Scarecrows and God's Best

I'm casually reading through Craig Groeschell's book, "Confessions of a Pastor." His chapter entitled "I worry almost all the time," has really spoken to me.

In it he talks about a verse from Jeremiah 10:5&6. God is speaking through the prophet to the people of Israel, telling them not to fear the nations around them. He says that "their idols are like scarecrows in a melon patch."

Scarecrows in a melon patch...think about that. Why does a farmer put a scarecrow in his melon patch? Simple, to scare the birds away in order to keep them from destroying his crop. What if the birds ever wised up and realized that the presence of a scarecrow was actually the tip off that the best of the crop was in the field?

A bird will never wise up, because it doesn't have the mental capacity to learn in these situations, that's why scarecrows still work to this day. However, as men and women who are created in the image of God, we do have the capacity to see the enemy's scare tactics as just that...tactics. The Bible tells us that "God hasn't given us a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and a sound mind." (2 Timothy 1:7)

Groeschell writes, "So, isn't it possible that the very fears the enemy tries to plant in your mind are unwitting advertisements for God's good stuff? (Like a "Danger" sign on God's cookie jar.)

Fear will always keep you from God's best for your life, so when you are experiencing fear, ask God to replace it with his love, and boldly walk into His best...it's waiting for you!

Read more...

Times of Crisis

"Crisis doesn't make a person, it reveals you for what you are. You don't know who someone is until adversity comes. It shows the cracks, and the cracks are where God leaks through."

I'm not sure who wrote that statement, but I realize how true it is in my own life. When I go through a crisis in my life, God reveals to me the areas of character that I need to allow him to work on in order to fill up the fishers in my life.

The following are some things I've learned that help me when adversity comes to my life.

First, don't internalize what God is trying to bring to the surface. When I internalize, I take on this passive-aggressive role that ends up hurting the people who are close to me and the true issue at hand never gets dealt with. I've learned that standing up with courage is vital to the health and growth of my character. Sometimes this means confrontation with others, more often it means confrontation with myself.

Second, band-aiding or trying to cover up the crack is never a good idea. We never help ourselves or others when we try to cover things up and pretend that everything is OK. It's only when we are courageous enough to let our imperfections to be visible that God can come and fill them with His grace, bringing us the forgiveness and the change that we all need.

Read more...

Choose Your Response

"...True leadership, is always about struggle. It is about two things: One, having values, and two, being willing to fight for hose values. If you want to be a leader you must have values, a set of beliefs, convictions, and ideals - a vision for your country, you community and your business. You must be willing to step into the arena and fight for those values, for that "worthy cause." ~Benjamin Nitanyahu~

What a powerful quote for us to remember. I think another thing that sets a person apart as a leader is not only the ongoing struggle of fighting for your values, but the on going need to keep from getting discouraged and wounded in the process.

Discouragement and hurt looms around every corner of our lives. We all feel it and we all let us effect us in one way or another. The difference in those great leaders that seem to be unaffected by it, lies in their ability to choose their response. A person chooses to let discouragement go too far, chooses to become wounded and taken out of the fight. God has given all of us the ability to choose our responses in life.

How does a person choose the right response?

First, they must have a deep and unshaken conviction of what his/her values are in life. What is most important to them that they are determined to fight for. I think a lot of people give up too easy and it's probably because they didn't believe enough in what they were fighting for.

Second, they must have the courage to defend those values to the point of no return. I have often said that the greatest enemy to what God desires to do through a person's life is the desire for self-preservation.

Third, when all is said and done, their attitude towards people, and especially those people who opposed them must remain hopeful and forgiving. The values that a true leader has goes beyond themselves and bleeds over to the people around them...even to those who mis-understood them and were the cause of some of their persecution.

History is full of people who modeled this type of attitude. In fact, this past weekend we celebrated the death and resurrection of someone who modeled it like none other...Jesus Christ. He is the true model of vision, values, and leadership that we, as believers, should strive to be like every day.

Read more...

Don't Settle for "NO"!

I took the day off yesterday and went to the beach with my family. We had an awesome day.

One of the highlights was me trying to ride my son's skim board. For those of you who don't know what a skim board is, it's kind of like a surf board, but instead of riding a wave into shore, your riding on about an inch of water where the wave meets the shore line. It's a lot of fun if you know what your doing. If you don't however, you end up feeling like I do this morning...sore...very sore.

I'm not sore because my muscles ache, I'm sore because when I do something like this, I go all out, in other words I throw caution to the wind, and in doing so, gravity throws me to the ground. I successfully rode the things twice, but at the end of each run I found myself eating lots of sand, and I've got the bruises to show for it.

After my skim board experience, I limped back to my chair and continued with one of my favorite rituals when I go to the beach...reading. I started a new book called, "Pour Your Heart Into It," (How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time). The book is written by Howard Shultz, who was personally responsible for taking that company to the success it now enjoys.

Howard Shultz talks about his experience in coming to work for Starbucks, which was just a small company of 5 stores upon his arrival. The courtship took place over a period of a year, and at the end of the year, Howard approached the head of the company, Jerry Baldwin, about hiring him. It took him another year to convince him that it was the right move.

