We strongly encourage all the entrepreneurs we work with to go through our LifePlan retreat. Getting clear on the life they are intended to live is a crucial first step in having the clarity and conviction it takes to get their business working for them. Once they have their ideal life in clear focus, doing the work it takes to re-engineer their business to support that life becomes a foregone conclusion…
The organizations you lead and the roles you play there, should support and fulfill the purpose for your life, not the other way around. More often than not, we see leaders completely unaware of their calling or purpose other than what their vocational role might dictate.
It is our contention that you are not only created for a particular purpose, but that your Creator desperately wants you to know what it is. The clues are written on your heart, have been evident throughout your life, and are fully embodied in the things that bring you greatest joy, deepest pain, and get you out of bed in the morning.
When I look at the life of Jesus, for instance, He seemed to only do and say what the Father told him. In fact, He routinely walked past the opportunity to do good, because He seemed to be called to other places and things. Often that thing was simply spending more time alone with the Father.
As a Christian, it is hard to look past the opportunity to do good. As a Type-A person who has spent a lot of time trying to do good things for God, I’ve had to come to the sobering reality that God would rather have me do a few things with Him than do a lot of good things apart from Him.
This is the time of year, when hope springs eternal. With 365 days (minus about 25 now), we can accomplish almost anything. But in the chaos of the tyranny of the urgent, even the best laid plans we’ve made begin to fade. Like sets of endless waves crashing on the beach, the day to day issues we face in our lives and enterprise, can begin to wear us down.
It is the beginning of a new year and every intentional leader I talk to is hoping that 2016 will be different than 2015. They’re seeing the new year as a grand opportunity to chart a course toward a different future. Believing that maybe this is the year where a sense of team emerges, their biggest challenges and frustrations get addressed, and they have a huge celebration at the end of the year to celebrate all they’ve accomplished.
As Andy Dufrene from “Shawshank Redemption” asks, “You better get busy living or get busy dying.” I have always chosen “life” but the offer is so much more than I realized or enjoyed through most of my Christian life. We are called to an uncommon life by an extraordinarily uncommon King. The weight of God’s glory in me and the intended glory for all those I love and lead, hangs in the balance.
Something grand is intended for each of us and it is ours for the taking. It is a great treasure not merely to be realized later, but to claim and enjoy the riches of now! There is freedom to move aggressively toward intended glory with the Spirit’s constant guidance and direction. That certainly seems like a mantle that every person would choose over the fear and doubt they currently shoulder.
I am a recovering legalist. My legalism taught me to operate with a lot of false humility… to offer just enough of a thin veil of transparency and the appearance of being humble. I thought it would keep everyone far enough away where they couldn’t see the true person inside. It didn’t work for very long. The reality is that law-based faith is really born of deep insecurity. The law is simply the veil we apply to keep others from the truth about who we really are.
One of my favorite books is “A Million Miles in a Thousand Years” by Donald Miller. It is likely that if you got very far into a conversation with me, a story about that book would emerge. The book is founded on Donald’s realization that he was living a life that no one would pay to attend if it were made into a movie. Essentially, he was not writing an interesting enough story with his life for anyone to really care or pay attention. The book gently awakens the idea and then “sucker punches” you with an incontrovertible truth: Living a better story with your life is completely within your control and it is precisely what you were placed on this earth to realize. Living a more interesting story is a choice.
“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field,” Matthew. I heard a man quote this recently when he was talking about leaving behind all the vestiges of a successful home building career to follow Jesus. As rare and powerful as that testament was, it really got me thinking about why it is such an infrequently referenced passage and why that life is so rarely lived. Maybe it is because the depth and breadth of that treasure is not completely understood.
The spiritual life is always frontier. Are we willing to stop, discern, and filter the decisions we face in the ways that can help us find better frontiers? The throne is completely approachable and a loving Father stands at the ready. Most of us have been blessed by clouds of witnesses around us. It is not like we don’t have all the tools we need to make better decisions and find better frontiers. Sadly, if I sort through some of the wreckage of my life, I find a lot more decisions made with the filters of fear and control.
When I used to be involved in the Young Life youth ministry, we used to have this core value of “getting out of town” with kids. You had to…It seemed like then, and only then, could we have relevant and meaningful conversations. There we could talk about the big definitional issues that were causing the life they didn’t want and investigate the solutions to the life they ultimately desired. There, meaningful and lasting change could happen. It is no different with adults.
