this is part 3 of 29 Things to Know Before You Hit 30. (you can read parts 1 & 2 HERE and HERE respectively.)
another thing people need to know before they turn old (spelled "t-h-i-r-t-y")
11 Bling-free is the way to be: live beneath your means duh. but no one in their 20s does this. come to think of it... no one in their 30s or 40s really does this either. but the author (Jason Boyett) made a GREAT point:
Consider the people closest to you--your friends, your fellow employees, your family. What forms the foundation for those relationships? What's the joint that keeps you together? None of us would chalk the connection up to material things: "I'm friends with Jessica because she has an awesome car." Or "I like to spend time with my sister on account of her fantastic furniture."
great point.
+ i thought the other greatest piece of advice = Hide the Gravy. every time you get a raise, don't change your standard of living. you haven't needed it thus far, so why spend it just because it's there? in other words, you've been used to living on $21k since you were 21, so just keep doing that & "hide" the raise... [or better yet, i say - GIVE IT AWAY!]
i'm not talking about scratch & sniff books either.
it could be a brand new book with fancy gloss pages that has that new car smell...
or a regular average book with that regular page smell...
or even a really old old book with that kind of musty smell... like you just stumbled onto something mysterious in an old chest in an attic somewhere...
don't matter what kind of book. i love the smell.
it's ok if that makes me weird. i love books and i even love the smell of a book as i sit down to read it. hard to explain, but i love it.
(This was originally posted to renown on March 15, 2010.)
A few years ago I heard a pastor say "I need to be mentored by more dead guys." I've remembered that and tried to implement it into my reading/learning habits and read several books from dead guys each year. That's definitely the case this year as "Dead guys" was a whole category on my 2010 reading list which you can see HERE. Right now I'm reading The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis. He was born in the 1300s and wrote this masterpiece in the 1400s. He was a medieval mystic - I have read those guys before and am always rejuvenated in my devotion to Jesus when I read what they have to say!
One of the greatest things I am reminded of is how crazy busy my life is and how much better I can connect to God if I simply slow down a little, take a deep breath, and create a little space for Him to invade my soul.
I completely understand where (Steven James) the writer of the intro to this translation of Imitation is coming from when he wrote: "I've been to monasteries several times on four-day silent retreats. After about twenty minutes I've had all the deep spiritual insights I can take. I start frantically looking around for a computer to check my email. I wouldn't make a very good monk." Haha, that's totally me!
Thomas a Kempis says "he who does not try to become the least, the servant of all, cannot be at peace for very long." I definitely need to hear stuff like that. Most of us know that climbing the corporate ladder and pushing our way to be on top doesn't really satisfy or make us happy... but we still do it anyway. We know it doesn't bring peace... just more stress. But, for some reason it's what we pursue. Those CEOs are the ones we imitate instead of Christ.
And I really love hearing a Kempis talk about "living it" over "learning it" = "What good does it do to speak learnedly about the Trinity if, lacking humility, you displease the Trinity?... I would rather feel contrition than know how to define it. For what would it profit us to know the whole Bible by heart and the principles of all the philosophers if we live without the grace of God?"
I think my heart is already beating at a slower, healthier pace and I am satisfied resting in God. I'm stoked about being mentored by this really old mystic monk! (He would currently be 630 years old!)
maybe when we talk to God we should start by addressing Him - "God, Whoever You actually are..." & then continue...
just as a "footnote" to denote we really don't know who God is... we're just fumbling for different representations in our minds of Who He is. the name "God" is of course inadequate for Who He actually is. it's just the best we have (for now).
This was actually C.S. Lewis' footnote to all prayers: "He whom I bow to ONLY knows to whom I bow" [wow. He is the ONLY one who knows WHO He is... none of us truly do. how could we?]
so since we don't know exactly who "He" is, we... "embrace in heart Symbols (I know) which cannot be the thing Thou art."
– C.S. Lewis, “Footnote to All Prayers” (a very short poem you can read HERE.)
yes, pray in confidence and talk to God as if He is sitting next to you on the couch. because He is. & that's how i talk to Him.
as long as we realize this is an appropriate footnote (to keep in the back of our minds) to every prayer.
i can remember in 1 of my 1st theology classes in seminary, my prof said something like this the very 1st day... "remember - theology is just our best attempt to say something about God. it's not really who God is... it's just our educated guess."
i loved David Crowder's analogy for his album a while back A Collision. Sixsteps sent me some promo stuff back then and part of it was an explanation of the discography that you see pictured to the left. Crowder talked about that diagram of the atom. it's just a diagram. that's not REALLY what an atom looks like. it's just our best idea. our best representation. & that's exactly what our worship is doing. it's our best effort to lift up who God is. Who we think He is at least.
theology is our best representation too. even the name "God".
it's the best we can do.
so, when we pray we use familiar symbols (like Lewis and Crowder mentioned) - like Father, God, King, Lord, and so on. but we must be careful with this because, we may falsely assume that our idea of God is identical to God. that the real God ‘out there’ is no bigger and no different from the idea we have ‘in here’ in our heads.
so, our symbols & familiar language carry with them our own distortions—concepts of God that are partial at best, misleading at worst.
we have to remember that our best symbolic representations [just like the atom] are in the end merely "frail images" of God, images that "cannot be the thing" that God is.
