What's Your Motive for Being Excellent?

I was looking over one of my favorite books yesterday, "Be the Leader You Were Meant to Be" by Leroy Eims. In it he has an amazing chapter titled "Why Some Leaders Excel." Have you ever wondered why that is? Why do some leaders excel and others don't? Too often our desire to excel comes from wrong motives, emphasizing our fleshly effort and worldly ambition. We do it to impress others in order to receive their praise. Hopefully this isn't your reason for wanting to excel. Shouldn't our reason for wanting to excel and be excellent come from our desire to please the Lord? Too often we forget that excellence is one of God's attributes, and we as Christians should always want to reflect that. His name is excellent, His loving-kindness is excellent, His greatness is excellent, His salvation is excellent, His work is excellent, His way is excellent and His will is excellent. If everything we do is in the name of the Lord, we should be certain that it reflects Him well. Today we will have countless opportunities to excel and reflect Him. Choose not to get sucked in to the cultures philosophy when it comes to this. Also don't let your focus be on perfection, but let it be on excellence, as there's a huge difference. And really the only way for us to be excellent is through Jesus, who Himself was excellent in everything He did. Today make the choice to be excellent :)