Mensa Otabil - Excellent Spirit
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This week we are talking about excellence, and I trust that God will give us an excellent spirit. Daniel chapter 6, verse 3: «Then this Daniel distinguished himself above the governors and satraps because an excellent spirit was in him, and the king gave thought to setting him over the whole realm.»
As a young man, Daniel was described as a person who had an excellent spirit. That means that what drove Daniel to reach the top didn’t come from outside him; it came from within. Something inside of him was the driving force of his actions, and that is what excellence is. It’s not based necessarily on the environment you live in but on the internal quality that is inside of you. For Daniel, the excellent spirit was within him, and the passage states that Daniel distinguished himself above people who were at the top of their game, the governors and the satraps. These were the topmost officers in Babylon, yet he distinguished himself above them. What does it mean to distinguish? It means to be marked out; he was separated from them, and that’s what excellence does. You can compete with the people at the highest level of your industry and still come out on top because what drives you comes from within. It’s a spirit within, not just an environment you operate in.
So let me talk a bit about the excellent spirit. First, it is an inner purpose, a purpose inside of you, a sense within you. It is a knowledge that you are made for more, that you are not made for the ordinary, that you are not made just to settle at the bottom. For everybody who has ended up in life doing something extraordinary, it began with an inner feeling that their lives count for something great. Many believe that God has called them, that God’s hand is upon them, that God has gifted them, and that God has a purpose for their lives. If you have no sense of inner purpose, you would seek purpose from outside; you would want people to validate you and tell you what to do. If your validation comes from outside, you are going to limit your expectations to those forces. There has to be something inside of you driving you to excellence, so there has to be inner purpose.
Secondly, there has to be inner value. Now, each of us wants to be applauded. You know, if you do a good job, you want people to clap for you. But what if nobody claps for you? What if nobody encourages you? What if nobody is there to back you up? You wish your parents would do it, but what if they don’t? Your teacher doesn’t do it, and your boss doesn’t do it. Are you going to just be mediocre because nobody believes in your value? The people of excellence are people who have an inner sense of value. That means their marking scheme does not come from external forces; it comes from inside. So even when you are praising them and say you’ve done the best, inwardly they would know, «I haven’t done my best; I can do better.» If you have no inner sense of value, people outside will determine how far you can go and how important you are. For us as Christians, God is our inner value; we measure our performance by God’s standards within us, not by external applause or encouragement.
Third is inner motivation. There are many people who want to work out because they’ll be paid well and so on. The motivation is always external. What if you’re not paid well? In life, you don’t get everything you want. It has to be something more inside of you that motivates you, that makes you get up in the morning, that makes you put out your best. If it’s money or someone applauding you, you are not going to be excellent. So an excellent spirit is inner purpose, inner value, and inner motivation. As Christians, we are driven by the inward presence of God’s spirit in us, who drives us to become more than we are.
Let us pray. Sit with me. Heavenly Father, I receive your excellent spirit. Through you, I will reach higher and go further in all I do. In Jesus' name, amen and amen. I’ll catch you again tomorrow. I’m Pastor Mensa Otabil. Shalom, peace, and life to you.