(For once. Sort of. Actually, I didn’t have much of a choice.)
The house was quiet, as it usually is at 4:30 a.m. I was awake, stretched out on my face on the living room floor. I’d been studying the life of Abraham. I’d been studying my life, too. It was Fall 1997.
Two years earlier, I’d been through a “crash and burn” experience, followed by a difficult, but amazing healing and restoration process. Through it all, I had a more intimate relationship with the Lord, a greater marriage than ever, and an awesome relationship with my kids. I was serving on the staff of an exciting, dynamic church. Just one thing was missing.
“Lord,” I asked. “When will I get to be a senior pastor again?”
There as I prayed, Abraham’s faith became mine, and I received the freedom and faith to enter into new territory with the Lord.
“You haven’t told me what kind of church you want,” I heard Him say.
The faith began to rise, and I began to write: [click to continue…]
You’ll want to read this story… because it’s yours in some way.
Do not fret because of evil men
or be envious of those who do wrong;
What do you do when you’ve done everything you know to do? What do you do when your tried-and-true system, which has worked before, doesn’t work this time? How do you respond when God makes a promise and you’ve seen it fulfilled – but this time it doesn’t seem to be “working?”
Trust in the Lord and do good;
dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture.
They’ll laugh when they read this, but I sometimes call Kaye and Mark, whom I love very much, Barbie and Ken. From a distance, they have a storybook life that looks like an 8×10 glossy. Kaye was a Baylor Beauty; Mark was a quarterback/safety for Frank Broyles’ University of Arkansas football teams. They married, settled in Little Rock, and had four beautiful children.
Delight yourself in the Lord
and he will give you the desires of your heart.
Mark and Kaye weren’t just church wallflowers. [click to continue…]
You were born little, with bigness in your DNA.
You were born naked, longing to be warmed and dressed.
You were born penniless, and learned fairly quickly that this was not good.
Even of you’re a twin or other multiple, you were born completely alone, but wired to be relational.
You were born on purpose. And your purpose may still lie in front of you. (What DO you want to be when you grow up?)
To get from here to there, you will most likely pass through a series of completely lame, boring, and maddeningly time-consuming stages. Yes, you’ll experience a few leaps. For the rest, you’d better get used to celebrating some baby steps.
God called it the Day of Small Things.
The Day of Small Things is the crawl that comes before the walk. The work that comes before the reward. The doing-something-anything that comes before doing something awesome. It’s boot camp and kindergarten, school and internships, and progress-before-perfection. [click to continue…]
(Note: I make no claims to be a prophet, so I write this with a bit of fear and trembling. But I believe a day of restoration and change is coming to a significant number people worldwide. Pardon the timing, but it has little-to-nothing to do with the upcoming elections. I haven’t had a stirring in my spirit on this level in more than 10 years. For reasons I’ll explain next week, all I know to call it is the day of the Second House. Make no mistake about it – these are heady, often stressful times. Things that can be shaken will be, so that the things that can’t be shaken will remain. But those who hear God’s call, trust God’s heart, and courageously obey God’s direction will enter into a season, like Israel, when their latter glory will be greater than the former. This post and the next one will serve as an introduction to that.)
+++++++++++++++++++++++
It was January 3, 1993 – more than 15 years ago – and it remains the greatest comeback in NFL history. At halftime the Buffalo Bills, their starting quarterback injured, trailed the Houston Oilers with mighty quarterback Warren Moon by a score of 35-3 in an American Conference playoff game. Backup Frank Reich led the team to a stunning upset. The score: 41-38.
Most of us aren’t football players, professional or otherwise. But we all experience adversity when, like the Bills, our backs are pressed against the wall. Sometimes we’re beyond distress; we’re beaten. These times of adversity almost always involve losses of some kind:
- money (how ‘bout them markets?)
- friendships
- joy
- health
- dreams
- family
LifeVesting? Designing your future? Ha! To quote the pained psalmist in slavery, “How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?” (Psalm 137:4). [click to continue…]
The LifeVesting Cycle
1. Allocate your resources.
2. Explore the possibilities.
3. Follow your passion.
4. Execute your plan.
5. Protect your investment.
6. Enlarge your capacity.
7. Wait
It’s one of my biggest fears.
I’m standing face-to-face with the God of heaven to account for my life.
My sin is covered, but God is looking at what I did with the life He gave me. And he holds up a thumb and index finger, one inch apart.
