Love

Teaching Nodians to Trust Again

by Andy Wood on February 11, 2009

in Enlarging Your Capacity, Life Currency, Love, LV Alter-egos, LV Cycle, Pleasers

Bringing Hope to the Land of Nod (Part 3)

1.  Reconnect the spiritual with the interpersonal.
2. Expose anger for what it is, and provide a model for forgiveness.
3.  Respond to Victimhood by Redefining Responsibility

4.  Reopen doors of trust and acceptance.

group-prayerEvery vibrant relationship is a dance with trust.  As the relationship deepens, so does the trust.  As the trust grows, the relationship deepens even more.

That said, it’s easy to see why the citizens of Nod have an itty bitty trust issue.  “Fool me once,” and all that.

Do people trust you?  The challenge we face in being instruments of healing is that trust, once broken, is incredibly difficult to restore.  Yet without it, hearts remain crippled and closed off.

Our goal for the citizens of Nod is to lead them to do more than survive.  We believe God wants them to thrive. [click to continue…]

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Can You Lead the Nodians Out of Victimhood?

by Andy Wood on February 9, 2009

in Insight, Life Currency, Love

supportTwo posts ago I started sharing what we’re learning about being instruments of healing to people in the “Land of Nod” – the realm of the aftermath of broken relationships.  It was to this place that Cain went after he had killed his brother and rejected the mercy of God.

To bring hope to the Land of Nod, we must:

1.  Reconnect the spiritual with the interpersonal.
You relate to people in the same way you relate to God, and vice-versa.  We must be faithful to live that message, and communicate it well to others.

2.  Expose anger for what it is, and provide a model for forgiveness.
Anger is always a choice; so is forgiveness.  To help the Nodians, we must encourage them to accept responsibility for their anger and guide them toward forgiveness.

The third thing we are learning to do to bring hope back to Nod is:

3.  Respond to Victimhood by Redefining Responsibility

Week in and week out, people pass through our doors carrying a past that neither they nor we can change.  [click to continue…]

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Could I Have Some Outrage, Please, With Extra Salt?

by Andy Wood on February 7, 2009

in Life Currency, Love, Tense Truths

salt-and-light-2(Note:  This is out of sequence, but I couldn’t pass this by.  I’d like to know your thoughts.)

First, read this:

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.  If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit. Let us not become boastful, challenging one another, envying one another.  (Galatians 5:22-26, NASU)

Then read this:  A Botched Abortion in Mother’s Own Words

Then read this again:

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.  If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit. Let us not become boastful, challenging one another, envying one another.  (Galatians 5:22-26, NASU)

Please tell me you feel at least a little outrage.

Please tell me that you haven’t lived so long in a culture of death that this leaves you untouched.

But while you’re at it, please give me something better than violence or political rhetoric. [click to continue…]

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Bringing Hope to the Land of Nod

by Andy Wood on February 5, 2009

in Enlarging Your Capacity, Esteem, Leadership, Life Currency, Love, LV Cycle

communityJan is a mother of four, two each from two failed marriages.  This morning, her 19-year-old lost his temper and verbally crushed his mother with a flurry of profanity and rage.  Jan wanted to die, literally. I got the call.

Last year, at the tender age of 44, Bruce became a husband for the first time.  Less than a month later, his bride, this time blushing with anger, ordered Bruce out of the house.  Their divorce was final last week.

Larry introduced himself to me by telling me how he was betrayed and fired by his corporate board.  Then he faced the most insidious wound of all – the church wound.  After months of being ostracized, the victim of church politics, Larry finally realized the need for a change. “When your wife has to take a tranquilizer on Sunday mornings just to go to church,” he said, “it’s time to do something different.”

All these people share two things in common.  First, they’re living in the Land of Nod (see the previous post).  The age that’s given us instant gratification, disposable everything, and technology-on-demand has elevated revolving door relationships to an art form.  The people I just introduced you to are Exhibit A.

Second, on Sundays they’re in our church.  [click to continue…]

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Are You Living in the Land of Nod?

by Andy Wood on February 4, 2009

in Life Currency, Love

broken-homePreston is about 14 months old; his future is literally wide open in front of him.  But even as young as he is, he already is feeling the effects of a broken home.  He didn’t ask for it, but for the rest of his life he’ll be living in the Land of Nod.

Gina grew up in the perfect family – at least that’s what everyone believed.  But they didn’t hear the verbal and occasional physical abuse Gina suffered growing up.  Very few understand the strange combination of anger and shyness that marks her personality today.  But the long trail of disrupted friendships and broken romances tell the painful story.  Gina is living in the land of Nod.

In the aftermath of history’s first broken relationship, the Bible says that Cain “went out from the presence of the Lord and dwelt in the Land of Nod, on the East of Eden” (Genesis 4:16).  As a race, we’ve been living in the aftermath of broken relationships – in the Land of Nod – ever since.

Are We Still That Clueless?

It’s amazing.  Thousands of years of history have passed, and we’ve learned an awful lot.  These days the knowledge available to the world doubles at rates we measure by minutes rather than centuries.  What’s more amazing to me, however, is what we have yet to learn. [click to continue…]

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An Open Letter to a Wounded Church Member

by Andy Wood on February 2, 2009

in Esteem, Five LV Laws, Life Currency, Love, Principle of Freedom

rejectionDear Daniel,

Thank you for taking the time to share your heart and concerns with me last week.  I respect your honesty, and am frustrated that you have experienced so many disappointments and hurts in your church relationships.  While I can relate to many of them, only you know how savagely this has impacted your life and the life of your family members.

