Storm Damage

by Andy Wood on October 24, 2012

in Books and Music, Exploring the Possibilities, Five LV Laws, Insight, Life Currency, LV Cycle, Principle of Freedom

Somebody in Florida was pretty up-tight.  Back in the day The Florida Baptist Witness ran an article about a book titled, Making Peace With Your Past:  Help for Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families.  The book was written by a pastor, Tim Sledge, who grew up in a dysfunctional family.  This pastor realized that events in his childhood still produced a great deal of trauma and difficulty in his present life.  The book tells what he learned in his journey toward wholeness and offers a biblical approach for others who deal with the same sort of thing.

One week later, enter one angry letter-writer.  How could the Witness even think of highlighting a book that relies on psychology rather than on the Word of God?  How could the writer not see that psychology and Christianity are based on two totally different suppositions?  The Biblical answer to our past is just to forget it, like God does.

Alrighty then.  How’s that working out for you?

Think about it.  Is it unscriptural for hurting people to try to get a grip on their past?  Is there any such thing as Christian (def. – “under the lordship of Jesus Christ) psychology (def. – “the study of human behavior”)?  Is there something spiritually wrong with me, or with you, if we can’t “just forget it, like God does?”

Maybe my Florida friend should take a lesson from the hurricanes that routinely blow through that state.  In a matter of hours, those deadly storms can destroy lives, property, and a lot of dreams.  No one there escapes the fury.

But then an interesting thing happens.  [click to continue…]

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He Will Carry You

by Andy Wood on October 22, 2012

in Ability, Allocating Your Resources, Five LV Laws, Life Currency, LV Cycle, LV Stories, Principle of Legacy

 
If He carried the weight of the world upon His shoulder,
I know my brother that He will carry you.
-Scott Wesley Brown

It was on an old four-propeller Lockheed Constellation airplane, on an 18-hour-long flight from Tokyo to San Francisco.  It was the mid-1950s.  Carol Willis was just a baby and had a severe earache.  To try to comfort her, her dad walked her up and down the aisle of that old plane throughout that long night.  If you’ve ever traveled with ear-sensitive children, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

Over the years the family nightmare became something of the family joke.  Harlan – my father-in-law – would say, “I walked all the way across the Pacific Ocean carrying you in my arms.”

But the family joke also became the family prophecy and the family legacy, and it was a part of Carol’s emotional DNA.  Carol spent her growing up years in Thailand, where she and her family traveled across that ocean again to take the gospel of Jesus Christ to a nation they love to this day. [click to continue…]

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Is He Worthy of Honor When Your Heart is Broken?

by Andy Wood on October 19, 2012

in 100 Words

It’s one thing to honor God when your quiver, nest and storehouses are full.

Honoring Him in times of great loss is quite another.

[click to continue…]

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When Darkness Comes

by Andy Wood on October 17, 2012

in Ability, Enlarging Your Capacity, Five LV Laws, Life Currency, LV Cycle, Principle of Freedom


For his anger lasts only a moment, but his favor lasts a lifetime!
Weeping may last through the night, but joy comes with the morning
(Psalm 30:5, NLT)

Until we experience the promise of a home where there is no more night, we all will encounter seasons that feel as though dawn is forever an hour away.  It’s not a matter of if , but when the shadows grow long and dark.  And no one, regardless of their faith or pedigree, is immune from the seasons when darkness comes.

When darkness comes, “tired” takes on a whole new meaning.  Every fiber of your being aches for rest, but rest remains taunting and elusive.  Even the simplest of routine tasks feels like labor to exhaustion when darkness comes. [click to continue…]

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The Game Changer

by Andy Wood on October 15, 2012

in Allocating Your Resources, Five LV Laws, Insight, Leadership, Life Currency, LV Cycle, Principle of Increase

“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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Five Years and Counting: The 10 Most Shared LifeVesting Posts

by Andy Wood on October 12, 2012

in Uncategorized

Today’s a special day – not just because it’s my daughter-in-law’s birthday – that would make it special enough!  But today’s also the fifth birthday of this site.

Almost 10 years ago my friend Kevin Rhoads was telling me about a new way to communicate that had become really popular – something called “blogging,” which was short for “web log.”  “It’s sort of like an online journal,” he said.

Hmmph.  Knowing the kind of stuff I usually put in my journal, my first reaction was, “That’s a crazy idea.  Who would want to read that?”

Then a couple of years later I wrote a book for a 40-day church campaign, complete with videos and teaching sessions, called LifeVesting.  You can read the back story here.  After that, I was looking for ideas to keep the momentum and to expand the message that was in that book.

It was then that I was introduced, I think by Kevin again, to Seth Godin’s blog, and I was hooked as a reader and inspired as a writer.  So that’s how a blog can help.

So on October 12, 2007, the LifeVesting site was launched.  Five years into it, this is post number 780.  Through a wide variety of ideas, rants, thinking-by-writing, and a few pictures along the way, the central theme remains the same:  Your life can be better tomorrow than it is today.  You can create your future, solve problems, impact eternity, and really live today.

