David Lee Martin

One of the greatest ways you can serve the world is to believe in someone else.

Cheer them on. Speak positive affirmation of their worth over them.

Refuse to agree with any meagre esteem they plaster upon themselves.

Paul wrote to his friends in Philippi:

“There has never been the slightest doubt in my mind that the God who started this great work in you would keep at it and bring it to a flourishing finish on the very day Christ Jesus appears.” (Philippians 1:6 MESSAGE)

You may not have arrived at your final destination yet. The people you are connected with may still be on the road, even stumbling along at times, but that does not mean they will stay there.

We all need encouraging voices to cheer us along the way. Even heaven itself lines the balconies with a “great cloud of witnesses”, the men and women who handed the baton from generation to generation until it graces our palm.

Run your race well, dear friends.

Regardless of the hardness of the way. Despite the setbacks. You can do this!

Your commitment to be all that you are called to be and willingness to take risks to fulfil your leg of the race is admirable and blessed.

The world may measure with wonky metrics. God’s measures in a different currency.

Faith, love, hope, joy, and peace fill the banks of Heaven, and faithful service ranks high in the stocks far more than mere sales.

God sees the treasure in others even when they don’t perceive it themselves. We can learn to look with His eyes.

When Gideon hid in the winepress, God called him mighty!

Jesus called flip-flip Simon, Petros, the rock!

Paul wrote to Timothy, who felt timid and ill-equipped for his call, naming him a man of power, love, and sound mind!

The greatest deposit you can make in your own future is to elevate someone else’s account of themselves.

In today’s fast-paced digital world it’s easy to get caught in a confusing vortex of options. Sure, the plethora of possibilities is one of the great blessings that our generation enjoys, but it can also lead to creative paralysis.

Like a nerve-drug victim, unsuspecting digital entrepreneurs can be sticken with opportunity overdose!

Should I be an author? What about TikTok (or whatever the latest craze happens to be)? Mini-offers, or flagship courses? Ecom or eCoach? How about Amazon merch? Should I follow the funnel guys, jump onto challenges, or leap on the go live bandwagon?

The list continues…

Youtube?

Mini sites?

Online workshops?

Kindle?

Etsy?

PLR or POD?

Podcast or premium coaching?

I’m pretty sure by the time you read this there’ll be several more choices hitched to the list.

How do you choose?

It’s a known fact that too many choices lead to no choice at all. It’s easier to choose not to choose, to put off the painful process of saying no to so many glistening possibilities.

What if I make the wrong one? Choose the wrong thing? Make a bad call? Say no when I should have said yes and miss out?

No call at all can parade itself as the wisest call to make.

And you stay stuck, frozen in the headlights, with a stream of fresh opportunities hurtling toward you. Month after month. Year after year.

Choose Yourself

Let me bring something obvious into the equation.

What is the one factor that runs throughout every and any opportunity to face? The golden thread that ties the whole thing together?

It’s actually simpler than you think.

YOU are the common factor in the enterprise equation.

The longevity of your enterprise, whatever it may be, will be determined by the investment of your heart in its fulfilment.

The Scriptures teach,

“Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life.” (Proverbs 4:23 KJV)

The word issues literally means ‘outgoings’ or ‘boundaries’. The outgoings, outworking, and boundaries of your life are determined by the heart. Your financial and creative destiny resides within your spirit, not out in the ether somewhere. No one else holds the wheel of your victory, you do. Tending carefully to the inner life will steer you to the right places, and to the right people, at the right time.

The result will be that the outgoings of your life will expand your boundaries, and bring you into your promised land.

I was an opportunity hog, gobbling up every new idea that crossed my burgeoning inbox. Dancing from one to the other and back again, my online business trajectory felt more like a whirling dervish than a steady climb to the top.

Until the Holy Ghost stopped me in my tracks.

He pointed me to the story of Mary and Martha. The record of Jesus’ visit to them is found in Luke 10.

We read:

“But Martha was cumbered about much serving, and came to him, and said, Lord, dost thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone? bid her therefore that she help me. And Jesus answered and said unto her, Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things:” (Luke 10:40–41 KJV)

Martha was cumbered, full of care, and troubled about many things.

I could totally relate.

“David, David, you are cumbered with many things.”

Those were the words the Holy Ghost spoke that day as I sat in the corner chair in my tiny house office.

But, “There is need of only one or but a few things.” (Luke 10:42 AMP)

The entrepreneurial life is not meant to be one frazzled to a crisp by a million demands. The romanticized picture of the overworked ultra-dedicated marketplace genius sacrificing all for the sake of his startup is quite frankly farcical.

There is nothing romantic about sacrificing your family and your health in pursuit of money or fame.

Jesus has a pathway prepared for you, one which will be perfectly in pace with His will. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I have rarely found God in a rush.

