Kathi and I went out on Friday evening to do a couple of errands at rush hour—our first mistake—and got caught at a light that had just broken. It was the left turn arrow for the left turn lanes at Jones and 1960. So we sat in an ever growing line of traffic through three cycles of the lights while every other direction of traffic got to go but us. As the traffic behind me was further than I could see in my mirror and the left turn arrow once again did not let us go I took matters into my own hands.  I hopped a median with my four wheel drive Honda Pilot and went on with my life. (Had I been in my low-riding Maxima I would still be sitting there.)
 
That incident was pretty typical of my week. Besides the evil left turn arrow, the bike rack I bought at Walmart did not work and I had to take it back and stand in the return line behind a woman who was returning the entire women’s garment section. REI was out of one kind of bike rack—the one I needed. I dropped a little tub of yogurt at breakfast and had to clean spots of yogurt off the blinds, floor, chairs, shoes, books, papers, doors, walls, and even off someone’s car three blocks away.
 
This is one of those weeks when I got ambushed by life. I know that you know those kinds of weeks: Too much to do. Too many unexpected things. Too much that did not work. Too many meetings. Too many setbacks. Too much I thought I could do. Too many interruptions. Too many wrong turns. Just too much. And as a finite man, for the 56th year in a row, I did not get it all done by Friday at 5 PM or even by Friday at 11 PM.
 
With all that as background, I got up this morning, Saturday morning to be exact, knowing that I had between 10 and 12 hours of work ahead of me—some of it work for my ministry to CBC and some of it work for my ministry to my wife and some of it work for my ministry to my own sanity by cleaning up some spaces that have spiraled out of control. (Part of that ministry to CBC is writing this article.) So, to be real clear, a day that is supposed to be a day off is actually a day and a half of work.
 
Usually when I get up on a Saturday morning and I am facing a day like this I get pretty bummed out and just want to go back to bed. Or, when facing a day like this, I can often fiddle around on trivial stuff most of the day and put off the important stuff until about ten at night—whereupon I then have to work like a fiend until 2 AM to finish what really needed to be done.
 
But it is 2 PM now and this Saturday has gone very well, despite the amount of work, because I got up this morning with a special commodity called “ambition.” Today, for some reason, I just felt like tackling all of it. 
 
I finished my sermon, I worked on my granddaughter’s Christmas gift, I ran all my errands before the other Houstonians got up, I avoided the evil traffic light at Jones and 1960, I cleaned up my email, I am cranking on this article, and I even folded a little laundry. (I beg you not to tell anyone—except Kathi!)
 
All this self-control and discipline and my remarkably good attitude in the midst of this day is because of one very special commodity called “ambition.” Today, for some reason, I just felt like knocking it all out. One of the major assets in self-control, in doing what we should do, is ambition.
 
Paul said, in 2 Corinthians 5:9, “Therefore we also have as our ambition, whether home or absent, to be pleasing to Him.” The paraphrase of what he said is, “Whether I live here on earth or go home to heaven I have a deep desire to be pleasing to God.”
 
There are two things of towering importance in this verse that I want to mention: First, we are exhorted to make “pleasing God” be the central goal of our lives. (Here is a question for personal reflection: “Is pleasing God the central goal of my life?”) And second, and this is major for our lives, ambition is apparently not something that we either feel or do not feel. Ambition is not some arbitrary state over which we have no control. Ambition is clearly something that we can just decide to have!!! We can choose ambition.
 
One of the key things in self-control is the choosing to be ambitious for pleasing God—choosing to value the pleasure of God more than the temporary fun of self-absorbed and lazy living.
 
Ambition is a choice. People are ambitious to get money and others are ambitious to get into political office and others are ambitious to get ahead of their friends and others are ambitious to get in shape. Clearly they chose those ambitions. No one forced them to want to be the governor or to want to be rich or to want to have power. They decided to be ambitious for these things.
 
When we decide to be ambitious to please God we gain a major dose of self-control—a major does of the ability and desire to do what we should do.
 
The question is not whether or not we should be ambitious. Clearly we should be ambitious. The question is what we are ambitious for. If our ambition is for pleasing God our self-control goes through the roof.