If you're goal is to have a happy marriage, it's probably a good thing to, with focussed intention and strategy, sit down and talk to your wife, on a daily basis. It's probably good - probably.
If your goal is to be this; you have to say NO to that. Let's say it a couple of different ways: one, you cannot live on accident. At best, you'll be disappointed with life; at worst, your life will be destroyed.
When I was a counsellor, any time someone came to me and said: I'm just so discouraged with my life; and I go: oh, why? I just don't know. I don't know why. Can you help me explore the reasons why I'm so disappointed with life? One hundred per cent of the time, it's because they were trying to let life come to them on accident.
They wouldn't have known if they got what they wanted, if it was standing in front of them, because they had not clearly defined it. You have to clearly define your life. You cannot live on accident. Where do you want to be in six months? Where do you want to be financially, relationally, vocationally? I want to start a business. Great! Great, then let's go do that. Let's make a plan. What equipment do we need? What's our market? How are we going to market ourselves? What are we going to do?
Let's live with full intention. This is a whole lot better than watching the next episode of NCIS. This is great. We're living with purpose, and intention, and power. We can do it! You cannot live accidentally. At best, you'll be disappointed; at worst, you'll be destroyed.
Two, people do not fall suddenly. They were on the road for a long time, and didn't realise it. What seems like a sudden fall, is only a sudden fall because it's you. Anybody observing your life could tell, that the road you were on was taking you over the cliff the whole time.
It's never the intention of your heart that leads you where you want to go; it's the road that you're on. If you get on the highway, wherever the highway is around here, if you get on the highway going north, with full intention of getting to Wellington, you're never going to make it. Even though every intention of your heart is I - where are you going? I'm going to Wellington. By faith, I speak that out; oh yes, by faith we call it into being. Oh yes! We're going to Wellington.
Yeah, but the road you're on is taking you to Auckland. Yeah, but we're going to Wellington; by God, yes we are, yes we are! So you get to Auckland; it feels like suddenly Auckland has appeared. No! Auckland was at the end of the road all along, you just didn't realise it.
Your intentions aren't enough to lead you where you want to go - which leads me to this question: What are you rationalising today, that you'll regret tomorrow?
When you're travelling, if your goal is to make it through today - if that's your whole goal in life - I want to make it through one day, do whatever you want to do. If every day starts over new, just do whatever you want to do, who cares?
But if you have any wisdom at all, you're thinking down the track; and when you're thinking down the track, however far out you're thinking, is how important your decisions are here.
One degree - I played golf at Cape Kidnappers yesterday. It was awesome by the way, pretty awesome. Had a guy here from Brisbane who treated me to it. He said: I just want to bless you, you blessed me. I want to take you up to Cape Kidnappers, it's my treat. I was like: this so fantastic!
So if you're aiming 250 metres down a fairway right, how important is one-degree off-centre here? It's pretty big. One degree, that's not very much, one degree. It would take a high-speed, frame-by-frame camera to see the error, one degree off centre here, is 20 metres off-centre at the target. At Cape Kidnappers, it's the difference between the centre of the fairway, and off the cliff. One degree! Now a 20-foot putt is different. On a 20 foot putt, one degree - one degree here is four inches, which still misses the hole, but it's a tap-in later.
So the shorter out your goal is, the less important it is your decisions here; but if your goal is long-range, then little things here make huge differences there.
If there's a builder in the room, maybe you could tell me the answer to this: if you're 1/32 of an inch off square at the bottom, how important is that? Well, if it's a one-storey house, not very important; but what if you're building a 60-storey building, and you're 1/32 of an inch off-square at the bottom. By the time you get to the top, it's just leaning. See, little things here, make big differences there.