I Believe, Too

I spoke with a friend today whose husband is stationed overseas on military duty. The anguish in her voice was palpable as she shared with me the burden she carries here while her husband, her best friend fights for our freedom across the ocean. With all my heart I wanted to make all her heartache go away, to bring her husband home so she wouldn't have to see the pain in the eyes of their four children as they live day after long day with his absence. I wanted to fix it so she wouldn't have to face another sleepless night in their empty bed, praying that he would still be okay when she wakes up in the morning.

But all I could do was listen and cry with her, never once pretending to understand what she feels. And I prayed for His grace to surround her.

God's grace is a crazy thing. It becomes to each of us whatever it is we so desperately need and it surrounds us and carries us when we don't see how we can make it another step. We just have to fling ourselves out there in it, letting it carry us wherever He wills. Easy to say. Hard to do. I pray His grace today to military families and I thank Him for a selflessness that I do not understand but that brings Him such unspeakable delight. I pray His grace for those who fight and defend and for their families who wait and believe. I believe, too.

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If You've Never Failed...

You've Never Lived!

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The Seeing

Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God;
But only he who sees takes off his shoes;
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.

I have written many posts on this blog about taking risks, exploring unknown places and launching the proverbial boat towards deep waters. And I have meant every word I have written as I feel passionately about not settling for status quo. That being said, I have been thinking a great deal about air travel and the altitudes at which different aircraft fly. And I want to share some thoughts that I have about this in relation to the topic of risk-taking.

Different aircraft are assigned particular altitudes based on a number of factors; direction, distance being flown, and the size of the plane. The ideal altitude for each craft is the one that has them flying most efficiently and thus using less fuel. Passenger jets typically fly between 31,000 and 37,000 feet. Smaller business jets operate up to 45,000 feet. And the Concorde has flown as high as 51,000 impressive feet, a height at which one can often see the curvature of the earth. Air traffic controllers determine when, where, and how high planes will fly based on all of these factors with the goal of getting people where they need to be safely, efficiently and without hurting others in the process.

My point here is that risk for the sake of risk is a life of madness. Risk for the sake of obedience to God is life at it's very best. And risk looks different for each individual. Some will be required, in the tradition of Star Trek, "to boldly go where no man has gone before", to hit the heights of the Concorde. For some, the greatest risk will be to stay the course, cruising at a normal altitude, when running off impulsively is easier. No one can define what is risk for another. Some will see risk and call it irresponsible while others will view a sound decision and say it lacks the vitality of adventure. Only the person taking the next step, in harmony with the heart of God, is capable of making that call. One thing is most certain...we were all created for high adventure, for ardent, technicolor living, and for, as Mark Batterson calls it, "refusing to allow your human responsibilities to get in the way of pursuing the passions God puts in your heart." Technicolor living is the full embrace of your own life, wrapping one arm securely around whatever risks He calls you to take and wrapping the other arm tightly around the beautiful mundaneness of the everyday. The ability to see the heaven and the fire that is right in front of you only happens when you are seeing your life through His eyes. The key is in the seeing.

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Dust Buster

Last night I saw 75-year-old grandma do stand up comedy, a 35-year-old cancer survivor sing opera like an angel and a nine-year-old electric guitar player who made my chin drop. I am NOT a fan of reality television but I caught a few minutes of America's Got Talent last night and I went to bed feeling inspired. The world is full of people who say "you can't" every day. Bruce Wilkinson, author of The Dream Giver, calls these people border bullies. And because most border bullies are well-meaning people who cling faithfully to the obviously attainable, they can be very convincing as they seek to keep dreamers "grounded".

