PTP:101. The Path to Greatness Part 1: What is Greatness

Brad Miller 0:00
pathway to a promise podcast with Dr. Brad Miller. Episode 101. The path to greatness, part one, what does it mean to be great?

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Hi everybody. This is

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Carol Stanek from the crazy marketing ladies show and I’m all about helping people get found. Right now you’re fortunate to have found the pathway to promise podcast with Dr. Brad

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Miller.

Brad Miller 0:29
You’re on the pathway to promise with Dr. Brad Miller Bradley’s every person has a god given promised life of peace, prosperity and purpose, and that you must have a plan and a guide to get there. The pathway to promise podcast Not only is your guide through the wilderness of depression and disappointment that stand between you and your promise life, but also brings you insights and direction from inspiring successful thought leaders who have transformed their lives. Welcome to the pathway to promise now here’s Brad Hello Good people Welcome to pathway to promise with Dr. Brad Miller. I just can’t believe I can’t express to you enough how appreciative I am of you being a part of our podcast episode today. It’s great, great, great thing for you to do. And we’re going to talk today about greatness. This is part one of a series of two podcast episodes where we talk about the pathway to greatness. Today we’re going to be talking about what does it mean to be great. And then on our next episode, Episode Number 102. We’re going to talk about how to be great on the pathway to greatness. Here on the pathway to promise podcast we’re all about helping you to overcome adversity in your life and to be great to achieve what we like to call your promised life of peace and prosperity and purpose. And you do so by moving through and getting through adversity. You can go over to our our website pathway problems. dot com. We have some great teaching for some great authors and leaders who can speak into your life to help you overcome adversity. And we do some teaching here. I do some teaching based on my background and ministry, and an education as a doctor of transformational leadership, and to speak into your life. We want to be helpful to you to overcome adversity to achieve your promise life. When you do that, it’s a great thing. It’s a great thing when you achieve greatness in your life. Let’s talk about that for a minute. Let’s talk about the pathway to greatness. Because here’s the thing. All of us want to be great, don’t wait. Now sometimes we don’t feel great. Sometimes we feel like we let ourselves down to let other people down. But it is a natural thing to want to be great. Almost always when we start up a new job, we want to be great at it. We if we become a new parent, we say we want to be a great dad or a great mom, or a great grandparent or if we try out For a sport or music, for a band or to play a musical instrument, we start off by that with great aspirations to be great. We want to be great. But a lot of times we don’t really understand what it takes what it means to be great. There’s different understandings about what is greatness from whomever we talked to, for some people, its financial success, and some people it’s an emotional well being. What is, well, I like to come things from a faith perspective, you know that I’m a pastor of a church, I’m a Christian. And whether you’re a follower of Jesus Christ or not, I think we I think there are some principles here that come from Christianity that I think can apply to what it means to be great. And as a follower of Jesus Christ, I believe that greatness is servant hood. Jesus talked about to be great you must be a servant to all he talked about let the children humbly come to me and talk to the adults around it said you’ll be great be like these little like these little children and Jesus would model greatness. And in every great faith, tradition, and people have done great things, there are things that that can model that we can be modeled for us. We know oftentimes, based on our own values we know greatest when we see it, and we want to emulate that. But for my purposes here, I would just bring it down to this. I believe. Servant hood is the epitome of greatness, based on what I understand when Jesus talked about being a true servant. So let’s talk for a minute about then what it means to be great based on this criteria. I think a true servant then is one who puts others ahead of his or her agenda. We all have our personal agendas. That’s to be sure but we understand. A true leader then understands that our agenda is served when we serve us. Agenda, we put others first.

