People buy into the leader before they buy into the vision.

Many times when people have a vision, they think in terms of a big vision - I want to take my city for Christ. But the problem with many pastors and this type of vision is this: they haven't developed the strategy to fulfill that vision. A pastor preaches a dream or vision to his/her people, they get excited for a week, a month, or a couple of months, but there is no strategy, planning, or process to fulfill that vision.

Most people want to avoid pain, and discipline is usually painful.

Someone once defined hard work as the accumulation of the easy things you didn't do when you should have.

We are so blessed, we get hundreds of emails a day that say, “John, I’ve worked this plan for one year and I can really see my growth.” So what I would love is for readers to do that for a year and then email me.

I say this in the book [Today Matters], we either spend our day repairing or preparing, and if I haven't taken good care of my today's, they accumulate. So all of a sudden today what I'm doing is I'm going back, I'm repairing bad relationships and wrong decisions, and I'm digging a hole. I'm not making any progress because I'm in a repairing mode, versus if I really make today count that prepares me for tomorrow. Tomorrow really will take care of itself if I do the right thing today.

Nobody ever got ready by waiting. You only get ready by starting.