Okay, all you fans of the amazing possibilities of humans left to their own ideas, it’s time for another edition of Hanukkah Hams! In case you missed previous episodes, a Hanukkah Ham was named after this, uh, “creative” marketing idea last year.
With all the gloom, doom, and sleepless nights about the economy, I thought maybe we could use a little financial inspiration.
Couldn’t find any, so this is what you get instead…
One of the fundamental truths of the New Testament is that money is “coined personality.” That is, people can see the “real you” in the ways you respond to and handle money. If you’re generous with your finances, you’ll be generous with other parts of your life as well. Same is true if you’re careless, stingy, unorganized, etc. This raises some interesting questions about some or organizations. If money is coined personality, we may have a few problems!
A couple of years ago, I walked into a local bank, started writing a check, and told the teller in my best deadpan voice that I needed $30 worth of Federal Reserve notes. He actually asked another teller, “Do we have Federal Reserve notes here?” “Ya mean, money?” she asked.
Last month a man in Warren, Michigan figured the best way to get a little extra cash for the holidays was to strong arm somebody and steal theirs. [click to continue…]
by Andy Wood on October 28, 2008
in Ability, Allocating Your Resources, Consumers, Enlarging Your Capacity, Insight, Life Currency, LV Alter-egos, LV Cycle, Money, Pleasers, Time
Here’s a little exercise we actually take worship service time to practice occasionally. Follow the instructions carefully (yes, I mean I want you to actually do this):
- Take a deep breath
- Let out half of it.
- Hold
- Smile
- Repeat the following out loud, in a calm soothing voice:
“No.”
Repeat this exercise regularly, just for practice, and as needed in live game situations.
Not, “No because…”
Not, “Maybe later…”
Not, “Let me pray about it…”
Certainly not, “See if you can find somebody else, and if you can’t, I’ll see what I can do.”
Learning to graciously, kindly refuse is one of eight steps to building or rebuilding margin in your life. Margin has to do with creating gaps – cushions of time, money, energy, or spiritual strength that act as living shock absorbers for those who have them.
Imagine how it could revolutionize your attitude, relationships, productivity, and health if the next time somebody says, “Got a minute?” you actually do! [click to continue…]
We pass a word around our office that my associate once used to describe me, and it stuck: Crispy.
He used it a few years ago when he and our office manager decided they’d seen enough of me in the state I was in and informed me that I was taking my wife on an R & R trip to the mountains. My reservations had been made, and they weren’t taking “no” for an answer.
I hope to God you have somebody who looks out for you like that. I wasn’t aware of how emotionally and physically fried I was. The sad truth about stress, crispiness, and burnout is that often others see their effects on us before we do.
It wasn’t the first time I’ve been crispy, and it probably won’t be the last. But there’s a further step that can be devastating. Burnout, in a clinical sense, means you have completely exhausted every form of energy necessary to continue. More than just losing interest (“I’m sort of burned out on jazz these days”), I’m talking about those times people go to their wells and find them completely dry. Times when people shock those who know them best by walking away from relationships, careers, or wisdom.
“Stress makes people stupid,” a management consultant once told Daniel Goldman. Burnout reveals it to the world.
So how do people get in such a state – past stress, past crispy, all the way to emotionally nuked? Let me suggest three quick and easy recipes for complete emotional, mental, or spiritual exhaustion: [click to continue…]
Another saint doing battle with the powers of darkness
“Arose.”
Fascinating word. Occurs 173 times in the New American Standard Bible. Nearly always, something interesting, if not transforming, follows.
Jesus uber-arose, as I hope you know. As in, from the dead.
Abraham arose, too, as in from the bed.
Jacob arose, and bugged out of town.
A new king arose in Egypt, and things got ugly for Jacob’s descendents.
Moses arose and went up the mountain.
Balaam arose and got up on his donkey.
Arose is the difference between sleeping and moving. Between sitting and acting.
Arose changes things. [click to continue…]
What do you do when you’ve done what you know to do, and what you know to do isn’t working this time? How do you explain the fact that time-tested methods for producing results, solving problems, and getting ahead just aren’t working this time? How do you plug the leaks in your economic life?
Questions like these are front and center among politicians, economists, investors, and families these days.
The problem isn’t a shortage of solutions. The problem is that that the solutions we know are supposed to work aren’t working.
We’re like a wad of sailors on a stormy sea, who keep running to opposite sides of a ship to steady it in the waves – while all the while, the hull is leaking. I’ve seen it at kitchen tables; I’ve seen it at capital buildings. Everything we do to steady the ship just draws in more water, and sailing has turned to bailing.
I wonder if anybody is asking – really asking – God.
(Aw, what does HE know?)
Plenty, it would appear. This isn’t the first time politicians and businesspeople confronted a leaky economy. [click to continue…]
This site is nearly a year old, and I have never written a post I am more serious or urgent about.
There are times when our spirits and/or minds are unusually drawn in certain directions. Ideas and concepts leap off the pages of the Bible. Words or names get planted in our consciousness and never seem to go away. These times, I believe, are no coincidence. They are times in which the Holy Spirit is bringing grounded biblical truth to bear on current experience.
Simply put, He’s speaking.
I don’t have experiences like this tremendously often, which makes the times I do have them all the more compelling. What I am about to share grew out of such a time.
