyway?
Okay.
So I want you to compete against yourself.
And what I mean is that you would begin to be, you would make it your mindset each day.
I'm going to be better today than I was yesterday.
I'm going to have, I'm going to tell the truth more.
I'm going to walk with integrity better.
I'm going to do my job with excellence better than I did yesterday.
Competing against yourself is like, best way I can describe it is someone came to you and
said, Hey, what's the advice you'd give me about this or that?
And then before you answer the question, ask yourself, well, am I that kind of person that
I just gave them the advice to be?
So in other words, if you're single and you want to be married, what kind of a man or
what kind of a woman would you want to marry?
Well, are you that kind of person?
Compete against yourself.
Look in the mirror and say, am I the kind of person I would want to marry?
Or am I the kind of person that I would want to employ?
Am I the kind of person that I want to be a friend with?
So be yourself.
Everyone else is taken.
God made you unique and expects you to be the one he created you to be.
So compete against yourself.
And the best way I know to do that is don't look down on others.
Number one, don't look down on those who are less than you.
They don't need your bad looks.
They need your encouragement.
Don't look around to your peers and compare yourself.
Look up.
Look up. Look at Christ. Look up at people who you emulate to be more like them.
Read good books. Read biographies. Keep continuing to be a lifelong learner and continue to grow.
Be the best you that you can be.
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