Max Lucado has given us a collection of short passages that will reaffirm to you how much God values YOU! This book could be a great pick-me-up for you, or a life-saving helper to your friend who is in crisis. Check out my full book review by clicking here.
“Since you are God’s idea, you are a good idea. What God said about Jeremiah, He said about you: ‘Before I made you in your mother’s womb, I chose you. Before you were born, I set you apart for a special work’ (Jeremiah 1:5).”
“God ‘personally formed and made each one’ (Isaiah 43:7 MSG). … And if you aren’t you, we don’t get you. The world misses out.”
“You are a custom design; you are tailor-made. God prescribed your birth. Regardless of the circumstances that surrounded your arrival, you are not an accident. God planned you before you were born. The longings of your heart, then, are not incidental; they are critical messages. The desires of your heart are not to be ignored; they are to be consulted. As the wind turns the weather vane, so God uses your passions to turn your life. God is too gracious to ask you to do something you hate.”
“God never called you to be anyone other than you. But He does call on you to be the best you you can be.”
“God promises no applause for self-promoters. But great reward awaits God promoters: ‘Good work! You did your job well’ (Matthew 25:23 MSG).”
“Don’t confuse God’s love with the love of people. The love of people often increases with performance and decreases with mistakes. Not so with God’s love. He loves you right where you are. He loves you just the way you are, but He refuses to leave you that way.”
“Enough of this self-deprecating ‘I can’t do anything.’ And enough of its arrogant opposite: ‘I have to do everything.’ No, you don’t! You’re not God’s solution to society, but a solution in society.”
“When asked to describe the width of His love, Jesus stretched one hand to the right and the other to the left and had them nailed in that position so you would know He died loving you. But isn’t there a limit? Surely there has to be an end to this love. You think so, wouldn’t you? But David the adulterer never found it. Paul the murderer never found it. Peter the liar never found it. When it came to life, they hit rock bottom. But when it came to God’s love, they never did.”
“There are two extremes of poor I-sight. Self-loving and self-loathing. … Self-elevation and self-deprecation are equally inaccurate. Where is the truth? Smack-dab in the middle. Dead center between ‘I can do anything’ and ‘I can’t do anything’ lies ‘I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me’ (Philippians 4:13). … Not self-secure or insecure, but God-secure—a self-worth based in our identity as children of God. The proper view of self is in the middle.”
“Each time we do our best to thank God for giving His, we worship.”
This is a weekly series with things I’m reading and pondering from Oswald Chambers. You can read the original seed thought here, or type “Thursdays With Oswald” in the search box to read more entries.
Passion For Souls
You hear people say that Paul showed his wonderful breath of mind, his culture and generosity, his gentleness and patience, by becoming all things to all men [1 Corinthians 9:22]. He did nothing of the sort; he said, “I am become all things to all men” for one purpose only—“that I may by all means save some.” He did not say, “I became all things to all men that I might show what a wonderful being I am.” There is no thought of himself in the whole matter.
The phrase “a passion for souls” is a dangerous one; a passion for souls may be either a diseased lust or a Divine life. Let me give you a specimen of it as a diseased lust—“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are” (Matthew 23:15). …
But have we got clearly in our minds what the passion for souls as a Divine life is? Read James 5:19-20: “My brothers, if one of you should wander from the truth and someone should bring him back, remember this: Whoever turns a sinner from the error of his way will save him from death and cover over a multitude of sins.” …
God grant we may understand that the passion for souls is not a placid, scientifically worked-out thing, it compresses all the energy of heart and brain and body in one consuming drive, day and night from the beginning of life to the end—a consuming, fiery, living passion. …
God grant we may understand that the mainspring of our passion for souls must be a personal, passionate devotion to the Lord Jesus Christ.
From Workmen Of God
The root of our passion really does make a difference in our Christian activity. Is my passion to make converts so that people can say, “Look what a good guy he is”? Or is my passion to save a soul from death so that people can say, “Look what a great God He is”?
Fellow Christian, I pray our passion is always the latter.
I had an amazing time last week at the Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit. Every year I came away with some many thoughts, and a brand new passion for the various leadership roles in which I get to serve.
Below are just a few of my notes that I jotted down during an intense two days.
Bill Hybels—The Lens Of Leadership
“Everybody wins when a leader gets better.”
“Armed with enough humility, leaders can learn from anyone.”