But I love seeing people at least try to go somewhere that others say is impossible. That show may be a vehicle I would not necessarily choose, but I love to see a dreamer step out of the everyday to shoot for an extraordinary moment. I have a teenage son who dreams some pretty big dreams and I am not about to tie his feet to the ground. Someone's son has to grow up to be the rock star...why not mine? The world is full of nay-sayers, and disappointment and circumstances alone will challenge hopes and threaten dreams--why should I stand on my own child's border and ask "why?" when I can shout "why not! "I believe one of my strengths is helping people, my own sons included, to dare to believe they can do whatever they love. There are too many people getting paid to do what they don't love while their passions sit on a shelf and collect dust. And I love to do some dusting and see people really love their lives and pursue their passions!

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Are You Willing To Risk It?

I found this video of a dance tribe forming on Seth's blog this past week. This is a pretty typical group dynamic...once more than a few people join in something, people come in droves to do the very same. But as I watched the first strange man dancing all alone, and in a most bizarre way, I couldn't help but admire his freedom. The truth is, when you act in a way that is different from the norm, people will gawk and laugh and point. Many will feel very uncomfortable with your freedom and your willingness to express it. Others will feel contempt and usually that is because they secretly wish they had that kind of nerve and rather than be challenged by it, they will judge it instead and usually loud enough for others to hear.

Obeying God is just like this video. At times, you are going to look crazy and unstable in all of your ways. It could be that your actions start a revolution and, in time, others will be running to do what you had to work up the nerve to do. But sometimes you will dance alone. It is a risk of obedience. Are you willing to risk it?

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Faith, Abandonment and Other Easy Things

"I may not understand what Jesus Christ says, but it is dangerous to say that therefore He was mistaken in what He said. It is never right to think that my obedience to a word of God will bring dishonor to Jesus. The only thing that will bring dishonor is not obeying Him. To put my view of His honor in place of what He is plainly impelling me to do is never right, although it may arise from a real desire to prevent Him being put to open shame." -Oswald Chambers

I have been thinking about these words from Oswald Chambers that I read in my devotion yesterday. When the leading of God conflicts with our understanding of God we are left questioning how well we really know God. You may ask yourself, "How can this possibly be the voice of God? This doesn't make sense and either God is going to look foolish or I am." I love the above passage from My Utmost For His Highest because it puts in proper perspective this debate in which we sometimes find ourselves. We must never put our view in place of His direction in our lives. This is easy to give voice to but excruciating at times to do. What makes it even harder is when you are concerned that your obedience will tarnish His reputation in the eyes of people you lead, maybe even your own children. And that is where faith must kick in.

Chambers goes on to say that "Faith is not intelligent understanding, faith is deliberate commitment to a Person where I see no way." Absolute, unquestioning obedience requires total abandonment of self which is so much more than lip service to a particular creed. It doesn't just ask for involvement, it requires an absorption of who you are into Who He is.
So, no matter how out of place or uncomfortable His leading in your life may be, your only response should be complete trust and unwavering confidence that He can handle the resulting consequences of your obedience. I don't know about you but I wrestle with this. And sometimes, it is just not pretty. But when it is all said and done, I can't help but come back to the simple truth of an old hymn "I once was lost but now am found; was blind but now I see." He changed me from who I was to who I am. And using the language of a changed life, He can speak for Himself.

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Good to Great-Gretzky Style

It is my sincere desire to be a woman upon whom God can depend to be "tuned in" to what He is saying and where He is heading.  In Genesis 41, Joseph was listening to God and perceiving what He was saying to His people at that time.  His keen perception of God's plan for upcoming events informed the leadership of a nation and people were spared from starvation.  

Jesus was the greatest perceiver of the heart of God (since He was pretty tight in the Trinity) and in John chapter 6  He "perceives that they were intending to come and take Him by force to make Him king so He withdrew again to the mountain by Himself alone."   His actions were determined by the way in which God led Him, knowing, at least in part, what was just up ahead.  

It is those times in my life when I feel hopelessly out of step with where He is headed that I feel the most frustration.  I know the Word says that we see in part and know in part (1 Cor 13) but there are clear Biblical examples of those who were great players because they were playing where the puck was going to be.  I want to live as Joseph lived- listening, believing and speaking boldly, anticipating where God is going to be and thus making a difference to a generation.