As I mentioned earlier , I believe we are entering a season that for many people will be a season of restoration and change worldwide.
We are also living in tense, fearful days. I called a banker friend yesterday and asked him, in the words of an old Randy Stonehill song, if we should go back to trading seashells and just admit we’re broke. (He was encouraging. But then, he’s a banker.)
I also spoke about this Sunday (Listen Here) that these are days in which anything that can be shaken will be. God is shaking the wealth of the nations. People are afraid.
How do we stand strong when we’re living somewhere between the faith and the fear? How can we be in a place where we see the joy beyond what we endure? How can we allow the Holy Spirit to shake the barnacles off of us and prepare us for a “latter glory” that will come? How can we be lights in a world of confusion and darkness?
Sparing you the details of how I got there, there are seven things we must do, and do quickly: [click to continue…]
Imagine for a minute that you lived in a world where you were the only one who ever told the truth. A world of random mirrors where you never knew whether someone else’s “yes” meant “yes” or “no.” How would you get a loan at the bank? How would you get directions to the nearest gas station? How would you fall in love or have meaningful family relationships? How could you ever function, much less be happy?
Imagine getting up every day and telling yourself and everybody around you how badly your life is going. Have a cough? It’s probably pneumonia. Surprise bill in the mail? You’re going broke. Get a compliment on your appearance? You mumble something about needing new clothes or not feeling well lately. Receive a major blessing? It’s just a matter of time until the other shoe drops.
By now I’m sure you have an image of somebody in mind (certainly not you, of course). I’m thinking of a girl I once knew named Kim. She was a twin; her sister Kay was pretty much an optimist. Kim? Winnie the Pooh’s friend Eeyore had nothing on her. The only seventh grade girl I’ve ever met who was completely dreary.
I made an amazing discovery the other day. Kim (and whoever you’re thinking about) has a soul mate in the Bible. [click to continue…]
I live in an area in which cotton farming is a multi-million-dollar enterprise. Care to hazard a guess about how much time the farmers here spend stripping or picking cotton?
About two weeks.
Everything that determines their futures for another year comes down to a two-week process. And yet, it’s what they do during the other 50 weeks of the year that will make or break the success of their harvest.
It’s all about the cycle, and where they are on it.
You may not be a farmer, but you were created to be a harvester of sorts. God created you with the capacity to envision a better future and a rewarding eternal state. But in most worthwhile pursuits, you don’t have the luxury of microwaving your results in a matter of minutes. While his medals were earned in a matter of seconds, Michael Phelps didn’t jump into a pool for the first time in June. His victories were the crowning achievement of his training cycle.
We, too, experience life in a variety of cycles. The seasons, economic cycles, and generational cycles come to mind. LifeVesting is no different. Each of the Laws of LifeVesting operate on cycles of continuous movement.
Don’t think of these as a locked-in sequence of steps; life is wonderfully much messier than that. Instead, think of the LifeVesting cycle as a flow of activity, moving from one stage to another. Over the next few days, I’d like to explore these with you. [click to continue…]
LifeVesting is about creating a compelling future and leaving a legacy long after your life here is done.
How do you want to be remembered? Here are a couple of ways I don’t recommend. One is pretty funny – the other, painfully sad.
The Man Who Got Shot and Arrested for Robbing a Drug Store with a Caulking Gun
The Midland (Texas) Reporter-Telegram reported on August 15 that a 24-year-old man, John Wilkinson, of Big Spring, walked into a West Texas pharmacy carrying what looked like a gun wrapped in a dark cloth, and demanding Xanax and hydrocodine.
After getting the drugs from the drug store, Wilkinson tried to make his escape, but realized he had locked his keys in his running car in front of the store. So he took off running on foot.
He was shot by police.
He’s not dead, though.
Just under arrest for suspicion of armed robbery after being treated for the gun shot.
Oh, and John’s weapon of choice? A caulking gun.
Not sure what he would have done had the druggist challenged him. I guess he would have waterproof-sealed him to death.
The World’s Most Honest Obit
The following obituary was posted a couple of weeks ago in the Napa/Sonoma Times Herald. It was confirmed to be real here. Brace yourself…. [click to continue…]
(A Turning Point Story)
Pam was 15 and pregnant. Somehow, in the wake of some poor choices, however, she made a good one. Pam decided not to get an abortion, and a young man – an all-star outfielder in his high school – lives today because of that decision. But Pam’s decision was costly, because her family didn’t approve. Pam needed a place to go. So at a time when our own children were four and two, Pregnant Pam came to live with us.
We helped arrange a private adoption, and the time came for Pam’s baby to be born. Robin was committed to walking with Pam through all of this, so she stayed at the hospital with her, and I kept the little ones at home. Having been through all of this together, the kids and I were excited about seeing Pam’s baby. So we planned a little trek up to Medical Center East in Birmingham.
Being something of a hospital veteran, I decided on this Saturday to go in through the Emergency Room. I herded my little brood through the waiting room, through the double doors, and into the elevator. After a delightful visit, we reversed the process – into the elevator, back through the double doors, breezing through the ER waiting room. The kids were walking ahead of me, self-assured and chattering away. They marched through the exit doors and started down the sidewalk toward the car.
[click to continue…]