Today I had the great pleasure to meet Charles “Tremendous” Jones. He was absolutely TREMENDOUS! He is one of the most dynamic and wisest men I have ever heard speak. His heart is as pure as goal and his words were filled with truth. At 80 years old, he redefined the words motivation, enthusiasm, encouragement, love, and most importantly faith. He challenged everyone in several different areas, but most memorable were three I would like to expand on.
1) Be a Thinker. Charlie encourages you to stop listening and start thinking. So, instead of listening to others and writing down their thoughts, listen to others, but write down and act on your thoughts about what the person has to say. This was powerful for me since it is something I have always done, but never was validated in my thought process until now.
2) Definition of Love. After being married for 60 years Charlie eloquently talked about the secret sauce of his marriage. He said, “The definition of love is commitment.”
Love is about how you serve, not what you deserve. Being committed to someone means you have a higher purpose besides yourself. The only unfailing love comes from Christ. All other love will fail, and is designed to reduce commitment. We so often confuse love with lust. Our modern day definition of love is really lust in most cases. And, lust never lasts very long. Make sure you are not lusting after someone, but you truly love (want to make a commitment to serve) someone.
One of my core fears, someone will not love me enough to stay committed to me. Am I not good enough? I am not! Therefore, for someone to stay committed, they must be willing to commit regardless of the other person’s inadequacies and failures. We must love the Lord enough to stay committed to the relationship, and not rely on “love” for the other person as the foundation for the commitment. We can’t love enough; because our love is not unconditional. We must commit to love!
3) People & Books
“You are today what you’ll be five years from now, except for the people you meet and the books you read.” I just love this quote by Charlie. Again, something my spirit has led me to believe, but never received full conformation of this thought process until today. What is so profound about his statement is how important it is to spend our time wisely and focused on activities that will change who we are five years from now.
Teach us to number our days, that we may present to You a heart of wisdom – Psalm 90:12
In addition, Charlie strongly encourages couples to read together. It binds their thoughts together and allows them to grow together. It makes a lot of sense to me.
To learn more about Charlie, please visit http://www.executivebooks.com/cjones/index.html