The seasons of greatness

Greatness does not have to be chased; it comes with responsibility and time. As we stick to our divine calling we are going to gradually stand out of the crowd. Although, our lack of character may delay our emergence, our weaknesses may keep delaying God’s great work concerning our life.
However, there is another outworking of God on our inside that is greater than the working on the outside. That is where the work of depth occurs in our spirit man. Our sin and weaknesses are not enough to stop him from taking us there to his destined point for our lives… this is why purpose is inevitable.
Your greatness is tied to your purpose. Your greatness will be discovered in the confines of your core calling. Your greatness is tied to your obedience to God’s word. When you are determined to live and die for a noble cause; you are only being philanthropic but when you are willing to be crucified with the lord Jesus Christ; when you are willing to live for Him alone.
When you are eager to see the fulfillment of His promises, purpose, and the manifestation of His power; daylight will arise in your heart. You will be able to say that it has been worth it all along. You will be certain that you have not come this far in vain because the true greatness in Christ is not seasonal.

Dancing to your inner drums!

Just because God deals with us individually and not always as group, when it comes to his specific instruction, it is very easy to compare ourselves with other people. Look unto the rock from were you were hewn, look unto Abraham your father, and to Sarah your mother, for I called him alone. An amazing thing I’ve seen when it comes to hearing from God individually is that you can be in the midst of a crowd and still be the only one who hears what you heard. Your ear could actively screen certain rhythms of instruction while others may not. You are so conscious of the instruction of that moment that you lose touch with the activities in your surrounding. Sounds crazily familiar?
You are among multitude but you are the only one hearing whatever kinds of sound you are hearing. You are hearing specifically what others are not hearing. Others may feel you’re mad for a while until they see what you see and hear what you heard.
And this is when it is very important to follow the direction of the spirit. As God beckons on you with His call, obey the divine program .Follow the yield sign.Why react to the anger of onlookers? You are weird to them and that is true. They cannot feel or see what you are experiencing. Stop trying to explain everything to everyone. They can’t understand by mere explanation. It has to be encountered as revelation. It is a divine matter. Spiritual things can only be understood by spiritually inclined. You are a spiritual being, the workmanship of God of heaven. You were never created to be understood all the time. You were not created by some kind of mathematical brains in a laboratory somewhere rather you were God’s divine intention. You cam into being by the very breathe of the almighty. Through the supernatural power of the almighty God, you were preordained unto greatness. Stop living by human analysis. Why? Because you were meant to live life to the full and be all what God wants you to be. You were destined for greatness. You were craft for God’s glory. Be all you were meant to be.

Where are the Legends amongst us?

Consequently we cry aloud: where are the knights? As we look around, they appear and disappear, faded into twilights. Champions of mediocrity reigns with charm, gazing further, we see the heroes. They are shaping the age ahead. Our age is evolving. This generation is self-defining. Imagine how we are emerging. Our age is dividing and defining. Can you see the divide? Can you see the dots? We were raised by heroes, fathered by giants. Their voices cry aloud from afar. They are voice of discipline. We were likened to gods, daily dying like moths. We were bound for Palace in Paris. We detoured as troupe through greed to Greece. We landed in Cyprus seriously injured. We were displaced to Syria. Our journeys have become a destination. We stopped. Progression ensnared at four-way sign. We came to the place called Kalahari. It’s like Sahara. These deserts happened to us amidst our journey through Arctic. We feel the winds amidst the storm. The wind-chill as we burn. We live with heat within. Our souls cry out for help. We starve, we stench, we sound as those who seems to be starched!

Legends are afar; we must catch up with them. Nevertheless we must run towards the light! Do you need to look far to see and plunge in? Do you have to squint to see the utmost? Who said they’ve all gone? The legends are all dead? When we see the handwritings of change, we feel the hope and know those who bring revolution are not far fetched. It is uncomplicated recognizing why we live in two worlds. How two different matrixes hold us all? Why they are strangely pulling us apart? There is a world of greatness. There’s distinction. It is the lowest height of prospect. The daily tenet there is plain: you either breathe your last on it. It’s excellence. It is exceptionality. It’s for you and you alone. You must live for fineness or there is no other option. There’s the second matrix. It is the world of mediocrity. It is where few things matter. It’s where principles and values don’t grow with age. It is an island of ease. You just take it easy and go with the flow or flow with the groan. Sometimes you can be stuck in between.

