THE Bible says in the book of Luke, chapter 14, verses 28-30: For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, “This man began to build and was not able to finish.”

In my 60th year, I recently reflected upon the question of “what advice would I give to my 20-year-old self?”

It’s tough to choose from many good options, as you’ll see if you try it. However, I settled on one of Stephen Covey’s “7 habits of highly effective people” (a business book written in 1989), namely “begin with the end in mind”.

My prospective mother-in-law put it this way, when she offered my wife-to-be and I some sound advice before we got married, “start the way you plan to finish”.

It means starting with a clear understanding of where you’re heading. This helps you line up your daily actions (habits) with your long-term goals. If we don’t make a conscious effort to visualise where we’d like to end up, and how we’re going to get there, we’ll allow the world around us to set our agenda and shape our thinking.

For me, that has meant learning to love the Bible, in which we find all the promises of God about our identity in him, our strength in him and our hope in him.

As Jesus might have put it, “beginning with the end in mind” is about identifying who we want to be, where we want to go and how we want to get there. As the saying goes, “when you believe right, you will live right”.

Kevin Prinsloo

Pastor, White River Community Church