The Mandate

By Jacob Bergen

"The Mandate" shows us how the trip we are on in this life is not just an accidental experiment. "The Mandate" is a book that is useful as a tool to use in handling your day when everything within you says "I'm Done." Nada, I have nothing left to give! The Mandate will encourage you for what you do, when others think you are of no value. Working past the tough times is easier when appreciated.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jacob Bergen
• Release date: May 7, 2011
• ISBN: 9781458190802

Jacob Bergen

Jacob Bergen is a freelance writer who writes with the purpose to make a difference in the lives of people. He wishes to encourage people who are already on a spiritual quest; as well, has a heart to show people that there is a reason to seek such a quest in an eternal perspective. Jacob has Self Published two print book versions: "The Mandate" and "It's Jacob! My Name Is Jacob! What's Yours?" These are available on most online Book Sales Outlets. Jacob has Self Published Ebook Versions of these books as well. Just recently retired from a career in the floor covering business, Jacob now has more time to devote to writing as a career. Thanks a Bunch Jacob

Book preview

THE MANDATE:

The Battle The Victory The Finish Line

by

Jacob Bergen

SMASHWORDS EDITION

PUBLISHED BY:

Jacob Bergen:On Smashwords

The Mandate:

by Jacob Bergen

Copyright 2011 Jacob Bergen

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

All scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the New Century Version®. Copyright © 2005 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Discover other titles by Jacob Bergen at Smashwords.com

It’s Jacob! My Name Is Jacob! What’s Yours?

*****

Table of Contents:

Introduction

Chapter 1 - Looking Inside

Chapter 2 - Mandation

Chapter 3 - Fit For Survival

Chapter 4 - Victory & Winning

Chapter 5 - Starting Blocks

Chapter 6 - Starting: Is Just the Beginning

Chapter 7 - Tough? It Is Tough To Get Going

Chapter 8 - The Wall

Chapter 9 - Battles Are For Real

Chapter 10 - Do The Small Battles Really Count

Chapter 11 - The Face of the Big One

Chapter 12 - The Mother of All Battles

Chapter 13 - Marvel Canyon

Chapter 14 - Questions and Answers

Chapter 15 - Quest & Questions

Chapter 16 - Castaway

Chapter 17 - Casting for the Part

Chapter 18 - Hope; the Final Frontier

Chapter 19 - Resolve the Will

Chapter 20 - The Nth. Degree

Chapter 21 - The Mandate Is the God Date

Chapter 22 - Are we There Yet

Chapter 23 - What about me

*****

Introduction

The Mandate need not be preachy as in biblical language. The reason I wrote this book is that I think that too often others make us out to be losers, and so many never realize that they are in fact winners; but just do not know it. It is easy to be a no good loser if people expect everybody to be carbon copies of the big name people who appear on the surface to headline the winners column at the race track.

Life is a racetrack and all of us are runners. There need not be any losers in this marathon. We race not against each other, but we race against the odds that come against us to try to push us off the track. Instead of keeping our eyes on the goal ahead of us, to often we jostle with each other for position, and it is then that we stumble and fall. Some when they fall are never able to run again because of the injuries suffered.

I want most of the book to be relational and relative to life, as we know it. I want much of the message of the book to be the responsibility of the reader to judge for himself or herself as opposed to this communicator or that communicator telling us what to do. At the same time, it is important to note that we need loving input so as not to eliminate information that can help us fulfill our mandate.

I want to begin by saying that I am of the informed opinion that the eternal success of any mandate will be Jesus Christ related. At the outset, I want to give him thanks, praise, and glory for all I am or ever will be. I want the reader to do what John Maxwell, in his book Thinking for a Change says, Think.

Thinking it seems is all that I ever do any more. I think myself through each day. It starts early in the morning, and it happens when I wake during the night, and it seems that any waking moment I have is filled with thinking. It may be good thoughts or it may be bad thoughts, but think I will when I am not comatose. Even then, my dream world is alive and well.

