This weekend at Mountainview I taught on the first part of the Lord's Prayer: "Our Father ..." To help us understand the nature of our new relationship with God as Father, I turned to Ephesians 1:4-6: "Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure. So we praise God for the glorious grace he has poured out on us who belong to his dear Son (NLT)" We often describe our salvation experience as being "born again" and rightly so (cf., John 3:3, 1 Peter 1:23). Through faith in Jesus, we receive a new life -- a second chance. We speak of the old life…
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When it comes to living a life of purpose, filled with passion, and one that makes a difference ... it's important that we are asking ourselves the right questions. Ask the wrong questions, get the wrong answers. Ask no questions, get no answers. That all seems pretty simple but most of us realize how easy it is to drift aimlessly through life. With that in mind, here are three questions to start with: Who do you want to be remembered by? What do you hope they will remember about you? Who else and why? For great resources on continued personal growth and for a free life plan tool, visit Building Champions.
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As parents, we have a wonderful opportunity to speak into the lives of our children at crucial times. Our words carry the power of life; they can also create wounds that may last a lifetime. We have always spoken to our girls in terms of "when you go to college" instead of "if you go to college." In this way, it becomes an expected next step in life. It also reinforces our belief in their capabilities and potential. It's part of creating a culture of positive expectation. When talking about taking a family vacation to Europe or Hawaii, we often joke that "when you become a big-short attorney you can take all four of us." I have no assumption either girl will be an attorney (nor do I really want them to be), but it's another way of conveying to them ... "You are capable of great things." As a…
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This falls under the category of "Why didn't I know this before now?" I just learned tonight that you can enable a feature in Microsoft Word that scores your document in terms of readability. I pasted in a blog entry and was amazed at how it breaks things down. To learn more, visit this page at Microsoft. Hat tip to Angel Tuccy for passing this along.
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In 1999, I co-founded a company with a few other guys with the intention of helping non-profits raise money online. Having lived in the non-profit world for all of my adult life (serving as a pastor), I was intimately aware of how non-profits had great missions and little money. I was a bit of a romantic: the goal was to set aside 10% of our revenue to go towards church planting. Unfortunately, we made no money. Shortly after shutting that down, I went to work for the first iteration of Christianity.com (now on its third or fourth owners). At the beginning we had all the Starbucks coffee and Krispy Kreme donuts we could handle. At the end, it was "bring your own coffee and napkins." After a fun ride, I was eventually laid off. After that I went into a period of doing contract work for a law firm handling…
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