Just Do It.

I’m sure many, many important meetings must have taken place back in 1988. But one meeting in particular helped determine what the future would look like for the well known sports apparel and equipment company, Nike. Anytime you hear the words “Just Do It”, most people’s minds immediately think of “the swoosh”. During that meeting back in the late 80’s, Nike’s ad agency Wieden and Kennedy and Nike employees sat in the meeting and Wieden said out loud, “You Nike guys, you just do it.”

Imagine if we all ‘just did it’. Imagine how much that would change your life, my life and your neighbors life. If everything we wanted to do, we did. "Just do it." It seems easy enough, right?

People go to seminars for their jobs, for parenting, and even for motivation. You can go to a seminar for just about anything these days. And don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. It’s important to educate yourself. But think about how much time is put into preparing those seminars. And how much time is put into listening to the speakers. And how much time it takes to write notes on your pad of paper so fast that you feel as if your hand is going to fall off. Now think about this: how much time do you actually put into practicing what you learned about, wrote notes about, and exercised your mind about?

Same thing can be said about serving God. You might go to church on Sunday… and may even learn a thing or two. While that is all wonderful, do you let what you learned change your heart and then allow your heart to "just do it" and shine as a light for our Lord?

Just going to those ‘seminars’ makes us feel better when we leave. Like we just produced more revenue for our company, like we just became better parents, like we want to go into work RIGHT now and get started on a new project. Just like going to church makes us feel good. Like we did the right thing, like we did a good deed for God. Again, not a necessarily a bad thing…

If you follow through.

We have to put the ideas we let come into our hearts and minds into action in order to actually produce more revenue… become better parents… and most importantly, better serve God. But where do we start? That always seems to be the question. How do we "just do it"? Sometimes the idea of putting our thoughts into actions is scary. No matter what aspect of your life you might be dealing with.

As I’ve shared with many of you, I am reading a book called The Me I Want To Be by John Ortberg. For those of you who might be close to me, you know how great I think the book is. I highly recommend it to all of you reading this. But anyway, in Chapter 10 of the book, he talks about taking direct action to face your fears.

 

Ortberg writes, “Information alone will not bring about the transformation of the whole person. We may read book after book, hear talk after talk, listen to sermons- maybe even read the Bible- but still remain just as anxious as we ever were before. There is no way to get the peace of God from our head to the rest of our body besides trusting God enough to directly confront our greatest fear (126).”

I’m definitely no expert, but if you want to begin your "just do it" journey, my friendly advice to you would be to find the form of worship in which you feel the closest to God and start there. Go to him. Trust in him. Hand it all over to him. Let the love you feel from those moments you spend with Him shine in all aspects of your life. And take action to ensure that light keeps on glowing. Don’t give up on it. 

Just. do. it.