I asked the Lord “what my one or but a few things” are, and seven years later I have made over $1,002,780 in Amazon royalties alone.

Focussing on what was fitted for my personality led to a radical turnaround.

That’s not to say that there have not been challenges. Sweat equity was poured in copious amounts into the affair. But my focus changed from everything and everyone to just one of but a few things that I have learned to do extremely well.

The choice of direction was determined by this question. Maybe it is one you can ask yourself.

“What do I want to be doing 5 or ten years from now?”

In my heart (remember the issues of life?) I wanted to be a writer.

I was already writing but also juggling several other opportunities like a circus clown, lacking confidence to shave off the ballast and bring my A-game to the table.

The decision to build from a place of pure desire, in my case the desire to be a writer, began a remarkable journey to where I am today.

I’m still working and walking with God, still in conversation with the Holy Ghost.

The difference is, I’m now in the business of being myself. No longer running here and there earnestly hoping for an answer. The answer was in me all the time, the outworking and outgoings were waiting on the inside.

We are told:

“Delight thyself also in the LORD; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.” (Psalm 37:4 KJV)

Some may cynically read this and say, “awesome, I desire a Porsche!”, but this verse holds so much more we can live by.

God plants desires.

What is the deep, real, resonant, desire of your heart.

Although the source if this quote is unknown, it rings true:

“There are two great days in a person’s life—the day we are born and the day we discover why.”

Moving into the fields of entrepreneurship takes courage. The venture must be backed not primarily by money, often that is in scare supply in the early stages, but by heartfelt conviction and a sense of calling.

I believe that business is a calling. A call to be salt and light in the marketplace, and to generate wealth on many levels, not just financial.

Your “outgoings”, the creative crystallisations of your personal genius, will flow out to the world and bring blessing and grace to others. The results of those genuine, heartfelt creations will be abundant compensation.

It all begins with embracing who you are. Your uniqueness is the ingredient that adds a special flavor to everything you do.

Yes, dear friend, whatever you choose to do, you are ultimately in the business of being yourself. Build around that reality. Learn and grow in the things that sit well with your personality. Grow in confidence as you jettison the things that don’t.

Will it be easy? No.

Will it be worth it? 100%!

Life happens. Sometimes it happens brutally fast. Others it creeps up on you and you lose sight of the ball. Either way, the reset button needs to be pressed.

Equilibrium in all things comes from centering your efforts on the one thing that matters. That one thing is relationship with Jesus Christ. This is true balance. Extreme devotion to Reality. All else is circumference.

Even creativity. Even your business, your family, your hopes and aspirations. All of it. No goal is great without Jesus at the helm. No victory sweet without His smile.

Jesus is the very meaning of life, because without Him there would be no life. By His words the universe consists. He holds all things together and when we stand before Him to give account for our life all of our boasting will fall to the floor.

No accolades will pass the pearly gates other than those that brought honor to His name. Nothing grand and glorious in the narrow eyes of men will find a plinth in His presence.

Every knee will bow. The great and the lowly, the first and the last. All will be humbled to confess, “I am not God.” Because on that great day only one name will grace the lips of kings, become the praise of paupers, and tame the tongue of the world – the name of Jesus Christ.

How will you fare when your moment arrives?

Will “good and faithful servant” be the words you’re relieved to hear? Or will, “I never knew you” shock you to the core.

No but’s and if’s will work on that day. No “tomorrow I will.” No “Give me one more chance” or “then I will change.”

There’s a time when time stops, and the future, a long eternal future without horizon, begins. Now and forever will be forged in an instant and you’ll stand in the eye of the storm.

When eternity strikes, time becomes meaningless. Where will your boasting be? How will the values that you have lived by stack up? What selfish laudations will you fly?

Be fearful.

You should be.

So should I.

All my pontification and pious declarations will count for zero when I tremble in His holy presence.

When the One I call friend casts His eye, He’ll do so as judge, not my buddy. No longer a religious side-dish added to my overflowing plate. He won’t be an option, or a favourable choice in the polls.

His glory will stretch the full span and nothing else will matter.

His light will bleach the glamor of all that seemed important bare. Nothing else will matter.

Zero, nada, nothing. Only Jesus.

We’ll discover that our tiny minds were incapable of comprehending the terrifying implications of Truth. Our apprehension of what’s real so shallow.

The tears that He wipes away will be ones of regret. That while we lived we did not make the main thing the main thing. That we made our own name the forefront, not His.

Fear deserves a strong place at the table, for the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Goodness and severity belong in the same room. A gospel that does not acknowledge holiness is a lop-sided lie that leads men astray. One day we will stand before God and give account.

To live life with only the end of your nose in the frame is foolishness indeed. The universe does not orbit our selfish desires, our greedy proclamations, or our tailored list of wants.

