I am the number one fan of the Anything is Possible Network…APN for short. One time, years ago, I was watching football with a friend of mine who lives out in the country. Way out. And like me, he is a big football fan, so he was really excited about his new giant satellite dish in the backyard (you remember these) and what it could do for him. “Tim, watch this,” he said. “Whenever I shift the dish, that’s what I pick up. I can watch games on the East Coast, in the Midwest, or anywhere.” Listen to that again: “Wherever I shift my dish, that’s what I pick up.” We theoretically have a dish like that in our hearts and in our heads. You could be picking up the I’m So Stupid Network or the It’s Too Hard Network or hundreds of other networks that are going to get you down when you pick them up. When you tune in to the APN, you are going to pick up something that is going to pick you up. What we focus on is what will inevitably dictate what our lives will look like.
One of my most intriguing friends is Duane Chapman, better known as Dog the Bounty Hunter. I was introduced to him many years ago, when he was a bounty hunter, but before he became famous and made famous mistakes. He was working in Hawaii and Denver, but he wasn’t happy. He knew there was more to life than what he had then. With Beth, his now wife, Dog and I began to spend quality time together. I talked to them a little about corners of life. A corner is a bend or a curve that you can’t see around. Sometimes your life just seems like it’s moving in a straight line…you’re ordering up the same thing every day, every week, every month. But if you shift your dish, you will come to a corner, and you never know what wonderful things may lie around that bend.
Dog had faith, and he turned that corner. Just around the corner, he was offered a show on A&E, which has had an eight season stretch and had become one the highest rated shows in the nation. He even had a best seller…his autobiography, ”You Can Run But You Can’t Hide” and then released his newest book, “Where Mercy is Shown, Mercy is Given“. I was at the his wedding to Beth (after living together for sixteen years, they had finally decided to get married) and we were out on the ocean in an outrigger canoe. The A&E people were there, celebrities were there, and hundreds of people lined up on the rocks on the shore, cheering for Dog and Beth yelling congratulations. Dog began to cry. “Can you imagine this?” he said through the tears. ” Look how far God has brought me.” If you shift your dish, good things are waiting just around the corner.
What are you focusing on? What is controlling your outcome in life?