[but we still desperately need these images. and we need LOTS of different ones. but more on that another time.]
(thanks to Brian McLaren for giving me better articulation for this idea i've felt in my heart for a long time.)
“Whatever the reality actually is to which the word or name ‘God’ points, we know that God’s reality must always be far higher and greater and other than our concepts and images of God—even our best concepts and images.”
- Brian McLaren
yes. YES. YES! that sums it up perfectly.
amen.
and that makes us feel really good.
because it puts us in our place.
it makes us feel so small as we realize our best efforts to understand who God is are simply cracking the tip of the iceberg.
and that realization will do wonders in your soul.
(I originally wrote and posted this to renown on February 10, 2010.)
Earlier this year I finished reading my 1st book written by the late, great missiologist David J. Bosch. He is the guru, but I've never read an entire book he wrote. But I recently finished Believing in the Future: Toward a Missiology of Western Culture and it was great stuff.
He applied much of his expertise in cross cultural mission to our mission here in the West [as it rightly should be applied the same!].
So, I know there are TONS of things we (in the West) should learn from African theology, but this is just one thought from Bosch on what we would do well to take from them
“African theology was to a significant extent missiological through and through.”
and along those lines...
“Third World theologies are missionary theologies, whereas First World theologies are not.”
This is so true and points to the root of a lot of our problems here in the West. Many only think of being "on mission" in a foreign context, but not here in the West.
Bosch wrote this back in the year of his death - 1992. Thankfully over these past 17-18 years the shift he wrote about has been happening here. We've still got a long way to go, but we're getting there, imho.
so i was reading some Clark Pinnock back before Christmas and was about to Tweet and/or post as my Facebook status "Reading some Pinnocktoday" ...then i changed my mind because i didn't feel like getting a lot of HATE comments and hate mail and HATE TWEETS that day. i just wasn't in the mood.
and then i had a question...
do people still HATE on someone after they're dead?
Clark Pinnock actually passed away over a year ago. i remember reading about it when it happened HERE and all over the web. i was bummed because i think his thinking contributed a lot to the conversation.
i started reading Pinnock back in college. because of a certain 50 page research paper i wrote back then on a topic that he was in the thick of - i REALLY had to wrestle with what he was saying. back then i disagreed with him but could appreciate where he was coming from. no way was he crazy... probably more brilliant than all the rest of us.
so, i've continued to read some Pinnock ever since.
...to the disgust of pretty much everyone i know :)
in fact, at my 1st job out of college, i remember reading a then recent Pinnock book. i made the mistake of showing it to my friend and co-worker in the office next door and he promptly THREW the book across the room to me and said something like "get that away from me."
wow. just a book, man.
(but it's always been crazy to me how people can actually HATE a person because of their views. but that's a blog for another day.)
so i was just curious - do you still hate on someone after they're dead? i was curious that day... could i have Tweeted that i was reading Pinnock and would the haters still come out of the woodwork? OR does all that change when the hated upon dies?
i don't think i've ever been a hater, so i wasn't quite sure how it works...
anyway, didn't matter because i didn't tweet it, but now i'm writing about my curiosity. and maybe it will enable me to find out the answer to my Q
and just in case any of you are wondering why i would even dare continue to read Pinnock... maybe because of stuff he writes openly and honestly like this:
"So I do not apologize for admitting to being on a pilgrimage in theology, as if it were in itself some kind of weakness of intelligence or character. Feeling our way toward the truth is the nature of theological work even with the help of Scripture, tradition and community …. A pilgrimage, therefore, far from being unusual or slightly dishonorable, is what we would expect theologians who are properly aware of their limitations to experience."
wow.
Right. on.
we would expect it to be a pilgrimage, wouldn't we, Clark?
i hope i can engage on a lifelong one like you did and like most aren't willing to do.
hopefully they won't all hate on me like they did you... but i bet you'd say it's worth it.
(you can read some of my earlier thoughts on innovation HERE & HERE.)
whether you realize it or not, innovation is vitally important to the world we live in. i would argue that it is foundational to this increasingly postmodern world.
and the NECESSITY for INNOVATION will only INCREASE, imho.
Some futurist experts say this about the way our world is changing:
“For the foreseeable future, information will be the business resource, and innovation the work.”
- Clarke & Crossland
factory jobs and technical skills used to be IT. that was the type of jobs everyone worked. those were the skills in demand. now the world is very different. KNOWLEDGE WORK is king (information) and therefore INNOVATION is the skill that is required.
“Innovation is creativity in its working clothes. It has experimentation as a coworker and failure as a strategic partner."
did you catch that? Yes, innovation appears sexy from the outside looking in, but 2 key components to true innovation and creativity are EXPERIMENTATION and FAILURE! are you willing to be an innovator since it means those 2 will be your friends?
and let me be clear what i mean by innovation. Technology doesn’t guarantee innovation. it's just a helper. When i talk about innovation, i'm saying that only the practiced discipline of innovation will produce innovative results.
this is a discipline which requires carving out space to create. it's a discipline that by its very nature requires EXPERIMENTATION and FAILURE!
and if you're afraid of that or think there's another way, i thought this was an awesome "encouragement" from Henry Petroski:
“no one wants to learn by mistakes, but we cannot learn enough from success to go beyond the state of the art."
of course, we would like to be innovators without the hard work of EXPERIMENTATION and FAILURES, but it simply isn't possible. we can't experience one without the other.
