No telling how many times I’ve said to someone, “Put this in your oven and let it bake for a while,” or “I don’t have this all sorted out yet – it’s still in the oven.”
I thought I’d share some of the “bread” that’s in my oven right now. Here are seven half-baked, half-raw ideas I’m heating up. I may toss ‘em. I may cook ‘em up. Put them in your oven too, and let’s see what comes out. You can help, if you’d like, by sharing your thoughts in the comments below.
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There is no such thing as a porcelain healer. There are expert healers, wounded healers, bloody healers, spiritual healers. But if your goal is to look pretty on a shelf or remain detached from the broken, the sick, the wounded, or the dying, you aren’t much use. For God’s sake, stay out of the way of those who are.
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“The Lord has made everything for its own purpose…” (Proverbs 16:4). If God is purposeful, He must be faithful to complete His purpose. Otherwise, He’s an idiot or impotent, a scoundrel or attention-deficit, careless or passive. In other words, if He is purposeful but not faithful, He’d be created in our image.
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Even my dog hates closed doors.
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The Ultimate test of a leader is whether he will “lay down his life for his sheep.” In other words, will he say no to his instinct toward self-preservation and do what is best for the people he leads? If you must maintain your position, your salary, your perks, or your title at all costs, you are no leader.
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“Have you ever considered how often we judge ourselves by our intentions while we judge others by their actions? Yet intention without action is an insult to those who expect the best from you.” –Andy Andrews, The Noticer.
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Having a wallet that’s an inch thick is NOT a status symbol. (Wait for it… wait for it… Here it comes… What’s in YOUR wallet?)
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Overheard on “Criminal Minds” a few weeks ago: “Scars remind us of where we’ve been, but they don’t have to dictate where we are going.”
Wisdom is boring.
Wisdom is a nag.
Wisdom is a boring nag.
Wisdom sucks the life out of the party.
Wisdom is a boring, party-killing nag.
Wisdom asks questions about consequences when all I want to do is enjoy myself. What’s wrong with a little fun, know what I mean? Wisdom uses words like “safe,” “abstinence” and “consequences.” Now THAT’ll get your blood pumping. Zzzzzzz. Look, all I want to do is have a little pleasure in my life. I know there’s more to life than feeling good. But I can control myself. [click to continue…]
(A Turning Point Story)
Glavine
It was something out of a Looney Toons episode. The kind of thing you’ve heard about happening, never assumed would happen to you.
It happened to me.
I had gone away on a far journey and entrusted all my worldly goods to my wife and three kids, telling them we’d settle accounts when I got home.
Well, not exactly.
September 13, 2001 – Do the calendar math. It was a surreal and vulnerable time. I was actually out of town on a consulting trip, when I got a call fairly early in the morning. My twin daughters were calling, breathless with excitement. Somebody had gotten the bright idea to leave a cardboard box in front of our house with two kittens inside.
“Daddy, can we keep ‘em, pleeze? We’ll take care of them, and feed them, and clean up after them. We promise.”
I wanted to kill them. [click to continue…]
Okay, all you fans of the amazing possibilities of humans left to their own ideas, it’s time for another edition of Hanukkah Hams! In case you missed previous episodes, a Hanukkah Ham was named after this, uh, “creative” marketing idea last year.
With all the gloom, doom, and sleepless nights about the economy, I thought maybe we could use a little financial inspiration.
Couldn’t find any, so this is what you get instead…
One of the fundamental truths of the New Testament is that money is “coined personality.” That is, people can see the “real you” in the ways you respond to and handle money. If you’re generous with your finances, you’ll be generous with other parts of your life as well. Same is true if you’re careless, stingy, unorganized, etc. This raises some interesting questions about some or organizations. If money is coined personality, we may have a few problems!
A couple of years ago, I walked into a local bank, started writing a check, and told the teller in my best deadpan voice that I needed $30 worth of Federal Reserve notes. He actually asked another teller, “Do we have Federal Reserve notes here?” “Ya mean, money?” she asked.
Last month a man in Warren, Michigan figured the best way to get a little extra cash for the holidays was to strong arm somebody and steal theirs. [click to continue…]
Isn’t it rich?
Are we a pair?
Me here at last on the ground,
You in mid-air.
Send in the clowns.
Isn’t it bliss?
Don’t you approve?
One who keeps tearing around,
One who can’t move.
Where are the clowns?
Send in the clowns.
-from “Send in the Clowns”
No, that’s not the theme song to the next installment of the U.S. Congress. Then again…
Yesterday I introduced you to a group of Christ followers who were living in a world of mirrors. The good people of Laodicea were living with the bling, but God had a different estimate of their true wealth. And in His correction, He revealed some things about a completely different economy that is in operation all around us. For review, here are the principles we looked at yesterday:
Principle #1: The root nature of sin is a declaration of independence from God.
Principle #2: God has a system of economy unlike the world’s system.
Principle #3: “Economy” is the exchange of all the commodities of life.
Principle #4: Money has a unique place in the commodities of life.
Principle #5: It is possible to be rich in the world’s economy and bankrupt in God’s.
So here the scenery changes, and God has some encouraging things to say to His loveable losers: [click to continue…]
It was the Beverly Hills of ancient Asia. A center of wealth and high-end commerce. A medical haven, where people came from miles around for treatment of various ailments. If you wrote your mama and told her your job was transferring you there, she’d have something to brag about the next day. This was some place. And there was a church in town.
