Don't Settle for Good Enough

I read a story about a young man who dreamed of playing professional football. In high school he was a star player and won all kinds of awards. He came from a very small town where everybody knew him. All the children looked up to him, and wanted to be like him; a local hero. But most of the coaches thought he was too small to play in college. All the major universities turned him down. He ended up at a junior college and took a job at a pizza restaurant. He quit playing football.

One night he was delivering a pizza and a ten-year-old boy answered the door. When this boy saw the young man his eyes grew so big. The boy was starstruck. He couldn’t believe this was the same person he’d watched play at the local high school, the same athlete who had thrilled the crowd so many times. After a second or two, the boy’s father walked up and the young man gave the father the pizza. The little boy was very confused. He looked up at his father. He looked at the young man and said very innocently, “What are you doing delivering pizzas?”

Those words from a ten-year-old boy lit a new fire on the inside for the young man. After work that night he went to the gym and started training. That summer he trained harder than he had ever trained before. He gained seventy pounds, and became bigger, stronger, quicker, and faster.

That fall, he tried out at a major university that had accepted him as a student. He’d always wanted to play there. He made the team and kept working until he also became their star player. After college, he was drafted in the first round to play professional football. Today, he is a star in the NFL living out his dream. But he said, “It would have never happened if that ten-year-old boy hadn’t asked me, ‘What are you doing selling pizzas?’ ”

My questions for you are: Have you settled somewhere way beneath what you know God has put in you? Have you given up on a dream, or let go of a promise, because it didn’t happen the first time?

Maybe you had a setback. Maybe somebody told you, “You’re not talented enough. You’re not big enough.” But I ask you respectfully, “What are you doing there? You have so much in you. You are full of talent, ideas, creativity, and potential.”