This was never intended to be just a blog site, and I’m excited about new plans that are coming.  Soon, Lord willing, I will be developing the “web site” side of this ministry in which we offer a newly-rewritten LifeVesting book, other books and media, and live and online seminars.  In addition to that, we are already working on a web site for The LifeVesting Group, our professional counseling and coaching ministry.  More on that very soon.

But today we celebrate.  Or at least I do, and you get to peer in.  In thinking about what I could share in terms of a “best of” or “most popular,” I found a plug-in that helps me know how often different posts have been shared on Facebook, Twitter, or Google-Plus by you, the readers.  There could be many reasons why somebody clicks on a post or page, but only one reason they would share it – it must have meant something to them and they wanted others to see it as well.

So here’s a countdown of the top 11 most-shared posts over the past five years (there was a tie for 10th).  Please click on a few of these – maybe you can see what the excitement was all about.  (Of course, feel free to share them again!) [click to continue…]

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Exit 226

by Andy Wood on October 10, 2012

in Executing Your Plan, Five LV Laws, Insight, Life Currency, LV Cycle, Principle of Increase

On Interstate 40 in New Mexico, between Albuquerque and Santa Rosa, you’ll find an exit at the 226 mile marker.

That’s about it.

A bridge and four exit and entrance lanes.  That’s all.

There is no food, phone, gas or camping opportunity.  No tourist traps so common on this major cross-country artery.  Nothing.

Okay, but at least there’s a highway number or the name of some road, right?  I mean, plenty of Interstate exits offer no services, but at least they name the road or the destination like Owassa, Hope Hull, or Tucumcari.  What’s the name of this road?

There isn’t one.

Where does it lead?

Nowhere.

The sign simply says, “Exit 226.” [click to continue…]

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Jesus Christ, Parking Lot Attendant?

by Andy Wood on October 8, 2012

in Consumers, Enlarging Your Capacity, Five LV Laws, LV Alter-egos, LV Cycle, Photos, Principle of Freedom, Turning Points

Albuquerque. Sunday morning, 4:30 a.m. MST.

I think I had an encounter with a prophet.

Or maybe it was one of those times when the Lord Himself wanted to pay somebody a personal visit and get their attention.  He definitely got mine and for the briefest of moments it wasn’t pleasant. [click to continue…]

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Fill My Life With Laughter

by Andy Wood on October 5, 2012

in Exploring the Possibilities, Five LV Laws, Life Currency, Love, LV Cycle, Photos, Principle of Abundance

(Baby giraffe born Sept. 23, 2012 at Hogle Zoo, Utah. AP Photo/Utah’s Hogle Zoo)

+++++++

“Whence comes this idea that if what we are doing is fun, it can’t be God’s will?
The God who made giraffes, a baby’s fingernails, a puppy’s tail, a crooknecked squash, the bobwhite’s call, and a young girl’s giggle, has a sense of humor.
Make no mistake about that” –(Catherine Marshall)

Our mouths were filled with laughter,
our tongues with songs of joy.
Then it was said among the nations,
“The Lord has done great things for them.”
The Lord has done great things for us,
and we are filled with joy (Ps 126:2-3, NIV).

Have I told you lately that I love to laugh?

That hasn’t always been true.

There was a time I was convinced that the world was going to hell and I had to do something about it.  And by God, that was serious.

I’m still convinced the world is going to hell (I have that on pretty good authority).  But I’ve realized two other things as well.  First, God has already done something about it – it doesn’t depend on me.

Second, the nations will never see what God has done for me until my “mouth is filled with laughter and my tongue with songs of joy.”  Angry sermons and surly scowls from Mister Blister won’t get the job done. [click to continue…]

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No Such Thing as an Insecure Leader

by Andy Wood on October 3, 2012

in Enlarging Your Capacity, Five LV Laws, Hoarders, Leadership, Life Currency, LV Alter-egos, LV Cycle, Principle of Freedom

One of the most famous child self-introductions in history took place in Cincinnati when Martha Taft was asked to introduce herself to her classmates.  She stood and said, “My name is Martha Bowers Taft. My great-grandfather was President of the United States. My grandfather was a United States senator. My daddy is ambassador to Ireland. And I am a Brownie.”

Love it, love it, love it!  What Martha may or may not have known at the time was that she was demonstrating leadership in the making.  With a simple statement she was saying, “I know who I am and where I came from.”  She was wonderfully free to be herself.  And that’s part of the stuff of ongoing leadership.

Nothing to prove.  Nothing to hide.  No one to manipulate.  No one to pretend to be, other than yourself.

Compare that to another group of so-called leaders who were anything-but.  They never lowered themselves to lift one finger to help somebody in need.  Everything they did was for attention.  They basked in the attention of being “all-that” at public functions.  They insisted on being called by their respectful titles in public.

Important?  Yes… every time they looked in a mirror.

Leaders?  Hardly.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, [click to continue…]

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