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Impress-To-Gain Game

Ever been around colleagues who played the "impress-to-gain game"? "Sucking up" to influential people to get a promotion or to give them the illusion they have a level of status?

Perhaps you have played that game yourself. We are all tempted to find our security in the comfort that different levels of status brings, searching for accolades from the right person and then making sure that others notice and are impressed.

However, God's plan is to be secure in the affirmation He gives . . . and only He can give! Finding His plan and following it can bring such deep purpose to living and bright hope for the future that giving our energy to playing the "impress-to-gain game" loses its lure.

It is at this point we can be free to lose ourselves in His creativity, His wisdom, His gifts, His wealth, His status. We can enjoy the fruits of His finished work on our behalf. We can be ourselves and who we were created to be and fulfill our destiny - not by what we do or don't do, but because God planned and destined it to be.

A few years ago, while struggling with the impossibility of the "God Plan" that was in my heart and wanting to make sure it happened just the way I envisioned it should, I finally let go of my self-made attempts to bring it to pass and began convincing my heart to simply believe the promise. I chose to do this by writing my name in one of the chapters of the Bible to convince my heart. I felt Romans 4 in the Message Bible told the story best for me, a story of the crazy faith of Abraham and Sarah that ended with astounding results. And so, I simply inserted my name in all the verses, writing it in past tense story style and added the details of the promise I felt that God had revealed to me.

What a great story of faith and there was my name right there! As I began reading this 'personalized' story over and over, the legacy of my life began to grow inside of me. No longer did I need to try to prove God's promise was true, I only needed to believe it was true for me.

Here are some excerpts that strengthen this premise from Romans 4, with blanks for your name: "If __________ gets what God gives them by doing everything they are told to do and filling out the right forms properly signed, that eliminates personal trust completely and turns the promise into an ironclad contract! That's not a holy promise; that's a business deal. But if there is no contract in the first place, simply a promise - and God's promise at that - you can't break it. That is why the fulfillment of God's promise depends entirely on trusting God and His way, and then simply embracing Him and what He does. God's promise arrives as a pure gift . . . God called __________ because they dared to trust God to do what only God could do! When everything was hopeless, __________ believed anyway, deciding to live not on the basis of what they saw they couldn't do but on what God said He would do. __________ didn't focus on their own financial limitations or business skills and, 'It's hopeless.' __________ didn't tiptoe around God's promise asking cautiously skeptical questions. ____________ plunged into the promise and came up strong, ready for God, sure that God would make good on what He had said. And so God's promise to ___________ was fulfilled. Not because of what they did or did not do, but because God planned and destined it to be."

Do you have a destiny story that needs to be written? I encourage you to write it out today and release all the "impress-to-gain games," all the human wisdom tricks, all the self-efforts to prove you believe . . . and simply embrace the promise. God has already planned and destined it to be.

Ellene Meece lives in Meeker, Colorado and works with her husband in their natural resource company while running her own online store, Grandma's Treasures Online. Currently, she oversees the marketing for the FMIN Workplace Leaders Network.

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