Dylan hadn’t smiled for days. His grandmother, whom he loved dearly, had died, and the ten-year-old was crushed. His friends were worried about him, and convinced him to visit their special friend, an old man they called The Storyteller. The Storyteller loved children, and often helped them with the special stories he would make up. The Storyteller also knew Dylan’s grandmother.
“This is Dylan,” one of the kids said that Monday afternoon. “His grandmother died last week, and he’s very sad.”
The Storyteller looked up from his gardening and sized up the boy. “Sad” was an understatement.
“Looks like she found the Big Surprise,” said the Storyteller, with a twinkle in his eye.
“What’s the Big Surprise?” asked Dylan dejectedly.
“Well, let me tell you about it,” said the old man as he turned to sit on the grass and the kids sat around him. [click to continue…]
When the Son of man comes will he find faith on the earth?
-Jesus Christ (Luke 18:8)
Welcome to the waterdown season.
Welcome to the days when we’re thankful, but not really sure Who to thank.
Where we count our blessings, but choke on the Name of the Blesser.
Welcome to the days where we deck the halls and hang the balls,
And sing wistful songs about traffic jams and bells and chestnuts.
When the world becomes a Winter Wonderland without a Wonderful Counselor –
And seeks peace on earth without the Prince of Peace.
But I’m not whining or pining away for the days of Rockwell or Currier and Ives,
Because God has always had a remnant of believing hearts and transformed lives.
And I’m still hopeful and expectant that in the city sidewalks or crowded stores,
In festive churches or feastful tables, someone out there still believes. [click to continue…]
The call or opportunity to lead is a call or opportunity for conflict. I doubt if I’m the first to tell you that, but if so, well, sorry. That’s certainly true on an interpersonal or team level. It’s also true organization-wide. Whether you’re leading a church or a business, a nonprofit or an institution, a state or a nation, the bigger they are, the harder they brawl. Or squall.
If your goal is to avoid conflict at all costs, let somebody else take the leadership roles, because what you’re saying is that you don’t want to influence anybody.
Assuming you’re still reading, let’s assume that the idea of conflict hasn’t scared you off – at least not yet. I have good news. Some of the greatest demonstrations of leadership in history took place when someone rose to face the challenge of seemingly impossible conflicts. So if your organization is facing competing values and visions, wise leadership can help make it stronger and more successful than ever. If it’s true that conflict is the moment of truth in any relationship (and I think it is), then the way you lead your organization to face those conflicts sets the course of the organization, sometimes for years.
It’s important to remember that the people in your organization have brains, hearts, and feelings, just as you do. Resistance to your or the organization’s direction is a way of saying you haven’t communicated the vision clearly. Or maybe you haven’t anticipated their objections or their priorities. Maybe you have yet to earn the trust of the people. Or maybe they are insecure in the roles in which you are asking them to perform.
Here are five ways to work with – not against – the members of your organization to turn conflicts into jumping off points. [click to continue…]
Cohen and Me on a Trash Run
It’s a familiar old friend, comfortable as a favorite pair of shoes. Brokenhearted parents cling to it, and eager young parents rise to it. It’s a friendly reminder to us all that there’s a higher purpose in the midst of our most frustrating and confusing days. And yet it can say so much more to us than we ever dreamed possible:
“Train up a child in the way he should go,
And when he is old he will not depart from it” (Proverbs 22:6).
We all know what that means, right? It means when you have children, if you get them involved in church, discipline them properly, and teach them how to behave, then when they become adults, they will live consistently with the things you tried to teach them. If you teach them to have high moral values as children, they will have high moral values as adults.
Right?
Wait a minute. How do you respond to the mom or dad who doesn’t understand why their adult children don’t go to church like they do? What do you say to the parent whose children have rebelled against their high moral standards and have rejected their values?
I’m convinced that many of us have missed some exciting possibilities because of the limited way we have interpreted this verse. [click to continue…]
He was careless in the conflict, and a bit presumptuous in the battle. Unaware of the schemes or the true power of his enemies – unaware at times of who his enemies actually were – he went down, wounded in the battle.
This is not your typical military operation. This is a spiritual battlefield, known for its invisible armies and stealth weapons. Known also for its enormous array of spectators – some cheering you on from heaven, others just watching a battle they themselves should be engaged in.
Lying there, ashamed, in pain, and afraid, it’s easy for discouragement and fear to have the final word. But deep in his spirit another wounded soldier’s testimony from long ago begins to stir his broken courage and will: [click to continue…]
Perdido Key, Florida. I was in a hotel room, desperately reading my Bible, even more desperately crying out to God. Somewhere along the way I had, well, lost my way. And I couldn’t find my way back.
Back to a consistently focused walk with God.
Back to a first-love commitment to Jesus.
Back to a sense of spiritual usefulness and power.
Back to a faith that could at least move me, even when it couldn’t move mountains.
Back to the hope that somehow tomorrow could actually be better than today.