What I do with and about my thoughts is the question I want to answer for myself each day. The more I think about the things that I want most to do, the tougher it seems it is to accomplish what it is I want to accomplish in my life. Yet each day is challenge enough, so that I do let the failure of not having done everything that I thought to do, deter me from competing to complete what I started out to do.

The Mandate has much to do about individualizing myself so that I can become the man that I want to be. The man that I want to be is the man that God wants me to be, and this is where the selfishness leaves the words individualizing myself. This simply means that I need to put myself into a space of time where I can look around inside of me and outside of what represents me. Now, others become the focus of all that I want to be.

The Mandate covers the things that allow us to continue when continuing does not seem possible because of the barrage of weapons pointed in our direction. When the battle rages, and it does for each of us; that is when it is imperative to muster up the resolve to keep on keeping on. This juncture in the journey is the one that determines the success we will have of completing our Mandate.

Failure is not an option when we realize that we are not a failure because we do not measure up to someone else’s expectations. Jesus did not die so that we could fail to live within the limits of our own being. It is about us and it is not about us. It is about us because we need to care for ourselves enough to nourish ourselves so that we have the strength to reach the others; that makes it not about us.

Therefore, when the going gets tough, the tough get going. This is the theme of the Mandate, along with being satisfied with who you are in Christ. The Mandate points out that we are our brother’s keeper, but we are not our brother. I am who I am, and you are who you are. Hopefully, that is what God wants us to be.

When I think in terms of understanding that I cannot do everything, and I settle for doing what it is that I can do, I am happy about it. I am not saying that I do not need a greater vision. I believe that once I settle the issue of who I am, I will become part of that greater vision picture that we all want. I for one do not want to allow mediocrity to rule my life. I want to excel to the greatest heights that I can achieve, and I want to be satisfied in that. If I seem to fall at times, it is no big deal because I know that I will resolve to continue after I get up, patch up the scratches on my knees, and look back in the direction I was going before I fell, and move in that direction again. It is not so much about how you start, or how many times you did or did not fall down. It is all about how you finish.

The realization that there is a finish line is one of the most important hopes that keep any vision alive. If I had no hope that I could compete and complete something of importance, then I might say, Why even try. I know one thing for sure, and that is if I did not have a relationship with God, in the person of Jesus Christ, I would have entirely different mandate for life.

I know this, and that is what keeps me going. I know that if the written word of God were not a part of my daily life, I would give up. The written word of God is what keeps me on track with the issues that I need to deal with in order to fulfill my desired goals. I know this, not just because the Bible tells me so, but because I can see from my experiences in life that this is so. For me it cannot just be a once in awhile thing to explore the Bible, it needs to be a 24/7/52 thing.

I know that I cannot be reading 24/7/52, but if I make it a regular part of my day, it is with me 24/7/52. This means that at any time I have the resources to combat any circumstance that comes my way, and that no circumstance will defeat me.

The Mandate displays life scenes that other people live out every day in front of us. It shows pictures of people who are finished running their race and those who are finished in their quest to complete their Mandate. The Mandate encourages anyone and everyone to look to those who have gone before them, to learn some of the things that they need to reach out to complete their own vision. The Mandate is written for the purpose of giving hope to all who are willing to take up the challenge to live.

There you have it. I think that I have introduced you to The Mandate. Let The Mandate introduce you to the exploration of life and be satisfied with what it offers you.

This book is part of My Mandate: What is yours?

*****

Just Looking

You do not make Champions in gyms. You make Champions from something they have deep inside them: A desire, a dream, and a vision. They have to have last-minute stamina, they have to be a little faster, and they have to have the skill and the will. However, the will must be stronger than the skill.

Muhammad Ali

Your neighbor's vision is as true for him

as your own vision is true for you.

Miquel de Unamuno

"Do not be interested only in your own life,

but be interested in the lives of others."