While failure can be painful, innovative people and organizations EMBRACEthis pain.
simply put by Clarke and Crossland:
“If you want more innovation, allow more experiments.”
for the past several years i have posted my Reading List for the upcoming year.
this year my "reading list" will be a lot different in that much of it will be handed to me via required reading lists for my graduate classes. so i won't actually be personally choosing most of the books i read. Over 20 books already that i've been required to read just for this 1st semester! at that rate i'll read over 60 books in required reading alone for school this year! Instead of including those in this reading list, i'll attempt to keep them all up to date in my Visual lists on the right side of this blog = books i'm currently reading & books i recently finished. i usually try to write a little summary of what i thought of them too.
So, as you'll see below, i'm trying to keep my personal picks for a reading list to just over 10 for 2012.
+ I always reserve the right to pick up a different book & bump these off the list & insert the good/better stuff! There's a good chance a book will come out in 2012 that i will want to read, but below is my best attempt to keep me focused on what i need most.
here are just 10 or so i hope to read by my own choosing:
Naked Spirituality - Brain McLaren He's probably my favorite author, so i try to read at least one book from him every year. this is his newest that i started reading last year and it has affected me "spiritually" maybe as much as any other book i've ever read. powerful. and i'm obviously reading it very slowly... trying to take it all in. most excited about this book.
Start Something That Matters - Blake Mycoskie Trying to do this very thing in 2012 and thankful to learn from someone who did it recently and did it well.
Radical - David Platt Very expectant. looking for this to shake me up even more. i don't think we can ever be radical enough, so i'm not scared in the least.
Entreleadership - Dave Ramsey No secret i'm a big fan of Dave. As much for his leadership genius as his $ genius. thankful to have that leadership style in a book now. i've been called a "Ramsey-ite" so i'll let you know if i am on the leadership side as well.
Parenting Beyond Your Capacity - Reggie Joiner and Carey Niewhof Been planning to read this book for years to help us better partner with parents at Ridge Church. now i'm reading it for 2 reasons.
Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard - Chip and Dan Heath These guys wrote the best book i read in 2010 - Made to Stick. so if this one is half as good as that one i'll be elated.
The Power of Full Engagment: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal - Jim Loehr and Tony Schwarz i carried this one around for about a month last year and never got started on it. need to read it this year!
Real Marriage: The Truth about Sex, Friendship, and Life Together - Mark & Grace Driscoll Every year i read at least 1 book on marriage and 1 book on sex. This year i'm killing 2 birds with 1 stone + i know i'm pretty much guaranteed Driscoll will make me laugh.
How to Write a Great Business Plan - Harvard Business Review In this process as well... figured i should try to learn how to do it right.
The Love Dare - Stephen Kendrick Crystal and i are going to try this again in 2012.
The 17 Indispensable Laws of Teamwork - John Maxwell Desperately want to master and leverage creating and sustaining great teams. almost finished with this book.
The Pocket Guide to Adulthood: 29 Things to Know Before You Turn 30 - Jason Boyett really NEED to read this one this year! it's my last chance...
Holy Discontent - Bill Hybels thinking and hoping it's much like Andy's Visioneering... just shorter and easier.
+ i know i'll be reading several more parenting books... just haven't picked them out yet. and i'm reading a few baby sleep & schedule books per Crystal's request. can't remember the names of them though?
ok, & below is another list of books i'll read this year, but they don't really "count" in the above list that i tried to keep to 10. BECAUSE they're either my 1 Fiction/fun book for the year, or an audio book, or a book i'll read in "waiting" time in shorter segments.
here are those extra 9 books i'll read this year:
What the Dog Saw - Malcolm Gladwell The Grand Design- Stephen Hawking A Briefer History of Time - Stephen Hawking SImply Strategic Volunteers - Tony Morgan & Tim Stevens Making It All Work - David Allen Taste and See - John Piper Knowing God - J.I. Packer SuperFreakanomics - Levitt & Dubner and last but not least... Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban- J.K. Rowling
it's becoming somewhat of a tradition for me on renown to post the top 10 books i read each year. (Top 10 list from 2010 HERE. Top 10 from 2009 HERE.)
my planned reading list did change a lot when we found out we were pregnant because i read several books like: Pregnancy Sucks for Men; The Guys Guide to Surviving Pregnancy, Childbirth, and the First Year of Fatherhood; and 30 Things Future Dads Should Know About Pregnancy. but only 1 full on pregnancy/baby book made the list.
*some may accuse me of cheating, but as i often do in my Top 10 lists i have a 3-way tie for 10th. so, here we go - the Top 10 books i read in 2011:
#10 Getting Things Done - David Allen fairly boring read but BRILLIANT strategy & system for productivity. i've implemented the system and it's awesome. worth the boring read.
#10 Evil and the Justice of God - N.T. Wright good book that caused me to think, but Wright never really offers many helpful solutions.
#10 In This Place - Kim Abernethy part 1 of a Memoir from a good friend of mine. a moving and emotional account of her time as a missionary in Liberia. a great read.
#9 Freakanomics - Steven Levitt & Stephen Dubner BRILLIANT book. these guys are WAY smart and see how the world works differently than anyone else. very "Gladwell-ish". again, the reader is left to come up with practical application on his/her own. but wow... brilliant & fascinating stuff.
