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Posts tagged with: purpose
Feb 3, 2012    |       3 comments

Hydrate — Winning From The Inside — The Preface

Is your happiness portable?

What do I mean by, “portable happiness?” Think with me…

What if you lost your job today and couldn’t find any work for the next six months?
What if your son went undefeated in his basketball season but lost the championship game because he missed his final free throw?
What if a tornado or a fire completely destroyed your home and everything in it, including your family’s creative memories albums?
What if your four year old daughter were diagnosed with stage 4 cancer and were given a 10% chance of living to age six?
What if you lost your wife and children in a car crash as they drove home from Walmart today?

The “What If’s” game is not a fun game to play. But, the “What Ifs” are a likelihood for each and every individual, everyday. A likelihood for you. Please understand that I am not deploying fear tactics here. I am simply reminding us all that the “What Ifs” are realities for people, everyday.

The hard reality is this. If we place our “ultimate” joy and happiness in these temporal elements of our lives, then we potentially face, each and every day, such a heart wrenching reality that we would not be able to live the rest of our lives with joy or happiness.

Introducing — “Hydrate.” Winning from the inside.”

What do I mean by “Hydrate?”

There is a story-of-old about a man who encounters a woman drawing water from a well for her family at noon on a hot and dry day. At this encounter, the man begins to converse with her, he simply asks, “would you be so kind as to draw a drink of water for me?” She is quite surprised by the inquiry because he was of different ethnicity than she, and it was counter-cultural for such conversation to take place. However, she agreed and drew up some cool water from the deep well. After being refreshed by his drink of water. He said, “If you drink this water, you will only thirst again, but if you drink the water that I can give you, you will never thirst again. It will be like a bubbling spring of water and life inside of you. ” Then the woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw the water!” And, so, the conversation went on.

If you don’t know the “characters” of this story-of-old, this is a woman from Samaria speaking with Jesus of Nazareth. You can read all the details in the Bible in the book of John, chapter 4.

“HYDRATE”

If Jesus of Nazareth is who He says He is…then I would think that we should deeply consider and learn from Him. One of His teachings actually commands us “to teach people to obey everything that I have commanded.” (We’ll get to that teaching in this Hydrate series…but not yet!)

There are approximately 300 different teachings that Jesus publicly declared in His lifetime. I am hopeful that you will devote yourself to drink in this material as often as you can. Do not “drink it in” out of duty. Have you ever consumed a bottle of water out of duty? Its not refreshing, is it? I hope that you will place this material at your easy access and when you “thirst,” you will take it up and drink it in. And, as you continue to drink, my hope for you, is that you will find a “bubbling spring of water and life welling up inside of you.” I call this joy and happiness.

When your Joy and Happiness begins to flow internally.

Then it is portable.

Each teaching of Jesus will be an entry in the Hydrate series. You will see that each entry will be in two parts. First there will be an easy to understand history of what Jesus said and I will call that section, “Drink It In.” Then there will be a simple practical challenge for you to consider and activate into your life after learning about what Jesus taught. This second part will be called, “Sweat it out.”

Drink it in and sweat it out.

Its totally portable!

I hope you enjoy it and are forever impacted.

Please keep me updated along your journey.

Trent

Jan 28, 2012    |       2 comments

Retweeting Jesus “RT@JesusChrist #10”

(To Mary) Woman, here is your son. (To John) Here is your mother. — JC
John 19:26-27(HCSB)

Awkward. What a strange message for Jesus to share publicly. Yet, because Jesus said it publicly with other people hearing…I chose to make this one of Jesus’ “Tweets.”

Imagine the scene. Jesus is on the cross. He is literally about to die. He is looking out at the people and He sees His mom. His mom is Mary (do I really need to write that?) She is crying (I assume) and is standing next to the disciple named John. The Bible describes John as, “the one whom Jesus loved.” Is it ironic to anyone else that the book of JOHN is the only book in the Bible that actually says that “John is the disciple whom Jesus loved?” In case you don’t know…the author of the book of John and the John referred to as the one whom Jesus loved…is the same person. John, wrote that about himself! There has got to be a good story in there somewhere. Someday we can ask him.

