Ponder this...

Grandparents 45th Anniversary!

Thinking about...

I'm back from a life-changing week at Barnabas Landing with Arrow.  So much to process!

- This article parallels a lot of my life in ministry lately

- Enjoying new music by Need to Breathe, David Crowder and Matt Redman

- This site speaks my language!

- Really excited about starting a new Sunday service and series at Oak Park!

Here are few quotes that are hitting home lately:

"Anything less than a conscious commitment to the important is an unconscious commitment to the unimportant." - Steven Covey

"Lord, Deliver me from the lust to vindicate myself" - Augustine

Here are few from a day spent with Mark Buchanan:

"You will never ever avoid having have a Judas in your ministry."

"When I carry the death of Jesus in me it provides life to other."

"To be anointed is when the Jesus life is visible and available to everyone around you.  The opposite of an anointing is a stronghold."

"You can filter all of life through the cross (suffering) and the throne (hope)"  

"People can’t see leaders straight – they love you then you disappoint them and then they hate you (Acts 7 - 28) Don’t get sucked into their false stories of who you are."  

"Hardship enables you to ask questions that you would never get to ask any other way."

Things that made me ponder recently...

What are you looking forward to in heaven?

Married with the same email?

The primary goal of parenting

Free graphics that I will likely be using someday

5 Leadership Lessons

Priority Management and Life Balance

Friday Links

Michael Hyatt nails it with this article "What Keeps You Going When You Want to Quit?"

I enjoy watching theologians make fun of theologians

How to Preach the Gospel to Yourself

My friend Mike offers up some gems in 100 Ways to be a Better Leader

This is so true

The secret to church growth can be found here

To let it go

 

Letting go is hard. 

 

After all, the thing that you are holding is valuable. It has meaning. It represents something that is of deep importance. If you have held it long enough, it has become a part of you, part of who you understand yourself to be. If you let it go you feel as if you are letting part of yourself go and you hardly have enough self as it is so you don’t want to just let go of the familiar parts!

 

You used to just hold it your hand, but then you kept bringing it up to your eyes to look at it – to examine and enjoy it. Pretty soon you realize that you may as well just keep it in front of your eyes and since that moment the world has never looked the same. It has colored the way you see life. It has changed the light patterns and the shadows and over time you have grown comfortable with how it makes things look.

 

In fact, most of the time you do not even feel it. Your muscles have grown and stretched to accommodate it and now it is just the way you are.  It’s just the way life is.  It’s just the way things are going to be. It happens and so be it.

 

What you may not realize is how it has grown. Well why wouldn’t it?  After all, you have been feeding it. You have been nursing it with worry and energy and hope and expectation of course it has grown larger! Of course it has developed a family of it’s own and set up a home with an office and several bedrooms and a two car garage - it's only natural.

 

What you are yet to see is how the thing that you are holding is in fact holding you.  It has occupied a piece of you that can never grow unless fresh light and clean air are allowed in. It has captured a section of your heart that you’ve always assumed was just a section of your personality. Instead of providing light it has actually stolen your vision and left you seeing only a slice of what is available. You are now left with a blind spot - a place just behind your awareness that makes you act and feel in ways that you don’t understand.

 

What you are yet to see is the price you are paying for clinging to it. The love that has long been constricted.  The hope that has remained in the dark. The freedom that sits unrealized. The joy that awaits.

 

Letting go is hard.  You need help.

Twittering

I've been using Twitter for a few weeks now and I feel like I am finally able to use it in a helpful way!  Here are few tidbits that twitter has sent my way the past week:

"We are products of our past, but we don’t have to be prisoners of it. God’s purpose isn't limited by your past." - Rick Warren

"Your problems are not punishment; they are wake up calls! God is trying to get you to change.. Ps. 119:67

"It is always more Christlike to resolve a strained relationship than to disolve it. Hang in there. Gal.6:9 - Rick Warren

"Facing your fears is like grabbing an electric fence. It's a jolting experience, but you live thru it." - Tim Sanders

Bob Kilpatrick's "Secrets of Silence: Praying w/out Words" next on my list. He quotes Mozart: "The notes are silver, the rests are gold" - Len Sweet

I've also got in a free book giveaway, learned a bunch about making speeches and read a lot of Scripture. I also find it a fun challenge to get my thoughts down to 140 characters! 

Links that kept me reading

Here are some of the better things I've read lately on the web...

Gossip Affects Your Spiritual Waistline

Why Staying Married Is A Good Idea

Ray Ortland's final letter to his family

Some Benefits of Life Without Television

Why John Piper doesn't have a television and rarely goes to movies

Leading vs. Managing

John Cleese on Creativity

These days

Listening - Matthew Perryman Jones, Matt Kearney, Joshua Radin, Stephen Roach

Using - evernote, twitterfox, xmarks, magellan maestro, burner

The Courage to be Real

As I prepare for some talks on "The Courage to Be Real" I keep coming back to this quote from "The Silver Chair."

“If you are thirsty, you may drink.”

[...] For a second she stared here and there, wondering who had spoken. Then the voice said again, “If you are thirsty, come and drink,” [...] [she] realised that it was the lion speaking. [...] [T]he voice was not like a man’s. It was deeper, wilder, and stronger; a sort of heavy, golden voice. It did not make her any less frightened than she had been before, but it made her frightened in rather a different way.

“Are you not thirsty?” said the lion.

“I’m dying of thirst,” said Jill.

“Then drink,” said the lion.

“May I – could I – would you mind going away while I do?” said Jill.

The Lion answered this only by a look and a very low growl. And as Jill gazed at its motionless bulk, she realised that she might as well have asked the whole mountain to move aside for her convenience.

The delicious rippling noise of the stream was driving her nearly frantic.

“Will you promise not to – do anything to me, if I do come?” said Jill.

“I make no promise,” said the Lion.

Jill was so thirsty now that, without noticing it, she had come a step nearer.

“Do you eat girls?” she said.

“I have swallowed up girls and boys, women and men, kings and emperors, cities and realms,” said the Lion. It didn’t say this as if it were boasting, nor as if it were sorry, nor as if it were angry. It just said it.

“I daren’t come and drink,” said Jill.

“Then you will die of thirst,” said the Lion.

“Oh dear!” said Jill, coming another step nearer. “I suppose I must go and look for another stream then.”

“There is no other stream,” said the Lion.

- “The Silver Chair” by C. S. Lewis

New way to communicate?

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