#8 Emotional Intelligence 2.0 - Travis Bradberry the latest on emotional intelligence - complete with a test to rank yourself + strategies to improve. extremely practical action plans.
#7 Strengths Based Leadership - Tom Rath The newest book in the Strengths revolution. This one focuses on helping leaders lead from their strengths and how to recognize and lead others through their specific strengths.
#6 Fields of Gold - Andy Stanley awesome little book on what God and Paul said about giving. so simple, yet so powerful. it's pretty obvious what money is for and the reason God blesses it with us. if we want to keep being blessed with more we better be giving it away. thanks to Andy for making it so painstakingly clear.
#5 The Likeability Factor - Tim Sanders almost like a modern Carnegie with a new "9 Ways". very relevant and practical.
#4 Under the Dome - Stephen King wow. the best ever from the best ever. over 1,000 pages and i couldn't put it down. this thing kept me up until i fell asleep with it on my face at 4am many mornings. it was like Lost meets The Stand meets Lord of the Flies. simply brilliant.
#3 Love Wins - Rob Bell yep, loved it. very moving. very powerful. very refreshing. i didn't even read any heresy... which may make me a heretic for saying that, but nothing i can do about that i guess? and please, don't send me hate comments or mail until you have actually held the book in your own hands and read it cover to cover. happy to have a conversation then. #2 The Baby Bump - Carley Roney + thebump.com this is the 2nd best book i read in 2011, but largely based on context of the timing i read it in. it was SO helpful for me. i recommend it to every soon-to-be dad to figure out what the heck is going on during pregnancy and after. so helpful, practical, and easy to follow.
#1 Humility - Andrew Murray i've already written on this book several times including HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE. so, i don't need to say much more other than i never expected this book to be the best book i would read all year, but WOW. it rocked my world. SO thankful for this little book i picked off my late grandmother's shelf. changing my life...
i read a book a couple years ago that full on lines up with my philosophy on everything.
i was born with (maybe inherited) an ALL or NOTHING personality. my natural bent with anything in life is to go all in or not go at all. so i like what Seth Godin had to say about Vince Lombardi's famous statement:
* “Bad advice. Winners quit all the time. They just quit the right stuff at the right time.”
To sum up this whole book and my philosophy as simply as i can = Don't Quit or else Don't Start.
so, be sure you're going all the way when you start or else you're just wasting precious time, energy, resources, etc... but if you do realize you need to quit then do it ASAP!
here are a couple awesome lines from Seth's great little book called The Dip:
“Extraordinary benefits accrue to the tiny minority of people who are able to push just a tiny bit longer than most. Extraordinary benefits also accrue to the tiny majority with the guts to quit early and refocus their efforts on something new. In both cases it’s about being the best in the world. About getting through the hard stuff and coming out the other side.”
Quit the wrong stuff.
Stick with the right stuff.
Have the guts to do one or the other.
“Strategic quitting is the secret of successful organizations.”
“The stupid thing to do is to start, give it your best shot, waste a lot of time and money, and quit right in the middle of the Dip.”
“If you’re going to quit, quit before you start.” * “Don’t play the game if you realize you can’t be the best in the world.”
and i LOVED this part:
‘Never Quit’ = “What a spectacularly bad piece of advice. That ranks right up there with ‘Oh, that’s a funny dirty joke, let’s tell the teacher.’
Here is the advice that Lombardi and all these other peeps MEANT to give us = “never quit something with great long term potential just because you can’t deal with the stress of the moment.” Now that’s great advice!
“In order to get through the Dip [of the thing you're called to] you’ll need to quit everything else.”
ouch.
it's all about focus. it's the 3 sport star who quits 2 sports he loves for the sake of the one he loves most and can be the best at. it's the organization who quits 8 things they're doing well for the sake of the 1 thing they can do BEST. and example after endless example...
"straight butta" is what we used to call something back in the day that was just amazing. it was so smooth and "pimp" that only the phrase "straight butta" would suffice to describe it's awesomeness.
so this stuff below from Jim Collins' talk at Catalyst '11 a few weeks ago is straight butta. my last couple (and the next) blogs have been thoughts from that talk and these thoughts below are the random ones that don't really fit into a topic. so the topic for these thougths is "straight butta" - because that's what they are.
ya feel me?
The signature of mediocrity is Chronic Inconsistency! This is true when you look at areas of your life or organizations across the world. Chronic inconsistency (or i would be witty and say consistent inconsistency) can be found in the mediocre leaders and organizations everywhere you look.
Collins says that VALUES are what can remain consistent. only VALUES endure. therefore, the bottom line from his 1st book (which is really a SEQUEL to Good to Great), Built to Last, is "Preserve the Core AND Stimulate Progress."
*which is what missional churches and contextualizing "missionaries" have been trying to do for hundreds of years.
The KEY is understanding the difference between practices and values. Change 1, never the other. never changing values but ever changing practices can make something enduring and great! wow - that feels like a direct address to churches & missional people. it feels as though it applies to us twice as much as business organizations. unfortunately, we're pretty bad at it.
