I think Peter was left handed.
I’m referring, of course, to Simon Peter of the New Testament, not Peter Gabriel, Paul and Mary’s friend Peter, or Laurence J. Peter of The Peter Principle.
Oh, I’m sure his mama beat it out of him since left handedness was considered a disability, if not a sign of evil back in the day. But evidence of Peter’s right-brained dominance abound… [click to continue…]
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Economics doesn’t have to be difficult. Just ask my three-year-old grandson…
Cohen: Papa can I have a treat?
Papa: What do you want? [click to continue…]
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A few months ago I was having a conversation with someone who was going through a recovery process. He sounded really healthy on the phone – sober in the best sense of the word. Then he said something really curious about his life.
“I’m so ready to get things back to normal.”
“Normal,” I told him, “was what got you in trouble in the first place. You’re ‘normal’ is being redefined, and that takes time. And as much as you want that, you are going to need to give it time to form.”
I was talking to a couple a few weeks after their first baby was born. I asked how things were going and got a predictable answer. “We love being parents, but we’re exhausted from lack of sleep,” Mom said.
Then Dad chimed in… “Yeah, we’re so ready to get back to normal.”
I guess I was a little rude, but I just laughed. In their face.
“You want what? Good luck with that.” [click to continue…]
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Have you ever felt as though you were good – really good – at something? I don’t mean false pride or arrogance. I mean being a person with faith. Faith in God. And almost as important, faith in yourself, at least in certain circumstances.
The word for that is confidence, and without it, you’re toast.
Have you ever moved confidently into a situation and blown it? I’m not talking about giving in to your weaknesses. I mean digging deep into the well of your greatest talent, knowledge, or skillset and serving up what they call “gopher balls” in baseball.
All of us can shrug off those areas of weakness. We know we won’t be perfect at everything. (You do know that, don’t you?)
But it’s hard to know where to go or what to do when we get hammered for what we think we’re good at.
I’ve seen a lot of that lately. I’ve had a few of those experiences myself, but I’ve also come across a variety of other people who’ve faced the same thing. Their confidence has been rattled, and they’re not quite sure what to do next. [click to continue…]
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Imagine you are going into an office that has two points of entry. Either door leads into the same large area. It’s during office hours, so you know both doors are unlocked. The first door you come to is closed. The second, a little further down the hall, is open. Which door do you go in?
I actually had that conversation with someone who challenged me. We were going down the hallway and I passed the first door – the closed one, and walked in through the open door.
“Why did you do that?” Krista asked.
“Do what?”
“You walked past a perfectly good door to go through the second.”
“Because the second one was open,” I said, a little baffled that someone would actually question that.
“But the first one was closer,” Krista said. Krista was a high school senior, our next door neighbor, and wonderful babysitter. She was also literally a genius. We had lots of deep conversations like this back in the day.
Then I blurted out this little gem of wisdom that revealed a lot more than I planned: [click to continue…]
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A few years ago Mike Ashcraft came up with a revolutionary idea. In considering what we all intuitively know – that New Year’s resolutions are inherently powerless to produce real life change – Mike proposed capturing the essence of the person we want to become, or what we most want God to do for us in one simple word.
“My One Word,” he called it.
The idea caught fire, and his web site, myoneword.org, became a gathering place for people all over the world to share their core essential idea for that particular year.
I arrived late to that party when a LifeVesting reader pointed me to the site a couple of years ago. I was captivated by the idea, and landed on the word, Finish! as my word for that year.
I revisited the idea when I wrote this post about things to do before the end of the year. I learned in the process that Mike, along with Rachel Olsen, has since written a book that is now available to guide you through the process.
In prayerfully considering what my one word could and should be for this year, I began searching for the themes the Lord seems to have been playing out in my life recently – what I call the Descants of the Soul. Those themes have a way of ebbing and flowing. And it didn’t take me long at all to land on what my one word should be… [click to continue…]
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Know what’s always messed me up with New Year’s resolutions? New Year’s Day is a holiday. So all those goals and new beginnings typically start around January 2 and I’m already a day behind. Then I need to put up Christmas stuff and I’m two days behind. I’m getting tired just thinking about it. So I need some mental rest from the holidays. Three days behind.
So this year I brightened up and decided that this will take a bit more planning and thought. And yes, I’m talking slap-dab in the middle of the Christmas holidays.
So I’m writing this to myself, but inviting you to come along for the fun. Here are ten suggestions to prepare for the coming year – do all these by December 31, and you can have New Year’s Day off. I know, I know! You’re welcome! Click here to get started
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Davidson High School, Mobile, Alabama. Circa 1974. My freshman year. I’m standing in the cafeteria line, waiting to decide whether I was going with the hamburger or whatever today’s chef’s choice was. It was there I spotted her, headed toward the faculty dining room. This was worth losing my spot in line for.
She was our school guidance counselor, and also an experienced English teacher. She was wise about things I was ignorant of.
She also happened to be my great aunt.
“Aunt Helen!” said I. “I wanted to ask your advice about something.”
“What’s that,” she replied.
“Well, see, I’m writing a book – a novel – and I wanted to get some advice from you about how to get it published.”
(I should pause here to interpret what “novel” meant. I probably had about five chapters, about five notebook pages hand-written each, about a tough-guy high school kid who winds up dying for the girl he loves, who happened to have the same name as the girl I was fixated on in the ninth grade. Anyway…)
Her advice was sage – way wiser than my 14 years. She didn’t write off my dreams and tell me that 14-year-olds don’t get published as novelists. She didn’t boggle my mind about query letters, agents or publishing houses either. She offered me words of encouraging truth. [click to continue…]
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Time to let you in on a little secret weakness. Sometimes I hate being reminded. Especially when I’m already doing the thing I am being reminded of, or I’m already aware of it. Now let me hasten to say that when somebody reminds me of something I have totally forgotten, I’m usually very grateful. But the obvious? The no-brainers? The already-doings? That’s another story.
Does this ever happen to you? You’re locking the doors before retiring at night and a voice from the other room hollers, “Don’t forget to lock the doors!”
Or maybe you’re buckled into that airplane seat, starting to get lost in whatever you’re reading, and they start that handy demonstration explaining how to use a seat belt?
I had a little visit with the Lord about this the other day. Not airline safety demonstrations, but this issue of hating to be reminded. Let’s just say it was His idea. [click to continue…]
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“Until now you have asked for nothing in My name; ask and you will receive, so that your joy may be made full” (John 16:24).
They’re called game changers. New players. New rules or rulings. New technologies. New rays of understanding. But sometimes we’re so adjusted, so acclimated to the game changer, it’s easy to lose the significance of it.
In the verse above, Jesus introduces a game changer. In fact, He rewrites the entire playbook for prayer. “Until now,” He says, “you have asked for nothing in My name. Up until now, you have prayed, but you haven’t taken on My identity or authority. You haven’t prayed ‘as if’ it were Me doing the asking”
Now… time to change the game. And that’s what praying in His name produces.
Praying “as if” – that’s what it means to pray in His name. It’s a whole lot more than using a tired old phrase at the end of a prayer. Praying in His name seizes the handle of the greatest cosmic weapon in the universe.
Take a look at any situation. A personal need, a friend in need, whatever… [click to continue…]
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