I could have told you how to find your way back to wherever you left your path. But I was lost as last year’s Easter egg when it came to me.
I heard all the things I already knew in my head. Didn’t help.
I heard all the platitudes and steps and methods I’d told others and they had told me. Ditto.
I heard all the sermons I had preached to others about coming back to Jesus, and they were profoundly useless to me.
And what I was reading in the Bible wasn’t helping much, either. I kept reading passages in psalms where David would pray things like, “Vindicate me, O God, because I have walked in my integrity.”
I didn’t have any integrity. And the last thing I needed to see in that situation was vindication. Justice either.
In desperation I silently cried out, “God! Is there a verse in there for the rest of us?”
And He showed me something that changed my life. [click to continue…]
I grew up in the Deep South in the 60s and 70s. There, when my African American friends wanted to know my address, they had a unique colloquial way of asking. They would ask, “Where you stay?”
I don’t know where the phrase originated. What I do know is that the question – Where you stay? – resonates on a much deeper level than just my physical address.
Had we lived a century earlier in Great Britain, the question may have been something along the lines of, “Where do you abide?” Or “Where is your abode?” Again, the question has to do with a physical house, but it communicates something much deeper.
It’s a question of the heart, not just the body. It’s a question of your dreams, your company, your vision, your love. It’s a question of what you hang on to and what you let go of. Of who or what touches you for a moment, versus who or what changes you for a lifetime. Of where you turn for security and where your heart finds its permanent places.
Where you stay?
When Jesus Christ invaded history, one of the possibilities He brought with Him was a whole new way of relating to God. [click to continue…]
Alexander's Bridge over Chickamauga Creek
Imagine throwing a little backyard barbecue and inviting 12,000 of your closest friends. And even closer enemies.
It happened nearly 125 years ago, in 1889, at a place called Chickamauga, near Chattanooga, TN. And it took place where these friends and enemies had once gathered 26 years earlier to kill each other.
You don’t hear as much about the Battle of Chickamauga as you do Vicksburg or Gettysburg or Shiloh. But in two days, 66,000 Confederate and 58,000 Union troops staged two days of hell – desperate, often hand-to-hand combat. Somewhere around 18,480 Confederate and 16,240 Union soldiers were killed, wounded or missing when all was said and done.
One side won the battle. The other won the war.
Then as time passed, something remarkable happened. [click to continue…]
I will give the lonely a reason to believe in companionship again.
And in so doing, I will banish loneliness from my own heart forever.
-from The Encourager’s Creed
Somewhere near you is an Eeyore in Tigger’s clothing. They’re bouncy, flouncy, trouncy, pouncy, fun, fun, fun, fun, fun on the outside. But on the inside they’re desperately alone and resigned to eating thistles. And you can make a difference.
There is somebody not far away who is adored for all they do and have to offer. They have no shortage of attention, compliments, and outright praise. Yet for all the attention and admiration they receive, they are profoundly lonely. Why? Because while many people are amazed by them, nobody seems to understand them. But you can.
It’s the chameleon of the emotional world. It blends seamlessly into any environment, and play-acts with the best of the cons. It can empower anybody to be hysterically funny in order to disguise the depression and isolation. It can offer wisdom or encouragement or insight to anybody else, but receives precious little in return. It can mimic the language of the spiritual, with talk of solitude and prayer and hearing God – yet all the while it disguises a relational wasteland. But you can (and should) break through all that.
Loneliness. Ever since Eve and her husband were evicted from their first home, something in us has ached with a longing for companionship and deep connection. We want to know we are searched (understood) thoroughly, known intimately, and loved unconditionally. [click to continue…]
Do you think God still speaks to people through dreams?
He did in the Bible.
I know a lot of people who don’t think He does that anymore because we have the Bible now. I know a lot of other people who say, “So what? The Bible we have shows God speaking to people through dreams. So if the Bible is inerrant, infallible and all that, why would it say that God gave people dreams back in the day if He’s not supposed to speak through dreams now?”
I gotta admit, that makes sense to me. But I should hasten to say that not every dream comes from God. One time I dreamed that I hauled off and slugged this British guy. I know he was British because when he prepared to slug me back he said something really ugly in a very lovely British accent.
I don’t think that dream was from God. Unless He was telling me to avoid hauling off and slugging guys from Great Britain.
But I have had dreams that I very much believe were prophetic. Like this one. And probably this one.
And I think I may have had another one last week.
I don’t know what you do with your possible alerts from the Almighty in your sleep, but I have sort of an ad hoc committee I run them by, just to test it out. Think of it as my Prophetic Testers of Supposed Dreams team (PTSD for short). [click to continue…]
Dylan hadn’t smiled for days. His grandmother, whom he loved dearly, had died, and the ten-year-old was crushed. His friends were worried about him, and convinced him to visit their special friend, an old man they called The Storyteller. The Storyteller loved children, and often helped them with the special stories he would make up. The Storyteller also knew Dylan’s grandmother.