Collins once asked the famed Peter Drucker (who happened to be Collins' mentor) which of his 26 books he was most proud of? - Drucker answered, "The next one." [i love that]
Andy Stanley interviewed Collins (again) at the end of his talk. he mainly talked about the difference between RIGOROUS and RUTHLESS cultures. especially as it relates to people in the seats on the bus (in our orgs) / firing people who don't need to be on our bus/ moving people who are in the wrong seat. A rigorous culture is all about service to the cause. We make big RIGOROUS decisions for the sake of the cause - the sake of the mission. we should ask the question "what REALLY is compassion in this situation?" many times, firing is the most compassionate (yet hardest) thing we could do. because if someone is failing in a seat, they're not in their Hedgehog (a Good to Great idea) - so helping them is getting them out of that seat. fast.
well, i wrote a lot more random thoughts into this "straight butta" article, BUT they just developed into blogs all by themselves. so, tomorrow i'll share some more "straight butta" Collins had to share on CREATIVITY.
this is a BRAND new perspective for me & it's changing everything. i hope it will for you too.
All of us have circumstances that suck. things that happen that aren't fun and we WISH they didn't exist. There is a broad spectrum of these things = from things out of our control to the bad decisions we have made that create crappy circumstances in our lives. ALL of them we wish we were rid of. We all have people in our lives we wish we didn't have to deal with. we cringe when we see them coming. There is a broad spectrum of these people too = from people who have wronged us in the past to people who are straight up jerks to us to people who just simply annoy us.
think about those specific people and circumstances for YOU right now. what are they and who are they? walk away from this blog to the other side of the room for 1 minute to make sure you have this in mind then come back...
______________________________
(are you a little bit riled up or stressed out now? sorry about that.)
i'm thankful for a lot of stuff and a lot of people. i think of myself as a pretty thankful person. but it seems ludicrous, backwards, and opposite to be thankful for the crappy things and the people who are crappy to me.
& as i look back on my life - the humility i have learned has mainly come from crappy circumstances and people who were crappy to me. hasn't it been the same for you? isn't that how you learn humility?
so here's my new perspective from the old school writing (all from different chapters) of Andrew Murray:
"But let us not be discouraged [when these crappy things come]. Let us look upon every person who tries or vexes us, as God's means of GRACE, God's instrument for our purification, for our exercise of the humility Jesus our Life breathes within us."
"Accept with GRATITUDEeverything that God allows from within or without, from friend or enemy, in nature or in grace, to remind you of your need of humbling, and to help you to it."
"Accept every humiliation, look upon every fellow-man who tries or vexes you, as a means of grace to humble you. Use every opportunity of humbling yourself before your fellow-men as a help to abide humble before God."
that's hard to do. it feels very opposite of what i want to do. but, if humility is what i want most then i should be REALLY thankful for the "awesome" ways it is produced in me. so thank you to all the circumstances and people that teach me humility. I see them as GIFTS... as "means of grace". i am genuinely excited about the man they are helping me become.
i'm confident that the reason there is no cartilage in my knees today is so that i could learn some humility. i can look back and see that losing the meniscus in my right and left knee was a crappy circumstance that would shred some pride out of my life... make me a little more humble. it's very hard to be prideful about an ability that you no longer have. if you were prideful because you were an amazing singer and you suddenly had no more voice... it would be pretty hard to be prideful about the voice you don't have. as many times as i've been bummed about having bum knees and all the limitations and pains... i look at that crappy circumstance with Gratitude. i want humility more than "menisci".
we should be thankful because without this humility we can't change the world. You can change the world without cartilage, but not without humility.
“Until a humility which will rest in nothing less than the end and death of self; which gives up all the honor of men as Jesus did, to seek the honor that comes from God alone; which absolutely makes and counts itself nothing, that God may be all, that the Lord alone may be exalted, -- until such a humility be what we seek in Christ, above our chief joy, and welcome at any price, there is very little hope of a religion that will conquer the world.”
(Andrew Murray, over 100 years ago)
*Mr. Murray, i wish you were here these days... we need a revolution of your words, ideas, and passion.
i think the world can change. i think it should & it's supposed to. i think it's gonna. no doubt about that. i would rather see it happen sooner than later.
i want my life to be about changing the world. i want to spend every day bringing the world-changing revolution. when i'm dead i want to look back on a life spent trying to change the world.
but i fully realize that is going to involve some dangerous stuff. dangerous on many levels.
a lot of things may be dangerous that we don't normally think of as dangerous OR they're not things i would have thought necessary in order to change the world.
like humility, for example. i've been writing about it a lot lately and i probably will be for a while.
humility isn't something that usually makes the top of the list when you are compiling necessities for changing the world.
but it is necessary.
without it there will be no world-changing revolution. not through us anyway. i'm convinced that humility is every bit as necessary (and even more necessary) than audacity to change the world. both have to be there. (i've already written on the uber importance of humility HERE, HERE and HERE.)
so, if that's the case then i want humility more than anything. because i want to see God's love and renown change the world more than anything.
so, i PRAY that whatever the cost God would help me be full of humility. MAKE ME HUMBLE. Shred pride from my life... every hint of it... until there is only humility left. DO whatever it takes to make that happen! because,
unless it does = i will never be fully satisfied/overjoyed and i'll never be used like i could be to change the world.
but this is a freaking dangerous prayer and desire.
i fully realize that. and yeah, it's kind of the joke in some Christian churches - "don't pray for humility, or God might give it to you..." as in - God may have to BREAK you to humble you. so we think to ourselves - "don't pray for humility because the humbling process is... well, HUMBLING." (spelled P-A-I-N-F-U-L)
so, this is legit. if i want to be fully, 100% humble i know it's going to hurt.
but i don't care. and i don't mean that in a cavalier way at all. i'm a little scared.
but i don't care as in i care MORE about being a humble man that it is worth the hurt and pain and humbling process that it will take to get there.
so, what if we all pray the "danger prayer"? what if we all went through whatever it took to be humble? what if we were just a whole bunch of broken, humble, audacious people?
