Several years ago, I sat in my office meditating and these words popped into my mind, “Prepare to Succeed”. At that time, I was highly involved in digging myself out of a bad past and running after the ‘spiritual life’, so I assumed this was God talking to me. (That’s just the way religious people think sometimes.) Anyway, it made me feel like The ‘higher power’ was promising me I could finally come out from under the dark cloud of poverty and failure. What a comforting thought that was. In fact, it was a bit exhilarating. I started to develop an optimistic attitude about my future.

There’s only one problem. Nothing happened. Day after day, my circumstances remained unchanged. No new opportunities popped out at me. Good fortune didn’t come smiling my way. I didn’t have a fantastic run of good luck. Life just kept on being sort of ‘normal’. I faced tiredness and drudgery just as before. Week after week, I waited for success to be mine, but it never happened.

It was maybe two or three months later that I sat meditating again and I remembered those three elusive words that had never come true. I looked upward toward this invisible benefactor of heaven and I complained. I told Him how I had thought that it ‘He’ who had given me that message. I straight out asked Him if He had spoken that to me or if it was a stupid figment of my imagination.

I belly-ached a while longer, until three words burned themselves into my mind. Those words were: “I said prepare!” All was quiet again. I was just an ordinary guy trying to figure out the mysteries of life and trying to chart my future the best I could. Those three words were not audible, but the inspiration that accompanied them seemed to make them more than the mere thoughts of a mortal man. Besides, Jesus never did waste words. His messages were always concise and to the point. He lets us add all the fill thoughts on our own. So that’s what I did.

Day after day I thought about those words. It was as if He had told me, “I’m not going to promise you success without effort. Don’t you know there’s something you have to do in this whole thing. It’s your job to ‘get ready’ for success.”

So what was I supposed to do? The message was ‘prepare’, but He didn’t tell me how to prepare! He didn’t give me specific instructions. What was I supposed to do? I did the only thing I knew to do. I went to the dictionary and looked up the word ‘prepare’. This is what I found.

Pre-pare (pri par, -per) vt. – pared, - paring <prae-, before (see PRE-) + parare

Now, it is true that I went on to read the rest of the definitions of this word…but that little line right there stuck in my mind. The word ‘paring’ made me think of a paring knife. A paring knife is used to ‘cut away the unnecessary’. Pre means ‘before’ or ‘ahead of time’ or ‘in advance of’. So my part in this whole deal was to cut away everything in my life that was unnecessary and to do away with everything that was in opposition to success.

I began to examine my thoughts, feelings and attitudes….they were failure oriented. Guilt and remorse had drug me down into a swamp of self-condemnation and lack of self-confidence. I didn’t feel worthy of sticking my head up above water. I knew I deserved the bad breaks that came my way. I sure didn’t feel like a favorite son. I had stacked up a whole lot of demoralizing attitudes in my mind. They were blocking out the sunshine of good expectations and enthusiasm for living. They created a drudgery mentality that was sucking the life out of me.

I was like the salesman who goes up to a door and timidly knocks, hoping nobody is home. When someone does finally open the door, he nervously shifts his weight, fiddles with his hands and says, “ I don’t guess you want to buy anything from me, do you?” And then, without getting an answer, he says, “Well thanks anyway.” He then turns around and slowly walks back to his car, wondering why no one wants to buy anything from him.

A defeatist attitude about life produces defeated people. If you believe nothing is going to go right for you, the whole universe will cooperate in giving you what you believe.

A city salesman had a flat tire on a lonely country road. On his way to a farm house he kept thinking how country people don’t like city folk – especially strangers. He imagined the farmer to be an uncooperative man. His emotions got riled up, so that when the farmer opened the door, the poor guy hollered, “Oh keep your ole jack, I didn’t need one anyway” – and promptly turned and walked away. How can someone like that succeed, when their attitude goes ahead of them and messes things up from the start?

One man gets up in the morning and peers out at the black clouds and says, “See, even the weather is against me.” He takes a scowl with him to work and everyone seems to scowl back all day long. The other guy says, “What a great Creator we have. He watered my front yard, my back yard, my fruit trees and my garden all at the same time…and while I was sleeping at that. Man! With Him on my side, how can I go wrong?” He goes his way singing and ‘whistling Dixie’. He bubbles enthusiasm all over the people he meets and they bubble blessings back on him. He becomes the ‘envy’ of poor Mr. Black Cloud, who bitterly complains, “It just isn’t fair. Some people get all the breaks.”

It never did dawn on that poor guy that he might have something to do with all the bad breaks that were coming his way. He will probably never see that ‘attitude alone’ can pull him down into a sewer of ‘stinking thinking’ or push him over the top of every ‘hindering wall’ of opposition that he meets in life.

I can hear someone out there saying, “but, it’s so hard to get rid of bad attitudes’. It’s for sure that I’ll never deny that bit of truth. So, you think it’s easy to win an Olympic Gold Medal? Do you think it was easy for scientists to put a man on the moon and bring him back safely? How easy is it to scale Mount Everest or to replant a forest on 30 thousand acres of burned land?

