Most people are pretty good at telling you what’s wrong with their life – come on, we don’t mind having a bit of a whinge. But those same people, often, aren’t very good at doing anything about it. So – what’s your objective for this year? What do you want to change?

Over many years one of the things that I’ve done a lot of is to consult to businesses large and small and government agencies across Australia, across New Zealand and in fact around the world. I guess it would be probably be over three hundred organisations that I’ve worked for in the past twenty years in one capacity or another.

And when you’re involved in a business or in a government agency one of the things you do a lot of is you go to meetings. Now some organisations more than others but nevertheless it can seem sometimes you’re going from one meeting to the next all day long and in many of those organisations they sit there, they talk about all sorts of things for hours but at the end no one agrees on any action points.

What needs doing? Who’s going to do each one? What’s the deadline? Now you’d think the whole point of a meeting is to get things done, in a lot of organisations that simply not what happens and so there’s a lot of discussion, often people feel great after having talked things through but nothing gets done.

You’d have to think to yourself, well that’s pretty much a waste of time and money and you’d be right, it is yet this madness isn’t restricted to large organisations, you see people running their lives in exactly the same way.

Now that might surprise you but just stop and think about it, people complain, let’s say it’s a wife complaining about her husband: (I always find that interesting) He doesn’t listen to me, he doesn’t understand how I feel, he doesn’t talk to me after he comes home from work, I don’t think he loves me anymore. Or a husband complaining about his wife: oh she’s always nagging at me, I feel hen pecked, it’s driving me absolutely crazy, I can’t stand it anymore.

Have you ever heard those words spoken by a wife or a husband? Have you ever been guilty of doing the same? And sometimes this whinging and complaining goes on for years with no improvement or resolution. It’s just like those meetings I was telling you about – people talking, talking, talking but never doing anything about it.

Why, you have to ask yourself, is that? It’s just because, because that’s what people do, that’s how people behave. We’re good at talking about things, we’re not so good, some of us, when it actually comes to doing something about it.

If I could take you back to those meetings with my clients one of the men who I’ll never forget is a man called, Mick McShea. He was a senior manager in a government organisation where, well to be honest, they had lots of meetings where nothing much happened.

But when Mick ran a meeting things always happened because at the end of the meeting he’d hop up, grab a pen and go to the white board and draw a table with three columns. The first column was ‘what needed to be done’, the second column was ‘who’, who was responsible for doing it and the last column was ‘when’, what was the due date of the action to be completed.

And he would always make sure that the first three tasks on the table were allocated to him. In other words as we used to say in military, he was a leader who lead from the front, he lead by example. Yeah whenever Mick ran a meeting things would get done.

It’s about deciding to take action and then taking the responsibility to get the job done. A wife who feels misunderstood could think about asking an older woman with wisdom and experience what she could do. She could talk to her husband about it and try to understand his perspective. They can work together to modify their behaviour, to empathise with one another, to draw close to one another again. That would be great wouldn’t it?

But often we don’t do those things because we’re like those people who like to go to meetings without any intention whatsoever of achieving anything unless of course someone else does the heavy lifting. Is any of this new? Is any of this rocket science? Not really, it’s as old as the hills. Have a listen to how Jesus put it:

Everyone who hears my words and acts on them would be like a wise man who built his house on a rock because when the rain fell floods came and the winds blew and they beat on that house but it didn’t fall because it had been founded on a rock.

And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. The rain fell, the floods came and the winds blew and beat against that house and it fell and how great was it’s fall.

Now when Jesus had finished saying these things the crowds were astounded at his teaching for he taught them as someone having authority not as their Scribe. (Matthew chapter 7: 24-27)

He had a lot of really wise things to say did Jesus but here’s what He’s saying to us in effect. Look don’t just come along to hear me speak and to be entertained, take what I’m talking about into your hearts and actually get out there and start doing it because it’s going to make a huge difference to your life.

Hey maybe that’s where Nike got their strap line, “Just do it!” Who knows?

You know some of the things that need sorting out in your life, whether it’s you own sense of self worth, whether it’s the job that you’re in, whether it’s an important relationship that you need to work on, whether it’s some of the things that you know you’re doing in your life, some of the attitudes that you’re carrying around that you just know are plain wrong.

Are you just going to sit there and talk about it and whinge about it and blame someone else about it or are you going to do something about it? Well? I suggest you could do a lot worse than adopt what I’ve come to call the McShea method. Who does what by when and take the first three tasks and own them for yourself? Own them, set a goal, set an objective and then start doing the things that you need to do to get there.

By the end of the year I’ll … whatever it is and then you can get focused on the things that you are going to do to make it happen. Now this is pretty basic but it’s incredibly powerful. Of course there are going to be some things that you can’t do on your own but set that goal and get started with some doing and I guarantee you’ll be amazed at the changes that start to happen in your life.

Now does God bless hard work and dedication and perseverance? You bet you He does. Please don’t get me wrong, God is a God of grace and forgiveness and mercy and we don’t have to do one single thing to work our way into His favour, that’s not what I’m saying at all.

But you read anything in the Bible, just read even a few chapters that you care to pick at random in the New Testament let’s say, and you can’t miss the focus on perseverance and dedication to the task. Again have a listen to this; it comes from a New Testament letter, the Book of James chapter 1, verses 22 to 25:

But be doers of the word and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. For if any are hearers of the word and not doers they are like those who look at themselves in the mirror, for they look at themselves and on going away they immediately forget what they were like but those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty and persevere being not just hearers who forget but doers who act they will be blessed in their doing.

So, what do you think? Need some important breakthroughs in your life? Need a fresh start in this area or that area of your life? I’m very much about praying, I’m very much for talking it through with God, for seeking His leading, absolutely but there comes a time when we have to step out and start doing it.

What is it that you’re trying to achieve? Okay, got that clear? That’s where God wants you to head. Now who does what by when? Remember it; it’s called the McShea method.