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Contagious Generosity

Tim Sanders blog yesterday on giving was inspiring.  I have always enjoyed his teaching on the abundance mentality versus the scarcity mentality.  You can read more about this in his book, Love Is the Killer App...a truly worthwhile read on business but its lessons go far beyond the business world.

Anyway, my husband and I have always enjoyed giving to others, most especially secret giving.  I really should have been Santa Claus for the big kick I get out of giving.  We heard a teaching on giving many years ago that taught us to sow into fields where we ourselves have need.  When we were striving to pay off student loans and our little amount was not enough, we would sow what we had into someone else who was struggling to do the same.  "If it's not enough to meet the need, consider it seed."  Great axiom to live by.

As I talked yesterday about running from the "doom and gloom" discouragement that is all around us, I can think of no better way to dispel such a cloud than by contagious generosity.  Give money to someone who needs it, speak life to someone who is down to their last hope, offer practical service to a person who has nowhere to turn for the meeting of a need.  Contagious generosity.  It works.  And the residue of hope it leaves in your own life is beautiful indeed.

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Get Paid For Your Passion

I think I have already mentioned that I have been reading Seth Godin's most recent book, Tribes, and it is really speaking to me where I am.  One sentence in particular grabbed my attention.  Seth says,

 "Instead of wondering when your next vacation is, maybe you ought to set up a life you don't need to escape from."  

  Godin asserts that the people who love what they do and are eager to get to work each day are people who are affecting change in their sphere of influence.  'They challenge the status quo and push something forward-something they believe in.  They lead."  Many people get up each day and head to jobs where they are working to help someone else accomplish their hopes/dreams/goals.  How many of us are getting paid to "do" the desire of our own heart?  

One of the things I love to do when I get the opportunity to speak to a group of leaders is encourage them to allow the desires of their heart to be resurrected that they might begin living from the overflow of those dreams and desires.  Most folks are taught to get a good job with great benefits and retirement.  I am telling people to make smart financial decisions but live your dreams.  If you are college age or younger, get in touch with your heart and discover what keeps you up at night, where your passion is.  Then figure out how to get paid to do that.  It may take some time and require paying a few dues, but you really can live, and get paid for, the passion in your heart.  If you are further along in life, but disappointed with where you are, it is NOT too late to get paid for your passion.  You just have to take that first step.

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Risky Business

Following God can be risky business.  Sometimes the thrill of adventure is exhausting and I just want to take a little nap and pretend I'm not hanging out on a limb.  Sloths eat, sleep, and even give birth while hanging from tree limbs and I have never understood that as "hanging" anywhere is not comfortable for me.  But you do get used to the view and you even begin thinking, after a while, that you might just be hugging a small space forever. I reminded myself today that I am not a sloth, but a daughter with a destiny and that this "hanging" is not a permanent condition.  Oftentimes I don't listen well to my own advice.  I am great at giving pep-talks to others but I am not a good listener when I am the only one in the conversation.  This is one of those times when I find myself yelling my own words in my own ears, hoping like crazy that they will penetrate my heart.  I am reminded that when Peter stepped out of the boat onto the water, he was fine until he began looking at what was around him.  Taking your eyes off of the face of God is never a good idea.  Why do our eyes like to wander so?  Why does the heart doubt what the head knows so well?  When will I ever be like my friend, Jesus, who could sleep so peacefully in the middle of a raging storm?  Someday.  Someday.  

If you,too, are finding yourself hanging in an uncomfortable place for an uncomfortable amount of time, just know that you are not alone.  And it is not forever.  And He will never, ever leave you alone.

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Counting the Cost

It is hard when your obedience to God is costly to others. It is one thing to walk out the consequences yourself but it is another thing entirely when you see what it costs others. It hurts and it causes you to question yourself. Did I really hear Him? Am I crazy? No. You are not crazy. It just hurts and there is nothing you can do but walk in obedience and trust the rest to Him. Oswald Chambers said this: "If we obey God, He will look after those who have been pressed into the consequences of our obedience. We have simply to obey and to leave all consequences to Him."
But most of us are not good at leaving things to Him. He is teaching me to leave it with Him, to count the cost and to trust. Is He teaching you this same thing?

