What's The One Thing?
Each day you and I are bombarded by content.
Text messages, tweets, email, voice mail, advertising, meetings, books, blogs, seminars, sermons - it is never ending. One of the dangers in this constant consumption of information is an inability to effectively internalize anything. Because there is so much to process, you can end up with nothing.
There is great wisdom in intentionally limiting what we consume, but much of it is simply inevitable. We need a better way to capture, process, and file away information.
One approach I've found especially helpful is to concentrate on capturing "the one thing."
More often than not, I read books and blogs, listen to lectures and sermons and find myself struck by one thing in particular - a thought, principle, truth, idea, phrase, or illustration. I don't think I'm alone in this.
Pastor John Piper says, "What I have learned from about twenty-years of serious reading is this:
It is sentences that change my life, not books."
There is freedom in only fighting to recall the one thing.It's the one thing that will change the way you think. It's the one thing that will change the way you feel. It's the one thing that will change the way you live.
As a preacher, I would love to believe everyone remembers everything about every sermon I preach, but in reality they remember one thing just like me.
So, what's the one thing you need to file away from the book you're currently reading? What will be the one thing you take away from the sermon you'll sit through on Sunday? What is the one verse you'll read today that needs to be committed to memory and meditated on?
If you try to get everything, you'll get nothing. So what's the one thing?
