I am often confronted with issues where one person has wronged another person. At times people expect me, as the pastor, to enforce morals on people in order to change them. Some how they believe if I talk to them, I can “force†them to change their ways.
I have learned one principle well. Rules never change people.
When it seems everything is a failure. Go for some small wins.
Life has a way of bringing seasons into our life where nothing seems to go right. Often God uses those times to strengthen us, sometimes our own bad decisions bring those times, and many times those seasons come just as a part of living in a fallen world. During those seasons of life, a person may need to experience a little victory to rebuild his or her confidence.
If everything in your life seems to be going wrong lately, find a few small things you do well and complete them. Everyone does something well. It will help rebuild your confidence and encourage you to take risks again towards the bigger wins.
Are you in one of those seasons? Be faithful in a little and God will bless you with far more. What’s a small win you could accomplish today?
‘m curious. What Internet browser do you use? I’m not happy again. Yesterday I discovered Safari, which I’m currently using, will not display some videos I want to watch. (Even the one with Andy Stanley I placed on my personal blog yesterday.) I have to occasionally open another browser to view certain things. It’s updated and today I made sure all my plug-ins are updated. Still, no success.
I’ve tried Firefox and Google Chrome, with similar quirks in each of them that caused me to look elsewhere.
So you can help me, I’m a Mac guy. What do you use or what would you suggest I try next?
Do taste buds change as you get older?
I know I could probably Google this question and get an answer, but I figure my readers will have an answer for me. Is it just me, or do our tastes change over the years?
Just in the last couple years I’ve learned to love some things I once said I would never eat/drink.
Things like:
Tweet Today I’d love you to help write this post. I love dreams! I love encouraging those with big, especially God-given dreams, to take the risks required to see them…
Recently the staff at Grace Community Church talked through conflict and its benefit for us. Sometimes an organization can become too polite with each other and conflict is avoided or ignored in an effort to protect the relationship or to avoid the tension conflict creates. Other times one person tends to control a situation without allowing other people’s input, either for selfish reasons or to keep conflict from developing. The problem with these approaches is that some of the best ideas are never implemented because we don’t push through the messiness of conflict to get to the right answers.
I love creativity. When we started Grace Community Church, we surrounded ourselves with highly creative minds and allowed them to dream big dreams. One thing I realized early in the life of the church, however, is that creative people are more difficult to lead.
The biggest question has been what we are to do while we wait to respond to this tragedy. Grace Community Church is a doing church. We have serving our community in our DNA. Our people have been anxious to do something tangible. In cooperation with local officials, however, we have been encouraged to wait. In the early stages of a disaster like this, mass numbers of people are not the greatest need. The safety of people, stabilizing the community, and assessing needs of the community is where the community is focusing attention.
I have tried this quick assessment with marriages in distress several times and it opens the couple’s eyes and my eyes to the real state of their marriage. If you are dealing with a marriage following a major event, mistake or disappointment, considering trying this process. If the marriage in distress is yours, considering a self-assessment of your marriage.
One of my pet peeves as a leader has been for people to refuse to try something new or fail to follow through on a project, giving up before it’s completed, because they think they do not feel they know how to do the task. I encounter far too many people that want responsibility or leadership assignments, but they are not willing to invest the time and energy it takes to learn the requirements of the task.
