Optimisfits

by Ben Courson

  Julius Caesar was no less driven. When he had leisure time in Spain, he used it to read a book about Alexander the Great. His companions noticed the tears in his eyes as he was reading and asked him what was wrong. Caesar replied, “Do you not think it is a matter for sorrow that while Alexander, at my age was already king of so many peoples, I have as yet achieved no such brilliant success?”

  Alexander braved deserts and mountains, and took his troops to places no one else would dare to go. He didn’t even fear the elephants of Hannibal, whose tusks were sometimes sharpened and laced with poison. When Alexander’s men wanted to turn back from India, he did everything in his power to keep them from turning back so he could continue his world conquest. He bid them to soldier on. One time when he was parched in the middle of a desert with no water anywhere to be found, he was offered a leftover bit of water in a helmet, which he refused to drink. He didn’t want to quench his own thirst when none of his men could do likewise. He knew how to motivate his troops, and because of that he conquered the known world by the time he was 32.

  No wonder Julius Caesar felt he couldn’t measure up.

  In reality these were all just people like you and me.

  With one key difference—they were focused and driven.

  If we can harness that kind of focus and drive, what is to prevent us Optimisfits from conquering the world?

  Some of my friends ask me how I can stand living out of a suitcase as I travel around the world giving ten speeches a week, or how I can memorize the long sermons I deliver without notes, or how I can get by on a minimal amount of sleep while I am doing that. My secret is this: I am focused and driven. It’s not even a question about the how. My why is stronger than my how.

  Why am I willing to work hard to get out my message? Because this planet is sinking into hopelessness and I refuse to accept that.

  I want to help rewrite that narrative.

  Me and my Squad—and you, dear reader—we need to be about change.

  That is my why. The how is all in the details about working hard.

  Who wouldn’t want to dance like Michael Jackson?

  But how many people would be willing to lock themselves in a room every Sunday and practice the entire day like he did, month after month and year after year?

  Who wouldn’t want to experience the excitement of being a Navy Seal?

  But how many people want to undergo 96 hours of sleep deprivation and hypothermia and all kinds of indignities as part of the training during “hell week”?

  Who wouldn’t want to be David, lopping off the head of mighty Goliath?

  But how many people are willing to take on lions and bears as part of the preparation for battle against the enemy giant?

  If we want to change the world, we have to be willing to work for it.

  In wartime, Churchill told the people of Britain that he could only offer them blood, sweat, toil, and tears…but that it would be worth it in the end. That is what I would say to any Optimisfit who wants to make a difference in this world.

  It won’t always be easy.

  But it will be worth it.

  If we want to share in His glory, we must share in His suffering.

  Our dreams might be beautiful things, but we can’t leave them on the pillow. We must drag them out into our reality. Sir Robert Scott, the great Arctic explorer, was once described as being “a strange mixture of the dreamy and the practical, and never more practical than immediately after he’d been dreamy.” This is the killer combo that unleashes greatness: dreamy practicality.

  When you combine big dreams with hard work you have the key to making things happen. If you aren’t working hard it’s because you aren’t believing in the power of your dreams.

  Inspiration is always the result of perspiration. It’s the vision that keeps us going strong.

  Dreamy practicality.

  If your dad tells you that you must clean out the family car, you probably won’t put in too much effort. You’ll quickly wipe off some of the dust on the dashboard, and run a vacuum over the floor mats, and then you’ll call it good. You do just enough to keep him from getting mad at you.

  If, on the other hand, Dad has given you the keys to the family car so you can use it on your date with that girl you have a ginormous crush on, you’ll make sure every surface is totally clean, then you’ll bust out the Turtle Wax for extra shine. You’ll wipe down all the windows and polish up the chrome wheels, and you’ll even hang one of those little trees on the rearview mirror to cover any stray odors. You get it all tricked out, and you’ll have fun doing it.

  No one forces you to do it, you do it because you are compelled by love.

  That my friends, is the difference between operating in Law and operating in Love. Love will always take you further than Law. Especially when you are crushing on the God of hope.

  And the result of such passion is excellence. When you aren’t trying it is because you aren’t caring. When you do what you love, nobody will have to get on your case. You’ll work harder because you are motivated.

  So, locate your dream.

  And pursue it fiercely.

  There is a lion in town.

  The Lion of Judah.

  What’s your excuse?

  47

  HOPE DEALERS

  You got problems? Yeah, well, welcome to humanity. Just last weekend I spoke in Cincinnati and some guy protested the event with a hand-lettered sign and contacted the local news station to spread lies about me and my family. Life can be hard sometimes.

  In the immortal words of Kurt Vonnegut: “So it goes.”

  But how you deal with the hard stuff depends on your perspective.

  Let’s consider Job for a moment, the legend from the Old Testament whose name has become synonymous with suffering. Job, we tend to think, was the guy who drew the short straw. Most modern-day Christians think that Job’s life was horrible. But maybe that is because we aren’t looking at the full picture.