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The Way He Has Chosen

I love the quiet comfort of my house early in the morning before everyone else wakes up. The luxury of having unhurried and uninterrupted moments with God is like a gift box in your lap wrapped in really expensive paper that is way outside your budget with the kind of bow that you could never have tied yourself and so you just want to sit and hold it a while and not rush through the process of getting to what is inside.

In recent weeks I felt the Lord pulling me back to the classic book, Hinds' Feet on High Places, which I have read at least eight times over the past eighteen years but which never fails to speak something of great value to my heart. I have been working through it slowly during my devotional time, savoring it like an expensive meal in a fine restaurant. The other day I read this passage: "Will you bear this too, Much-Afraid? Will you suffer yourself to lose or to be deprived of all you have gained on this journey to the High Places? Will you go down this path into the Valley of Loss, just because it is the way I have chosen for you? Will you still trust and still love Me?"

What is my answer to that question? There are turns in the path with Him where He brings you to a place that overlooks the Valley of Loss and you must consider if you really are willing to follow Him into something that appears crazy and that places all that you have gained so far onto the altar of sacrifice. Many in the audience of your life might even judge you and ridicule you for taking such a direction and, as for applause...well, there will be none of that. Will I allow Him to break the reverie of my daily living to pose such a question to me? Will you?

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Get This!

Mark Batterson's new book, Wild Goose Chase, is out and you have to get it. It will challenge you to live big and outside of the box and, as you know, I am a huge fan of big, adventurous living. I absolutely loved his book In A Pit With A Lion On A Snowy Day, but this one is even better. Here is a little taste:

A part of us feels as if something is spiritually wrong with us when we experience circumstantial uncertainty. But that is precisely what Jesus promised us when we are born of the Spirit and start following Him. Most of us will have no idea where we are going most of the time. And I know that is unsettling. But circumstantial uncertainty also goes by another name: adventure.


I love that! Winston Churchill once said, "Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice; it is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved." This is what Christianity was meant to be, not the boring, status quo for which so many people settle. The heroes and heroines of Scripture went where God took them even when they didn't see the whole picture.
I could go on and on forever...just get this book and read it.

For more on this book click here.
Or click here.

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Don't Die WIth This!

In his book, 9 Things You Simply Must Do, Dr. Henry Cloud said this, “One of the worst things you can die with is potential. Die with failures before you die with potential. Potential is something to be realized, not guarded and protected.”

I love that movie, Last Holiday, starring Queen Latifah. I love that book of possibilities that she makes because I made one just like it when I was about ten years old. I liked being able to turn the pages and look at pictures of the things I dreamed I could have and be when I grew up. Thirty years later I don’t have everything that I put in that book all those years ago, but I have a lot of it. And tomorrow, I am going to keep working on the rest of it, using up every ounce of potential that I have been given.

I know I talk a great deal about dreams and risk, potential and living “big”. I really believe all this stuff I write. I figure that, like that old song said, if I shoot for the moon and miss, I will land among the stars.

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The "F" Word

“Oh, no she didn’t!!” No, actually, I am speaking of failure. Over the years I have come to regard failure as a friend…a friend and an excellent teacher. So many fear failure and view it as the “scarlet letter” that marks them for life. On the contrary, failure can prepare you and equip you for life, but only if you allow it to do so. We should always play to win, but when we do lose, we can learn from it and let it strengthen the fiber of who we are. Are you afraid of failure today…has it gripped you and caused you to stop moving forward? . The only people who never fail are the ones who do nothing. Take off on a run, friend, and don’t look back.

