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I Choose the Offering

by Andy Wood on June 3, 2011

in Hoarders, Life Currency, Love, LV Alter-egos, Pleasers, Tense Truths

It’s the creator’s fantasy…

…to use the tools of the trade – words or paint or dance or music – to design the ultimate masterpiece.

…to turn passion into such artistic cleverness and inspiration into such adoration that mountains move, easels grow dark, and all other voices remain silent, at least for a while.

…to write the song to end all songwriting, or the story that all other stories are compared to, or the verse that contains the finest content of the heart.

Never gonna happen.

The heart is too large to be reduced to words or rhymes or phrases or meter.

The soul is too powerfully changing to be framed by one snapshot of expression.

The imagination is too delighted in the dance of dreaming to stop with one image.

The inspiration is too elusive and awe-inspiring to ever satisfy the poet that his work is done.

The Creator whose image we bear is too interesting to be limited to our vision-of-the-moment.

So we have the choice… [click to continue…]

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PowerDough: Seven More Half-Baked Ideas I’m Working On

by Andy Wood on January 24, 2011

in Half-baked Ideas

So many random and not-so-random thoughts… so little time…  Here are the latest places and spaces where my mental wheels are turning.  You can find others here, here, and here.  I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

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“It takes just as long to be great as to be mediocre.”  -Brian Tracey

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 “Every day you live there are more things you are never going to do.” -Al Mohler

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Good teachers answer your questions.  Great teachers question your answers.

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Have you ever noticed that the people who holler the loudest about grace are the ones who seem to need it the most?  Uh huh. [click to continue…]

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Waiting on Your Harvest

by Andy Wood on June 7, 2010

in Enlarging Your Capacity, Five LV Laws, LV Cycle, Principle of Freedom, Protecting Your Investment, Waiting

News flash!  As a culture, we don’t wait well. 

That’s why, in the previous post, I mentioned that it’s easy to get into trouble when we’re in those waiting seasons.  (In theory, of course… not that I have ever actually gotten so impatient that somebody in a uniform decided it was time to have a little chat… but I’m sure you know somebody like that.)

One of the problems we have with waiting is that we don’t know how.  We think of waiting as the kind of thing you do in a bureaucrat’s line or a doctor’s office (now you know why they call them “patients”).

In the Bible, James offers a different idea.  And when I read this during a particularly hard waiting season, it really got my attention: 

“The farmer waits for the precious produce of the soil, being patient about it, until it gets the early and late rains. You too be patient; strengthen your hearts…” (James 5:7-8). 

I happen to live in the middle of the largest contiguous cotton-growing region in the world.  My neighbors know a thing or two about waiting on a harvest.  Their livelihood depends on it.  And believe me, you won’t find a busier bunch. [click to continue…]

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So Change It! Eight Steps to Making a Difference, Beginning Where You Are

by Andy Wood on February 5, 2010

in Enlarging Your Capacity, Executing Your Plan, Exploring the Possibilities, Five LV Laws, Leadership, Life Currency, LV Cycle, Principle of Increase, Principle of Legacy

I want to take you to a place where, frankly, we aren’t invited.  For just a minute, let’s be one of “those” people we often gripe about – those rubberneckers on the highway, who seem fascinated with somebody else’s messes.  

In this case, we’re creeping up to a closed bedroom door, where on the other side, we can hear muffled sobs. 

A man’s sobs.

A few days ago, somebody from home had rocked his world.  The news was bad, and every ounce of optimism he once had was crushed.

You should have been here yesterday.  He was really blubbering then.  And he will be again tomorrow.  Fasting, too.  And praying.  Lots of praying. 

But as he cries and prays and cries and fasts and cries some more, something happens.  [click to continue…]

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Bread in My Oven: Seven Half-baked Ideas I’m Working On

by Andy Wood on February 3, 2010

in Half-baked Ideas

No telling how many times I’ve said to someone, “Put this in your oven and let it bake for a while,” or “I don’t have this all sorted out yet – it’s still in the oven.”

I thought I’d share some of the “bread” that’s in my oven right now.  Here are seven half-baked, half-raw ideas I’m heating up.  I may toss ‘em.  I may cook ‘em up.  Put them in your oven too, and let’s see what comes out.  You can help, if you’d like, by sharing your thoughts in the comments below.

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There is no such thing as a porcelain healer.  There are expert healers, wounded healers, bloody healers, spiritual healers.  But if your goal is to look pretty on a shelf or remain detached from the broken, the sick, the wounded, or the dying, you aren’t much use.  For God’s sake, stay out of the way of those who are.

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“The Lord has made everything for its own purpose…” (Proverbs 16:4). If God is purposeful, He must be faithful to complete His purpose.  Otherwise, He’s an idiot or impotent, a scoundrel or attention-deficit, careless or passive.  In other words, if He is purposeful but not faithful, He’d be created in our image.

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Even my dog hates closed doors.

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The Ultimate test of a leader is whether he will “lay down his life for his sheep.” In other words, will he say no to his instinct toward self-preservation and do what is best for the people he leads?  If you must maintain your position, your salary, your perks, or your title at all costs, you are no leader.

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“Have you ever considered how often we judge ourselves by our intentions while we judge others by their actions?  Yet intention without action is an insult to those who expect the best from you.”  –Andy Andrews, The Noticer.

