You are a HUGE story!

If you don’t know the trees you may be lost in the forest, but if you don’t know the stories you may be lost in life. —Siberian Elder

People listen to stories and remember them. They often impact us in a way that other forms of teaching don’t. Maybe that’s why such a large part of our culture and beliefs are tied to stories....i.e. films, books, the Bible....

Stories have depth and multiple dimensions; they help us create human connections in a world that seems very complex.

When stories come to you, care for them. And learn to give them away where they are needed. Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive. 

—Barry Lopez

 
Stories give us context; they can help us bridge gaps and heal wounds. Stories reveal our beliefs and the lenses through which we view our world; and as such, our stories shape our experience and the future that will unfold.

Without authentic stories we are disconnected from a unifying purpose, vision, context, community or core value.

The destiny of the world is determined less by the battles that are lost and won than by the stories it loves and believes in. —Harold Goddard

The same is true for us individually — by reciting the same stories again and again, we maintain the same patterns of experience.

If you keep telling the same sad small story, you will keep living the same sad small life. —Jean Houston

What is your story? Do you keep telling the same one over and over and it seems life never changes?

Could it be that because we can only believe where we are now and not what God has for our future, we are stuck in our small story?

"How can I picture God's kingdom for you? What kind of story can I use? It's like a pine nut that a man plants in his front yard. It grows into a huge pine tree with thick branches, and eagles build nests in it."

Luke 13:18 (The Message)

Your and my story are a lot alike.....we start as a pine nut but the story God wants us to grow into is HUGE!

WHAT HAPPENED?!!!

WHAT HAPPENED? 

YOUR KIDDING RIGHT?

We live in a world with constant changes. At times, we are thrown into circumstances beyond our control that force drastic and life-altering changes upon us. Thrown headlong into such challenging situations, can make it seemingly impossible to cope with the changes  imposed by these special circumstances.

This past week I have been dealing with an unforeseen and uncontrollable circumstance.  It was out of the blue...unexpected...and very frustrating and disappointing. 

So, after I realized I had to go on (I could not sit and stare into space forever or could I?) :-)....

I did 6 things:


1.  I prayed....I know that the circumstance was not a surprise to God and that no matter how out of control I felt at the moment, He was in control and knew what I should do.....I asked for wisdom.

2.  I contacted the source and found out what happened and why so I had all the facts and details.

3.  I delivered the bad news to the other people the situation would affect.  For some reason I had a leadership quote from Colin Powell stuck in my head: 

Bad news is NOT like wine....it does not get better with age.

4.  I starting dealing with the changes this circumstance had not yet caused but was about to.....as much as I could....I know there will be things I still do not see that will happen but I needed to prepare for the changes as much as possible.

5.  I talked to people I trust and to other people who are being impacted by the situation.  This was enlightening and encouraging.

6.  With our team and the facts we started looking for a creative solution.

Now a week later, here is what I know; 

1.  There is no solution yet but we are a lot closer than if I had sat and wallowed in self pity and given up.
 
2.  There are few things better than how God meets us through people.  
 
3.  The mission and vision haven't changed or been accomplished so we must keep going.

Why am I telling you this?  Because whatever is happening to you at this moment...the crisis, the uncontrollable circumstance, the helpless feeling you find yourself in....it is not the end.  

Don't give up.  Take a deep breath ask God for help, courage, people to help, and creative solutions.

Don't fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. Before you know it, a sense of God's wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It's wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life. Philippians 4:6-7 (The Message)

This is your moment....step into it.

 

 

Furcifers unite for a better world!

Forks were first used in the Middle Ages, but eating with one was considered scandalous.

While forks were a regular feature on the tables of nobles in Italy since the 11th Century, and used in France in the 14th Century, it was introduced in England only in 1611 by Thomas Coryat through his book “Coryat’s Curdities” He was mocked about promoting the use of forks and called “Furcifer,” meaning fork-bearer or also referring to a type of Chameleon lizard that has a fork marking on it.

So what did people eat with before using forks? They used wooden spoons, knifes and, of course, their hands.

Sound familiar?  I think human nature is interesting, we get used to something and avoid change at all cost and our first reaction seems to mocking, calling names, and possibly creating superstitions instead of using and utilizing new methods, products, and inventions to create a better future. Our history is full of these stories; someone invents or discovers something - it is ridiculed and banned from culture - then it is adopted and the world embraces a new and possibly better way of doing things. 

“Innovation is the ability to see change as an opportunity - not a threat”  -Albert Einstei

The proverbial "fork in the road" which leads to two questions:

1.  Is there something you have "written off" because of your fear of change? pause for a moment and reconsider.

2.  Is there some art, invention, or thought process you can bring to the world to make it a better place even though there is a possibility you may be mocked and criticized? (You might be called something worse than a "furcifer"!)

