Obedience

This Sweet Surrender

by Andy Wood on June 27, 2012

in Five LV Laws, Life Currency, Love, Principle of Freedom

To stay in Your presence, with a heart full-ready to hear your voice…
Yielded and trusting as You’re breathing life into these old, dry bones…
Oh, what joy! This sweet surrender!

To watch for Your smile while the rest of the world is sleeping…
Dreaming with open eyes of the beautiful hope to spend endless days with You…
Oh, what hope! This sweet surrender!

I am that one who had lost his way, who spent his whole fortune in search of illusions…
But now I treasure the Faithful and True – the stubbornly real – the everlasting prize…
Oh, what life! This sweet surrender!

If I close my heart, may it be to my pride and selfish ambition.
If ever I fall, may it be into Your strong arms of grace.
Whenever I miss the mark, may I miss on the tender side of love.
If I dream the impossible dream, may it be in delicious faith.
If I do the ridiculous deed, may it be with contagious hope.
Whenever I miss the mark, may I miss on the sweet side of surrender. [click to continue…]

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

On and On

by Andy Wood on November 9, 2011

in Consumers, Five LV Laws, Following Your Passion, Life Currency, Love, LV Alter-egos, LV Cycle, Principle of Abundance

I grew up in the Deep South in the 60s and 70s.  There, when my African American friends wanted to know my address, they had a unique colloquial way of asking.  They would ask, “Where you stay?”

I don’t know where the phrase originated.  What I do know is that the question – Where you stay? – resonates on a much deeper level than just my physical address.

Had we lived a century earlier in Great Britain, the question may have been something along the lines of, “Where do you abide?” Or “Where is your abode?”  Again, the question has to do with a physical house, but it communicates something much deeper.

It’s a question of the heart, not just the body.  It’s a question of your dreams, your company, your vision, your love.  It’s a question of what you hang on to and what you let go of.  Of who or what touches you for a moment, versus who or what changes you for a lifetime. Of where you turn for security and where your heart finds its permanent places.

Where you stay?

When Jesus Christ invaded history, one of the possibilities He brought with Him was a whole new way of relating to God.  [click to continue…]

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

The Last Baptism

by Andy Wood on September 30, 2011

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

“I have something I’d like to discuss with you.”

Given my history with that kind of meeting request, I’m embarrassed to admit that my first instinct was to brace for bad news.  And given the fact that it came from my father-in-law, of all people, made me think I must really be in trouble.

What in the world could he possibly want?  What was so serious?  I started collecting a mental inventory of possibilities.  And in my head, started apologizing before I ever knew what the “something” was.

Turns out, apologies weren’t on the agenda.

Harlan Willis is one of the most tenderhearted, godliest men I know.  He has followed Christ since the age of 10, and committed himself to the Lord to become a medical missionary at the age of 15.  Both were profound experiences, and as a result, he invested a huge portion of his life to serving Christ and advancing the gospel in Thailand – and now for years in West Texas, where, at age 82 he is still practicing medicine and sharing Jesus.

But for years something has nagged him.  Bothered him since his teenage years.  That something has been the impression that he should be baptized.  Again.

And that’s what he wanted to talk to me about.  And he wanted me to do it.

Didn’t make sense.

For years he wondered if it was just the devil.

That didn’t make sense, either

But he couldn’t do it in Thailand!  What would the people there think?  What would the other missionaries think?

He couldn’t do it back in Texas.  What would the people in the church think?

This wasn’t a case of getting his baptism out of order, as often happens when people are baptized who really don’t understand what it is they are responding to in the gospel.

He knew.  Age 10.  And baptism came later.

But yet… here was this feeling.  This call. [click to continue…]

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

Trouble in the Waiting Room

by Andy Wood on June 5, 2010

in LV Cycle, Waiting

“If you have been waiting longer than ten minutes, press eight. This will not speed up your call, but it will give you something to do while you wait.”(Message on an Airline Reservation Line)

“Waiting on the Lord is like sitting on a concrete bench.”  (Source unknown)

I’ve been known to get in trouble in waiting rooms.  Especially the examination room, where you sit there for God-only-knows-how-long before the doctor comes in.   The other day I was playing with something that looked like a collapsible chin warmer… until my wife informed me it was a barf bag.  And I’ve lost count of the number of latex glove turkeys I’ve made, or the number of peeks through those spiffy wall-mounted scopes.

And those doors that say, “Authorized personnel only”?  I just authorize myself.  I figure it’s just the doctors’ break room, where the really good snacks are.

I did say I’ve gotten in trouble, didn’t I?

There’s a different kind of waiting, however, where the stakes are much higher.  But the potential for trouble is just as real. [click to continue…]

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

What to Do When Your Brook Dries Up

by Andy Wood on March 9, 2010

in Exploring the Possibilities, Five LV Laws, Hoarders, LV Alter-egos, LV Cycle, Principle of Abundance, Turning Points, Waiting

It was that time again.  Time to plan the annual Men’s Rafting Trip in Colorado.  I had taken a group of fifty men a year earlier and discovered how some guys get the nickname “Bob” when they go rafting.

That’s all I want to say about that.

Now as I pulled out the file, I came across the list of men who had gone with me.  What a difference 12 months had made!  I was amazed at the profound changes so many of them had witnessed. 

  • Three had been fired from their work. 
  • One had quit his job and was unemployed for four months. 
  • One man endured an extended season of severe depression.
  • Another had faced a dangerous autoimmune disease and was out of work for several weeks.
  • One man’s career was at a dead end.
  • Three others lost their businesses.
  • One left for another state with no job in sight. 

Put in Biblical language, “their brooks had dried up.”  That is, they looked to a means by which God had provided for them in the past – health, strength, job, career – only to discover that the resource was no longer available.

Little did I know as I scanned that list that I, too, would soon face a drought of my own.  Up until that time my ministry was fairly evenly split between an itinerant ministry and a part-time pastoral staff position.  Within a matter of weeks, my traveling ministry had dwindled to two continuous months of inactivity.  Then the church where I had served for four years terminated me, along with a number of other staff members, because of budgetary restraints. 

Downsized!  [click to continue…]

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

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…]

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

What’s Wrong with Religion?

by Andy Wood on May 30, 2008

in Spoofs

First a little Burger King spoofing fun, then a modest little reminder that religion killed Jesus…

Until Jesus returns, we will always have to face the difference between man-made religion and authentic relationship with Christ.

But isn’t religion a good thing?  Nope.  Religious people killed Jesus.  And the “infidels.”  And those they labeled heretics.  And the Anabaptists.  And suspected witches.  And a few churches I know.

Religion is different than relationship.  Religion is man’s search for God.  Relationship is God’s search for man.

So what’s wrong with religion?

[click to continue…]

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

Next Entries →