“Without this there can be no true abiding in God’s presence, or experience of His favor and the power of His Spirit; without this no abiding faith, or love or joy or strength.”
humility is what i'm talking about, by the way. still on this humility journey and will be for quite a while.
so, Andrew Murray says that without humility there is no - experiencing God's presence or favor or power of His Spirit or faith or love or joy or strength.
well, that's a pretty sucky life without all those things. (i'll write more about this later but that's why i'm saying crazy things to God like - "do whatever it takes to make me humble." i can't see any other way to happiness.)
AND humility is a pretty big deal because:
“the lack of humility is the sufficient explanation of every defect and failure.”
wow. that's a pretty big statement, Mr Murray. and if you're right, then how do we get/have humility? what do we do? what even is it?
“it is simply the sense of entire nothingness, which comes when we see how truly God is all, and in which we make way for God to be all.”
those are the greatest words on humility i've ever heard. it's this yin & yang. us and God. we need to simply see ourselves like we really, truly are = NOTHING. and see God... even a glimpse... of Who He really, truly is - ALL.
boom. done deal. we'll never be the same. no room for pride then. pride is ludicrous. humility is the only thing for sane people at that point.
“humility is simply acknowledging the truth of my position as creature, and yielding to God His place.”
And just to remind us how big of a deal humility actually is (like we talked about in the previous post - "the most important thing")...
“Humility is not so much a grace or virtue along with others; it is the root of all, because it alone takes the right attitude before God, and allows Him as God to do all.”
anybody starting to see how crazy important this is?
i'm desperate to be humble and kick pride out. i wanna do whatever it takes.
but somehow - we, our culture, the Church, etc... talk and think about it so very very little.
maybe we just need to be reminded that it's a pretty big deal.
(i set up these Humility thoughts HERE but just now getting a chance to actually blog about it.) just trying to think through (by writing) the ideas about humility that are rocking my world right now.
Andrew Murray sets it all up by saying that "nothing is more natural and beautiful and blessed than to be NOTHING, that God may be ALL." and that's a great summary of this whole idea of humility. nothing and all. that's the essence. me becoming nothing. literally humbling myself, emptying myself, to the point that i am 100% dependent on God... which lets Him be the ALL that He already is. if there is still something of me in me... God cannot possibly be ALL in me. that's a tough thing to humble myself to the point that i empty me of me. rid myself of every trace of pride. (is it even possible? but i think that's the only way for God to be ALL and truly do His thing.) the main idea Murray threw at me is that HUMILITY is the MOST IMPORTANT thing. and at 1st i think "no way." no way that's the most important thing in my life. but i think i'm buying into that idea.
this is all i've been thinking about the last couple weeks. and you don't normally think of something like humility as being revolutionary... but it IS. i promise. it's a radical thing. to us it feels like a thing of the past... it doesn't seem sexy or like it allows for our swagger so we throw it out. but i'm with Andrew... it's maybe the most important thing: "Our chief care, our highest [good], our only happiness, now and through all eternity, is to present ourselves an empty vessel, in which God can dwell and manifest His power and goodness."
& humility is the place of ENTIRE dependence on God. it' s a great place to be. but i think we have to think of it as our 1st order of business... the most important thing we can be in our day, because it's the ROOT of everything else we can do for God's glory.
Murray says humility is "the ROOT of every virtue... and so pride, or the loss of humility, is the root of every sin and evil." + "evil can have no beginning but from pride, and no end but from humility." WOW. those are BIG time words! he's not messing around.
i was way wrong when i picked up this dusty old book that used to sit on my grandmother's shelf. it looks so old and boring. i just thought it would be nice to read what some old guy said 100 years ago. i thought it wouldn't be all that relevant. maybe it would be a little pious. certainly not revolutionary.
but tell me that this doesn't rock your world: "The truth is this: Pride must die in you, or nothing of [the Kingdom] can live in you."
"Could you see what every stirring of pride does to your soul, you would BEG of everything you meet to tear the viper from you, though with loss of a hand or an eye."
whoa. maybe you can get a sense of why this Andrew Murray guy is jacking me up. really wrestling hard with this humility thing. because i can see how revolutionary and ALL-ENCOMPASSING/ ALL-IMPORTANT it is.
is it really the most important thing? i guess if without it, God can truly not be ALL and get His glory... if the lack of it leads to every sin... if it is the root of every good God does through us... then yeah, it must be the most important thing.
it's not really a pop culture subject. or even a "pop church" subject. i haven't seen many books written about humility lately (although i did read & write about this one HEREand HERE a couple years ago.)
in fact, God used that above book to mess me up when it comes to pride and humility. God used the words in that book to point out the pride in my life. it produced a passion in me to desperately want to get all pride out of my life. i want nothing to do with it. i just want to be a humble guy. but that's really easier said than done. we're all more prideful than we think. it's a sneaky thing, pride.
and as i've hopefully made strides over the last few years i constantly find that the more and more humble i hopefully become the more and more pride is uncovered in my life. it's like the more prideful we are the less of our pride we can even see. As we become more and more humble we see our pride more and more. i hope there can maybe be an end to it.
since about 2006, i've made it a life long goal of mine to chase after humility as passionately as i can.
so, when i came across this book, Humility, that used to sit on my late grandmother's shelf, i picked it up. it made the final cut for my 2011 reading list and i just cracked it open last week at the beginning of our vacation.
and it has been rocking my world since page 1.
it's written by a guy named Andrew Murray (not the tennis player). i knew he was an "old" guy. i knew he was going to be one of my "dead mentors". i think i even quoted him during a sermon i did way back in college.
