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What makes a person great?

Conventional wisdom would hold that some people just get the breaks we mere mortals don’t. It’s a combination of inborn talent, faster firing synapses, genetic blessings, right time/right place, etc. You either got it or you don’t.

So we buy personal development books. We listen to audio programs that help us develop a positive mental attitude. We set goals. We discipline ourselves.

And we end up right back where we were. Know what I mean?

Baloney. Don’t buy any of this. Say this with me: “I am destined for greatness.”

I don’t want to come across as some sort of rah-rah cheerleader here … I hope you’ve read enough of my musings to know that’s not how I roll.

But here’s a little revelation for you. You are capable of greatness. It is in you. I am not kidding. This isn’t some false promise.

Here’s what’s happened. The reason you find it hard to believe that you are capable of great things is because the Enemy has made sure that you’ve had plenty of attacks. You’ve had setbacks. You’ve experienced pain. You have had more than your share of failures.

The result is that you question yourself. Worse, you compare yourself to others who seem to have so much more on the ball than you do. They seem to float above life’s problems.

The dirty little secret is that they are probably just as riddled with doubt and uncertainty as you. They just don’t put it on Instagram.

One of the devil’s great deceptions is to convince you that you’re ordinary. I return to this theme a lot, because not many of us are truly “bad” in the conventional sense. Yes, we’re sinners, but we probably aren’t filled with malice or hate toward others. We don’t like to think we’d purposefully hurt anyone.

Satan is full of malice and hate. He wants to hurt and destroy. And to the extent that he can convince us to question ourselves, he knows he’s taken us out of the redemptive fight.

The strategy, then, is for us to focus on the battle God wants to win IN us more than the battle we want Him to win FOR us.

You are called to greatness. It’s spelled out in black and white for us: I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. I swear, if we could get past knowing that verse so intimately and realize the power and passion in it, this whole discussion would be moot. If doing all things through Christ who strengthens you isn’t evidence of greatness, I don’t know what is. And this isn’t a “greatness” as the world might measure greatness … this verse could be a reality in your life and you still spend your earthly days in obscurity. That’s not what this is about. It’s about peace, and security, and knowing that, dang it, you are NOT ordinary. You, by God’s grace, are great in the Kingdom.

So get ready. Destiny winds are blowing over your life.