Uh oh…
Somebody lost touch with their “Y.”
When you lose your “Y” something else seems missing, too.
Somebody offers a solution: “What’s missing is a B!”
So your J-O-Y becomes a J-O-B. [click to continue…]
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Mission
(And You Can and Should, Too)
Travel with me to an ancient version of Death Row. A lonely old man sits in isolation – a rare occurrence for a life so well-traveled and surrounded with people. And he awaits his fate.
He’s a dead man walking.
Yet even though his body is scarred and his bones crooked from a hardened life, he doesn’t have the same despair or desperation that’s typical of someone living under a death sentence. In fact, he has – dare I say it? – a sense of satisfaction. Fulfillment. Maybe even a touch of pride.
How do I know? His own words.
For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith; in the future there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day; and not only to me, but also to all who have loved His appearing (2 Timothy 4:6-8).
Those words from Paul have carried a new fascination for me recently. Here was a man who know what his life was about, and lived it. He followed the course laid out for him, and he finished it.
Put in other language, Paul had a vision, and throughout his life he stubbornly, doggedly, faithfully pursued that vision. Doing so was costly in the short run. He was routinely run out of town, beaten to a pulp, deserted by his friends, and bedeviled by danger. But to him it was a price worth paying, to get to the end of his life with two things: [click to continue…]
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Nobody talks about the life-changing leader who helped them raise their umbrella at the beach. Influence happens only rarely in comfort zones or times of ease. Vision is not the starry-eyed product of Monday morning quarterbacks or couch potatoes. Adversity was made for leadership. And leaders were made for adversity.
Seth Godin puts it this way: [click to continue…]
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Welcome back to the tour. Hope you enjoyed the break, and I hope you have a good, roughed up version of a personal mission statement. We’re ready to move to the advanced part of the lab. Before we go in, remember, this is MY lab and it’s still messy. Also remember that this work was done because of a felt need for change. If you are absolutely satisfied that your personal mission statement is something you can organize your work and life around, with conviction and passion, leave it alone.
Oh… and if you haven’t taken the time to do a little soul work and put your mission statement together, back up to the first part of the tour and get caught up. Otherwise, we may hijack your tombstone and just say, “He (or she) was too busy to wonder why.”
Ready to go in? Let’s to this. [click to continue…]
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Hello everybody and welcome to the laboratory. I hope this is educational or helpful to you, and we’ll go inside in just a minute. Just a couple of guidelines first, so you can benefit the most from the tour.
First, this is MY lab. It’s up to you to set up YOUR laboratory however you think best.
Second, it’s a little raw and messy because I just finished a major project redesign. At least I THINK it’s finished.
One other thing… as your tour guide, my job is to remind you, this is not a museum, but an active living and learning space. So every once in a while I’ll ask you to stop and apply this to your own life and learning. Deal? Okay, let’s go… [click to continue…]
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President Woodrow Wilson once said, “You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forgot the errand.”
Have you forgotten the errand lately? Maybe it’s time for a look under the hood.
At least it is for me. And maybe for you, too.
I’m involved in some pretty big initiatives lately (you’ll be seeing more of that soon). And those initiatives are added to an already-very-busy life. Never a day goes by when I don’t lay my head on the pillow with plenty more to do tomorrow that I left undone today. Most days I’m fine with that. But lately in the middle of all the time and resource challenges I’ve found myself frustrated, more tired than I should be, and actually feeling anxious about some things that should have me feeling excited and hopeful. And in the middle it all is this nagging question:
Is this really what I’m about?
That brings me back to something I’ve been pretty passionate about for a long time – a clearly-defined sense of personal mission or purpose. [click to continue…]
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In spite of all her lamentable weaknesses, appalling failures and indefensible shortcomings, the Church is the mightiest force for civilization and enlightened social consciousness in the world today. The only force in the world that is contesting Satan’s total rule in human affairs is the church of the living God. -Paul Billheimer
What does it take to rouse a sleeping giant?
Whatever it takes, I think now is the time.
One of the biggest clichés and repeated experiences in history is that of unrealized potential. It’s one of the reasons I believe heaven will be a place in which God wipes every tear from our eyes. When we see what was in light of what could have been – with our lives, and with our corporate potential – we will have no alternative but to weep.
For years, as a global body, the Western church has been asleep at the wheel or, worse, awakened to fight the wrong battles, the wrong enemy, or with the wrong weapons of warfare. We’ve made an art form of “trivial pursuit,” and the world is worse off because of it.
The first Century Church didn’t keep up with its time, didn’t spend its energy keeping up with its time. The first Century Church changed time. It rewrote history. It radically impacted culture. The church was the forerunner, not the runner up. – Erwin McManus
If you claim to be a follower of Jesus Christ, I’m referring to you. I’m referring to me. But the news isn’t all bad. We serve a God who is wonderfully capable of waking sleeping giants. He did it on a national scale, both with His own nation and at times even with foreign, pagan countries. And I believe He’s doing it today. [click to continue…]
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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…]
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