Posted in life skills on Jul 27th, 2010
How would I know if I needed to do some growing up? Let’s say: “I’m smart, I’m good at things, I’m talented, I have friends and people like me, some people even look up to me…” The question I’d need to ask myself is how back and forth am I? There’s a part in Ephesians [...]
Posted in life skills, sermon notes on Jul 26th, 2010
A popular meme from Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers is that people who become experts in something had around 10,000 hours of practice in it. That sounds right because in our daily experience, it would be hard to do something for 10,000 hours and NOT get better at it. The first few days of a job [...]
Posted in life skills on Jul 23rd, 2010
With all this talk of “following your heart,” very few people do. Most people live like everyone else even when their “hearts” tell them to do something extraordinary. With all this talk of “being radical for God,” very few people do that either. Because these things takes courage. I don’t think real courage looks the [...]
Posted in life skills on Jul 21st, 2010
There’s nothing wrong with doing things the easy way – but in our easy going society we’re in danger of losing the joy in doing something hard. No one climbs a mountain because it’s easy. Or sails around the world. Or trains for the Olympics. These things are cool because they are NOT easy. Sometimes, [...]
Posted in life skills on Jul 15th, 2010
I offer this video as something to get you thinking about what would make you feel like a success… Alain de Botton also has some great one liners: “A snob is anybody who takes a small part of you and uses that to come to a complete vision of who you are…” “The next time [...]
Posted in life skills on Jun 23rd, 2010
You don’t have to go it alone. Not only does God love you, but your unique abilities and perspective is something other people actually need. Like with our bodies, even losing one little toe means suffering loss; the church is not whole without you. Following Jesus, even haphazardly, will mean rough sailing sometimes… “All who [...]
Posted in life skills on Jun 21st, 2010
I met a guy today who said he used to be “kind of a thug,” but he decided to change his life after he survived ground zero on 9/11, and then survived bout with cancer (and chemo) – perhaps caused by the dust at ground zero… He said he figured “God didn’t save me so [...]
Posted in life skills on Jun 17th, 2010
Murray Bowen found that his counseling patients often got better when they removed themselves and spent some time in a healthy community. It wasn’t enough to have thoughtful counseling dealing with their issues… Real issues required being in an emotionally safe place with other people who were supportive and considerate, with healthy personal space and [...]
Posted in life skills on Jun 9th, 2010
Many people were raised with the ideas: “have some pride in yourself,” “take pride in your work,” so it’s hard to accept any teaching AGAINST pride. English Christians in the past used to distinguish the bad kind of pride as “overweening pride” or arrogance… So if it helps, you can think of it that way at [...]
Posted in life skills on Jun 2nd, 2010
…Is what Ken Robinson doesn’t say, but implies all throughout his two TED talks. Whereas our current-world’s thinking is: if you’re rich or famous or accomplished or beautiful you have value… I believe that EVERY person has an inherent and unique value and purpose. And part of our jobs here is to help find that [...]