“Andy,” He says, “you were this close, to seeing it happen, and you quit. The blessing you were looking for was just around the corner.” No wonder he’ll wipe away every tear from our eyes.
Many a wonderful idea started well, but never came to fruition because somebody pulled the plug too soon, and refused to wait.
Just for the record and the sake of full disclosure, I hate waiting. I hate being told that waiting is the solution to any problem or situation I’m facing. I believe traffic lights will be in hell, and I hate waiting at them – particularly when nobody’s coming from the direction of the green light. I hate waiting in line and loathe waiting on hold while listening to a computer on the telephone (which will also be in hell).
That said, and my flesh notwithstanding, there is no substitute for time. And the larger the investment, the longer the wait. It takes 40 days to make a squash, and 40 years to make an oak tree. How long do you suppose it takes to make a man or woman of God? I heard of a recent controversial study that suggests it takes 26.5 years to make an adult in the U.S. Makes sense to me. Jewish tradition held that it took 30 years to make a rabbi. (Yes, that’s why Jesus waited.) [click to continue…]
God has established an ordered world based on eternal principles found in His word. I’m not talking about so-called “principles” that preachers invent to make people feel good, then try to attach a random Bible verse to in order to sound legit to the church crowd. I mean truths, grounded in His character, that apply to many different situations. That’s the difference between a rule and a principle. “Don’t commit murder” is a rule. “Value life” is a principle.
That said, to the degree that we align our lives with God’s principles, we experience the fullness of God’s purpose in creating us in the first place. And the root from which every other principle springs is that everything begins with, and culminates in, the glory of God. You and I were created for his glory – to express His image, extend His life, and execute His will. And in order to fulfill that purpose, we were given the awesome gift of one lifetime.
That’s it. No Plan B. No second chances as a toad or platypus. You get one shot, with no guarantees of how long exactly that will be. But with that one lifetime, you receive the opportunity to produce consequences affecting your future, in both time and eternity.
LifeVesting is about understanding the possibilities and taking action in the direction of the compelling future and eternal reward that can be yours. It revolves around five biblical principles. You can find them expressed in a variety of images – agriculture, business, family relationships, even fishing. But the principles are consistent, regardless of the metaphor. Today I’d like to briefly explain the first one.
[click to continue…]
“Bruce likes to terrify himself.” So began a story years ago in Success magazine.
One day Bruce led some friends 9,000 feet up Mount Hood, and decided to show them how much fun it would be to slide down part of the way. While zipping down an ice field at 30 miles an hour, Bruce suddenly realized he had forgotten to remove his crampons – the spikes that attach to hiking boots. His feet were useless as brakes.
Uh oh.
Bruce had the presence of mind to realize that jabbing the spikes at the ice whizzing past him wouldn’t work either – that would risk breaking his ankles and hurtling off the side of the mountain. So as the edge of the cliff came rapidly into view, Bruce flopped over on his stomach and jabbed repeatedly, frantically, with his ice axe. He finally came to a halt about 50 feet from the edge of the cliff. He later said that the thing that kept running through his mind as he got closer and closer to the edge was, “Boy, this is a stupid way to die.”
Uh huh.
Oh, and just a thought – if it’s a stupid way to die, then maybe it’s a stupid way to live. But hey, that’s just me.
I don’t know if Bruce ever went ice surfing again. And for all I know, he may be the ultimate LifeVestor. But on this day, he was a gambler.
[click to continue…]
Winnie the Pooh died last week.
Not the “chubby little cub all stuffed with fluff” – lest I start a bad rumor.
This Winnie was a member of our household for the last sixteen years. The shih tzu has offspring scattered from Georgia to West Texas. She lived in seven different houses and outlived two hamsters, three cats, and two other dogs. What times she wasn’t a yapping fool, she was a good dog. And we’d been anticipating that she didn’t have long to live… for the last three years or so.
In our family two beliefs have always converged. Belief #1: Pets are good things. They teach us a lot about unconditional love, trust, and care. Plus, they’re (usually) a lot of fun.
[click to continue…]
Had lunch with two good friends this week. Both have lives that, if they were airplanes, could best be described as being in a holding pattern.
They’re waiting.
Knowing there’s more to come.
But it ain’t happening yet, and neither of my friends was particularly thrilled by it.
[click to continue…]