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Having a wallet that’s an inch thick is NOT a status symbol.  (Wait for it… wait for it…  Here it comes… What’s in YOUR wallet?)

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Overheard on “Criminal Minds” a few weeks ago:  “Scars remind us of where we’ve been, but they don’t have to dictate where we are going.”

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How’d I Wind Up HERE?

by Andy Wood on January 18, 2010

in Consumers, Exploring the Possibilities, Five LV Laws, LV Alter-egos, LV Cycle, Principle of Freedom

Maybe it’s because I majored in history in college.  Maybe it’s because I’m an explorer at heart (not always a good thing).  Maybe it’s because I’m a typical man who hates to ask for directions, or maybe it’s because I often wind up in places I didn’t intend to go.  But regardless of the reason, one of the most common questions I ask myself is, “How’d I wind up here? 

That’s a pretty handy thing if you want to stay out of the bad neighborhoods, the dead ends, or the “I told you so’s” in the future.

But wouldn’t it be more helpful to have a bit of a roadmap ahead of time?  Maybe to get some directions that apply to whatever path I or you think we’re on? [click to continue…]

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Buyback: Be a Life Redeemer!

by Andy Wood on August 19, 2009

in Consumers, Executing Your Plan, Life Currency, LV Alter-egos, LV Cycle, Time, Waiting

backwards clock“So much of our time is spent in preparation, so much in routine, and so much in retrospect, that the amount of each person’s genius is confined to a very few hours.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson

Whatever happened to Green Stamps?  They’re an indelible memory of my childhood.  In case you missed it, the Sperry & Hutchinson Company, began offering stamps to retailers back in 1896. Grocery stores, gas stations and the like bought the stamps from S&H and gave them as bonuses with every purchase, based on the amount you bought.  In their heyday, 80 percent of U.S. households collected some kind of stamp.

My sister and I grew up licking green stamps and pasting them in books.  When the A&P bag began filling up with completed books, we started getting excited.  We’d peer at the two pages of toys in the S&H catalogue, surrounded by page after page of sheets, clocks, toasters, and other boring things.  (Truth be told, you could get virtually anything with stamps; a school in Erie, Pennsylvania, exchanged 5.4 million stamps for two gorillas for the local zoo.)

Anyway, when we had collected enough to make the trade, we’d go off to the Redemption Center.  Technically, we’d already “bought” the stuff.  We were presenting evidence of our purchase (the stamps) in order to redeem – to buy back – our merchandise.

This is not about Green Stamps, but about redeeming.  About buying back something that already belongs to you – namely your opportunities and your time.  [click to continue…]

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It Takes a Lot More Than a List of Wishes

by Andy Wood on July 24, 2009

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

wishful thinking“I’ve become just about every sort of servant there is in my attempts to lead those I meet into a God-saved life. I did all this because of the Message. I didn’t just want to talk about it; I wanted to be in on it!” -1 Corinthians 9:22-23, The Message

I’ve devoted a lot of time to a life powered by wishful thinking.  With that came a lot of declaring about what I was going to do, and by when.  Those lists I referred to in the last post even contain a pretty crazy collection of audacious plans.  Just one problem.  Some of them are lifetime pursuits, and I still haven’t started the chase.

Setting goals or writing down wish lists is a bit like writing a check.  [click to continue…]

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The Home Church

by Andy Wood on July 6, 2009

in Life Currency, LV Stories, Money, Photos

Have a dream?  A vision of what could be, if only…?  Do you have a vision of something greater to come, which you passionately long for?  This past Saturday  night, on what was as much a holiday weekend in Thailand as it was in the U.S., a visionary, passionate Christian leader taught me a priceless lesson about how God brings vision to reality.  Here’s how I described it, straight out of my journal.

gift-and-duiSaturday night Dui and his wife Gift invited us to join them for what he called a home Bible study.  Pastor Preecha and Nit joined us as well.  When the van came to pick us up, it was already loaded with an army of others – Dui’s father and stepmother, brother and sister-in-law, and a couple of kids.  As we made our way, we stopped at a roadside chicken roaster’s stand, where a woman had five cooked chickens on a rotissarie.  Gift picked the best looking one, the middle one, and the lady whacked it off and gave it to her.  That, Dui said, was going to be our dinner. [click to continue…]

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What’s YOUR Hurry?

by Andy Wood on March 7, 2009

in Executing Your Plan, Insight, Life Currency, LV Alter-egos, LV Cycle, Time

fox-and-rabbitWhat gets you to mash on the gas?  To run, not walk.  What gets you to turn off the TV, marshal all your forces, or move to the front of the line – even if you, like me, are a procrastinator?

There, I admitted it.  I’m one of those people who dances with deadlines and lives by the motto, “Only do today what you can’t put off until tomorrow.”

But that doesn’t mean I never hurry.  (After all, even the hare hurried when he woke up from his nap and found out he was losing to a tortoise.)

Yesterday I got a kick in the quick.  It wasn’t so much a Jesus-jab in my procrastinating rear end as it was a moment of conviction that really captured my attention.  More on that in a minute.  As a result of God’s little attention-getter, I did some thinking.  I’d like you to do the same:  What do you hurry to do?

My Hurry Points

I found five things that get me to “grab a gear.”  [click to continue…]

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