The Bible

*****

Chapter 1

Looking Inside

*

I received my body some time ago, and like it or not it is mine for the duration of my time. Like it or not, I am finding that I am still human! During this time, I will learn many things because of my enrollment in the school of life. It is as much a learning experience as is the formal school that I attended from age five. My schooling is not part time, it is fulltime. Even though many of my daily lessons seem as if they are beside the point, they are still relevant to my successes.

My life is not an experiment that God thought up and put to the test in a test tube. He made no mistakes when he thought about and fashioned me. Make no mistake; life is an experiment on my part, not an exercise of futility on God’s part. I will make some mistakes during my tenure, but failure on my part, to measure up at all times, is not a failure that I cannot live with. These failures will make me a better person in the growth process my enrollment in life allows me.

I wish, I wish, I wish that the experiments tried once would curtail my activities enough the first time so that I would not try bad choices a second time. Good choices but failed first attempts, well they are another story. Lessons for living are such that I will repeat them until they are learned. It is only after I learn hard lessons that I am truly free to move on to the next major step in the whole life process. The lessons that I meet head-on may have differing faces, but they have the same thread of stamina building running through them. There are stamina blockers that often run along that thread, but lessons properly confronted will become stamina builders. Life lessons are not short term; they present themselves for the duration.

I often wish I were farther along the road of life, not age wise but in the picture of maturity. Unfortunately, pictures do tell the story all too well. Accomplishment resides at my present address. Well this is what the man inside of me often assumes, until I look around me and inside of me at the reality of living. When I get to where I feel accomplishment is in my comfort zone, it is in reality only the same as where I just came from; an illusion. When I trudge through this illusion, I find another desire along the way that exhibits the same picture as the scenario I just finished. Life is such a puzzle. Someone once said, It ain’t over till the ― lady sings. Life and its lessons are not over until the shovel dumps dirt on your casket, or someone throws your ashes into a beautiful lake somewhere you used to like going ―.

When I look at other people, I for some reason see something in their makeup that makes me glad I am not them. This can be a good thing because it may mean that I am actually satisfied, as I should be with how God created me. On the other hand, I look at another person and wish I were―. Think about it, you are the other person. What they are, you are. We are really reflections of each other in more of a realistic sense than we realize. Think about desires and needs others have; what is different in them from the way it is in you? When you love or hate something in someone else, could it be it is because there is something relevant in him or her, which you love or hate about yourself?

Circumstances dictate a lot to what happens in our lives. I will not try to say that your conditions are insignificant to the successful fulfillment of your term of your mandate. In each of those circumstances, you and I get to choose how we will react to the changing status that may not be of our choosing. We are all born to adhere to the same set of rules, and I know that it may not necessarily ring true, when we look at the circumstances into which some people are born. This is where God’s directive for humanity comes full circle.

We are all slated to be a part of each other so that not one person alive is ever left out. That is the big picture. It is harsh reality, and utterly selfless. The completion of the grand plan for all people everywhere to be satisfied is impossible unless we use all the resources available to complete God’s vision for humanity.

Questions and answers are such an integral part of our day. Sometimes it is scary to think that answers given are not enough to satisfy the need every question presents. Every question another person has is equally as important as the questions I have. If I never look, listen, and trust someone else, what is the use trying. Yes; then I say, why bother! No, I will never be able to help anyone else if I never, look, listen, and trust.

I observe life from many positions. The question is not, if I look at life or observe it in all its parts! When I look at life, it is a more realistic approach to this statement. I can examine only the portion of themselves that people let me see. Each of us puts on a certain façade. The veneer that we layer our outer appearance with is actually the same as intentionally deceiving another person. Computer language addresses the issue of outer appearance with inner appearance in a special way. We know it as WYSIWYG. What you see is what you get. If only! There may well be a few who fit this criteria, and if for the most part they do, I personally think that everyone still keeps something that they think of as personal or private, from the rest of the world.

