LifeVesting

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The people in Pisa needed professional help.  Seems their most famous landmark was, well, leaning.

Well, duh!

Actually, a few years ago someone discovered that the Tower was very slowly beginning to lean too much.  So the city fathers had an emergency meeting and decided there was only one thing to do.  They would bring in architects and professional builders who would make sure the tower didn’t topple over.  One mandate, however:  keep the tower from falling over, but don’t correct the tilt!  In other words, make sure it stays like it is.  After all, who would travel to see the standing Tower of Pisa?

It’s amazing the time and effort – sometimes even large amounts of money – we will invest in order to remain the same.  And that in a world where the constant is change.

If you’re reading this, regardless of who you are, change is the one thing that is required of you, as well.  It’s the one thing you and I have in common.  It’s also the one thing we have a tendency to resist.  Leo Tolstoy once said, “Everyone wants to change humanity, but no one wants to change himself.”

Jesus once told a story about a farmer, some seed, and four types of ground.  The seed, He said was the “word of the Kingdom.”  Only one kind of ground (a type of heart) received the seed to the degree that it made lasting change.  Something would have to change about the ground to experience the maximum effect (change) of the seed.

There are four types of life change, based on the Parable of the Sower.  You are somewhere on this list right now:

1.  Brokenness of my will - when a heart set against the will of God is changed to a heart that is yielded to Him.

2.  Deepening of my resolve - when a heart quick to answer, but dependent on emotion and convenience, must dig deeper to stay the course.

3.  Purifying of my values - when a heart that says “yes” to everything and everybody must learn to say “no” to some things - even perhaps good things.

4.  Enlargement of my capabilities - when a heart that has enjoyed a measure of success is pruned - cut back and re-formed - in order to be more productive in the future.

So where are you on this list of four?  I’ve been camped out for a while at #3.

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This entry was posted on Monday, April 14th, 2008 at 8:30 am and is filed under Enlarging Your Capacity, LifeVesting Cycle.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.