New Year’s Eve. We’d had a great dinner with friends, and were doing the potty wait in the restaurant foyer, when out walked a small group from another dining room. I recognized her immediately, though we hadn’t spoken in more than three years.
She was (and is) a part of my team. My Dream Team.
If this was baseball, she’d be the heavy hitter off the bench. If it was football, she’d be the Hail Mary quarterback who came in the game in the fourth quarter. If it was business, she’d be the turnaround specialist.
As it is, she’s my frontline intercessor.
As I explained to my friend, she is one of the godliest women I know, and a powerful intercessor. And she has occupied a very unique place in my life. “When my back is to the wall and I’m desperate,” I told him, “and I need somebody who knows how to pray with heavy artillery, she’s the one I call.”
I’m thinking of a few times since we last spoke when it may have been a good idea to make that call. Anyway… [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…]
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…]
New Year’s Eve. We’d had a great dinner with friends, and were doing the potty wait in the restaurant foyer, when out walked a small group from another dining room. I recognized her immediately, though we hadn’t spoken in more than three years.