But that's about all i knew about him. turns out most of his ministry was in the 1800s (& trickled into the early 1900s). he was born in South Africa and lived pretty much his whole life there. and he wrote a ton of books and influenced a ton of people and had a hand in several influential movements. and check his sweet beard.
*One of the coolest parts for me is that is was my grandmother's book. she was an awesome woman who loved Jesus as long as i knew her. that was obvious. she died when i was 12, but i spent several summers at her house, so i knew her pretty well. never as an adult or even a teenager though.
When i opened up her book to read it a really old paper fell out. it was a (typewriter) typed paper she had put together to lead a Bible study at her church on humility. it was dated January 12, 1982. pretty crazy. pretty awesome. like a window into the past. i wasn't born yet. i wasn't even thought of yet i guess. my grandmother wasn't even a grandmother yet.
and as i read this amazing book that has changed my life... i got to see all the stuff that my grandmother underlined and highlighted. i got to see the stuff that jumped out at her and influenced her life. it's been like reading this book together with my grandmother.
and the book is pretty radical. it's revolutionary. i didn't know people said this kind of stuff back then.
i want to write more and more about this book in the coming days, but i'll sum it up by saying this: Murray basically says that Humility is the CHIEF thing. The chief mark of a true disciple. It’s foundational to all the other virtues.
(This was originally posted to renown on September 30th, 2009.)
yeah, I read the whole New Testament of the Bible while I was in the shower! No, I don't have a waterproof Bible... well, sort of, I guess.
A few years ago I heard about The Bible Experience as it was about to be released. It caught my attention. It was going to be an "audio Bible", but not just ANY audio Bible. I had listened to those before and they should be illegal because the guy reading would put you to sleep while you were driving!
No, this was basically a Hollywood-quality MOVIE that you would listen to! (And it is produced by Hollywood producers.) It has all the sound effects, surrounding ambiance, the movie-like soundtrack, etc... Plus each actor plays his character throughout the entire "Story" of the Bible.
And the actors... let's just say they didn't do like the normal Christian movie producers do and get actors off the ABC Family Channel (worst actors in the world!) or get a big name star like Kirk Cameron :)
The best actors in the business came together to "reenact" the Bible! Big time award winners like = Denzel Washington, Cuba Gooding Jr., Forest Whitaker, Angela Bassett, Samuel L. Jackson, LL Cool J, Blair Underwood, and even my boy Kirk Franklin!
So, when the New Testament released I went out and bought it right away. It was AMAZING! I told everyone about it. The coolest thing is that it is SO REAL. It feels like your standing there on the hill listening to Jesus' sermon on the mount! It is so dramatic that you get a little scared when demons talk. In fact, riding in the car late one night listening to the gospels, Crystal made me turn it off because it got so intense!
Then last year I won the WHOLE BIBLE "Bible Experience" cds at Catalyst! That was awesome because at that time the whole thing was over $100. Plus the version they gave me also has the complete text & you can scroll/read along with it in your iPod as it is playing in your headphones! Pretty sweet. I love that it's the exact same version I read and use too - TNIV. So it's exactly the same text as what I read in the Bible.
And I am hard core about multi-tasking! I feel like I'm wasting away if I'm not always doing 2 things at once! So, the Bible Experience has been perfect for me. I can always be listening to Scripture... and not just listening... actually experiencing the Story!!!
For example, when we painted our living room 2 months ago I got to listen to the whole entire book of Isaiah in 1 day! (& Isaiah is a pretty long book!)
Driving home from ATL one time I blazed through Nehemiah, Esther, & Ezra... Awesome stories.
*And of course, as the title of this post suggests, I always listen to the Bible Experience in the shower! BUT I've never been strategic about it. I would just pop in a random cd & listen to whatever as I was waking up in the shower 1st thing in the morning.
**BUT, when we got back from vacation last month I decided to be very strategic. I just decided to go straight through the whole New Testament. I put a little Ridge sticky note on the mirror and wrote down where I left off each day. So I only listened to the Bible Experience while I was taking a shower and getting ready (brushing my teeth, etc...). I started on August 14th and finished the whole New Testament yesterday, September 29th!
So, around 1 & a half months is all it took to "read" the whole New Testament... and no extra time on my part... just while I was in the shower!
Now that's what I call a wise use of my time! The epitome of multi-tasking! I love it! And I love the intensity & "realness" of The Bible Experience.
In fact, check out a sneak peek of the experience for yourself below:
The best clip to get a feel for the whole thing is on the Bible Experience website HERE.
and if you want to see more here is a "making of the Bible Experience" video...