I said that when I look around me, not if I look around me, I see people only for what they want me to see in them. Picture yourself for a moment; you have just come home from a day at work in the coalmine. It is five o’clock and you have guests coming for dinner at six o’clock. Some very special and prestigious people are coming to your house, and you do not want them to see you as plain ordinary you; covered in coal dust.

Consider for a moment that when they ask what your professional career consists of, you tell them that you are involved in the FFB. (Fossil Fuels Business.) This is the truth, but you leave them with the impression that you are the CEO, when in fact you are the individual who shovels the raw coal onto a conveyer belt down deep in the bottom of a filthy coalmine. Do you want them to see you the way that you came home from your hole in the ground?

Frantic is the pace with which you address yourself in the shower and in front of the mirror. Rather than coming home and relaxing for a few moments with the newspaper in hand to catch up on the daily news, you begin to fashion yourself into a creature that even you do not recognize. You are deceiving your guest and yourself, not because you want to be clean, but because you want them to see you as being in a prestigious position when you are not in that position.

The mirror is such a revealing fixture. The Bible is a voluminous book and it is the most revealing mirror that anyone can stand before; it reveals the inner person. The mirror, in which you are presently admiring your fictitious success, does not lie about physical detail such as imperfections on the surface of the outer person. Bravo, it looks like you are ready for the grand entrance.

As you gaze into the glass mirror, it beckons you to look into the Book mirror, and it asks you revealing questions. Who are you anyway and what are you doing man? A new name would be better suited for this occasion because the character that you see is not a coal miner anymore. Now he is Chief Executive Officer of Fossil Fuels Inc. Enter Mr. CEOOFFI.

Mr. Special and his good wife arrive and the person you are calling your butler for the evening, greets them at the door of the house that you cannot afford. He is one of the people that you have hired to serve your needs for the evening. Out of the reserve money that you keep for emergencies, you have your servants fashion a lavish affair that people generally reserve for Kings. You leave nothing to chance. Mr. and Mrs. Special go home that evening knowing that you are in fact in the Fossil Fuels Business and that you are really Mr. CEOOFFI (Chief Executive Officer Of Fossil Fuels Inc.). Mr. CEOATBOTP, (Coal Excavating Operator At The Bottom Of The Pit,) has just walked the high wire at the circus to the applause of the spectators. Your façade is in tact.

If in fact, you feel the euphoria of the evening through to the next morning, and I doubt that you do, reality will look you in the face when you go back to the bottom of the mine. Reality will look you right in the face once again when you come home at the end of the day, and look in the mirror again. Faced with that reality, you will see that you are Mr. CEOATBOTP. The obvious is that you will need to work a pile of extra jobs to pay for the veneer that you wore last night. There is always a price to pay for deception, even small deceptions.

I have put the picture above into somewhat of an extreme. Most of us do not go to this degree of Putting on The Ritz. There are however many things in our lives that put us into that actual picture of deception. Whenever we let people think we are great, when in fact we are in dire need, there is a chance that we will never come to the place in our lives where we will be able to compete and complete our most desirous goal.

What are we trying to hide? What we are in the right relational sense is probably the God intended purpose for our lives. This is not to say we should not dream big, or attempt great things. The issue is that we do all to the glory of God.

Each of us, whether we are sighted or blind can see or sense others and their needs. God created us with five senses. Some say we have six senses; some even talk of the seventh sense. Maybe we will figure out a few more senses to add to the original five senses (sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste.) A new one might be common sense. This makes the statement that I made earlier, fall into the when category. If, would put me into the category of, if I were born. If you are in this world, then when is where it is at for you and me?

When I look at life and the people around me, I see countless numbers of people. Each of them is occupying a different position from that of the other person. One is a child and the other is a teenager. One is a young adult and another is an adult. One is middle aged and the other is a senior. One is alive and one is dead. All of these people of different ages are part of a mandate in life. A large part life is about different stages, not about better parts reserved for better people.

