Excerpts from The Seven Seasons of a Man's Life (Zondervan Publishers)

I have a confession to make.

In 1991 I retired from the day-to-day responsibilities of my business to devote more time to the noble purpose of helping men find success that matters. Yet almost immediately, something felt amiss.

AN "ORGANIZING PRINCIPLE"

Within weeks I found myself evaluating "how I was doing" with the same old methods of measuring performance as in business. How many people were in attendance at that speaking engagement? What percentage of them indicated they gave their lives to Christ? How many books did we sell this month? Was it more than last month?

And I began to hate it. So, I began to pray and ask God to give me some sort of "organizing principle" around which I could order my life. A few months later I was reading The Letters of Francis Schaeffer. I can't recall exactly what I read, but I was prompted to put down the book, pick up my legal pad and write, "I will commit myself to a life of devotion and study of God, then speak, teach, and write about what I am learning."

Eureka! I thought. That's it! The key to staying on track is a life of devotion and study of God. A life of devotion means to love Him more and more, and a life of study means to know Him more and more. To love and know God. These, then, should become my chief pursuits, and everything else should proceed out of the overflow of what God is doing in my life. I realized that my relationship with Him must always be a higher priority than the work I do for Him.