It also serves us. And there’s some understandings of this that I think when we put others first we begin from a place of awareness. We aware we become aware about the needs of other people. We see that need and within we want to do something about it and we make ourselves available. We put ourselves in position to take some action. So there is awareness of the problem, and there’s availability to the issue. Then there’s also acceptance. That is we accept others where they are at and we don’t try to condemn them for their situation in life. We accept other people, those of us who believe in greatness, and then move forward in serving them anyhow. And also another thing about being a great person who puts others ahead of themselves. you survive your heart. It’s out of a heart of love. It’s not out of obligation or guilt, or expecting compensation in return. It is about out of a heart of love. And that’s what I want to encourage you to be about to be a to serve it. Something else that I think is important about understanding what this matter of, of greatness is. Is it a great person to be great means that you have a very good self image for yourself. You serve out of the fullness of your own heart, you serve out of a good sensibility about who you are. If you notice people who often hurt other people, the ones who are hurting. And servant hood, I believe begins with a sense of your own self identity, your own security that you serve out of the fullness of your own heart. Jesus certainly was that he was most Fulfill person therefore was, and he served others based on the fullness of his heart. Because he knew ultimately his ultimate security was in going back to be with his heavenly Father with God. So here’s the thing, and serving other people. It’s about knowing who you are. Jesus knew who he was. So it’s having some confidence about your own self identity. It’s also about knowing where you come from. It’s knowing your foundation. As a Christian, you know, your foundation comes from God. Right, otherwise, what are your foundations? What are your foundations of your education or from your parents, or for teachers or coaches, people who smoke good stuff into you, not the bad stuff now, not the destructive things, but to sort out the good things that you want to impart in others. So we know who we are. Jesus knew who he was. He knew where he came from, and he knew where he was going. And so it is with us to be a good servant is to know where we’re going. It’s knowing that our Purpose is bigger than our present circumstances, to know where you’re going to know what this is about that we want to serve a greater good here on the pathway to promise we’d like to say we’re all about helping you to find your pathway to peace and prosperity and purpose. And the purpose piece of that has to do with serving something greater than yourself. That’s knowing where you’re going, knowing what it’s about. Not just flailing about just existing just kind of punching the time clock. But getting through things. A great. I’m a son was a sociology major in college and one of the people I studied was a writer by the name of Eric Hoffer. And he wrote this, and I think it’s apropos here. The number of the remarkable thing is that we really love our neighbor as ourselves. We do unto others as we do unto ourselves, we hate each other when we hate ourselves. We are tolerant towards others when we tolerate ourselves. We forgive others when we forgive ourselves. It is not Love itself, but hatred itself, which is the root of all troubles that afflict the world. Eric offer some good stuff there. So we serve out of going, who we are, where we’re going, and where we come from. One of the thing at least another thing to think about about what is the meaning of greatness is you serve servant hood. You take the initiative, you don’t wait for an invitation to serve other people. You see a need and then you do it. You take the initiative. How is it when someone offer themselves up free for you to help you out? That’s a good thing, isn’t it? I think about when you will offer to help other people out.

That’s what you know, Jesus did he taught so you know, the Good Samaritan is a great story about that from the Bible. Do something to help somebody out. What a great story recently as I record this, it’s the middle of the November, getting ready for Thanksgiving time had a great Thanksgiving story about how a woman arrived, a young man got a text from an older woman. And the text was inviting him to Thanksgiving dinner at her house saying grandson come to Thanksgiving dinner. The young man didn’t recognize the number and he texted the number back. And it turns out there was a wrong number that this was a young black man and his older white woman who sent him to text. And he said, No, ma’am, you’re not your grand son. But what you described sound good. Do you mind if I have a plate and the woman was very gracious and invited this young man to her home for Thanksgiving to share with more than a plate. They share Thanksgiving together and they shared other holidays together. It’s my understanding that this year’s Thanksgiving will be about the fifth year in a row that they’ve spent Thanksgiving together all because of a wrong number. All because someone was gracious enough to take the initiative to offer themselves to one another. That’s what I want you to understand here, friends. That’s what this is about. See the need, seize the opportunity to reach other people. And you don’t need to expect anything for every turn. Okay? Just a couple of other things here. We do not do this. In this, we don’t serve, serve others. We don’t serve others to be great. Just for the sake of being create ourselves. It’s not about our position. It’s about our personality about who we are. It’s about humility. greatness is embodied humility. And that’s the ability to not compare ourselves to others. We don’t serve others, because we expect some something to come back to us. Now the thing about servant hood is we serve even when others mistreat us This is a hard one, but it’s true. If you want to be if you want to be great you serve even when hurts when people hurt you. It’s a phrase that I hear from time to time, that it’s a painful phrase to be heard. But sometimes it’s true and it’s something to the effect of, in some situations, no good deed goes unpunished. That is there is bad things in the world, there is this treatment that does happen in a great person does good things anyway, does good things anyway. And I invite you to do that. So don’t determine your actions, your good things that you do good people, based on how others treat you base your good actions and your good deeds out of who you are. That will lead to greatness. Because what you do is you follow the example of great people who’ve gone before you. As a Christian, you might follow the example of Jesus, but whatever situation or you want to follow great people do what they did, that can help you be a great leader and a great person who was well respected. I know others will see that is an awesome person. That’s what you want to be. That to me is the meaningfulness of grateful of being great. Next time and episode number one or two, we’re going to talk about how to be great. If right now friends, thank you for listening to pathway to promise head to our website pathway, promise calm, we’ve got a free gift for you there, and other helpful things for you great interviews and other things that could be helpful to help you overcome adversity to achieve your life of peace, prosperity, and promise. Until next time, this is Dr. Brad Miller. I want to invite you to keep your promises because there is power and a promise kept. Thanks so much for taking the pathway to promise with Dr. Brad Miller as a subscriber, you’ll be a vital part of the pathway to promise community visit us on the web at pathway promise.com until next time, remember to stay on your pathway to promise

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