Welcome to 10 minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life in the time it takes to get to work.

I'm Keith Simon. There's a principle called Begin with the End in Mind.

I first heard it from Stephen Covey in his book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

And ever since hearing it, I've never forgotten it.

Let me explain it by showing you how it works.

If you want to build a new house, what do you do first?

Maybe you order materials, or choose colors, or start framing it?

Well, of course you don't do any of those things first.

The first thing you do is decide what kind of house you want.

How many bedrooms and bathrooms will it have?

Should the kitchen and family room be separated by a wall or should it all be one big room?

Where should the laundry be in relationship to the bedrooms?

Once all that's been decided, what's the next step? Well, then you draw plans that reflect what you want. So you might have to hire an architect or an engineer depending on how complicated of a project it is.

But only after you have all the plans do you start ordering materials and building?

Now, do you have to do it in that order?

Well, I guess you don't have to, but it would be pretty foolish to do it in any other order. But I guess you could start building without deciding what you want. You could start building without drawing any plans.

But if you do that, you're going to end up making a lot of changes that are going to be very costly,

both in time and money.

No one would do anything so foolish as to start building a house without first having a very good plan for how you wanted it to look at the end. In this instance, beginning with the end in mind, is just common sense.

Okay, here's another example.

What's the first step in taking a family vacation?

Do you just get in the car and start driving?

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