Be Prepared

The Boy Scouts of America have as their motto, “Be Prepared.” If you read in a boy scout handbook you will find a detailed explanation of this philosophy. It deals with being well equipped to deal with any situation. Growing up I had always felt that this meant “Be prepared for the worst possible situation.” It never occurred to me that this also meant be prepared for the best possible situation, and every situation in between.

There is a very fun, and often very competitive, tradition in my wife’s family of playing games at family get-togethers. Among the favorites are old fashioned card games. I learned to play just about every card game in my first two years of marriage.

I have a reputation in the family of frequently losing at these card games. I sometimes do well, but mostly I lose. I’ve never really been concerned about this because winning at games has never been something that I have valued a whole lot … until I had an epiphany on our last visit. Several times during the night I had a good hand which could have led to a victory, if I had been interested in learning the strategy to make it so. The only problem was I didn’t play with the intent to win. I was content to drop out of bidding wars and I didn’t pay close attention to what cards had been played to know what would be best for me to play. Had I played more aggressively, the result of the game would have been drastically changed in my favor.

The analogy to my own life became apparent to me that night. The biggest reason I don’t win at card games is because I don’t start out with the intent to do so. I don’t prepare for winning. In fact, it would be more accurate to say that I started out fully prepared to lose.

As a young man, I learned to cope with losing. I’ve never considered myself an extremely competitive person. I was taught it was important to know how to lose gracefully, which is a generally good trait to have, so I put a lot of effort into knowing how to lose well. I didn’t really pay much attention to knowing how to win because it didn’t happen all that often. It never occurred to me that the reason I didn’t win often was because I wasn’t preparing myself for it.

As I though Is this a bad thing? Isn’t it a good character trait to know how to be gracious when we lose? Of course it is, but losing well is not our goal. If our goal is anything other than winning, why do we play? And if our goal is to win, this is best accomplished by preparing ourselves to win, which is what I started to do that night.

I made a conscious effort to prepare myself emotionally to win. I didn’t just give up the bid because someone might have a better hand than me. If I wanted the bid and thought I had the hand of cards to back it up, I went for it. Do you know what the result was? I started winning!

This is a powerful metaphor to life, and teaches a true principle: We gain that for which we best prepare ourselves to obtain. If I only prepare myself for disappointment, I will be more likely to be disappointed.

In the movie “Facing the Giants” there is a story that teaches a powerful message about preparing for what you want. A man who walks the halls of the school after the students are gone, comes to the head coach and tells him a story about two men who prayed for rain, and only one of them went out and prepared his fields to receive it. It was the one who went and prepared his fields that was blessed with rain. The coach taught the team a powerful lesson in response. He taught them to prepare themselves to praise God, no matter the outcome. Notice that he didn’t teach them to have an attitude of, “God, to prove that I’m going to praise you whether we win or lose, I’m going to lose on purpose.” That would be ridiculous. As with any good sports program, they planned to win. The way they made sure they were gracious if they happened to lose was to prepare themselves to praise God no matter what happens, in everything.