Admiral Hyman Rickover was the father of the U.S. nuclear Navy. He once interviewed a Naval Academy graduate and asked him a very direct question: “When you were in school and in all your life, did you always do your best?” The young man started to say “yes” but then realized it wasn’t truthful. “No,” he said, “I didn’t do my best all the time.” Admiral Rickover looked at him with piercing eyes and said, “Why not?”

Why not? The question burned in the young man’s heart, and it was a turning point in his life. That young cadet, Jimmy Carter, became the 39th president of the U.S. and wrote a book called Why Not the Best?

If you want to give your best to God, there are three things you must do that every soldier understands.

1. You must define what you would die for.
Soldiers know there are some things more valuable than their own lives. Even Jesus talked about it: “The greatest love is shown when a person lays down his life for his friends” (John 15:13 TLB). You measure love not by what people tell you but by their willingness to sacrifice everything they have for something.

2. You must sacrifice your own comfort.
Soldiers do this all the time. They serve in extreme circumstances and don’t make much money. They give up a lot of things.

You don’t become a great man or woman of God by doing what’s easy or comfortable. You do it by committing to something greater than yourself and then being willing to sacrifice for it. The greater your sacrifice in life, the greater your character will be. “Endure suffering along with me, as a good soldier of Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 2:3 NLT).           

3. You must eliminate distractions.
“No one serving as a soldier gets entangled in civilian affairs, but rather tries to please his commanding officer” (2 Timothy 2:4 NIV). Soldiers know they can’t be distracted if they want to be ready to respond to a leader’s command.

If you want to be great, if you want to be the best you can be, you must start spending more of your time, money, and energy on things that are going to last forever and less time, money, and energy on things that don’t really matter.

If you want to give your best to God, why not start with these three steps?