You can be pushed or pulled. You can even fall so badly; beaten by the drift, forgotten in the fight and flight of survival. The attitude of gang of choice may knight you as a “legend”. Words, habit and more may make you. There are those whom we only need to see once again and our dreams would soar again within [us]. There are those we need to run the Deer’s race away from. If only to preserve our dreams, we may have to reverse. If we will ever fulfill those dreams, there are destiny gangs we must identify with. We must stick together forever. There are those we must observe closely for fortune to be born forefront. There are inspirers even from afar that we only need to see again and soul would soar again. We may come to the post tagged “arrival” to see that there are few of these ones amongst us. We may get to that point when stimulation can only be drawn from within us. We may reach a yield sign where our inner reservoirs of old is calling enter to great lanes. Join only noble causes. Motivation may be a question of within and not without. We can either yield or stick, seeing maggots, faggots and harlots. Change will never be born; greatness will never be real until we can truly cry, not for the legends but dare to be the legends amongst us.

What you don’t know about greatness.

Let me shoot straight at you. Don't read this if you don't want to become successful. Very recently,i was inspired by the Holy Spirit to compile some pictures of great and successful people from all walks of life.I added a picture of mine with them. And i printed it out on just one glossy photo paper.I framed it up and hung it in my sitting room. It serves as a reflector of my heart. It represents where i want to be in life. I understand that God is great. Why shouldn't i? I am not the first person to be doing this kind of thing. It's just that this is my own time to reinforce the principle. I must let you know that the discipline of success is taught in an invincible school called: School of greatness. There is an invincible drill going on daily for greatness to be birthed. There is a rigorous training in which very few people participate in. There’s an institution of success that few people who enroll and attend, systematically attain stardom. This is quite different from the normal schools around. It is not the same thing as the ordinary institutions we see around. The curriculum is self evolved. The time table, sessions, class hours are self chosen. Exceptional people attend there. Those few who succeed in life are students of that school. They strive to learn what others don’t care about. These people are busy working day and night, reading hard, thinking through, and pummeling themselves to align with their vision. With Intentionality they press on to become better people in life. You have to know what you need to know to blow off the limitation. And because you don’t know what you don’t know, these are one of the reasons why they read and study.

Success and greatness takes more than self awareness. You need to consciously pursue after success to reach there. You have to keep pedaling forward until you reach the city of greatness. The people who attend this invincible school of greatness are on their way there. These are people who have signed up for the course called success. They have sold out their hearts for development. They have tied their lives up for improvement. Development is their target. They are not afraid of taking calculated risks and making changes. They have surrendered their lives to the discipline of the school of greatness. Working on their character daily, embracing the right school of thought in totality. They follow the same trend of hard work. They give over themselves unto right principles, right relationships, right actions and more. Although, their lives may look boring to some, they may miss temporary fun in the moment; they may look phony, weird to some others. But as they keep looking inwards to grow daily, they are climbing each rung towards greatness. By reading unpressurized books, buying books which nobody has enforced on them, listening to tapes and CDs, watching heroic and educative movies, listening to informative podcasts, going to seminars; they are chatting the course to greatness in the invincible realm. As they keep studying the life of those who have succeeded in the past. They are ingraining their exceptional spirit. By repeating what those successful people did rightly in order to succeed. They are forming a habit which will shape their destiny forever. By asking questions, having mentors and life coaches; they are led to the great path which successful people of old threaded to get to where they reached. It was not an accident. And it will not be accidental. It was through conscious consistent efforts in the right direction. Greatness is not a mistake. You will reap exactly what you sow. Successes don’t just jump on people. The value of small but consistent actions can never be underestimated. Nothing just happen to any man, I don’t believe that there is anyone called a lucky person on earth. He must have been sowing some secret seeds somewhere which no one knew about. So when he reaped the fruits of his heart and he plucked the rewards of his labor; ignorant people merely look and concluded he was lucky.

If I may ask you now, considering the pace at which you are going presently, considering where you want to go in life, are you positioning yourself rightly each day? Considering your age, if we are to compare your age with the age of those successful people you want to be like, were they doing what you are doing now at the same age? If we are to evaluate the lives of those great people we read about. If you were to read in between the lines of their biographies; how did they achieve greatness? Were they doing what you are doing right now? Were they doing things exactly how you are doing it now? Or were they committed to something much more tasking? The stake to greatness is getting higher each day. In terms of what it entails to be successful, more is required of us. And it seems that every generation seems to have their own peculiar big breaking point when those who succeed actually emerge. There is always a momentum prior to that effect. That can not happen without periods of self discipline wherein those great people would have faced their own self. Conquer their fears. Run over their limitations. Fight their individual battles against mediocrity. There is a unique huddle everyone has got to jump. Their huddle to success and greatness may have shaped their life in determining how they succeeded and why we hear so much of them in our day.

