Daniel DiPiazza writes:
When you make friends with successful people the sky’s the limit. This is how partnerships are made, handshake deals are done, and new audiences found. And it’s not as difficult as you might think.
The biggest reason why connecting with people benefits you is simple: It allows you to extend your reach further, which in turn allows your ideas to make a much bigger impact.
The result is that you achieve your goals a lot faster with a few key friends to help you out than if it is just you, banging your head against the wall.
Additionally, the more successful people you’re connected to, the more likely you are to be successful yourself (“You’re the average of your five closest friends”).
DiPiazza suggests the following steps:
1. Find people with mutual interests and make them love you
2. Now that you’ve started that friendship, it’s time to give, give, give
3. Reap the rewards of real friendships
He concludes "... Now imagine doing this for decades. You could go anywhere you want, have access to almost anything you desire and know that in an instant, you’d have the resources to solve your toughest problems. Your friends become your biggest assets."
As with virtually everything else, God’s Kingdom operates by its own set of principles. Rather than looking for the 5 most successful friends we can find, Jesus’ example would have us get as close to as many losers as we can find! For it's only then that we can be sure that our motives are pure and that our service is pleasing to God.
“He said also to the man who had invited him, “When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just” (Luke 14:12-14, ESV).
“For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ” (Galatians 1:10, ESV).
The Enigma was a supposed unbreakable code machine that the Germans were using during WWII to communicate military messages leading to many victories for the Germans and many deaths for the British and allies.
The odds of guessing the code of Enigma machine was one in over 14 million, million, millions. Even if the code breakers made headway on one day, the code was changed every day.
For many months the code stumped the allied code breakers. Finally, they had a breakthrough!
The breakthrough came from a weakness of the human heart. The movie, "The Imitation Game" described the breakthrough. You see, out of respect and fear for Hitler, the Germans habitually signed their Enigma machine encoded messages with the salute, "Heil Hitler". This salute was very predictable. The pride and ambition of Hilter and the idolatry and fear of the Germans led to the breaking of the unbreakable code machine.
It is estimated that the breaking of the Enigma machine's code ended the war two years earlier with an allied victory that saved hundreds of thousands of lives.
Proverbs 16:18 states: Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall. Some say it this way, "pride goes before a fall." Pride leads to a fall for three reasons
Firstly, pride evidences a lack of trust and confidence in God. Yet we are designed to trust and depend upon God, rather than ourselves. Secondly, God opposes the proud person (1 Peter 5:5; James 4:6). It is much better to humbly rely upon our faithful God than to be opposed by God. Thirdly, we are designed to take our greatest satisfaction in God and when we don't our hearts create an idol that will disappoint and deceive us.
So, whether because we are designed to trust God, or that God opposes the proud, or that we will fall victim to our own idolatry, let our hearts praise God and God only!.
There is a story told of a young and ambitions lawyer who was moving up from a local district attorneys’ office to a large and prestigious law firm. His boss at the DA's office was disappointed to see him go. He told the young lawyer that he belonged there; that he was great at his job; that there he had an opportunity to usher in a small amount of justice in a place where justice was rarely the outcome. The young lawyer replied, “I have worked too hard to stay where I belong.”
How many of us have chased big dreams, pouring our time, energy, and resources into reaching them, only to pass right by the place where God could use us and our talents the most?
"Now there is great gain in godliness with contentment" (I Timothy 6:6).