The phrase “Just Do It” is a trademark of the Nike shoe company, coined in 1988. Hugely successful, the “Just Do It” ad campaign allowed Nike to increase its market share from 18 to 43% in just 10 years.
Nike’s objective was to target every person regardless of age, gender or physical fitness level – customers associating their purchases with the prospect of achieving greatness. Students of the “Just Do It” campaign have observed that the campaign was so successful because it was both “universal (it) and intensely personal (just do).”
Like most truth-claims, Nike’s campaign has some truth to it.
The fact is each choice we make, each action we decide to take, or not to take, has bigger implications than just the minutia of that moment in our own life. Each day’s actions or non-actions will affect our own future and will have an affect on those around us as well. And so a strong determination, and purposeful decisiveness, is called for in our everyday life.
But of course “Just Do It” has a gaping ambiguity to it also, doesn’t it? What is “it”? That is an obvious and crucial question! There are things worth doing — worth giving our lives for even — and there are also things we should never do, that are a waste of our time or even harmful.
Every part of every Christian’s life has the potential to honor God.
Paul, in 1 Corinthians 10:31, sums up what our motivation should be with this concise formula, “Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” Just do it … all to the glory of God!
Paul here brings both the “universal” and the “intensely personal” to bear, but also provides the crucial specific: what are we to be “doing”? And his answer should be the motto, the life calling of every Christian everywhere in every age.
With every thing you do, every decision you make, every word your speak — even, Paul says, every bite of food you take — do everything to the glory of God. Do everything, even eating and drinking. This brings it down to the very basic, the very personal, and the very routine details of life.
How do you eat, how do you arrange your sleep, how do you study, how do you work, how do you schedule your mornings and evenings, how do you drive, how do you relax, how do you use the internet, how do you keep your lawn, how do you use your home? The gospel has a claim on all of it!
Whatever you do, do it all to the glory of God. Every part of every Christian’s life has the potential to honor God.
Be “doing,” yes: your life should be a life of activity, purposefulness, and even accomplishment. But the overriding purpose for your life is not, as Nike’s campaign suggests, “the prospect of achieving personal greatness.” It is the superior prospect of bringing glory to God as your Maker, and specifically to Jesus as your Savior.