Hybels discussed four leadership lenses:
1. Passionate leader (depicted by vibrant bright red frames)
2. People leader (cool frames, but cracked lenses)
3. Performance leader (self-adjusting glasses)
4. Legacy leader (sunglasses with a rearview mirror [cyclist])
Alan Mulally—CEO Boeing and Ford Motor Company
An average commercial airline has 4 million parts!
Melinda Gates—Gates Foundation
Melinda says of herself, “I am an impatient optimist. We are changing the world, but we need to change it faster.”
“At the end of the day, you have to hear the cries of those in need, let your heart break and act in courage.”
Jossy Chacko—Empart
“All of us have been entrusted with something. What are we doing to leverage it?”
In thinking about the parable of the talents … “To Jesus, faithfulness is not just sitting with what you have been given, but multiplying what you have been given. God’s mission is not maintaining.”
“Playing it safe is not enough for a follower of Jesus Christ.”
Three principles for expanding our leadership reach:
2. Empower your people
3. Embrace risk
Dr. Travis Bradberry—TalentSmart
All inputs into the brain travel through the limbic system first (emotional center) before the inputs travel to the frontal cortex. The EI (emotional intelligence) center is in the front of the brain, just above the left eye.
Only 36% of people are able to accurately identify their emotions as they happen.
EQ (the Emotional Quotient that measures emotional intelligence) is not IQ.
EQ can be improved all throughout life.
Four components of emotional intelligence:
1. Self-awareness: knowing my emotions, and knowing my tendencies. I need to lean into my discomfort if I want to improve.
2. Self-management: what I do with this increased self-awareness. This is not “stuffing” my feelings. The biggest mistake is only trying to manage negative emotions; positive emotions need to be managed too.
3. Social awareness: focusing more on others than on myself.
4. Relationship management: using the first three skills in concert. Seeing how my behavior is affecting the other person, and then adjusting accordingly.
How to increase my EQ:
Three qualities of an ideal team player:
1. Humble
2. Hungry
3. Smart
“To develop people, we have to have the courage to humbly and constantly talk to people about their ‘stuff.’”
Chris McChesney—Franklin Covey
Rahm Charan asked:
“The hardest thing a leader will ever do is drive a strategy that changes someone’s behavior.”
There are four disciplines for making changes in human behavior:
1. Focus
2. Leverage
3. Engagement
4. Accountability
On The Culture Map communication is divided into Low vs. High Context:
Anglo-Saxon countries are typically low context.
Latin American are mid-low.
Asian countries are usually high context.
In low context we tend to nail things down in writing, where in high context we leave things more open to later interpretation.
“Context impacts communication. … We need to read both the messages ‘in the air’ as well as the explicitly stately messages.”
“In a high context culture, repeat things less, ask more questions, learn to ‘read the air.’”
“Good leaders lift.”
“You have to find the people before you lead the people.”
“The one thing leaders have to get right—they must intentionally add value to people every day.”
Five things that intentionally adds value to people:
If you attended the GLS, please share in the comments below something amazing / challenging / paradigm-busting that you learned. Let’s all keep on learning!
This is a weekly series with things I’m reading and pondering from Oswald Chambers. You can read the original seed thought here, or type “Thursdays With Oswald” in the search box to read more entries.
What Does Your Religion Mean?
To believe is literally to commit. Belief is a moral act, and Jesus makes an enormous demand of a man when He asks him to believe in Him. To be “a believer in Jesus” means to bank our confidence in Him, to stake our soul upon His honor. …
Many of us use religious jargon, we talk about believing in God, but our actual life proves that we do not really believe one tithe of what we profess. … “The unsearchable riches of Christ”—yet we often live as if our Heavenly Father had cut us off with a shilling! We think it is a sign of real modesty to say at the end of a day—“Oh well, I have just got through, but it has been a severe tussle.” We carry our religion as if it were a headache, there is neither joy nor power nor inspiration in it, none of the grandeur of the unsearchable riches of Christ about it, none of the passion of hilarious confidence in God. …
Christianity is the vital realization of the unsearchable riches of Christ. …
We have made Christianity to mean the saving of our skins. Christianity means staking ourselves on the honor of Jesus; His honor means that He will see us through time, death and eternity. …
Why do you pray? Why are you religious? Because of a consuming passion for a particular set of your beliefs to be enthroned and proved right, or because of a consuming passion for Jesus Christ?
