involved

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Go All The Way In What You Do

If you are going to do something, or be involved in something, you should go all the way.

Go All The Way

You should be all in.

When you do something halfway or half-heartedly others can tell … and you know yourself that you didn’t put the effort in that was really required.

This applies to individuals and groups, teams as well as businesses, organizations and network television. 

One of the highlight events on television every year is the Super Bowl. 

Even people who don’t watch football, don’t care about football, and don’t know who’s playing in the game still watch the Super Bowl.

There were over 60,000 people in the stadium in Miami on Sunday night to watch the game. There was an estimated 100 millions viewers watching the game on television.

And even in Canada it was a huge draw. About 4.5 million people in our country tuned in to watch the spectacle called the Super Bowl.

I, for one, had a group of hungry … well, I shouldn’t say fans, but hungry people over to watch on our TV. And one of the things we were looking forward to seeing were the commercials. 

Companies were paying about 5 million dollars for a 30 second commercial during the Super Bowl game. And when you spend that much money on air time, you are going to spend a wad of cash on making that commercial spectacular.

I even had little bingo cards made up for my guests to daub when a commercial for a certain product with a particular celebrity occupied a square on their card.

It was perfect for my group of less-than-eager football fans. 

But not in Canada you say? 

For some reason the CRTC and CTV decided they would run Canadian commercials in place of the high priced star-studded commercials in the US. 

CTV didn’t get into selling that kind of commercial space. They just ran regular commercials. In fact, they didn’t even have that many commercials. More than anything else, they ran ads for shows on their network.

If you have an audience who’s all geared up for a big game with all the hoopla – like big expensive commercials – then you should go all in.

Do it up right! 

You either get advertisers to make interesting and outlandish commercials or you just show the ones that they are showing south of the border. 

CTV and TSN should have done it right!  

I had 10 people with bingo cards and I barely could get one person yelling bingo the whole game. 

I went all in: I had the cards, explained the game, got prizes for the winners … and then we watched how Downey can make sweaters soft when you wash them in their detergent. 

I’m not buying it. I don’t mean that I don’t believe Downey will make a sweater softer, I’m just not going to buy the product. 

When a network buys the rights to air something as big as the Super Bowl, they should fight the CRTC to the limit so they can go all in and broadcast all the Super Bowl goodness. 

Oh, and by the way, the Kansas City Chiefs beat the San Francisco 49ers 31-20.

Here’s the thing: When Christ came to earth, He was all in. He left all He had in heaven, took on human frailties, and went all the way to die on the cross for our sins. Jesus was all in. In exchange He calls us to be fully committed to Him. Don’t be half-hearted with Christ; be all in. 

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What is your commitment level to Christ right now? Leave your comments and questions below.

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Is It Possible To Be Too Involved in Something?

I got myself way too involved and didn’t realize it until I was deep into it.

The other day we changed our phone and internet service at work. 

We had been with the same internet company for 23 years but they couldn’t offer us any faster service than we were getting even though it was no longer adequate.

I still wouldn’t have made the change but the price point was almost the same for 10 times faster internet.

Even then I was still sceptical that the new company could give us increased service, knowing that the phone wires in our building were ancient.

I was assured by the salesman that it would be a very simple change over … no trouble; it would be seamless; I wouldn’t notice a thing.

Salesmen are all about the sale. They will tell you what you want to hear. I, on the other hand, knew our building and didn’t think for a moment that it would be seamless. 

But I was curious.

When the installer came, he realized about five minutes after he arrived that this was not going to be a simple change over. 

In fact, just getting a new cable to our building took all morning. Then there was all the inside work.

The installer had help in the morning, but in the afternoon he was on his own. 

He asked me if I wanted to see where things were going to go down in the basement and I said, “Sure.”

Costly reply.

In the process of showing me where things were going, he also got me to hold something … then pass him something else and help him follow a wire.

I then located a hole in the ceiling where he could feed a cable up through to the main floor of the building – a significant deal because we have reinforced concrete floors and he would have otherwise had to drill through it to get the wire up.

But by this time, my sermon writing had been abandoned and I was helping him trouble shoot some of the other things that needed to be negotiated.

It was like offering to help someone move who tells you he just has a small apartment and that one truckload will do it. But when you show up, nothing is packed in boxes and there is no truck. You are left lugging carloads of items piled throughout you car and trunk. 

… And the one trip it was going to take ends up being four or five trips back and forth. 

We’ve all been there.  

This time I got roped in by just wanting to see where the installer was going to put things … and, from that point on, he had a lackey he could count on. 

The seamless change, that I would barely even notice, cost me my sermon writing time, and an afternoon of being an assistant. 

The work that had been scheduled for 8:00 am – 12:00 pm, ended up being from 8:00 am – 4:30 pm, with me deeply involved in it. 

But you know what? The new internet speed is amazing!

Here’s the thing: Like anything in life, your relationship with Christ will take you deeper than you realized or thought it would at the start. Are you able to say “yes” to going deeper with Christ than you thought you would or could? Christ will always call you to deeper levels of relationship. Don’t ever settle or try to minimize the work you will be called to do. It will all be worth it.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What in your life has taken you deeper than you thought it would? Leave your comments below.