What’s the point of this Tweet? Its pretty simple. In Jesus’ time where Hebrew Culture ruled the day…Jesus was Hebrew…Yes…Jesus was a Jewish man. That would mean He wasn’t white. That would mean He wasn’t black. He would have more likely been very…what we call…tanned. Dark thick hair. He was Jewish from the Mediterranean area. Dark eyes. But…I suppose I could be completely wrong. Maybe he really could have looked just like Jim Caviezel. We know his mom was Jewish. But His real Father….well…Genetics wouldn’t matter! I can’t wait to meet Jesus face to face and see what He really looks like. Maybe He really did have blonde hair and blue eyes. LOL

Back to the Hebrew thing here. In Jesus time and in the Hebrew Culture it was the husbands job to be the head of the household. The husband was the provider. If something happened to the husband, then the first born son would be responsible to step up and be the head of the household. If the new head of the household died…then right on down the line to the next oldest son. The next oldest son would take responsibility for the family in all areas. If there were no more men in the family to take this responsibility it would be passed to a different man in the family, maybe a cousin…if there were no other family men, the responsibility could be passed on to a friend of the family. You get the idea.

So this instance in time, where Jesus is sending this “Tweet,” has several angles to it. First…in my opinion…it proves that Joseph, Mary’s husband, has passed away. We don’t know for sure. We have no record of Joseph after the instance where Mary and Joseph can’t find Jesus for 3 days, and when they finally find Him, He is in the temple area speaking to the religious leaders…Jesus was about 12 or 13 then. After Joseph and Mary find Jesus, there is no mention of Joseph again. Nothing. Maybe God took Joseph’s life for losing Jesus? LOL…just kidding. See how I think? LOL

So in this Tweet, where Jesus is saying publicly to Mary….”Here is your son.” And to John….”Here is your mother.” I think this demonstrates that Jesus is the head of the household. The oldest son. I suppose its arguable that someone could say that Jesus is the Son Of God and can do whatever He wants…and He didn’t have to be the oldest son to give this Tweet. That could be true. But I see a theme throughout the Bible that Jesus honored culture and respected law.(He didn’t have to.) I’m pretty convinced that Jesus is head of the household here and is making sure that His mother will be cared for when He is gone. Now…Jesus had brothers and sisters. But it seems they weren’t on the scene. So, i think Jesus was asking John to step up and take care of His mother. We won’t know for sure until we physically meet Jesus someday. I’m sure we’ll ask and get a clear answer from Him then. How cool with that be?

The other, and more important point about this Tweet of Jesus being sent out while Jesus is on the cross…It shows that Jesus was continually focused on Promoting the progress and purpose of others. If there was ever a time for Jesus to say. “Hey…Everybody! This is about ME!” Then this was the time. Yet His focus was to make sure the people He was leaving behind would be cared for and loved. He was concerned about others. In fact, I can think of only one time where Jesus thought about himself. Its the time in the Garden of Gethsemane when Jesus begs to have “this Cup of Suffering” taken away from him. For a few moments, Jesus thinks about himself and begs for His Father to get Him out of the crucifixion. This thinking didn’t last long. Immediately after asking His Father to take away this pressure….He bowed and submitted and began to promote the progress and purpose of God/Others by saying…. “Not my will be done, but yours.” (If you want to watch a full message I preached on this very subject on video about this “cup of suffering” then click on this link, its the video titled “Cup of Suffering.”) PLEASE NOTE: If you leave this sight right now to watch the video without reading the rest of this blog because you intend to come back and read it later, the parts you have not read are all underlined. It should be easy for you to return and know where to “pick up” your reading right where you left off!