How would you like to get a personal letter from Jesus Christ, where the first thing he said was, “I know what you’ve been doing”? That can be a little unnerving! But that’s exactly what Jesus said to the First Church of Coolville, alias Laodicea. He had a few other things to say as well. Let’s peek at their mail:
I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm – neither hot nor cold – I am about to spit you out of my mouth. You say, “I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.” But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see (Revelation 3:15-18).
Looks like the guys and dolls in Lala Land had a few things to learn about wealth.
So do we.
They thought they were loaded; Jesus said otherwise. Remember, though, that in spite of its scathing message, this was a love letter. And in his love, Jesus gave them, and LifeVestors everywhere, a few pointers on His economy. [click to continue…]
by Andy Wood on October 28, 2008
in Ability,Allocating Your Resources,Consumers,Enlarging Your Capacity,Insight,LV Alter-egos,LV Cycle,Life Currency,Money,Pleasers,Time
Here’s a little exercise we actually take worship service time to practice occasionally. Follow the instructions carefully (yes, I mean I want you to actually do this):
- Take a deep breath
- Let out half of it.
- Hold
- Smile
- Repeat the following out loud, in a calm soothing voice:
“No.”
Repeat this exercise regularly, just for practice, and as needed in live game situations.
Not, “No because…”
Not, “Maybe later…”
Not, “Let me pray about it…”
Certainly not, “See if you can find somebody else, and if you can’t, I’ll see what I can do.”
Learning to graciously, kindly refuse is one of eight steps to building or rebuilding margin in your life. Margin has to do with creating gaps – cushions of time, money, energy, or spiritual strength that act as living shock absorbers for those who have them.
Imagine how it could revolutionize your attitude, relationships, productivity, and health if the next time somebody says, “Got a minute?” you actually do! [click to continue…]
What do you do when you’ve done what you know to do, and what you know to do isn’t working this time? How do you explain the fact that time-tested methods for producing results, solving problems, and getting ahead just aren’t working this time? How do you plug the leaks in your economic life?
Questions like these are front and center among politicians, economists, investors, and families these days.
The problem isn’t a shortage of solutions. The problem is that that the solutions we know are supposed to work aren’t working.
We’re like a wad of sailors on a stormy sea, who keep running to opposite sides of a ship to steady it in the waves – while all the while, the hull is leaking. I’ve seen it at kitchen tables; I’ve seen it at capital buildings. Everything we do to steady the ship just draws in more water, and sailing has turned to bailing.
I wonder if anybody is asking – really asking – God.
(Aw, what does HE know?)
Plenty, it would appear. This isn’t the first time politicians and businesspeople confronted a leaky economy. [click to continue…]
This site is nearly a year old, and I have never written a post I am more serious or urgent about.
There are times when our spirits and/or minds are unusually drawn in certain directions. Ideas and concepts leap off the pages of the Bible. Words or names get planted in our consciousness and never seem to go away. These times, I believe, are no coincidence. They are times in which the Holy Spirit is bringing grounded biblical truth to bear on current experience.
Simply put, He’s speaking.
I don’t have experiences like this tremendously often, which makes the times I do have them all the more compelling. What I am about to share grew out of such a time.
As I mentioned earlier , I believe we are entering a season that for many people will be a season of restoration and change worldwide.
We are also living in tense, fearful days. I called a banker friend yesterday and asked him, in the words of an old Randy Stonehill song, if we should go back to trading seashells and just admit we’re broke. (He was encouraging. But then, he’s a banker.)
I also spoke about this Sunday (Listen Here) that these are days in which anything that can be shaken will be. God is shaking the wealth of the nations. People are afraid.
How do we stand strong when we’re living somewhere between the faith and the fear? How can we be in a place where we see the joy beyond what we endure? How can we allow the Holy Spirit to shake the barnacles off of us and prepare us for a “latter glory” that will come? How can we be lights in a world of confusion and darkness?
Sparing you the details of how I got there, there are seven things we must do, and do quickly: [click to continue…]
I have eye-opening experiences in odd places. I want to tell you about one that took place a few years ago at a house on 80th Street in Lubbock, a few houses away from where we used to live. Our former neighbors were having an estate sale, and I have to confess, I’m a sucker. So I strolled down to take it all in. The sale was professionally managed, well organized, and quite thorough. They were selling what appeared to be everything that wasn’t bolted to the walls or floor.
Like most estate sales, this was a trip back in time. And somewhere amid the 8-track tapes, 70s-era stereo, and the costume jewelry, it happened. Somewhere in my own mind, I was standing in the middle of my own estate sale. Watching crowds of strangers pick over my treasures that, over the years, I had spent tens of thousands of dollars on. Seeing them bargain with somebody over curtains or books or something – for dimes on the dollar, of course. “Dear God,” I half-exclaimed and half-prayed, “tell me there’s more to my life than old stuff to be bartered over!”
As I continued to wander through the house, I could identify with the fun and excitement of this family as they had purchased that new appliance, received that special Christmas gift, or took advantage of those today-only prices and sales. In so many ways, this was a typical American family. Nice house. Nice stuff, albeit touched by time. And now all of it was being left behind.
It’s bad etiquette, I suppose, to actually ask about the people whose possessions we’re pilfering through. Are they still living? Do they have family? Could I be standing next to their daughter or niece? But I couldn’t help but wonder. As I stood in what once was their home, I felt sure I was looking at a poor reflection of who these people really were.
[click to continue…]
