Responsibility

25 November 2008 - Word For the Day
Taking personal responsibility
"If you are wise, your wisdom will reward you."
Proverbs 9:12 NIV

To display the kind of responsibility that makes you successful in life: (1) Recognise that gaining success means practising self-discipline. Every time you stop yourself from doing what you shouldn't, and start doing what you should, you're increasing your capacity for responsibility and the rewards it brings. (2) What you start, finish. There are two kinds of people: those who will and those who might. Responsible people follow through. And that's how others evaluate them. (3) Don't expect others to do it for you. Paul writes: "Each one should carry his own load" (Gal 6:5 NIV).

Addressing students at the University of South Carolina, Chief Judge Alexander M. Saunders said, "As responsibility is passed to your hands it will not do...to assume that someone else will bear the major burdens, that someone else will demonstrate the key convictions, that someone else will run for office, take care of the poor, visit the sick, protect civil rights, enforce the law, transmit value, maintain civilisation and defend freedom...What you do not value will not be valued, what you do not remember will not be remembered, what you do not change will not be changed, what you do not do will not be done. You can, if you will, craft a society whose leaders...are less obsessed with the need for money. It's not a question of what to do, but simply the will to do it." Sometimes we don't take responsibility because we believe others are more qualified. No, those who make a difference in life don't do so because they're the best qualified, but simply because they decided to try. Plus: God doesn't call the qualified, He qualifies the called!