Jesus cared right up to His very last heart beat. He cared for you. He could have come off that cross and settled the score right then and there. He could have come off that cross right there and shut everybody up and prove His Lordship. He could have called on the angels with swords drawn to free Him from the cross and they would have obeyed Him. He could have worked any miracle He wanted to. Right then. How tempting it must have been. But He didn’t. He honored the wishes of His Father and stayed on the cross and kept His mind on others. He knew it was better to die to for you and your cause than it was to think only about His own feelings.

Jesus continually focused on the needs of others. Not his own. I love the phrase “Promote the Progress and Purpose of Others.” Its easier said than done.

There is no phrase that better describes the focus of Jesus.

Today…as you pursue your check lists and live in your rituals…would you pay attention to others around you? When you get to the office or wherever you work…God will already be at work there. Join Him. Open your spiritual eyes and see the spiritual needs in the people around you during your day today. Be the one who joins God in His work today and get to the business of promoting other people’s purposes in life. When you and I fully do that…That’s when Jesus has a way of bringing it all back around on us.

That is truly living.

What can I do for you today to help promote your progress and your purpose?
If you ask…I will do whatever I can.

May 3, 2011    |       2 comments

Leader…SHIP!

What style do you lead with? You are a leader. Everyone leads in some form or another. I don’t want to oversimplify leadership because there is no such thing as simple leadership. So, humor me for a moment and let me cause you to think about two very famous forms of leadership and then you can decide which one you are and whether or not you are okay with your type of leadership. I do believe that you and I can change our leadership. Whether you have the gift of Leadership (Romans 12:8) or not, you can change your leadership style. Do you need to change your leadership style? If you do, will you?

Antoine Sanit-Exuperty was an aviator and an author. He wrote the following statement about leadership that I want to expound on. The simple statement below expresses what I think are the two most popular forms of leadership that I am asking you to meditate on and discern which one you are. Maybe someone else would be more truthful to you than you are to yourself as to which one you are more like.

“If you want to build a ship, don’t recruit the men to gather the wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead teach them to yearn for the vast and open sea!”

There you are. Two very effective forms of leadership. Both, effectively get a ship built.

The first form of leadership gets the ship built just like this image portrays.

This ship is magnificent. Inspirational. This is the kind of ship where men work hard to get it built. This is the kind of ship that men will do all they can to fix the problems and tweak the ship as its built so that it is just perfect. This is a ship that is built in a way that is reproducible, catches attention and people come from all over the world to walk around it and gasp at its incredible-ness. Who wouldn’t want to be recruited by the Leader of this vision so they could gather the materials, be a part of the divided work and complete the orders to build it?

I wouldn’t. I have a problem with this ship. Oh, its breathtaking and inspirational. It is quite an accomplishment. Something to be held in high honor and something to be very proud of. Not too many people get to build a ship like it! Its just not my kind of ship.

You might ask, “Why?”

Because all it is, is a ship, stuck on land. The problem with this ship, is that it is complete. The Leader wanted to build this ship, so he recruited the men to gather the materials, divide the work and gave the orders. Mission Accomplished! Built Ship.

The other form of Leadership… This second form of leadership builds this kind of ship…

This is the kind of ship that is built by the kind of leadership that I long for. Somewhere there was a man that taught a group of people to YEARN for the VAST and OPEN sea. They got together and began to dream about what it would be like to be out in the open sea with the wind blowing and the whales breaching and the waves carrying. These men got tired of dreaming and they discovered amongst them abilities and strengths that could make this yearning become a reality.

This is a boat that probably took a bit longer to build, it may have been a bit of rougher completion process. Mistakes would have to be forgiven, new lessons learned and the product that was brought to fruition was not a ship completed and still on the dock, but a ship completed, full of men who were proud of the accomplishment and an actual ship that is built to accomplish what the dream was all about.

I don’t want to be the leader that just builds the ship. Glorious as that may be.
I want to be a leader that inspires men to build the ship, un-dock the ship, navigate the ship, and then EXPERIENCE the VAST AND OPEN SEA.

Both are very effective styles of leadership with very different results.

What is your Leader…SHIP?

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