Below is an excerpt from Morning Star Ministies Word for the Week.

"After speaking at an NFL team chapel, I was invited to join the team for dinner before the game. I ended up sitting with a group that included a winner of the Heisman Trophy, the award given to the best college player in the country. The other players at the table were also some of the best at their positions. I asked all of them how they achieved what they did, and each one related how they started out very young with a devotion to be a professional football player. Then they became focused on a single position. They spent an average of eight hours a day, every day, practicing, lifting weights, and studying others who had been the best at their positions. If they did this for a position on a football team, what would happen if God’s people started having the same kind of devotion for gaining a place on His team?

Some of these players remarked what I have often heard from others: They felt they knew others with more talent than they had, but they wasted their time in entertainment or dreaming about being a great player, instead of working to get there. In short, the successful ones were inevitably the ones who sacrificed the most and had the discipline to train when others did not, even when they did not feel like it.

I have talked with others who were the best in their fields—artists, musicians, business people, people in the military, and people in the ministry, and I always seem to get the same story. Again, what would happen if Christians started seeking their positions in the body of Christ with the same zeal that athletes seek their place on a team? A single congregation, even a small one, with those who are greatly devoted would certainly impact the world for Christ.

What would happen if we spent the same amount of time cleaning up our inner man each day as we did our outer bodies? What would happen if we spent as much time preparing and eating spiritual meals for our inner man as we do for our outer man? Our physical bodies are going to pass away, but who we are spiritually will last forever. To what should we be giving most of our time and attention?"
 

  This convicts me to realign my priorities. To seek Him with all of my heart. To spend time in His presence. This is what changes us.