 It takes courage to pause, think and admit there could be a better way. It takes courage to assume nothing is sacred or out of bounds for replacement or change – AND it takes big courage to make big changes.

I applied my heart to what I observed and learned a lesson from what I saw -Proverbs 24:32 (NIV)

Going to Minneapolis!

If you are in the Minneapolis area this week and are looking for a great conference to attend and want to hear some great music and be a part of a worship experience, I highly recommend the Pure Worship Institute conference.  I am honored to be a part of this for the second time and will be speaking on Tuesday the 15th in a morning and afternoon.

Jeff Deyo is the founder of this impactful event and this year as always has an incredible lineup of speakers/teachers and musicians.  You can see the entire list here:  http://www.pureworshipinstitute.com/guests

If you are in the area you don't want to miss it or if you can't make it to Minneapolis this week, the Nashville PWI is July 18-23.  I will be there as well....if you attend either event please come by and say hello!

For more info and registration....go here:

http://www.pureworshipinstitute.com/

Where you are headed...there is no map!

This banner advertisement for the game 1701 A.D by Aspyr caught my eye some time ago.  I went to find it yesterday because for the past few weeks I have been having "aha" moments as I encounter people who are exactly going through issues I am reading about in a new book from Seth Godin called Linchpin (www.sethgodin.com).  It is challenging me in big way! I think it is important for me to relay it to you, so as many people as possible to read what Seth is saying about heading to a place where there is no map and for me to look in the mirror and say it to myself!!

This thought process is amplifying that there aren’t enough of us who are headed where there is no map, where there is no way to know for sure what to do next and yet creating and doing things that matter. 

Why is that?

Because we live in fear – petrified - that someone’s going to say to us, “You know what?  You’re not as good as you think you are.  Who do you think you are, acting like this?  Who gave you the authority?  Who gave you the permission to go do that thing that’s not written down?  Where’s your deniability?  Where’s you excuse?  How can you possibly justify what you did?  You’re not nearly as good as you think you are.” 


But no one ever says that to us.  We just worry that they’re going to say that.  And the worry gets amplified by school, by spouses, by in-laws, by debt, by the system, by the media......by what kind of job we can get.

Here is where it gets tricky...you know the saying "Give them an inch and they will take a mile" ?  Well, I think a lot of people have the opposite problem; there are people if you give them a mile, they’re going to take an inch.  If you give people this opportunity to do that art, to make that change happen, to have an impact, they’ll figure out how to minimize it.  They’ll figure out how to make it a smaller opportunity.  They’ll figure out how to look for less.


 Why on earth would we choose to do that?  The answer seems pretty simple.  The answer is because it’s safer.  The answer is because in the short run, as Zig Ziglar would say, "making the frying pan smaller lowers the bar on the size of the fish you need to catch".  And this is why so many people choose to stay on the map and not explore the possibilities.

You and I get to make the choice and "where there is no map"  is scary for those of us who are used to having a map, those of us (most of us) who like knowing what is next. 

After Twitter hit the curve and became the fastest-growing communications medium in history, dozens of companies just like Twitter came along.  It only takes a week to program something like Twitter.  You don’t win any prizes for having the seventh version of Twitter.  We don’t need that.  We needed you to do it before there was a map.

Here is a strange thought....God has actually asked us to live "where there is no map" and trust him.

Romans 4:16-18 (The Message) not only tells us this but gives us the example of the ultimate "off the map" follower, Abraham:

This is why the fulfillment of God's promise depends entirely on trusting God and his way, and then simply embracing him and what he does. God's promise arrives as pure gift. That's the only way everyone can be sure to get in on it, those who keep the religious traditions and those who have never heard of them. For Abraham is father of us all. He is not our racial father—that's reading the story backward. He is our faith father.

We call Abraham "father" not because he got God's attention by living like a saint, but because God made something out of Abraham when he was a nobody. Isn't that what we've always read in Scripture, God saying to Abraham, "I set you up as father of many peoples"? Abraham was first named "father" and then became a father because he dared to trust God to do what only God could do: raise the dead to life, with a word make something out of nothing. When everything was hopeless, Abraham believed anyway, deciding to live not on the basis of what he saw he couldn't do but on what God said he would do.

I get it....it is hard and scary.  But let's take to heart that last sentence from the Romans quote, "When everything was hopeless, Abraham believed anyway, deciding to live not on the basis of what he saw he couldn't do but on what God said he would do." 

What is at stake?  Impacting your life, my life, future generations.....the world!

Go....make new discoveries! 

Because where you are headed...... there is no map!