Being a self-made man, building a nice career, and earning a lot of money is a deceptive path that once on, is nearly impossible to depart. This world is designed to captivate you with something far from God’s grandest intentions. The offer is life and freedom and yet we unwittingly step into cages and latch the door behind us. And the generations behind us, like this young man, buy into a lie that the Church (we) haven’t done a good enough job shouting over.
The hill you will die on is the place or position you will fight for with your very last breath. It is the ground that will not be surrendered… you will do everything in your power to advance and preserve. It is the songs you have committed to your Father to never stop singing. I’ve found myself using that expression on a more regular basis of late, but it has been reserved for some very specific things. There is something about this saying that evokes the much more significant beginnings of where it was likely first uttered.
There is a much larger story going on in the petroleum industry as there was in the simple birth of a baby born a little over 2,000 years ago. And there is a much larger story unfolding all around you every day. The Kingdom continues to advance and as a crucial player in it, your unique role to play is desperately needed. Living with a world view that places you within that story and recognizes that you have an enemy set completely against you, will change everything.
Obviously, something far grander than forgiveness and a free pass into eternity is intended. There is a nobility and charge that we are to carry as ambassadors of the most high. How differently would all leaders approach their posts if they saw their companies and families as territories of the Kingdom to cultivate, grow, and advance?
Rare is the week where I don’t talk to at least one person overwhelmed by their situation. Typically it is in regards to their own life circumstance, but it is a fairly common occurrence to talk to a leader frustrated, confused, or overwhelmed by their organizational challenges as well. The “reference system” of everything going on around us tends to crowd out any hope or expectation for change and a different future. When we assess the litany of issues swirling around us, it is nearly impossible to imagine things getting any better.
If we are going to be the good Kings of the Kingdom that lead our businesses, families, and organizations well, we are going to have to do a better job of telling a compelling story. Ironically, the story we have to tell is written on the heart of every human being and it is the one they are all desperate to hear.
The difference between living fully alive and simply managing your sin until eternity is the difference between life and death. We read amazing stories from the Bible and hear incredible contemporaneous tales about those who change the world in unique and inspiring ways. For most of us, we view those stories as exceptions to the rule and see our lives as more pedestrian, simple, and of no consequence.
"Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus" - Paul’s Letter to the church in Philippi. Paul seems to be referring to exiting Phase 4 and entering Phase 1 in terms of the Hudson Cycle of Renewal. Frederic Hudson, founder of the Hudson Institute of Santa Barbara, teaches the cycle as part of their overall coaching methodology. It is designed to help figure out what phase an individual or organization is in in their development cycle.
In the certain, stable, and still-watered times, you simply need a good manager or someone to stay the steady course. The problem is, if we are intending to change lives, to bring transformation to the organizations and lives we have stewardship over, we will face certain and almost continual opposition. We should almost expect that trouble, trial, and uncertainty would be the context of our every day existence. The real question becomes whether or not we can take the directive (Take heart!) and trust in the promise (I have overcome the world).
“I’m the CFO and my job is to find the best people and pay them as little as I possibly can.” At least he was honest. Despite managing $1 Billion in bank assets and outperforming virtually everyone in my high-performing peer group, I was still making only a few thousand more than when I started as a credit analyst just out of college. Add to the fact we were expecting our third child and I felt like it was time to go around the boss (who said he was unable to adjust my compensation) and speak directly to the CFO we all reported through.
There seems to be a great swelling tide of purpose. As Uncle Oswald (Chambers) says, “Launch all on God, go out on the great swelling tide of His purpose, and you will get your eyes open.” The reason that it seems so prevalent, so ubiquitous in virtually every corner of society, should not surprise us. We were all uniquely created for it and collectively, we are called to the same.
I woke this morning, as I do most Mondays, with the week’s requirements present on my heart and mind. Rather than feeling daunted by all that lies ahead as I occasionally do, I felt an uncharacteristic calm. There is much to get done and everything seems to drip with import and implication, but it feels strangely manageable. I started thinking about the rhythm of my life and all the surrounding movements that have led me to this place. I thought it might be helpful to share a few. The movement from…
