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Tag: purpose

What do you want to be when you grow up?

February 22, 2018 /

man and child on railroad tracks

What do you want to be when you grow up? It’s a fun question when you are four but by the time you reach my age the question gets a little annoying. I recently asked a group of kids how old they thought I was. Most put me in my sixties. Aren’t kids great? I am NOT that old! While I may not like being asked what I want to be any more the truth is I still have the same heart of four-year-old that dreams of what could be. We all do. It’s just as we get older we push it down deep out of sight. Wherever, you have stuffed them it is time to drag out those dreams and dust them off.

If you want to achieve your dreams or become someone or something there is a basic principle of life you need to follow: act like those who have it. It is really that easy.

Do you want to be wealthy? Then find out what wealthy people do and do it. I.e. don’t have a car payment. Pay cash for everything. Don’t buy what you can’t afford. Never use a credit card.

Do you want to be an Olympic snowboarder? Then find some snow and start practicing. You won’t get there surfing the cushions of your couch. Potato chip grease makes a terrible board wax.

Do you want to run a marathon? Then train like a marathon runner.

Do you want a college degree? Then go to class. Complete the assignments. Do the work.

Do you want to run your own business? Then find a successful business owner and learn how they did it and what they do.

Do you want to lose weight? Skip the midnight infomercial products and find someone who lost weight and do what they did. Hint: It probably involved eating less and exercising more.

Do you want a marriage that lasts a lifetime? Don’t ask your single friends what to do. Don’t get advice from your neighbor who has been divorced eight times. Go find that couple that’s been married fifty, sixty years and find out how they did it and then do what they do.

Do you want to have a vibrant spiritual life? Find a saint. Someone who has lived through life’s best and worst and do what they do.

What do you want to be when you grow up? Whatever it is there is someone who is already there.

Blessings,
Stephen

 

Hone Who You are For God’s Glory

February 15, 2018 /

So I will admit it. When I am reading through the Bible I do great at the start, but around about the middle of Exodus things get rather bogged down and crawl to a near halt at the descriptions of skin diseases and bodily discharges of Leviticus. My morning coffee begins to taste funny and quickly I decide it might be just best to skip breakfast.

Toward the end of Exodus, the people of Israel are starting to be formed into a self-governing nation. Their existence as slaves is being peeled away and they are taking on their identity as children of God. Essential to this is the construction of the Tabernacle along with the tents and articles that will used in this place of worship and sacrifice for the nation.

Reading these descriptions I was suddenly struck by the words at the opening of Exodus 31.

Then the Lord said to Moses, “See, I have chosen Bezalel son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah, and I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with wisdom, with understanding, with knowledge and with all kinds of skills— to make artistic designs for work in gold, silver and bronze, to cut and set stones, to work in wood, and to engage in all kinds of crafts. (vs 1-5 NIV)

Jeweled HeartBezalel has been given by God the gifts and abilities to fashion the articles needed for the worship of God. When were these gifts given to him? When did he hone the craft? It must have certainly been while he was living as a slave in Egypt.

Had Bezalel built a successful business designing exquisite pieces of jewelry? Did his work sit on the tables of Pharaoh and his officials? Did the young women say of their betrothed “He went o Bezalel’s?” We will never know, and it all might be a little bit of an exaggeration to think such, but I do wonder. What gifts and talents have we been given? Perhaps God has a grander purpose than we could ever imagine.

Prior to his becoming the leader of World Vision, Richard Stearns was the CEO of Lenox China. He had built a career on selling luxuries to the world’s wealthiest. God used him and the wealth of his position in amazing ways to support the work of his kingdom. Richard thought this was his purpose in life. What he did not know was that God was honing and equipping him to serve the world’s poorest.

What about us? What talents and opportunities has God given to us? Are you in a place of leadership? Do you have musical abilities? Can you fashion things of beauty? Are you able to build the tallest buildings and widest bridges? Whatever you have been given and wherever you are, hone those skills for God’s glory. Become the very best of the best but don’t be too surprised to find that the path you thought you were on to use these talents is not the one God actually has you on.

