CHRISTIAN COMMENT: Always strive for excellence

He calls us to excellence. Excellence honours God and promotes us to places of influence.

Daniel was a Jewish exile in Babylon but the Bible speaks of him being elevated to a place 
of prominence because he had an ‘excellent spirit’ (Daniel 6:3).

We live in a culture of mediocrity where it is easy to go with the flow of simply offering what is sufficient, rather than using 100 per cent of our energy to give the best.

We want things fast and at as little personal cost as possible.

Of course, it is possible for us to do as little as we can to get by.

We can act one way when people are watching, when the boss is in the office, and quite another when people are not.

As Christians, we believe that God honours excellence. We should be known for doing more than we have to.

You might now be thinking that everybody slacks off at work when we’re not busy or wastes a bit of time on Facebook.

That may be true, but as followers of Jesus we are called to be children of the living God and to reflect him.

God is not mediocre, nor should his children be.

At Christians, we believe that Jesus’ death and resurrection was an act of complete surrender and abandonment to his father, giving everything and 
Jesus in turn calls us to follow him – in complete surrender.

Many people will never come to a church or read a Bible, but they are reading us.

They are watching to see how we react to situations and circumstance.

This is often most evident in the seemingly insignificant areas – whether we pick up rubbish thrown on the ground; how we treat our spouses or children.

In Matt 5:41 Jesus speaks about ‘going the extra mile’.

In Jesus’ day a Roman officer could demand a Jew to carry his pack for one mile.

Jesus says, “Go further, be excellent. Demand respect. Do more than what is expected of you.”

In Genesis 24, Abraham sends his servant to look for a wife for his son, Isaac.

The servant bumps into Rebecca at a well where she offers to draw water for the servant’s camels.

The scriptures say he has ten camels.

One camel can drink up to 30 gallons of water when thirsty, if she had a one gallon bucket she was offering to dip it 300 times.

She offered to go the extra mile.

The story follows that she then became the wife of one of the wealthiest people of the time, Isaac.

I doubt she ever had to draw water from a well again.

God has prepared an amazing destiny for each one of us.

Let’s be people of excellence that He can trust to live them out to the full.