From the category archives:

Principle of Legacy

Thinking Your Way to a Beautiful Life

by Andy Wood on February 8, 2012

in Esteem,Exploring the Possibilities,Five LV Laws,Life Currency,LV Alter-egos,LV Cycle,Pleasers,Principle of Legacy

I know what you’re thinking right now.

You’re thinking, “No you don’t!”

I know… scary isn’t it?

Know what’s even scarier?  Anybody who knows you at all can follow you around for a week and know what you’ve been thinking for the past year.  That’s based, of course, on the biblical principle, “As he thinks within himself, so he is” (Proverbs 23:7).

Your life today is the result of your thinking.  It may not always affect your circumstances, but it always affects your character.  Your disposition.  Your emotions.  Your perceptions.  Yes, your faith.

If you have any intention of designing a compelling future, it’s time to accept responsibility for the role your thoughts play in creating it.  After all, your thoughts have produced the person you are right now.

That’s why the Bible gives such attention to your thoughts.  Jesus said to love God with all your mind.  Paul talks about renewing your mind, and not thinking of yourself more highly than you ought, but thinking soberly.

Recently I reread a familiar old verse and it rocked my world a little. [click to continue…]

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Dear Cason

by Andy Wood on January 5, 2012

in Five LV Laws,Life Currency,Love,Principle of Increase,Principle of Legacy

You entered our world today – January 5, 2012 – a little early, but with no shortage of anticipation, excitement and joy.  We have known for some time that your big brother Cohen would be sharing playing time with a little brother.  But that’s not the same as being able to see you, hold you, delight in you, and brag on you to the world.

Game on.

Let the seeing-holding-delighting-bragging begin!

The world you have been born into is a strange and beautiful place.  Right now in places like New Hampshire and South Carolina, Republican presidential candidates are courting actual votes of real people in primaries, after spending a year courting poll results and press attention.  All of that for the privilege of challenging President Barak Obama in this November’s election. [click to continue…]

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Making a Difference in the Life of a Child

by Andy Wood on November 16, 2011

in Ability,Allocating Your Resources,Esteem,Five LV Laws,Insight,Life Currency,Love,LV Cycle,Principle of Legacy

Cohen and Me on a Trash Run

It’s a familiar old friend, comfortable as a favorite pair of shoes.  Brokenhearted parents cling to it, and eager young parents rise to it.  It’s a friendly reminder to us all that there’s a higher purpose in the midst of our most frustrating and confusing days.  And yet it can say so much more to us than we ever dreamed possible:

“Train up a child in the way he should go,

And when he is old he will not depart from it” (Proverbs 22:6).

We all know what that means, right?  It means when you have children, if you get them involved in church, discipline them properly, and teach them how to behave, then when they become adults, they will live consistently with the things you tried to teach them.  If you teach them to have high moral values as children, they will have high moral values as adults.

Right?

Wait a minute.  How do you respond to the mom or dad who doesn’t understand why their adult children don’t go to church like they do?  What do you say to the parent whose children have rebelled against their high moral standards and have rejected their values?

I’m convinced that many of us have missed some exciting possibilities because of the limited way we have interpreted this verse. [click to continue…]

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Give the Lonely a Reason to Believe

by Andy Wood on November 4, 2011

in Allocating Your Resources,Five LV Laws,Life Currency,Love,LV Cycle,Principle of Legacy,Time

I will give the lonely a reason to believe in companionship again.

And in so doing, I will banish loneliness from my own heart forever.

-from The Encourager’s Creed

Somewhere near you is an Eeyore in Tigger’s clothing.  They’re bouncy, flouncy, trouncy, pouncy, fun, fun, fun, fun, fun on the outside.  But on the inside they’re desperately alone and resigned to eating thistles.  And you can make a difference.

