Angels With Pens

Do you ever feel like there is more out there in life for you that you just can’t seem to get ahold of. Does it seem like time gets away from you and you can’t seem to manage to get everything done you want to?

I used to feel that way. I have always been a person who could complete tasks— something others struggle with. It is something that the Lord has gifted me at, but as with many project-oriented people, doing ongoing things well was my struggle. And then what do you do in between big projects?

In 2003 I began embarking on a journey that has radically transformed my life. I wanted to accomplish everything in life that I could and even stretch myself. As I was driving home from a miserable job one day, I started having a thought experiment. Most of us have daydreams, but Albert Einstein called them thought experiments, so I’ll go with him.

I was thinking about a specific passage in Revelation in particular:

And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books.

Revelation 20:12

There are books in heaven that have been written about us and by them we will be judged. To be clear, our eternal fate is decided by whether we said yes to Jesus as God. It is what puts our name in the Lamb’s book of Life. But beyond our eternal fate, our actions will really be weighed by God.

My Heavenly Books

I started imagining that there must be angels or somebody in heaven who were responsible for recording these books. They have to be written by someone, don’t they? Then I started imagining what a task that must be. Does everybody get one angel, or can one angel handle twenty people?

This is of course all just speculation and a daydream—excuse me, thought experiment—but it really got me to thinking about how this life will eventually be weighed in the next. As my mind wandered to how that would actually work in heaven I decided that however many angels were required to record the actions of people, I wanted to take up more than my fair share of them. If most people had one angel recording their actions, I wanted twenty.

I wasn’t satisfied to drift through life only accomplishing what was easy for me. Like I said, finishing projects is easy for me, but that’s not enough. I wanted more. It was then that I came up with a mantra that I have tried to live by ever since:

A life well-lived is not one where I am proud of all the goals I accomplished while on this earth, but one where I couldn’t have possibly achieved them all.

I didn’t want to set realistic goals for myself, because in doing so, I was doing what came easy. I was taking up one scribe angel. I wanted twenty. That meant I had to push myself.

That meant that I had to be serious about having a system. Something that drove me. Something that guided me. Something that informed every decision I made even when I didn’t want to make them.

Reinventing The Wheel

I didn’t have that, and the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People just didn’t seem to fit the mold I was trying to form. I wanted my activities to be the kind that kept angels writing about me, not men. We can definitely do things that receive the accolades of both heaven and earth, but only when we first seek the heavenly praise. (I think there’s a Bible verse about that somewhere—maybe here ).

I didn’t find any kind of organizer that fit what I wanted, so I decided to invent the wheel myself. It meant beginning with something a little different. Something that would keep me focused on those scribe angels furiously writing away to keep up with me.

After a few weeks and a year of iterative changes, I found something that worked for me. I used it religiously and I was amazed at how it changed my life. When I was looking back on the previous three, six and twelve month periods I was shocked at how much I had accomplished. I couldn’t believe it! In fact, just the act of putting something I wanted to accomplish on the paper almost magically made it happen!

It’s not magic, of course. It’s hard work. But it’s hard work you can’t see from day to day, and that’s why if there isn’t a driving force behind us, we don’t accomplish much. We need something to make us intentional.

Stretching

The more I used it, the more I stretched myself and the more I accomplished. I was truly amazed. Several years ago I decided to package up what I had been using for myself and turn it into an eBook and give it away. I gave a very brief description of my philosophy and the simple tools I use. People loved it.

I never had a name for it when I used it, but when I started giving it away I called it Destiny’s Discipline. It’s not a system that requires a long book, a weekend conference or a $5,000 mentorship to learn. It just takes the desire to accomplish more for the right reasons.

Do you want your own twenty angels writing down your activities? Do you want to accomplish more things that matter? I encourage you to try out Destiny’s Discipline for a year and see how it changes you.

The best thing of all is that it is free. I just can’t stand the idea of charging people for something that can so radically transform the kingdom of God. I do make money off of other books and products I sell, but this one thing is too holy to me to sell.

I want to give it away for free because I envision an army of people occupying more than their share of angels.

How To Get It?

Sign up for my email list. There should be a form after this article. I will send you the link to it and I will follow up with some emails to keep you on your way. You are free to unsubscribe anytime. This is the internet, after all.

How Do I Use It?

Read the presentation-turned-eBook, called Destiny’s Discipline, first. It will walk you through a short look at the philosophy and the tools. The hardest two parts are making the time to think about what your destiny truly is and then filling out your weekly schedule as if every minute counts–that’s a big transition for a lot of people.