All that exists, the ten thousand times ten thousand galaxies swirling through endless space, to the quantum slice of the tiniest atom, everything that ever was and ever will be, all are for His pleasure and praise. Rocks cry out and the heavens declare one name, and it is not yours. It is not the name of the famous or the fabled. Not the legendary or the talented. Not the rich, the clever, the wise-in-their-own-eyes, or the glamorous go-getter.

Only one name.

Jesus.

Jesus is Lord. Yesterday, today, forever.

Lord, let me live like it’s so.

I longed for the day of discovery. I knew it must be stashed somewhere, maybe hidden under a rug, or hung in a lonely closet? The awful thing was, the longer the search the more elusive the answer seemed. My hopes of ever finding my prize dripped away with every day of drudgery.

Would I ever find it?

Was I not told again and again that there is some magnificent plan at work? A destiny I was shaped to embody and gloriously fulfill?

So tell me, who has hidden or stolen it?

That’s how so many people feel, chasing dreams, looking under every stone, hoping that finally their day will come and the lottery of life will open its treasures.

We know we have a creative gift, a great and significant destiny calling us upward and onward, but life’s rough edges have worn our resolve to the bone. The idea of stepping up and stepping out used to be an exciting prospect, pregnant with hope, but today it’s just frightening. Another disappointment may be the straw that breaks the proverbial camel’s back.

Plastered against a backdrop of screaming voices on the internet, pulling you in every direction with inflated promises and the next glistening opportunity, the bombardment can be wearing.

The grand design can be shaved thin by many devilish tools.

It comes from all directions. Satan is not choosy. If diminishing your sense of worth works, that’s his tack. If keeping you frantically chasing the next shiny object in the hope that your breakthrough is hidden behind yet another sales page he’ll plaster your life with endless opportunities to pry your credit card from its pouch until your resolve, or your bank account, runs dry.

On the other side, it can be the drip, drip, drip of discouragement that silences the awesome creative spirit within you and causes you to crawl into a shady place – the shadow life lived through others who have made the break.

Rough words from a tactless teacher, disbelief from parents and friends, a string of failed experiments that appear to bolster the secret fears we harbor about our potential.

The list goes on.

Creativity is applauded on the one hand. The kings and queens of expression are lifted up as almost otherworldly examples of human genius. Meanwhile, on planet earth, creative aspirations are often frowned upon.

Creatives are lampooned as dreamers and folks who’ve lost touch with reality. What makes you think you can make it as an artist, an author, an actor? Why would your message be of interest to anyone beyond a tiny insignificant crowd?

Perhaps I am laying the mud on thick here. I do so for a reason. The devil is no pansy. He holds nothing back in his war against the image of the One he hates.

Satan has no power whatsoever to create anything of value. All he can do is heist the genius of God’s image-bearers and twist their inherent creativity in lamentable and destructive ways.

I urge you to pick up spiritual arms and wage war against his lies.

You are a unique and marvelous gift to humanity, and there is no other in history who can offer what you carry to the table.

Martha Graham, the pioneering dancer said:

“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening, that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost.”

You carry a priceless treasure on the inside. It is your creative nature. The very image and likeness of the One who made you.

Like the lost coin of Jesus parable in Luke chapter 15, it must be reclaimed.

“Or what woman, having ten silver coins, if she loses one coin, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? And when she has found it, she calls her friends and neighbors together, saying, “Rejoice with me, for I have found the piece which I lost!” (Luke 15:8–9 NKJV)

So many souls are lost to eternity. Many more never live their life, even though redeemed and secured. Their bright creative light is dimmed and hidden.

Don’t allow satan to keep you in the dark. Light your lamp and search incessantly until you find that spark you once carried. That missing piece that fits all else into place.

Your redemption is not just an insurance policy, it is an invitation to live fully and freely here on earth, adding value to the world through the unique expression that bears your name!

How do we find that lost coin of creativity?

I would love to be able to tell you that there is a click-finger solution to this most pressing of problems, but there’s not. For all of the easy-quick-cheap-effortless answers the marketing world wants to foist upon you, the reality is that it takes work. If it were easy, effortless, and cheap everyone would live in the luxury of fulfillment, joyously sharing their authentic self with an adoring audience.

Back here on planet earth, the process of discovery is often layered with dirt.

Excuses.

Insecurities.

Roadblocks and reasonings.

Fears and failings and feelings and fumblings.

Discovering your awesome is like digging dirt. You sometimes need to shift a lot of earth before you hit the precious vein that carries your voice to the world

The lady in the parable hunted tirelessly until. You need to do the same.

The journey can be challenging. The temptation to turn around and head back to the village with your tail between your legs will press upon you at times. Shame will sneak up on you and poke its bony finger in your face, spewing a river of “I told you so’s”.