Sometimes, some people wonder if those people who lived in the 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th, and 20th century actually faced such nerve-racking huddles as we are facing now. And I wonder why not. They were not more fortunate than us. There is no point doubting whether or not they got into greatness of equal standard with our day. Although, it was not all the students of that invincible school of greatness got to be famous and read about. We did not even know so many people. However, people who disciplined themselves to be successful attain it in their own right. They were few. Yet they were true. Such thing called the discipline of success was probably uncommon in their day. Listing out the number of great people in those times; I am not sure whether or not they outnumbered their successors. The population of the successful people in each successive era may have been determined by the rate at which people actually enroll in that school of greatness. And much more, in how they stayed through the process thereof.

I stand to be corrected that reading just one book such as “Think and grow rich” or any exceptional book at all; can make one truly rich or successful. Doing just one thing and expecting huge result hardly works. To suddenly become rich, is to take a short cut. I think we need to understand that. We need to know why must do better and how we can do better. As we study patterns, succession, history and the culture of greatness. We will read of the wealth of principles that was passed down from one generation to another. We will understand the trend. We need the global perspective on how things evolved from generation to generation. We need to know how success and greatness got re-defined over decades until it got to our generation. And we will need to look for, and understand the common patterns in each stage and each age. It is my thought that: the gateway to riches got more challenging because many people already know the same things...the popular old principles which the likes of Napoleon Hills wrote about has become a common knowledge and almost obsolete. You remember the law of demand and supply? That the higher the demand the lower the supply. The universe works with it still. When everyone already knows the same thing, it becomes a common knowledge. And the value of common knowledge is that it’s almost nothing. If something must be valued and appreciated, it has to be rare. This is why fewest people believe that the search for wealth of knowledge has just began. We are starting all over again. It takes those who will search deeper to know something special, some new strategies for winning. I mean after reading all we have read so far. We have come to realized that more is required of us than others. It will take those who will read above others to stand out of the crowd and lead others. We cannot expect to read common books and suddenly lead people. We can't attain stardom cheaply. If we read the same things like everyone, it means we all know the same thing. The question is this: What are those uncommon principles that others are yet to know about? That is what will make us stand out of the park. That is why you don’t become the student of success by just reading of successful people. You have to become a follower of successful principles, successful trends; you have to become an observer of patterns, a lover of greatness, et.al. And you must constantly look out for what other people are not looking out for. You must go deeper!

When you enroll in this invincible university of Greatness; everything about your life will change. In this invincible school, sometimes thoughts must be weighed on a scale, thoughts must be inverted, recaptured, bright ideas must be scrutinized for the realization of success. You cannot be thinking like everybody else and expect to be their leader. You have to think ahead of them. You have to go above their ideologies. And sometimes, it means becoming different. It means you are not afraid to stand alone and be called weird by some people. In that school of greatness, you cannot graduate in four years like it is in the common college. Sorry. You have signed up for life! You must resolve in your mind that you will stay through the process. You must determine to wait as long as the journey requires of you. Considering when great people got into stardom, looking at the age they got there and the barrier they went through. Do you think they calculated the time it will take them to get there? No. They simply resolve to wait and win come what may. And that was how they won. I think we need to ask ourselves: was there anything we think they did differently? What was so unique about their lives? What were they doing all along before they got their big break? What were they doing differently from their mates every day? By the time we look at these indices. We will realize that we have serious work to do and the time is short!

We need to keep seeing the big picture. We need to focus on the destination we see? One of the rare beauties of life is hidden in the art of living in the unknown, believing in the possibilities and potentials of human spirit and striving hard to become better each day. What do you want to become? Do you believe that you can reach there? What do you look like in the present? How long do you think it will take you to get there? How much are you giving daily towards reaching there? The point is that our daily walks count. We are supposed to look at destiny. We are to consider the time and understand the season. What time is it? In terms of our life goals how far have we come? What is the clock of purpose saying? Are we conscious of destiny? Are we working on fulfilling purpose? All these require working hard with time daily. Time must be invested, traded, managed and maximized… that means that we are to daily seize opportunities. These things will require serious learning, communication with other successful people, consciously networking with great people, and more. In order to fulfill your vision; there’s need to write out your plans, to set your goals,to act towards it. Implementations of dreams require taking deliberate steps towards it. Team work will help you to attain greatness on time. There is no self made millionaire. We need to trust other people and be trusted to reach there. We need right people around us. Writing down certain things, brainstorming, thinking through them, mind-mapping with intelligent people will make us achieve much more. I know you know all that.

