IMMERSE yourself in hope!

In a world where the news organizations and even our government is telling us how bad things are economically, I had a moment of hope for the future I want to share with you.

Yesterday I was invited to be a part of an event sponsored by the Gospel Music Association and I spent about 2 hours at Belmont University in Nashville in an event called IMMERSE. It was designed for hopeful and up and coming songwriters, artists, producers, and people who would like to be in music industry careers.

I was among a group of industry professionals who stood at various "stations" and over 500 of these people mingled among us and stood in line to ask us questions and get advice. I met people from Texas, New York, Florida, Alabama, and other exotic places, looking for answers to fuel their dreams and vision for themselves and others.

Hopefully myself and others gave them ideas, answers, and guidance they can use but let me tell what I saw and heard in these new friends......There is a future and God is there and he is inciting us to move forward and not live in the past and not to be deterred by the current circumstances.....I saw HOPE not fear not despair but pure hope!

There have been challenging times in the past and there will be challenging times in the future but have hope my friends and step into and IMMERSE yourself in the next moment of HOPE God has for you!

here I am discussing digital downloads with a new friend from Cleveland, OH ..........≥

“We have within ourselves

Enough to fill the present day with joy,

And overspread the future years with hope.”
- William Wordsworth

Pondering COMPETENT

com·pe·tent (kŏm'pĭ-tuh nt) noun

1. The state or quality of being adequately or well qualified; ability.
2. A specific range of skill, knowledge, or ability.

I was doing some reading this week by one of my favorite authors Seth Godin on "Survival is not enough" and his observations about change got me pondering the word competent in my life.

Most people like to think that they're competent. Competent people have a predictable, reliable process for solving a particular set of problems. They solve a problem the same way, every time. That's what makes them reliable.

Competent people are proud of the status and success that comes with being competent. They guard their competence, and they work hard to maintain it.

OBSERVATION #1.... competence is the enemy of change!

Don't get me wrong I am one of the first to say let's strive for excellence, quality, and strong work ethic....but can we be too proud of our competence? Can we take it to the point where we actually become mediocre instead because we can't move forward because of our rules, regulations, and wanting to be known as"competent"?

Competent people resist change. Why? Because a new winning strategy threatens to make them less competent. And competent people like being competent. That's who they are, and sometimes that's all they've got.

OBSERVATION #2 .... competence may be holding back my passionate pursuit of life

“It’s rare to meet anyone with a passion for anything,” someone once said.

Passion is indeed a rare commodity in our culture, often considered a “luxury for the young.” But a life of passion and purpose is the cry of every human heart.

I want to live passionately and be a part of changing the world but I also want to be seen as competent? Is that possible?

OBSERVATION #3.... competence can be a tool
in my pursuit of purpose and destiny

We were in God’s imagination before we were ever born. All the talent, gifting, and creativity we possess was placed there by God Himself.

I believe we can find our true purpose and destiny in the pursuit of the passion and character of God.

This revolution in thinking can changes a life of imitation and mediocre "compentency" into one of passion and character that can change the world!

I'm not saying that I have this all together, that I have it made. But I am well on my way, reaching out for Christ, who has so wondrously reached out for me. Friends, don't get me wrong: By no means do I count myself an expert in all of this, but I've got my eye on the goal, where God is beckoning us onward—to Jesus. I'm off and running, and I'm not turning back. Philippians 3:12-14 (The Message)

Be the TRIM-TAB

I really believe that one person who is truly passionate about his or her mission can make a difference in the world. When we look at successful people who have changed the world we often forget that once upon a time they were unknowns with little more than a dream.

You don’t need to become world famous though to make a difference. As Stephen R. Covey puts it, become a trim-tab. A trim-tab on a boat or plane is the small rudder that turns the big rudder that turns the entire ship.

People who are trim-tabs act in such a way that whatever they touch is positively affected by their actions.

This is a choice...I can choose today to be a "trim-tab" or I can choose to not be a part of positive change.

