X-Challenge: Practice Makes Perfect

I’ve always loved to sing.

I was singing in the bathroom this morning with my daughter.

I’m not bad at it! I’m not necessarily good either.

As a kid, I had some pretty neat opportunities because of singing.

I won the lead in my high school musical and got to perform in my town’s big arena, but it never went anywhere.

As an adult, there have been times when I have wondered if there was ever anything I would do with singing. Today, I figured it out.

As I was singing with my daughter (who is so much more talented than me), I realized how my gift and love for singing is there to help her execute.

It’s there for me to help her develop, grow and to not stop. It’s there for me to help her to do it and to do it all the time. Why?

Practice Makes Perfect

It’s been said that in order to become excellent at something you have to either spend 10 years or 10,000 hours working on it.

So if you want to be a singer, you better sing day and night in order to make it before you’re thirty. Ten years or 10,000 hours.

Take professional athletes for example. Pro basketball players didn’t start playing in college. No, they were the ones who played every night until dark. They played every moment after school. They didn’t quit. They honed their gifting until it was good enough for people to take notice.

How to Execute Your Gifting

Once we’ve identified our gifting (whether its singing, basketball, business, inventing, writing, organization – whatever it is), we need to start using it all the time.

We need to plan for it. We need to work that plan and not give up on it. Then we need to execute that plan and do the thing God has called us to do.

We all want to be noticed for something. We shouldn’t think we can be noticed as “good” after we have been doing it for a year. That is not how it works.

Remember, it takes 10,000 hours of practicing your gifting (even if you are naturally talented in it) to hone it, understand it, be able to work it, know how to overcome the obstacles in it without letting them see you sweat, to flow in it and to become excellent in it.

Give It Some Time

Do your thing. Do it well. And do it as much as you can.

Every hour you spend using the gift God has given you puts you one hour closer to becoming truly excellent in it. You’ll be one hour closer to being able to fulfill the destiny God has for you.

Now quit reading this and go practice!

Join the Conversation

How have you seen practice, diligence, or time spent working on a gifting make a difference in your life?