Let me quickly ask you this: What is the dominant thought in your mind? Why do you hold on to it? What can you do right now to make that thought bear fruits? What are simple actions steps that will change that thought from mere thinking into materialization? How are you living to implement that vision? Will the realizations of these thoughts make you fulfilled? Will it keep you focused? Can it make you keep putting things in perspective? Will there be connectivity with grand purpose in days to come? What is that one thing you want to live and die for? Are you cultivating your mind field daily? Based on your life experience, what is that information you have been able to learn and gather personally that will be helpful? Do you have a solitude moment when you think creatively? What have you been able to bring out from your solitude experience that will now be resourceful in your journey to greatness?
Greatness is a culture. We don’t just jump into it. We brood in it…for us to breed it! It takes singleness of purpose, focus and commitment. It takes just one heart to run over this bridge of ordinariness unto greatness...the bridge is burning with fire. Just as two lovers whose heart has merged into one can cross any ocean together. We need you to become one with your vision so that you can cross over despites the fire. We need you on the other side victorious. We can all be great and successful. The question is: Will we all do what it takes? You must strive to cross the bridge of greatness to be there on the other side. It takes a heart. It takes a person of courage. If indeed you want to cross over to fulfillment, you need to be inseparable with God and your dreams. In order to cross this bridge to greatness; you will need commitment to God. Your determination will count but without God; you will miss it. Your choice matters. And decision determines destiny. It is a choice to enroll under a discipline wherein no one is watching you, wherein nobody is rewarding you, in which no one rates you nor expects anything of you, yet you chose to be faithful in it all.

WHO TOLD YOU THAT YOU HAVE TO GROW GREY HAIR BEFORE YOU ARE HEARD?

I’ve always said it time and again. That action is one indispensable part of success. Any great man you read about took action. They had a drive to pursue their goals and they did. And the rest is history. I can’t overemphasis the essence of putting one leg in front of the other and making your way out of the house each morning towards the place where opportunities are waiting to be plucked. There is need to just put your leg in the door anyhow. Half of the job is done once you show up. It’s vital to show up even when you don’t feel like it. Even when it seems that you’re unqualified for such opportunities. It is vital to hang in there. There is a need to stay put to the threshold for things to happen. There’s need for persistence for results to be birthed. You will be surprised how things will answer for you. The reasons why great people made it were not because they were smarter. Rather, they were able to make it because they took bold steps despite their doubts. They went deliberately after their opportunities and they stayed through thick and thin to pluck it, and they were made. In this same spirit, it’s important for us to walk up to our desires, to move intentionally towards our dreams and areas of interests.

I will remind you how Nelson Mandela got the national victory for South Africa. You remember that the oppressor weren’t planning to leave? Apartheid would have become normal up to now, if he had not stood his ground in the face of imprisonments, intimidation. The hopelessness of the South African situation was enough to discourage anyone. But then, this one man; just stood his ground. He refused to shift. And the rest is history today. What about the Montgomery bus protest? I mean the well known civil right movement? How it began? You remember that the non violence protest, with series of events unfolded after one woman refused to give up her seat on bus to a white passenger? The struggles began, because someone was just fed up of it all. Then, a well positioned Pastor was also around the corner thinking of extraordinary life beyond the four walls of the church. He was thinking of influencing more lives than just clapping hands and singing religiously every Sunday. He decided to break the walls of the religion holding destinies back. And within the four walls of the church came the victory for the American black people. Martin Luther King Jnr. Led an already uncomfortable crowd out of racism. The victory was discovered. It was signed, legally stamped, and delivered. Racism was wiped out of the fabric of the American people because a woman acted, a man also did his part and there was a group and then a whole city, then a state and then a nation was affected. He was just one man. She was just one lady. They decided to act! They acted first separately at the beginning; then later as a team.

“Uniqueness”

Change will change you,
Mar or make you,
Doubts will stop you,
It’s yours to decide.
Not all change was good for me,
Not all doubts was evil
A trouble here, a bubble there,

I’d be rather be Teddy, escape life,
gain attention, but I’d have lost!
I’d have lost me into numbness, lifelessness,
I’d have loved to be river
Negligent, watch life play by,
But I can’t give me up and be me.
There’s a vital part of me in me that makes me, me
I’m so unique than anyone else.

-Babawale Odunuga