At the end of that year, Howard had a sit down dinner interview with the three deciding partners of the company. He thought he had convinced them to hire him, but the next day he received a big "NO". He was devastated, but decided that "NO" wasn't the answer he would accept, so the next day he called Jerry back and told him he thought he was making a big mistake, and that he needed to have courage to convince his partners it was the right move. Jerry agreed, hired Howard Shultz, and the rest is history.

As I think about this story, I can't help but wonder how many people give up on their dreams because someone tells them "NO". I understand that there are times when "NO" is the answer and we need to accept that, but I also realize that "NO" is sometimes a result of someone else's uncertainty or insecurity. They are afraid to risk, afraid to fail, or even afraid they'll lose control.

Success comes from being able to discern the two and knowing when it is appropriate to push the envelope and not take "NO" for an answer. It takes guts, courage, and plenty of self-effacement, but in the end it could pay off big.

Think about the many people who wouldn't take no for an answer...

- Christopher Columbus, who was fighting conventional thought that the world was flat and he would certainly perish, wouldn't take "NO" for an answer.

- Martin Luther King Jr. was told "NO" over and over and over, but wouldn't accept it even to the point of losing his own life.

Pastor Steven Furtick is a church planter in North Carolina whose church has grown from a small handful of people to over 1600 in the past 2 years says this about being told you can't do it...

"Don’t you think every mammoth concept was downright laughable until it was a reality? Inherent in any vision that has the possibility of really taking off is the possibility of really tanking, right? Do you even think that maybe if people aren’t laughing at your ideas, you aren’t dreaming big enough?

George Bernard Shaw once said, "Some men see things as they are and say "why?" I see things that never were, and say "Why not?"

May God give me the wisdom to look at my situation and say "why not?", and not settle for the inferior answer of "NO."

Read more...

Spring Training

Baseball season is once again upon us, and now that I live in Florida, I can't wait to go to the Phillies spring training camp. My parents are coming for a visit next week and I plan on taking my dad to a game or two.

My father and I have always had an affinity for the Phillies. I'm not sure why, because year after year they seem to let us down. They are a team that is filled with talent, but just can't seem to pull it together. Well, maybe this year will be better for them.

Speaking of baseball, I was reading recently that Ty Cobb had a life time batting average of .367. This is a great accomplishment if your a baseball player, but think about it for a moment, a .367 average means that he failed at bat more than he succeeded.

I think it says a lot about how we are to view failure and success. I think too often we view success as getting a hit every time we come to the plate of life, and when it doesn't happen we get upset and stop trying.

If you look at history, however, you'll see that the greatest achievers are the ones who didn't look at life in this way, but looked at success as a journey. Often their journey's were filled with more failures than successes. So what was it that made them successful? They had a way of seeing every failure as part of the road that led them to the ultimate victory in life.

Read more...

Change Needed

I've been taking some time to allow God to search my heart, asking him to show me what needs to change. It's quite a humbling experience when you're serious about this kind of evaluation.

Here's how it works for me. I ask God to search my heart and from that point on, my week begins a downward cycle. The normal wear and tear that we all experience in life goes from a simple inconvenience, to heightened awareness in my life.

I find myself rising to a new consciousness of all the injustice that is making my life so difficult, and by the end of the day I am furiously journaling about all the people, places, and things (ok, scratch the places and things, it's really only people) that need to change in order for my life to be happy again.

From here, I go to bed, and when I awake in the morning, something has changed. The Holy Spirit did something in my heart as I slept, and I realize that my problem is really...me. So somewhere during the night, God pealed back all the layers to show me that the solution lies with me needing to change.

I really hate it when this happens, because it is much easier to point the finger at everyone around you, however, it's life changing when you turn the finger towards yourself.

If you haven't already tried this, do it. I guarantee you'll hate it, but it will put you on an incredible path of change.

Read more...

Courage

One of the most important elements of creativity, leadership and life is courage. I wonder how many really great, even life changing ideas have gone unsaid because of a lack of courage.

I often see this in my own life. A new idea comes to me, I think it through, but often it stays at that conceptual place journeying no further. Why? Perhaps fear of getting laughed at, shot down, openly criticized or just simply not wanting to go through the hassle and debate of trying to sell that idea.

The end result, however, is tragic. My ideas go unplublished, unrecognized, and never considered, which makes me guilty of hiding the gifts that God has afforded me. How selfish and prideful is that?

Imagine for a minute what the results would be if some of the greatest thinkers in the world would not have had the courage to speak. Where would we be in issues like civil rights, world poverty, communism, etc? I know that we have only begun to remove the lid on these things, but the progress we have seen is because people have exercised the courage to speak out about their dreams and ideas.

Edmund Burke wrote; "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing." The true heart of leadership is courage. Courage is standing up in the arena of life and speaking. And when a person doesn't stand up for what they believe, then evil truly has an inroad to prevail.

Read more...