There is somebody not far away who is adored for all they do and have to offer.  They have no shortage of attention, compliments, and outright praise.  Yet for all the attention and admiration they receive, they are profoundly lonely.  Why?  Because while many people are amazed by them, nobody seems to understand them.  But you can.

It’s the chameleon of the emotional world. It blends seamlessly into any environment, and play-acts with the best of the cons.  It can empower anybody to be hysterically funny in order to disguise the depression and isolation. It can offer wisdom or encouragement or insight to anybody else, but receives precious little in return. It can mimic the language of the spiritual, with talk of solitude and prayer and hearing God – yet all the while it disguises a relational wasteland. But you can (and should) break through all that.

Loneliness.  Ever since Eve and her husband were evicted from their first home, something in us has ached with a longing for companionship and deep connection.  We want to know we are searched (understood) thoroughly, known intimately, and loved unconditionally.  [click to continue…]

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What You Can Learn From a Ghost House

by Andy Wood on October 31, 2011

in Five LV Laws,Leadership,Life Currency,LV Cycle,Principle of Legacy,Protecting Your Investment

I don’t know what else to call them.  But if they were all in the same vicinity or neighborhood, they’d be part of a ghost town.  They’re usually uninhabitable, with windows and doors gone or broken, and the roof letting in morning sunshine.

There’s at least one near you somewhere, but it may not be as easy to see as the hundreds that dot the wide open landscape near where I live.

Abandoned, but never empty.  For lack of a better term, I call them ghost houses.

Not haunted houses, though I’d rather not wander into one of these things after dark.  Broad open daylight either, for that matter.

Once upon a time these places provided a home for families.  Now they sit empty.  Sometimes the reason is obvious; sometimes it doesn’t make sense at all. Just in the last week I’ve seen several once-lovely and spacious homes now left to the elements, vandals, and critters.

Maybe someone died, and left no heir.  Maybe business dried up or sold out and forced a move.  Maybe the place got tied up in some sort of disagreement in court or with a bank.

Regardless, the end result is the same – empty, eroding testaments to lost usefulness and life.

Oh, if they could talk!  Oh, if they could teach us!

Call me weird (okay, who said that?).  But what started as a years-long fascination has led me to visit and photograph over 200 of these old places over the last week.  Most were houses.  But there are also old stores, gas stations, barns, schools, and even a few abandoned churches.

Some are part of the three certifiable ghost towns I’ve visited (a story for another day).  Most stand alone on the edge of town or in the middle of nowhere.

Nobody built one of these planning for them to sit desolate.  But sit they do.  And while the ghost houses have lost their primary purpose because nobody can actually live or work in them anymore, they being dead still speak.

And no, they’re not hollering, “Boo!”

They’re teaching some powerful lessons that speak to us as individuals and leaders, churches and organizations. [click to continue…]

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Rewriting Your Life Story

by Andy Wood on October 21, 2011

in Enlarging Your Capacity,Esteem,Five LV Laws,Life Currency,LV Cycle,Principle of Legacy

I know a guy named Garrett who has completely changed my impression of him in a matter of a couple of years.  When I first met him, he came across as a slacker – lazy, unmotivated, and a pretty bad student.  But the last time I saw him he had rewritten his story – at least the one that played out in my head.  Truth is, Garrett is sharp, actually quite brilliant as a communicator, and a potential world changer.

What made the difference?

Time.  Perspective.  A little experience.  In Garrett’s case, he never stopped anything or changed anything.  I just had more time to get to know what he was capable of.  The one who needed changing was me.

Sarah and Ben were a different case.  [click to continue…]

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The Memory of the Heart

by Andy Wood on October 11, 2011

in Allocating Your Resources,Five LV Laws,LV Cycle,Principle of Legacy

How do you want to be remembered?

By what you did?  What you said?  Who and how you loved?  What you accomplished or overcame?

That may or may not happen.

I was chatting with someone yesterday about the idea of legacy – one of those Five Laws of LifeVesting.  He asked me to clarify what I meant and how people leave legacies after their time on earth is done.  I said that legacy has two parts – the intentional and the unplanned.