I know it has to be a bit surreal to always feel as though, in your words, “you kept missing the memo” about what was expected beyond a simple faith in Christ.  And to be caught in between two conflicting women “leaders” had to have felt like a no-win situation.

I still don’t understand what the whole turf war stuff was all about.  But I do understand the tension between trying to show grace and love to someone in deliberate sin and yet not approving the lifestyle.  I guess until Jesus comes, we’ll still be arguing about that one. [click to continue…]

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Why I Haven’t Given Up on the Church

by Andy Wood on January 30, 2009

in Allocating Your Resources, Consumers, Life Currency, Love, LV Alter-egos, LV Cycle, Tense Truths

xmma-00145News Flash!  This just in…  In a shocking reversal of public opinion, somebody thinks something’s wrong with the church.

Here’s a blast from the past from an old B.C. Cartoon.  Picture the anthill, and the Dad ant poking his head out the top.  His teenaged son is coming back from the movies.

Dad:  “How was the disaster movie, son?”

Son:  “A disaster.”

Son:  “Why do they make so many disaster movies, Dad?”

Dad:  “So when Armageddon comes, we can all go back to sleep and say we’ve seen it already.”

I can see a 2009 update:

Dad:  “How was the disaster movie, son?”

Son:  “A disaster.”

Son:  “I thought we’d see a bunch of explosions, death and mayhem.”

Dad:  “Let me guess – you saw the Ted Haggard documentary instead.”

Pick your spot – inside the church or outside.  Mainline, sideline, or no-line.  House churches and megachurches.  Political and “news” organizations.  Cultural elitists and preachers.  Gay rights advocates and Fred Phelps.  Everybody seems to converge on one common opinion:

The church sucks. [click to continue…]

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The Resurrection Army

by Andy Wood on January 26, 2009

in Enlarging Your Capacity, Life Currency, Love, LV Cycle, Tense Truths

Tense Truth: If you are a follower of Jesus, you are a citizen of a kingdom that is always one generation from extinction, and you are that generation. On the other hand, you are part of a kingdom that will never die. Armed with the most relevant, life-giving message ever known to mankind, we reach out with urgency to a dying generation, yet with confidence in a living God.

angel-prayerBorn on the first Easter and commissioned forty days later, the history and destiny of the world has been forever changed and shaped by an army sent forth by the Lord Jesus Himself. You are now part of that army.

Conceived in the eternal heart of God, nurtured in the womb of a rich man’s grave, this army entered the world with very little fanfare. There were no parades. No marches. No legions of soldiers with their pomp and circumstance.

Rome hardly noticed; most of Jerusalem heaved a sigh of relief. The Rabble-rouser was dead, His disciples terrorized, His followers shocked numb. The Armies of Death had won again, and life(!) would go on as usual.

Then came Sunday. Oh, then came Sunday!

Then rolled the stone.

Then fell the guardians of the grave.

Then rose the Lamb, the Lion, the Prince of Peace!

Out came the cry, at first as hoarse as a whisper: “He’s alive! And He’s calling for you.”

From everywhere they came: Jews and Gentiles, rich and poor, male and female, the religious and the rebels. They saw for themselves the difference a risen Savior would make. And true to the prophecies of Daniel, out of the kingdom of Rome there rose a kingdom that would never, never die – one that would subdue all other kingdoms and fill the world. And true to God’s promise, that kingdom and its Resurrection Army – your Resurrection Army – is still alive and well today.

What gives this Resurrection Army its power to overcome? [click to continue…]

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Speaking the Truth, Speaking in Love, Speaking Nothing at All

by Andy Wood on January 22, 2009

in Life Currency, Love, LV Alter-egos, Pleasers, Words

truth-loveThis is about the difference between creeds and deeds.  Action and diction.  Your words and your walk.

I’m assuming if you’re reading this that you want to be known and respected as a man or woman of truth.  That may be a big assumption, of course, since it’s possible that you went to bed last night with the happy memory of somebody you conned.

But if you’re a believer, God has placed a desire in your heart to please Him, and truth is one of the things that does that.  So is love.  So it’s no surprise that the Bible describes spiritual maturity as the fine art of “speaking the truth in love.”

And it is a fine art.  What do you do when words and wishes collide?  What do you say when your honest thoughts and feelings aren’t very loving?

Years ago I was sitting in a therapy group, where a couple of people were talking about their “inner child” and their “inner adolescent.”  It was a poignant discussion by some people who were sincerely seeking healing and growth.  But I couldn’t help but think, “My problem isn’t my inner child, or my inner adolescent.  My problem is with my inner jackass.”

I figured it would be better to stay quiet.  Love?  Maybe.  Self-protection?  No doubt about it.  I said it best when I said nothing at all.

The greatest love tends to show up in the fewest words.  [click to continue…]

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The Trust

by Andy Wood on December 9, 2008

in Consumers, Life Currency, Love, LV Alter-egos, LV Cycle, Money, Protecting Your Investment, Turning Points

(A Turning Point Story)

Glavine

Glavine

It was something out of a Looney Toons episode.  The kind of thing you’ve heard about happening, never assumed would happen to you.

It happened to me.

I had gone away on a far journey and entrusted all my worldly goods to my wife and three kids, telling them we’d settle accounts when I got home.

Well, not exactly.

September 13, 2001 – Do the calendar math.  It was a surreal and vulnerable time. I was actually out of town on a consulting trip, when I got a call fairly early in the morning.  My twin daughters were calling, breathless with excitement.  Somebody had gotten the bright idea to leave a cardboard box in front of our house with two kittens inside.

“Daddy, can we keep ‘em, pleeze?  We’ll take care of them, and feed them, and clean up after them.  We promise.”

I wanted to kill them. [click to continue…]

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