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The Impossible

Alice laughed. “There’s no use trying”, she said. “One can’t believe impossible things.” “I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes, I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

The Queen’s words to Alice in Lewis Carroll's "Through the Looking Glass”

It seems to me that many have lost the capacity to believe. Most of those who serve in positions of governmental leadership don’t believe in all that the founding fathers laid down as our very foundation. In our society, we don’t even believe that humans can wait until marriage to be physically intimate; we have reduced the fabric of humanity to the stuff of which animals are made. Our urges control us and therefore we must give our children birth control to take the place of self-control. How have we arrived here? What happened to believing that we can be what we were created to be, the very image of the living God? That now being the fabric of our society, how can we then believe that we are capable of doing anything that does not appear naturally within our reach? Much of what God desires for us is too great, too impossible, and too far-reaching for our natural abilities and so we settle for what is base and minimal because it is all we think we can attain.

In his book, Sex God, Rob Bell says, “If your energies don’t go into a few, select disciplined pursuits that you are passionate about and are willing to give your life to, then they’ll dissipate into all sorts of urges and cravings that won’t even begin to bring the joy that the “one thing” could.” In America, we teach our children to grow up and make a living instead of making a life, to settle instead of search, to passively accept insignificant things rather than passionately pursue the “One Thing”.

We must not allow ourselves to be lulled by such small thinking. We must regularly remind ourselves that those things we allow to be buried deep within us by the cares of this world are the big, impossibilities that God actually wants for us. What about you? Are you believing impossible things? I have a half hour…I think I am going to get started.

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For Those Who Dare to Dream...Part 2

If you are contemplating your big dream or maybe just another dream in a succession of “God dreams”, then consider this:

“Your dream lies in the direction of an overwhelming obstacle. If you go toward it today,
you will bring God honor. And you will experience a life marked by miracles as God inter-
venes on your behalf.”

This is an excerpt from Bruce Wilkinson’s book The Dream Giver. If you are considering a big launch in the direction of your dream, I strongly recommend this book to you. I read this little book five years ago at the time of death of one of our big dreams. It was a crucial time as I considered the cost of the launch while I swam about in the deep waters where my boat had sunk. But land was a short swim away and another launch towards another dream was just around the corner. Life is like that if you dare to trust His plan and you believe that your destiny lies in the palm of His hand.
Dwight L. Moody was one of the biggest risk-takers of the nineteenth century and this was written about him by his own son:

It may be safely said that in the beginning of all his greatest and most successful efforts he
stood alone, acting against the advice of those best able, apparently, to judge of the matter-
with the one exception of his most valued human advisor…his wife.

This is not to say that Godly counsel is to be disregarded. On the contrary, you must take such counsel to your place of meeting with God and allow Him to show you truth. But once you have heard from God, my friend, then run towards your dream and trust that He will see you through. There is just nothing like it! On your mark, get set…..GO!!

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For Those Who Dare to Dream...

I must tell you that lately I have been investing much of my private thoughts in the arena of dreams. More specifically, my dreams, but also about this whole process of realizing the big dreams that our big God gives to His children. I have a Bill Johnson quote on my desk that I read every day: “Why would anyone want to get up in the morning and not shape the course of world history?” I love that!! I love it because I know that this happens even when we are obeying God in the seemingly mundane tasks of life. Even there we are changing the course of history through our obedience to Him in the routine moments of our lives.
But there are also seasons of radical obedience, or at least that is how some would see it. You know those times, when God asks you to do something that will cause those around you to scratch their heads and say, “You are going to do what??!” I am sure there must be something wrong with me, but I LOVE the deep waters because it is there that I see God do what He will never do in the safety of ankle-deep. What has always bothered me is the inevitability of being misunderstood by those that you love. This rips me up. It hurts to have friends look at you and call you a flake or ask you when you will ever be really happy and just “stay put”. God has taught me that His pleasure over our acts of obedience way outshines the dark clouds of misunderstanding and that being misunderstood is inevitable when we launch out into deep waters.
So what about your horizon? Any deep waters just up ahead for you? My next blog will give you courage to just launch out!

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