The LifeVesting Cycle
Stage 1: Allocate your resources.
Stage 2: Explore the possibilities
Stage 3: Follow your passion
Stage 4: Execute your plan
Stage 5: Protect Your Investment
Years ago, a Detroit homeowner went to check on his five-bedroom house.
It was gone.
As in, completely removed down to a vacant lot, gone.
Completely baffled, he asked the Detroit Free Press to help him find out what was going on. A reporter learned that not only was the house gone, but the deed to the empty lot was in someone else’s name. What had happened?
For starters, several years had passed since the homeowner had left the city without providing a forwarding address. Moreover, he had failed to make arrangements for someone to keep the property in repair. So the house was torn down because a city ordinance called for the removal of neighborhood eyesores.
Gives a whole new meaning to “Snooze, you lose,” doesn’t it?
Want to see a farmer laugh? Tell him you’re going to plant corn or tomatoes or something, take a three-month vacation, and come back to pick your harvest. Sorry, Mr. Douglas. It doesn’t work that way, in Hooterville or anywhere else. Investments of any type require care and cultivation. Jesus’ story of the sower and the four types of ground show just how rare a harvest really is. The seed that fell on the hard path became birdseed. The seed that fell on stony ground sprang up rootless. And the seed that fell among the thorns choked.
Investments – seeds of all types and the environment they’re planted in – require nourishing. That means breaking up the hard, resistant places, deepening the shallow places, and pulling the weeds. Did I mention that this was work? Where every day hurls new surprises and challenges? But if the harvest is worth it (and you will wonder at times), then the cultivating is worthwhile.
In order to experience the return you want, your investments require your attention, diligence, and adjustments. Mind if I switch metaphors? Hebrews 12 talks about the same idea, only it uses the imagery of a marathon race, and you’re the runner. Based on the imagery in this chapter, here are four ways to protect your investment:
1. Plan for success.
This is the difference between a gambler and an investor. An investor has a finish line – clearly-defined picture of what he or she is running for, and knows when he reaches it. A gambler “shoots in the dark,” and runs for the sake of running.
Financial investors have a finish line, or at least specific goals. Athletes have a clearly-defined standard of excellence. The Christian life also has a “finish line” and a Finisher – it’s Jesus.
Before you can prepare for attacks or failure, you need to be prepared for success. Many a potential LifeVestor blew it right here! It wasn’t that they couldn’t handle problems, or warfare. They couldn’t handle success!
Sort of like this famous scene from the years of Coyote/Roadrunner chases: Okay, what do I do now?
2. Anticipate danger
Any meaningful pursuit has its share of dangers and pitfalls. Here, using the marathon analogy are a few types you may encounter:
- Unnecessary weights – when you make things more complicated than they are .
- Failures – when you get discouraged by your own mistakes.
- Distorted vision – when you lose sight of the goal.
- Resistance – when you feel alone against the crowd.
- Exhaustion – when you reach the end of your strength.
- Isolation – when you get disconnected from God.
There’s only one way to avoid these types of situations – don’t run at all. The fact is, you will encounter them. Anticipate. Prepare. Have an answer, a strategy for dealing with them.
3. Stay alert to your progress
Remember, the imagery here is a distance race. It’s easy to get deceived here, if you use the wrong measurement. Some people measure themselves by the crowd in the grandstands. Others measure themselves by the other runners in the race. Some measure themselves by looking back at how far they have gone. Others measure themselves by looking only at the distance they have to go.
The one accurate standard for your progress is your own finish line. In the Christian life, that’s Jesus, the Author and Finisher of your faith.
4. Make adjustments as needed
Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint but rather be healed.
-Hebrews 12:12-13, ESV
Athletic contests are won through training and adjustments. Same goes for any other long-term meaningful pursuit.
As you are chasing your finish line, make adjustments based on these three questions:
- What needs to be strengthened, or “fed?”
- What needs to be simplified?
- What needs to be healed, or “fixed?”
Let me say it again: there’s nothing sexy or romantic about any of this. It’s maintenance. It’s work. But the return is worth it.
Now go pull some weeds or something!