You have the freedom to choose how you respond to whatever happens to you.....it is the space that exists between stimulus and response. It is in this space that your freedom to choose exists. This space will vary in size depending on the occurrence, your biological makeup or your upbringing, but it always exists. That is, you always have a freedom to choose your response.

So, I am encouraging you and myself today, in the big things and small things, the difficult and stressful things....choose to be a trim-tab and guide you and others toward positive change!

I place before you Life and Death, Blessing and Curse. Choose life so that you and your children will live. Deuteronomy 30:19 (The Message)

The QUALITIES

The qualities of specialness and humanity, of passion and remarkability are not accidents. They are designed in our DNA by God.

Then the self preservation factors enter the picture....winning at all cost, greed, self centeredness and control.

Our challenge is we are strongly influenced by self preservation instead of the God factors.

My friend Erwin posed this question to me this week:

If your greatest dream
became your life
would the world be a better place?

I love this question because it changes the focus from self preservation to putting demands on the God image qualities.

My self preservation factors say yes but ultimately fails because it is all about me instead of others. These factors have historically proven to lead to self destructive behavior and obviously do not make the world a better place not even for me.

But my God qualities built in my DNA say YES and mean YES! I can serve and contribute and change and help others and this always increases exponentially the quality of life for others and for me!

Remember, your specialness, your uniqueness, the things you are passionate about and the remarkable ideas you have are the real YOU!

It is absolutely clear that God has called you to a free life. Just make sure that you don't use this freedom as an excuse to do whatever you want to do and destroy your freedom. Rather, use your freedom to serve one another in love; that's how freedom grows. For everything we know about God's Word is summed up in a single sentence: Love others as you love yourself. Galations 5:13 (The Message)

That's the moment....

When you are sitting right on the edge of something daring and scary and creative and powerful and perhaps wonderful... and you blink and take a step back.

That's the moment. The moment between you and remarkable.

What if you knew somewhere in front of you was a moment that would change your life forever?

But whoever catches a glimpse of the revealed counsel of God—the free life!—even out of the corner of his eye, and sticks with it, is no distracted scatterbrain but a man or woman of action. That person will find delight and affirmation in the action. James 1:25 (The Message)

You can lead a COW up stairs but.....

Well, now you have done it - you've led a cow up some stairs, forgetting the basic fact that cows can't walk down stairs!

It is true cows cannot go downstairs because their knees do not bend properly to allow for the descending of stairs. We've all done it - but what to do about it?

Ok we haven't all done it.... but you probably have had or do have a problem where there seems to be no solution?

As humans, we are limited beings. We have no wings, claws, or gills. We are bound by gravity, thermodynamics, and mostly the things we can see, taste, feel, etc.

As a 6-year old child once said when the TV commercial said he could be anything he wanted to be, “That’s not true, you know. You can’t be God. Or a tree.”

Yet when we discuss creativity, we speak as if we were unlimited, as if creativity were all about transcending limits. We speak of limitless imagination, boundless enthusiasm, and infinite possibilities. And we have proven it in so many ways, even though we don't have wings, we have invented a way to fly and even though we don't have gills, we have explored the depths of the seas.

I want to suggest that creativity is not always born in the realm of the infinite but in the realm of the finite – the bounded, the minimized, the limited. And not just that it is the experience of limits that inspires us to be creative in order to overcome them – that’s too easy, too everyday. No, I would propose it is the limits themselves that create creativity.

Creativity arises out of the tension between spontaneity and limitations, the latter (like the river banks) forcing the spontaneity into the various forms. -Rollo May

By the way, back to your cow problem....don't despair, there are some guys who have figured it out.....Bovine Descenders.

Bovine Descenders was formed as a company in 1989, by a group of like-minded individuals who realised their combined 110 years experience of getting cows down stairs could be put to some real use. With cows being led upstairs, either deliberately by people ignorant of the prime cow / stairs principle, or accidentally. Work has come thick and fast, and Bovine Descenders are now the world-wide leader in the getting-cows-down-stairs field.