Passivity paralyzes

Are you growing? Will you be intentional about moving on -- moving forward -- in the dimensions of life and throw off the shackles of passivity?

After all, passivity suggests:

• I've arrrived. Although I'd never assert such a thing, it's suggested when I'm cemented in place.
• I'm comfortable. I know, I know...my marriage could be better, my relationships are few and weak, my fathering is part-time at best...but the discomfort I now experience (knowing those things) might be better than the discomfort I'd experience from intentional growth.
• I can't. At my age...with my background...as busy as I am....(insert favorite phrase here) no one improves his fitness, grows his long-term marriage, changes his attitudes toward work, begins to win the day in his spiritual life.

Intentionality is key. Get around growing people. Find the resources. Gain accountability. Put some specifics on paper. And be free of the paralysis of passivity.

How's My Attitude?

Zig Ziglar says that the "hardening of the attitudes is the most deadly disease on the face of this earth."

What's hard is what's right

A great video clip (third one on the page) from the film "Weather Man." Scene between a father and a son: "the hard thing to do is the right thing to do. 'Easy' doesn't enter into grown-up life."

 

What would be different if?

If you were living today to leave a legacy, what three choices would you make?

What makes us secure and insecure

To be sure of whose you are and who you are is the key to a secure life and leadership. Jeremie Kubicek

Pursuing what matters

Living a life that matters doesn't happen by accident. Michael Josephson.

What Matters?

Ron Jenson is someone we met several years ago -- have enjoyed getting to know his thinking again via his blog and tweets. He mentions this great article in a recent post: http://www.ronjenson.com/?p=482

Calcifying influences

Faithless wisdom seeks control and fears the dynamic. 

Thus we set ritual above relationship, structure above reality and organization above organic life.

CHANGE??

Poet W.H. Oden wrote, "We would rather be ruined than changed. We would rather die in our dread than climb the cross of the moment and let our illusions die.”

When things grow worse

Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold. Matthew 24:12

A sign of the end of days -- self-absorbed thinking will generally displace love.

The end of all things is near. Therefore be alert and of sober mind so that you may pray. Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. 1 Peter 4:7, 8

The mandate for believers in every age: attend to Christ’s new command to love each other as He has loved us.

Igift?

In German, the word Gift means poison!

(A friend of ours wondered one time why a lady in the store gave her an odd look when she noticed “baby gift” on her shopping list!)

Anyway, I got a great gift for Christmas. My son (we exchanged names this year) -- at my request -- gave me a new MP3 device.  I quickly got my NLT Bible and the audio version of John on it. Wow -- amazing tool -- portable and ready at all times.

But it can be so much more. Unlike its poorer cousins, this one features APPS!

Thousands and thousands of apps! Lots are free, you can download them and suddenly -- another time sucker! Another distraction. Another substitute for reality and authenticity.

A device to remind me to worship my God! 

Or…something else...to keep me far from His presence. 

This morning 1 John 5:21 came home. Dear children, keep away from anything that might take God’s place in your hearts. (NLT)

Individualism and Commitment

American cultural traditions define personality, achievement, and the purpose of human life in ways that leave the individual suspended in glorious, but terrifying, isolation. From Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life

Choices can change the heart

How does a lapse of faith occur? Very simply: one begins to live like everybody else.  Leo Tolstoy

Thanksgiving: antidote for grumbling

Dr. Dale Robbins writes, “I used to think people complained because they had a lot of problems.  But I have come to realize that they have problems because they complain. Complaining doesn’t change anything or make situations better.  It amplifies frustration, spreads discontent and discord, and can invoke an invitation for the devil to cause havoc with our lives.”  

Complaining makes us miserable!

SO busy!

I wondered to myself this morning: has any academic ever taken the time to calculate how much time we give to convincing others around us how busy we are?

Samuel Adams on commitment

Before the Revolutionary War began Samuel Adams issued a gut check to his fellow colonists who would dare to call themselves Americans. 

If you love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen. 

Another great charge to commit or forget about it -- to follow through with abandon or abandon all attempt, because no middle ground can be tolerated in regard to supreme causes. 

Anyone who puts a hand to the plow and then looks back is not fit for the Kingdom of God. Luke 9.62.

Not a spectator sport

In the Kingdom of God, no one can see so long as he remains merely a spectator. Nathan Soderbloom

Opportunity

Opportunity


This I beheld, or dreamed it in a dream:-
There spread a cloud of dust along a plain;
And underneath the cloud, or in it, raged
A furious battle, and men yelled, and swords
Shocked upon swords and shields. A prince’s banner
Wavered, then staggered backward, hemmed by foes.
A craven hung along the battle’s edge,
And thought, “Had I a sword of keener steel-
That blue blade that the king’s son bears,-but this
Blunt thing-!” he snapt and flung it from his hand,
And lowering crept away and left the field.


Then came the king’s son, wounded, sore bestead,
And weaponless, and saw the broken sword,
Hilt-buried in the dry and trodden sand,
And ran and snatched it, and with battle-shout
Lifted afresh he hewed his enemy down,
And saved a great cause that heroic day.

- Edward Rowland Sill

A lesson from Weight Watchers

Our appetite for and the steady consumption of any kind of commodity becomes a determining factor for our future. A quotation I heard at WW a couple of weeks back was: "What you eat in private will show up in public!"

It’s not what we eat but what we digest that makes us strong; not what we gain but what we save that makes us rich; not what we read but what we remember that makes us learned; not what we profess but what we practice that gives us integrity. Francis Bacon