You can buy The Bible Experience by simply clicking HERE.
Tomorrow in the shower I am starting on the Old Testament. I wonder how long it will take me to go all the way through it? Probably a lot quicker than trying to hold a Bible and read it while in the shower!
Borders was my favorite store. it was the best bookstore in my opinion because... well, let's see, it was the coolest, most posh, 5 minutes from my house, brilliant & visually pleasing set up that was way better than all the rest, + always had the best selection in store. need more reasons?
pretty much every time i went to the mall the past 5 years i parked at and walked through Borders. the time duration of that walk through directly depended on whether or not my wife was with me.
books. it's like my 1 thing. i'm a reading junky. and Borders was my Mecca. in fact i referred to it as just that. often.
even driving by the mall and seeing the huge towering Borders made my heart beat faster.
i was thinking just the other day why i like walking through so much? i know i'm not going to buy anything. why do i love to walk through and look at all the books in all the different sections. i'm sure i could look through them faster on the internet. i think it's because i love the thrill of actually picking them up and looking at them. holding them in my hands. it's refreshing.
i am so thankful that when i saw on Twitter that Borders was closing we went last Thursday - when Borders was still Borders. i enjoyed it one last time.
because now Borders is already gone. it's dead and no more. That's not Borders that's still open at the corner of Northlake Mall. it has already ceased to be what it once was. as my wife put it - "it's a hot mess in here."
it sucks. it went from the best, coolest, "poshest" bookstore ever to... a nasty garage sale. from the UGLY "going out of business" signs all over the windows to the books scattered randomly all about, etc... people rushing about like scavengers/vultures.
as soon as we pulled up and i saw the ridiculously nasty "GOING OUT OF BUSINESS SALE. EVERYTHING MUST GO!" signs i commented to my wife about how they had "lost" it. but then she pointed out that there's nothing left to preserve.
wow. i'm sure there are a lot more profound thoughts & illustrations just about that above thought. when an organization loses any fight to preserve what it is. you can see it happen long before they go out of business. but i guess whether or not they're still truly "in business" at that point is debatable.
so long Borders. or "Farewell" as your president put it in the email. you will be missed. i hope someone else moves in - Walden, Barnes and Noble, Books A Million, anybody... but they won't be as cool as you.
(This is a repost form the depressing day of November 10, 2009. The infamous red notebook has still never been recovered.)
The title of this blog is a spoof and tribute to one of my favorite songs as a teenager = Blue Comb '78 It was a song from probably my 2nd or 3rd favorite band as a kid, the amazing and incomparable Five Iron Frenzy. Those guys were sick! (back then... now when I hear them I just have to chuckle a little...) They were kind of like a crazy punk rock band with a lot of ska mixed in and a lot of funny too. Blue Comb '78 was a song that was a tribute as well as a search for something that was lost. That something which was lost was described as "the last great symbol of my youth." and it was a blue comb "bought with some money from my mom and my dad. Light blue in color, I could never have another comb like that, big and fat..."
The plea of the song, in an utter angst from deep in the soul, was "Tell me, have you seen my comb?!?!?" It's called Blue Comb '78 because 1978 is when Reese Roper lost his prized blue comb as a 5 year old boy "Somewhere on I-70" because of "a sibling lacking coothe". It turns out he never got that exact blue comb back (Although now it "might be brown from lying on the ground") but the band did receive tens of thousands of blue combs in the mail through their career! This blog is a play off of that song. My plea is very similar. "Tell me, have you seen my notebook!?!?!"
Here's the story as short as I can make it. I have... had... a red notebook. I think it said "NUDGE" on the front... along with some other words smaller like "dance. pray. laugh." or something like that?
I started using it around 2 years ago and it was basically FULL. FULL of all my notes, all my thoughts. If you know me you know that I am a conference/podcast/reading JUNKIE! Learning is my drug/addiction. So, I have had this red notebook with everywhere I go (literally) for the past 2 years. And I had filled it up with all my learnings, thoughts, ideas, takeaways, etc... from podcasts, books on cd/iPod, and conferences!
The most "controversial" use of the notebook is that for 2 years it has been in my car. I have gone through MANY books on my iPod over the last 2 years and I take notes the whole time while I am driving. I perfected it so i didn't really have to take my eyes off the road much and can write pretty neat with the little arm rest/desk set up in my caddy. I have listened to literally over 1,000 podcasts in my car and write notes on them while driving.
There is so much of my brain in that notebook. And recently I LOST IT!!! I have looked for it in every place I can find and no luck. I have turned my house, my car, and all my places of work upside down looking for it... still can't find it. In the last 2 weeks I have been coming to terms with the reality that it may simply be gone forever. and that hurts. it really hurts. it knocks the breath out of me. It feels like I fell on my back off of a semi- tall ledge. I really get short of breath when I think about all that is lost with that notebook. kind of like a computer crashing and nothing is backed up.
***SO, I am asking all of you HAVE YOU SEEN MY NOTEBOOK?!?!? I really hope you have. If you have found it or see it somewhere please let me know! I feel like a reward would definitely be in order for you... both from God and me. : )
[btw - just found out Five Iron Frenzy is coming out with a film this winter! 6 years after their retirement! I'm so stoked. take me back to my high school days... i bet I might have made it on the film because I was front row for at least 3 of their shows!]