What do you think?

Blessings,
Stephen

Who am I?

August 25, 2015 /

Trees in a mist

Dear Friends,

I know one of the criteria for being a well-educated person is that I am supposed to like poetry. From the carefully crafted words of soliloquy I am to find transcendental peace for my soul. I don’t. Most of it, I actually find annoying and better for solving the world’s sleep deprivation epidemic. I would say that I am sorry for offending those of you who find pleasure in rhyme, but I really am not.

One poem stands out to me as different than all the others. Words written by the German pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer from within the confine of a Nazi concentration camp. Bonhoeffer would pen these words one month before he could be executed. They speak to the depth of the human struggle in our soul. The tension between who we convey to the world on the outside and who we see ourselves to be on the inside. These words haunt me and challenge me. They convey an authentic life that is rarely ever allowed to be seen and expose raw hope as it should be.

Who Am I?
by Deitrich Bonhoeffer

Who am I? They often tell me
I stepped from my cell’s confinement
Calmly, cheerfully, firmly,
Like a Squire from his country house.

Who am I? They often tell me
I used to speak to my warders
Freely and friendly and clearly,
As though it were mine to command.

Who am I? They also tell me
I bore the days of misfortune
Equably, smilingly, proudly,
like one accustomed to win.

Am I then really that which other men tell of?
Or am I only what I myself know of myself?
Restless and longing and sick, like a bird in a cage,
Struggling for breath, as though hands were compressing my throat,
Yearning for colors, for flowers, for the voices of birds,
Thirsting for words of kindness, for neighborliness,
Tossing in expectations of great events,
Powerlessly trembling for friends at an infinite distance,
Weary and empty at praying, at thinking, at making,
Faint, and ready to say farewell to it all.

Who am I? This or the Other?
Am I one person today and tomorrow another?
Am I both at once? A hypocrite before others,
And before myself a contemptible woebegone weakling?
Or is something within me still like a beaten army
Fleeing in disorder from victory already achieved?

Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine.
Whoever I am, Thou knowest, O God, I am thine!

Functioning by Design

June 17, 2015 /

Manufacturing

Right after college I worked a little over a year at Hewlett-Packard doing technical support for their JetDirect network printing devices. I remember one day I received a phone call from a man in Indianapolis. He was not able to print to his printer in Paris. The man went into a description of network switches, subnets, satellite uplinks. On and on he went describing the complexity of his network. It was my first week on the job flying solo as a tech support agent. And I froze. I did not have one clue what the man was talking about.

After taking down all of the information, most of which I did not understand I put the man on hold. It was at that moment that my coworker, sitting across from me, who had been listening in on this call, asked one important question “Can they print to it in Paris?”

The answer was “yes.” He said, then it is functioning as it was created to function.

We can get bogged down in life with the complexities of life. People can tell you that this is a different world. And it is. They can tell about all of the changes. And they are many. But the ultimate question for each one of us is: “Are we living our lives, are we functioning as we were created to function?” If the answer is yes, then the rest really doesn’t matter.

Ultimately, the one who decides if something is functioning in the way it was designed to function is not the end user, but it is the one who created it. In terms of our lives. It is not our society or the talking head pundits who decide the chief aim of humanity. It is the one who created humanity himself: God.

When was the last time you asked him and sought his answer to the meaning and purpose of life?

Pastor Stephen

Defining the Church

April 21, 2015 /

Loaded Menu Board

 

In my last post, I asked the question, “What if we are not meant to be known by the roles we play and the things we do but rather by whose we are?”

I continue to process this very challenging question and its implications. My struggling has brought to wonder about the church itself. What if the importance of finding our value is whose we are rather than who we are is not only true for persons but also true for churches? Admit it. We define our churches by the things we do. The more programs we run the better. Our success as a church is defined by having more programs than anyone else in town. If we offer an ever increasing diversity of choices of things for people to do we are a success. But if our menu board of programs is not glamorous and loaded we must be a failure.

What do you think? Does the church place more emphasis on what we do rather than whose we are? What difference does it make?

 

Pastor Stephen

 

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