Somehow, we have to cut away the mindset that says, “If it’s hard, I can’t do it.” Or the attitude that is even worse than that – the attitude that says, “If it’s hard, I’m not even going to try!” It’s the fatalistic thinking that kills us. We think we are doomed before we even start – so we don’t even attempt a new beginning. One person says, “I can’t get up early. I’m just not a morning person.” Thirty thousand other people have proved that ‘night owls’ can adjust their thinking and their sleep habits. They weren’t morning people either, but they are still getting up early every morning and getting to work on time. They were motivated to want ‘the good job’ no matter what it would cost them – and they got it – because they cut away the kind of thinking that said, “I can’t do that!”

What is it that holds you back? You want success but you also want to spend your whole paycheck on booze. You want to save money, but you want to buy six lottery tickets every week. You want to have a happy home, but you want to ‘blow up’ every sixteen minutes when you are around your family. You want peace of mind, but you want to keep doing those secret things that keep bothering your conscience.

Someone once told me, “You can have anything you want in life, but you can’t have everything.” My wife likes flowers, but she also likes to let the sheep and goats in our yard. We’ve never been able to have both.

It all boils down to ‘choices’. You can keep all those old newspapers, balls of string and broken toasters and have a cluttered house – or you can start ‘cutting away at all the clutter’ and have a cleaner house.

Don’t wait till New Year’s Eve to make New Year’s Resolutions. That’s too late. You must ‘pre-pare’ for the new changes you really want in your life. Now is the time to start cutting back on the unnecessary elements that detract from your happiness.

Of course, you could pretend that bitterness and hatred are the foundation stones of a successful life. You might want to lie to yourself and tell yourself that honesty is not necessary in business or in personal relationships. And maybe it’s okay to justify your excessive anger, by saying, ‘Anger is a necessary part of a good marriage’. In that case, tell yourself that you need ‘a little more anger’ so that you can have a better marriage.

Sorry, sorry, sorry. I’m not trying to cut you down, but it sure feels like it, doesn’t it. Well, shucks, it’s always going to hurt a bit to peel back the layers of deceit we’ve been covering our weaknesses with, isn’t it?

Before the New Year rolls around, why don’t you take a good, long look at yourself and dare to be honest as you ‘plead guilty’ concerning the self-defeating elements you have allowed to remain in your life. Then, start getting rid of things that aren’t necessary to your peace, happiness, and security. If you don’t know how to start, ask for help. Dare to break past the ‘pride factor’. Cut away the ‘fear of embarrassment’ first – so that you can get on with the rest of the program. Doubt and unbelief are never a part of any solution either, so get rid of those negative devils right from the start.

Well, here I’ve wasted three pages on the paring knife principal of success – when there is so much more to succeeding than merely getting rid of clutter.

Nobody successfully reaches their destination if they don’t plan the trip. They need a map. They need to plan on which roads to take. No one can just take any old road that looks good and suddenly end up right where they want to be. You have to look ahead. You have to see what it’s going to take to get there. Someone once said, “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail!”

Everybody wants a lot of things out of life, but only those who plan how they are going to get them ever really move out and obtain their desires. Until you put the ‘how and when’ into the situation, it’s merely wishful thinking. You want to go back to school someday. ‘Somedays’ are a dime a dozen, unless you plot a path to their doorstep.

Pre-providing is also a part of preparing.

If you are going on a trip, a full tank of gas wouldn’t hurt a thing. Money to buy more gas would be a great help. A credit card for emergencies might not be a bad idea either. Fixing the heater and buying snow tires can be essential to a successful journey if you know you’re going into cold country. If you plan on having a picnic but fail to take along the provisions, what kind of a picnic will you have? Even if you can’t do what you want to do now, start accumulating the stuff you might need later.

If you really want to go to college, a high school diploma wouldn’t hurt a thing. If you already bombed out, at least get your GED certificate, so that when everything else lines up you will be ready. Wrap your pipes before freezing weather gets here.

I could write reams of words on this topic, but I think wise people will pick up on the thoughts that I’ve thrown out and take it the rest of the way by themselves. So think about it. Pre-plan. Pre-pare. Pre-provide. Start now in planning for a good year next year. Start now in lightening your load. Start now in getting the equipment you’ll need to succeed.

And after you’ve done everything you can do to be a success in this life – dare to pre-plan for happiness beyond this life. Get rid of the things that you think might stand in the way of a ‘blessed eternal existence’. Add to yourself the character qualities that you think might stand you in good stead when that day finally arrives. Be smarter than the average Joe or Jane around you - get ready now!

But, several years ago I talked with one of my brothers about the possibilities of an untimely death and shared with him a dream that I’d had of him. It was so serious and realistic that he decided to do something about my warning. He took care of business deals, worked on family situations and made provision for those whom he loved. Just last month he talked with me about a certain provision that he was working on and told me, “Well, since I talked with you, I made a list of things I wanted to do ahead of time, ‘just in case’. That’s the final item on my list!

My brother died yesterday at the age of 58. Nobody is totally ready for something like that. But, he was more ready than if he hadn’t planned and pared and provided. I was more ready to accept it since I knew he had most of his affairs in order.

He was in good health and living a robust life. He was planning on being with us for the Thanksgiving week-end. As we all know, some plans never get carried out. In those cases, we fall back on our ‘contingency plans’ – if we have any.

I know all of you plan on living forever – but just in case that doesn’t work out ………..are you ready for anything else? Shucks, since I’m smack dab up-against the topic of death myself, let me flat out ask you,