From The Place Of Help
Wow, those are excellent questions to consider—What do I think Christianity really is? Do I really believe what Jesus did for me, or is it just jargon I use? Am I consumed in my passion for Christ, or is it only something I profess when things are going my way?
“If my prayers are listless and unimpassioned, perhaps they reveal a heart that is self-assured and content with itself.” —T.M. Moore
“Our joy does not just rise from the backward glance in gratitude. It also rises from the forward glance in hope. In the end, the heart longs not for any of God’s good gifts, but for God Himself. To see Him and know Him and be in His presence is the soul’s final feast.” —John Piper
Fellas, this is a pretty good list: 10 ways to romance your wife. And both husbands and wives should check out The Secret Enemy in Your Marriage.
“The key to spiritual growth isn’t increased church attendance or involvement in spiritual activities. People don’t grow in Christ because they’re busy at church. They grow in Christ when they read and trust their Bibles.” Read more in Max Lucado’s post: Key To Spiritual Growth.
Carly Fiorina is so right about the Iran deal and Planned Parenthood. And what I love is that she links both of them to the moral foundation of the United States of America. Check out this 90-second video clip.
These words of Charles Spurgeon are gripping. Especially the questions at the end…
But when we continue in our sin, when we laugh at what God disallows, we do indeed laugh at Jesus hanging on that Cross.
“See Him; like a cart pressed down with sheaves He goes through the streets of Jerusalem. Well may you weep, daughters of Jerusalem, though He bids you dry your tears; they hoot Him as He walks along bowed beneath the load of His own Cross which was the emblem of your sin and mine. They have brought Him to Golgotha. They throw Him on his back, they stretch out His hands and His feet. The accursed iron penetrates the tenderest part of His body, where most the nerves do congregate. They lift up the Cross. O bleeding Savior, Thy time of woe has come! They dash it into the socket with rough hands; the nails are tearing through His hands and feet. He hangs in extremity, for God has forsaken Him; His enemies persecute and take Him, for there is none to deliver Him. They mock His nakedness; they point at His agonies. They look and stare upon Him with ribald jests; they insult His griefs, and make puns upon His prayers. He is now indeed a worm and no man, crushed till you can think scarcely that there is divinity within. The fever gets hold upon Him. His tongue is dried up like a potsherd, and He cries, ‘I thirst!’ Vinegar is all they yield Him; the sun refuses to shine, and the thick midnight darkness of that awful mid-day is a fitting emblem of the tenfold midnight of His soul. Out of that thick horror He cries ‘My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?’ Then, indeed, was He pressed down! O there was never sorrow like unto His sorrow. All human griefs found a reservoir in His heart, and all the punishment of human guilt spent itself upon His body and His soul. O shall sin ever be a trifle to us? Shall I ever laugh at that which made Him groan?” —Charles Spurgeon
“God is not merely mending, not simply restoring a status quo. Redeemed humanity is to be something more glorious than unfallen humanity would have been, more glorious than any unfallen race now is (if at this moment the night sky conceals any such). The greater the sin, the greater the mercy: the deeper the death, the brighter the re-birth.” —C.S. Lewis
“Zeal for God feeds itself upon the thought of the eternal future. It looks with tearful eyes down to the flames of Hell and it cannot slumber: it looks up with anxious gaze to the glories of Heaven, and it cannot but bestir itself. Zeal for God thinks of death, and hears the hoofs of the white horse with the skeleton rider close behind. Zeal for God feels that all it can do is little compared with what is wanting, and that time is short compared with the work to be done, and therefore it devotes all that it has to the cause of its Lord.” —Charles Spurgeon
“For those who know the sound of a Goliath, David gives us this reminder: Focus on giants—you stumble. Focus on God—your giants tumble.” —Max Lucado
Frank Viola has some excellent thoughts for Christians to respond to the narrative of the culture.
Fight The New Drug shares the results of a survey of pornography actresses, that shows their lifestyles are highly unhealthy compared to the general population. Read the full article here. Here is the important takeaway: If you are watching porn, you are keeping these young ladies in bondage to these destructive habits.
Jeffrey Kranz at the Overview Bible Project has a great infographic to help us all understand why publishers sometimes change an English translation of the Bible. (And while you’re there, check out all the other great resources on the Overview site.)
This is an astounding video clip from John Piper! Please soak up this powerful 2-minute snippet…
I love when he says, “Too many Christians are fighting graduate school sins with a grammar school knowledge of God.” You can find the link to watch Piper’s entire sermon by clicking here.