There are some things I want to be remembered for, and I take action to make those memories while I still have a chance by investing my life in things that will live on after me.  This is why people give money, write things, do art or music, or make memories with people, just to name a few.

But your legacy has a life of its own, and you’re making memories all the time, whether you realize it or not.  Some of those are pretty routine.  Some are painful.  Some are glorious, and you don’t even know it.

Two days ago I got an email from Gotta-Love-Google-Land.  It came from somebody I knew in my very first church staff position, 33 years ago.  The message, framed with “thank you,” contained some profound memories.  What was interesting, though, was what all those memories had in common. [click to continue…]

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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…]

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How Long Will Your Influence Last?

by Andy Wood on July 22, 2011

in Five LV Laws,Following Your Passion,Leadership,Life Currency,LV Cycle,LV Stories,Principle of Legacy

(From the forthcoming book, Coach Lightning)

(Note:  Anybody can be an influence to people sitting right in front of them.  But it takes a special kind of character to continue to shape lives you first touched 50 years ago.  The following is an excerpt about the way Morris Brown did that, and how his influence lives on to this day.  You can see other excerpts here and here.)

Benjamin Disraeli, the British statesman, once said, “The greatest good you can do for another is not just to share your riches, but to reveal to him his own.”  That’s what you discover when you talk to the people whose lives were touched by Morris Brown.  You hear the language of wealthy people.  And they’ll tell you that Coach Brown was instrumental in revealing their riches to them.

One of the greatest contributions any leader, teacher, or friend can make in terms of influence is to “raise the bar” in the pursuit of excellence.  Morris did that time and time again.  Don Hunt calls him a “beacon in my heart and soul” to this day.  From the days of Little League baseball until today, Don says, Coach Brown’s life and actions remind him to strive to be the best person that he can be.

It’s interesting to note that in all the conversations or interviews about Coach Brown’s influence, nobody went to a chalkboard and started drawing the X’s and O’s of a football locker room.  Morris influenced players and students by first influencing them as people.  As he helped raise up a generation of excellent people, the on-field or on-court play took care of itself. [click to continue…]

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Five Forks in the Road

by Andy Wood on June 10, 2011

in Consumers,Five LV Laws,Hoarders,LV Alter-egos,Pleasers,Principle of Abundance,Principle of Eternity,Principle of Freedom,Principle of Increase,Principle of Legacy

This may be a leap, but let’s assume for a minute that you know what it is you want, and you’re pursuing it.  I don’t mean what you’re conquering in your search for lunch.  I’m talking destiny, journey-of-desire stuff.  Maybe it’s to influence or gain the approval of someone.  Maybe it’s wisdom to make good choices or the ability to do something that’s hard or impossible for you right now.

Regardless, have you ever noticed that sometimes getting there feels like an eight-lane highway?  And other times, the minute you start moving in that direction it feels like you just turned onto a muddy jungle trail?

Have you ever noticed that sometimes the journey launches like gangbusters, but then stalls or stagnates?

Chances are, you came to a fork in the road and made a wrong turn.

Robert Frost was right in his famous poem about the two roads and choosing the one less traveled by.  What he failed to mention was that life or any worthwhile pursuit is a series of forks in the road, not just one.  One road leads to a path that makes it easier to pursue your dreams; the other leads to mediocrity, failure, and defeat.

Appearances are Deceptive

Paths that lead to mediocrity and failure are well-worn and popular.  They require the least mental effort or “soul work.”  But what starts off as the path of least resistance quickly turns to the path of resistance-beats-my-brains-out.

Other paths may appear to require a lot of work or may leave you feeling isolated and alone.  But somewhere in that spiritual, emotional, and mental work you activate forces that begin to carry your load, increase your speed, and move you in the direction of your truest desires.

The other tricky part about these forks in the road: [click to continue…]

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