Scripture:
“Make the most of every opportunity in these evil days. Don’t act thoughtlessly, but understand what the Lord wants you to do.” Ephesians 5:16,17
“Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” Colossians 4:5-6
“As for you, the anointing you received from him remains in you, and you do not need anyone to teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about all things and as that anointing is real, not counterfeit—just as it has taught you, remain in him.” I John 2:27
Reflection:
In 1996, there was an American company that dominated their market. They commanded a whopping 85% of the business in their category. They employed over 140,000 people and had a market cap of $28 billion. They ranked in the top 5 of the most valuable companies in the country; yet in less than 10 years they lost it all. They lost their market leadership and all profit. In another 6 years, they had to declare bankruptcy. Who was it? It was Eastman Kodak.
Many companies fail, even premier companies like Kodak. Like many companies, they were supplanted by a new technology that killed their core business. The interesting part of the Kodak story is that they invented the digital camera, the technology that put an end to film photography. They created the very thing that turned out to be their own demise. Rather than embracing the technology they had invented, they continued to hang on to what they thought they knew best. I hate to say it, but they missed their own “Kodak Moment.”
There are decisive moments in all of our lives where we need to act. Indecision becomes a decision! David was a shepherd boy in ancient Israel that certainly made a decisive decision when he took up a fight with the giant Goliath, but it didn’t start that day. Decisive decisions always have a back story. When I read the story of David and Goliath in 1 Samuel 17, David’s courage didn’t magically appear the day he faced Goliath, but rather it stated years before tending his father’s sheep. He said to King Saul:
“Your servant has been keeping his father’s sheep. And when there came a lion, or a bear, and took a lamb from the flock, I went after him and struck him and delivered it out of his mouth. And if he arose against me, I caught him by his beard and struck him and killed him. Your servant has struck down both lions and bears, and [today], this uncircumcised Philistine shall be like one of them.
David’s courage would have certainly failed him that day when he faced Goliath, the King and the entire army, had it not been that he had faced similar moments in private before that eventful day. His defining “Kodak Moment” was not made when he stood before King Saul and all of Israel, but rather when he stood before his fathers sheep and made the decision to fight the good fight; be it lion or bear, or embracing something new.
As followers of Jesus, we will never be able to face Goliath if we don’t face the everyday battles. Then when everyone else is paralyzed by fear, we can like David, trust our everyday history with God to be the source to overcome our Goliath’s. As David said; “this uncircumcised Philistine will be [just] like one of them.”
Embrace the battle today. It will become your true Kodak Moment.
David
P.S. Charles Spurgeon once said; “Discernment is not knowing the difference between what is right and wrong, but rather between what is right and that which is mostly right.” Sometimes this is our most difficult battle.
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