  Most biblical scholars agree that the events recorded in the book of Job took place over about a nine-month period. Think about that for a minute. The sufferings of Job were intense, for sure. Really bad. But they lasted less than a year. Then, according to the biblical account, Job went on to live for 140 more years after this time of suffering had ended.

  That’s 140 years.

  And, when it was all said and done, he ended up with twice as much as he had before. Twice the cattle, twice the sheep, twice the wealth, twice the joy, and even twice the kids.

  When you think about it, his biggest loss had been his kids, but he gained the exact same number of new children as those he had lost in the catastrophe. In the long run he had twice as many kids as before, though half of them had now changed addresses. They were in Paradise.

  So, on the other side of the struggle, Job had twice as much as before. The promise of Zechariah had proven true: “Return to your fortress, you prisoners of hope, even now I announce that I will restore twice as much to you” (Zechariah 9:12 NIV).

  Job seemed to have lost everything—health, wealth, family, reputation. But in the long run he would be okay. He should have chosen to relax and sit back, because every setback is a setup for a comeback! In the long run, he ended up having the best life he could imagine.

  The nine months were an interim period. And such periods are probably inevitable for all of us. The nine months were the labor pangs before he gave birth to a brighter tomorrow.

  Ask any mom if it was worth the nine months of discomfort to give birth to her child. No mom ever looks at her baby and says, “Well, that wasn’t worth it.”

  Nine months of intense suffering was nothing when compared to the 140 years of intense joy that followed.

  So, don’t judge your life by this moment right now. Don’t think the script of the present season of your life sets the tone for everything that follows. You have a brighter future on the other side of your own Job-like time of struggle.

  God is leading His chil
dren from gory to glory. Victory is already determined in the final act. So, hold on during the hard times. Relax. Trust God. Look ahead.

  No matter how badly you might think you are losing right now, there is no reason to be hopeless. You might think that you’ve lost the plot, but the Author of your story knows what is coming next. And that our story is a love story, a story of healing, a story of hope, and a story of ultimate victory.

  Our hope, our joy, our happiness—these things are not based upon our current circumstances.

  Our best days are still in front of us.

  Does that seem overly optimistic? Well, we aren’t called Optimisfits for no reason.

  Is the glass half full? Is the glass half empty? No, if you look at the bigger picture, then the cup is overflowing.

  If we’ve already won the game—and we have through the God of hope—then all that’s left is to celebrate and have fun. We are Gryffindor. We will beat Slytherin every time. The snake has been crushed, and we are the winners. We are just mopping up after the victory and turning the page on our pains.

  We may suffer for a little while, but something better is ahead.

  That’s why Optimisfits are hope dealers.

  What a difference a year makes.

  A couple of years ago I arrived at a resort in Palm Springs all by myself and full of heartbreak. I spent a week soaking in the pain while I soaked in the sun. I walked around the resort empty, lonely, and confused about my future. So much of what I had dreamed life would be like had now become just a memory mocking my present misery.

  This year I returned with my some of my Squad—Cambria, Bo, and Brighton. Life seemed so different now than it did during that dark year of my life. We vlogged while we splashed in the gurgling muddy hot springs, we explored caves as though we were Navy Seals on a mission. We took selfies in front of a vibey neon palm tree, and snuck onto a waterslide at midnight at an upscale resort. We skateboarded through a forest of lights and danced to ’80s music. We laughed until we cried.

  There was a time when I wondered if I could ever be truly happy again, and here I was taking hold of happiness with both hands. God used my friends to redeem the bad memories and rewrite that chapter of life with a Magic Marker called…

  Hope.

  48

  HORNS AND RED TIGHTS?

  Throughout this book I have been talking about the supernatural enemy we face in our day-to-day battles of life. He’s the one we call the devil, or Satan.

  Now let’s clear up a couple things about the original “Dark Lord.”

  First, he is the source of the bad stuff that happens to us, not God. I often hear Christians say, “The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” Yes, that is in the Bible. Job 1:21 to be exact. But pay attention to this fact. God didn’t say this. Job said it.

  Frankly, during his time of struggle Job said a lot of things that weren’t really true. By the end of the book of Job, God has to straighten out his bad theology.

  If you are actually paying attention to what you are reading, you’ll note right away that it was Satan who took away what God had given to Job.

  Who took Job’s kids? Satan.

  Who took Job’s health? Satan.

  Who took Job’s possessions? Satan.

  See a pattern emerging?

  Please don’t attribute to God the work of the enemy.

  And at the end of the story, who is it that restores these things to Job? Yep. God. And He restored them double. Although Job’s trouble doubled, in the end God gave him double for his trouble! God is not the One who takes away. He is the One who gives. Blessed be His name.

  At the beginning of Job’s story, it was a stormy whirlwind that killed his kids. Then at the end of the story, it is through the whirlwind that God speaks to Job. The place where we suffer most painfully is often the place where God speaks most powerfully.