But the prize is worth the work.

The delight is worth the digging.

Not just for you, but for the ones you will help and encourage.

There are not many devotionals that stick with me for decades but one story I read in “Streams In The Desert” by LB Cowman, has never left me.

The author relates this far better than I can, But I will try.

It pictures a small girl who finds a cocoon. Inside she can see the encased butterfly struggling to escape its woven womb. Thinking to do the exhausted creature a favor, the girl carefully slices the cocoon and waits for the beauty of the full-formed butterfly to take wing and grace the world with its wonder. Instead, the pitiful creature falls from the opening and dies, limp and helpless in her hand.

The struggle, the pressing against resistance, the pushing and straining to break the mold and finally find the full expression of its nature, is the very thing that pumps the blood into its crumpled wings and allows it to fly when finally the casing cracks.

I believe it’s the same with our personal gifts and full-formed personality. It becomes encased in layers of resistance over the years, and the playful believing child is wrapped out of sight. The dreams still call to us as we grow, but when we respond we discover that it is not easy.

Being yourself, without fear and full of faith should be a cinch, right?

I have found that it is not. It is a great quest to reclaim and rediscover your beauty and let it fly.

Harness the resistance. Let it squeeze a deeper reality from the depths of who you are as a child of the Creator. Understand that the pressing through is all part of the great Creator’s plan. That your mess and your message is often intertwined. That your journey will be the very thing that helps others to reach their destination.

Paul speaks of this in the book of Philippians:

“Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me.” (Philippians 3:12 NKJV)

Pressing forward, meaning “endeavoring earnestly to acquire”, to take hold of all that Christ has taken hold of you for.

Do this daily. Building habits that respect your dreams and hopes. Disciplines that lean into the person you believe yourself to be. You are willing to face the prospect of a hard climb at times, or a long dig. Your desire to write or sing or paint or dance overrides the world’s baying discouragement.

Dear creative friend, make your desire to make something beautiful a priority. Don’t back off.

Whatever your circumstances may say, whatever voices stand in your way, push through them, pressing toward your own mark, those set by the planting of God in your heart.

For me, it’s being a writer.

This post, these words, are part of my pushing the cocoon. I feel the creative juice flowing through my veins as I do. Even if hidden from the world there is a bursting beauty that will one day break out and bring something remarkable showing down.

Some days that’s easy to believe, other days not so. Sometimes it feels inevitable that the breakthrough will occur. Other days I feel more like a caterpillar curled away and reluctant to emerge.

The important thing is to keep pressing regardless of the feelings.

To recognize that there’s a unique expression only you can bring. And do all you can to transform your ideas into action.

For you, it could be words on the page each day, images painted, sketches done, instruments played, or a new song sung. Keep digging. Keep pushing.

You are special, and no one else can go deep enough to draw you out. It is a hero’s journey you alone undertake. Others may help and direct. They may even act as guides. But at the end of the day, your love and wonder is not going to be a pale reflection of someone else’s experience, it’s a glowing testimony to who God has made you, and you alone, to be.

This treasure, maybe lost for years, is reaching for your attention. It is the treasure of creativity calling to be recognized and released.

As you know, its not what you know that makes the difference, it’s what you do with what you know. Go-how, not just know-how. Being moved to action.

We must diligently apply what we know.

It is pointless to know something, and not act in accordance with that knowledge.

And the word pointless here is appropriate.

Scriptures teach:

“…the hand of the diligent maketh rich.” (Proverbs 10:4 KJV)

The word diligent in the original Hebrew essentially speaks of sharpness. It means to bestir oneself, decide and decree, determine, and to move.

I define diligence as “consistent application of what you know in one direction over time.”

To coin some phrases.

Slow and steady wins the race.

Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast.

Not slow to act, but slow in the sense that we are not in a 100-meter dash. Our lives are not lived in fits and spurts, a random string of accidental or occasional explosions of activity. Daily habitual actions stacking up over time are far more effective than infrequent eruptions of genius.

We live day by day, building line upon line, moving purposefully toward our stated goals.

Diligence and discipline arise because we bestir ourselves to move in the direction we have decreed. Our course is set not by the fickle winds of fashion, but by the gentle leading of the Holy Ghost.

He leads and directs our steps. Sometimes our pace will increase, other times the speed of implementation may be slowed as we learn new skills, but all the while, every day, forward motion is apparent, even if inch by inch.

His hand on ours allows us to overcome the tendency to start well, and never reach the end tape. The hand of the diligent under the direction of the hand of the Divine. Purposeful progress propelled by grace.

As we yield and allow the fruit of long-suffering to have its way in our lives, shaping our character and sharpening our vision, the results are remarkable.

Diligence maketh rich.