One person is a gardener, while the other is the owner of the garden. The gardener may be both gardener and proprietor of that patch of vegetation. The courses of direction for both are possibly different from each other, but equally as important. Make no mistake about it. Whether I like to admit it or not, the gardener or caretaker of the patch of dirt is equal. Left to its own resources, this patch of dirt would just become dust blown, blown about by the wind brought on by the clouds that God lets into our lives. However, my value as the gardener would remain the same as yours as the lord of the vineyard. We will both die taking nothing with us. What we accomplish in the plan of God’s choosing is an issue worthy of consideration.

My world and it is my world because God gave it to me to explore and or exploit, to discover, and develop; is full if I want it to be full. To determine to cultivate something of value for another persons use is my purpose as a resident of this world. My God given intention is to take care of something for and or with you for someone else. It is your God given job to grow something for and with me for someone else.

God grant me the wisdom to understand these basic principles of human existence. When I read the Bible, it is not long before I see a basic principle. Simply this, it is not my idea to implant something into the lives of the people of his creation. God said, Have many young ones so that you may grow in number. Fill the water of the seas, and let the birds grow in number on the earth. (NCV) Genesis is full of the information I need to develop and mature. The people around me will be the beneficiaries. I will not explore only to exploit the title deed to what God gives me on this earth. Do I have the courage to call this my mandate?

I am accosted, stopped, approached, confronted or detained, as in not being able to move on to compete at the God intended level of excellence towards my goal, if I do not do my part. If I do not compete effectively, I will never complete my goal in the manner that God in his perfect will intended. I may still get by with a degree of success and satisfaction. What do I gain, if all that matters is lost?

I may still get the physical things that this world offers to those who apply themselves to the principles available. But, and this is a big Butt (ram, hit, bump, strike, knock against, run into, push or end). This is the big hit to this reality series, and it wakes me up to the big urge ensconced within me. The urgency within me to compete at the highest level with the power of His Excellency is not satisfied until I finish my course. Saul of Tarsus did this when he went on to become Paul and said, I have finished My Course…

I will not, absolutely not! This is an emphatic no if I ever heard one. This is a good response when responding to the temptation someone offers us to do a bad thing. Absolutely not, I will not race on Sundays. This was the response of Eric Liddell.

To my way of rationalization, the words I will are not irrelevant or unimportant. The words I will are the most significant words that I can add to my thinking and vocabulary. Without the proper appliance of these words to my life, the meaning of I will becomes an antonym, or generates the opposite of the positive. I will becomes I will not. It may be a determined I will not, or it may be a non-determined I will not. This factor determines our understanding of how life works.

Generally, I will not, is the easiest response to a request someone may make of us. I will not do what you ask because I am not as equipped as Johnny or Susie. I will not do what you ask because I do not have the time. I will not do what you ask because there is nothing in it for me. I will not participate in your project because I might hurt myself. I will not, because, because, because! There are some legitimate reasons to turn down someone’s request to assist him or her in some manner.

I will not, absolutely not! This is a definite no if I ever heard one. I will absolutely not race on Sundays. This was the response of Eric Liddell.

The Scottish runner Eric Liddell, hero of the film Chariots of Fire was a devout Christian, became famous for winning the 400 metres at the 1924 Paris Olympics after refusing to run his best distance, the 100 metres, because the race was on a Sunday.

Not as well known, is that he was born and lived much of his life in China. The son of missionary parents in the port city of Tianjin, he left Britain the year after his Paris triumph to assume the role as a missionary teacher.

Eric Liddell was a great Olympic champion who gave it all up to come to teach the youth of China," said Stephen Metcalf, 78, a friend and fellow internee.

What was once the Weihsien Internment Camp is now Number Two Middle School in the city of Weifang, and yesterday thousands of children, teachers, residents, and city leaders turned out to greet former occupants. There were more than 2000 people in the camp, including 327 children, mostly from a western-run boarding school nearby.

Many were children of missionaries, as were