  Second, let’s be clear that the devil isn’t a sunburned faun with cleft hooves and horns and red tights, who twirls his mustache ominously and zaps people with his trident. This cartoon version of our Great Adversary only leads us to question his reality.

  You’ll find a better picture by reflecting on J.R.R. Tolkien’s creation story in The Silmarillion. When the Eldar sing Middle Earth into existence, there is a fallen angel (Morgoth) who adds discordant notes to this heavenly music to misshape the new creation. Then, his servant Sauron becomes the source of the evil that is troubling Middle Earth in The Lord of the Rings. His malign presence is there throughout the tale, trying to destroy all that is good and beautiful in the world of Elves, Dwarves, and humans. The whole story is an epic battle of good versus evil that parallels the story of our world.

  Life is a battle.

  We are in hand-to-hand combat with a powerful foe. But he is a foe who has already been defeated by the God of hope.

  Psalm 37 tells us that God laughs when the enemy plots how to destroy His kids.

  The Lord laughs because He knows he’s betting on a fixed fight!

  49

  HEARTBREAK AND HOPE

  I’ve been through a lot of heartbreak in my short lifetime. My sister died in her VW Bug. My brother fought a long, raging battle against brain tumors that nearly brought about his exit from the planet. I got so heartbroken about a romantic relationship that I actually thought the suffering might kill me. It was pain beyond pain. And I’ve done battle with severe depression and at one particularly low moment even seriously considered the option of suicide.

  Once, I even took up a knife to end the pain. But I thought about what Sylvia Plath wrote in The Bell Jar about the time she was planning to slash her wrists and this thought ran through her mind:

  But when it came right down to it, the skin on my wrist looked so white and defenseless that I couldn’t do it. It was as if what I wanted to kill wasn’t in that skin or the thin blue pulse that jumped under my thumb, but somewhere else, deeper, more secret, and a whole lot harder to get at.9

  Like Plath, my life has provided enough material for years of nightmares.

  But I have dreams. And these have proven more powerful than my nightmares. In fact, my nightmares have prepared me for my dreams.

  Your pain is in service to your destiny. As my favorite novelist, Matthew Stover, has written: “Pain either has the power to break you, or it is the power that makes you unbreakable. What it is depends on who you are.”

  Sometimes clichés are true.

  What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

  Tears make you braver.

  Heartbreak makes you wiser.

  That’s why pain doesn’t scare me so much anymore. When you’ve lived through some nightmares, but kept going farther up and further in, up and to the right…you start to lose your fear of the White Witch. She may try to turn you into a statue of ice, brittle and on the point of shattering, but the warm breath of Aslan will begin to thaw you out, and empower you to defeat her. You’ll find yourself alive, awake, and ready to fight back.

  One day you’ll thank your past for creating a better future.

  Outlook determines outcome, so when the outlook is bleak, try the uplook. Get a different perspective. The problem is never just the problem; the problem is my perception of the problem. When the problem is too big for me, then it is just the right size for God.

  I know depression. As the poet said, “I myself am hell; nobody’s there.” But don’t feel sorry for me. You’ve experienced the darkness too.

  And when you take the long view of things, you find that it brings things into proper perspective. What may seem like a big deal may not be such a big deal in the big picture.

  The universe moves forward, and so shall I. I’m not going to waste a lot of time looking back at the pain I’ve been through, lest I veer off my course. I’m racing toward the great Unknown, which is the place where God will fully make Himself known. I’m banking everything on the God who is with me on this journey for that day when I drink the milk of paradise.
/>   But I don’t want to tell you that it will always be easy.

  Because that would be a lie.

  Depression has dogged my steps. And sometimes it felt like it was going to do me in.

  Sometimes all I could do was sit and stare at the wall, wondering what might be the best way to do myself in. And I knew I was at my darkest moment when I began to feel nothing. I got to the point where I felt no emotion at all. Just an emotional flatline.

  And my heart felt dead as stone.

  But as alienated as I felt, I was not left an orphan. It may have felt that way for a while, but it wasn’t true.

  When you are a child of God you are never alone. Never, ever. You will never be less lonely than when you get alone with God.

  My God was Abba, which is a highly personal word in the Aramaic language of Jesus. And it was the word with which He addressed God.

  When you think back to how the surrounding cultures thought about their gods, you realize how revolutionary it was to call God Abba, which effectively means Daddy. No Greek would ever have thought of referring to Zeus as their caring papa, nor would any Roman talk about Jupiter in that way. To them, God was frightening, often angry, and always unpredictable. The ancient gods were not good material for caring fathers. So, when Jesus and Paul told the Jews and the Greeks that God was Abba, that was about as subversive and iconoclastic as it was possible to be. It introduced an unheard-of sort of intimacy into how people thought about the Source, the Universe, God.