I have to admit, talking about my faith has always made me a bit uncomfortable. From a church pulpit? Of course. Here on the blog? No problem. It’s expected. But in normal, everyday life? It can be a little awkward trying to insert Jesus into a mailbox conversation...
John Madden’s famous Six-legged Turkey is being prepped for Thursday’s NFL postgame show. Church signs are splashed with Thanksgiving themed bible verses (which, let’s admit, is a welcome change from most church sign content). Facebook walls are awash in “thankfulness...
Tom Paino is the first man I ever called Pastor. To this day, I still can’t call him Tom. It just doesn’t feel right. He’s Pastor Tom, a title of respect that forever belongs attached to his name. His voice is as familiar to me as my own family. From the time I was a...
My dad grew up in a poor pastor’s home. My grandfather pastored small Assemblies of God churches all up and down the east coast of the United States. Sometimes the church had actual money for his salary and sometimes they would have to pay him in chickens. Live...
This week we sat down with Anca Enache from Agency Boon, located in Bucharest, Romania, to hear more of her marketplace ministry story. What she shares with us is a powerful message we all need to hear about how we see our work and our ministry. Agency Boon is doing...
Chuck E. Cheese is a casino for kids. Debate me if you want, but I firmly believe the trail of ownership for this gambling franchise masquerading as a pizza place will lead you straight to Caesar’s Palace, The Mirage, and MGM Grand. The bright flashing lights. The...
Is It Possible To Find Meaning In Our Daily Work? This week Erik Cooper, The Stone Table President, shares that after speaking on Faith and Work with a number of churches, pastors, and business leaders, they all echoed the same idea: they want their work to be...
This week we spoke with Ron Maddux, the Assemblies of God World Missions Area Director for Northern Asia, to ask him why it's so important for the church and the business community to work together in missions. He brings some wonderful insight and even says some...
A few years back, I sat in my car outside our neighborhood Walmart and wrote myself an email. Some people just talk to themselves, but I prefer to put my neurotic episodes in writing. While I was obviously proving every stereotype about the crazy people who shop at...
My wife has an obsession with that bagged ice you buy from the large freezers outside gas station convenient stores. As often occurs, she buzzed me recently to ask if I would pick up a few bags on my drive home so she could keep her oversized plastic cups full of...
One of the most powerful tools you can add to your business arsenal this year is prayer. Prayer changes everything. Prayer aligns our hearts with the heart of God and makes us a safe place for Him to deposit His creativity and His ideas and His blessing. There’s this great scene from the Magicians Nephew in The Chronicles of Narnia series that I think illustrates why prayer is so vital. And I’m just going to read it to you, I’m just going to read right out of, right out of this great book. If you haven’t read The Chronicles of Narnia series, I highly recommend it, but the Magicians Nephew, there’s this great scene when Aslan has sent young Digory on a journey to accomplish something for him with one of his friends and they’ve gone on a flying horse together.
A mentor once told me that the two most vulnerable moments for any leader are after a great failure or after a great success. And it’s those moments of success that I want to talk about today. I think it’s when God has breathed on something that we are involved in; When God has done something more than we could have ever asked or expected. We tend to want to take more ownership of those things than we should. And it’s not that we don’t have a role to play, but I think in those moments of success when God has just multiplied something beyond our wildest imaginations, we can tend to pat ourselves on the back. Maybe begin to arrogantly think we were more of the causation for that than we actually were. And there’s going to be moments in any leadership journey of failure, but there’s also gonna be these moments where things just work. Where you look back and you realized, “Oh my gosh, look what has happened in and around me.” And it’s in those moments that we need to humbly fall on our knees and remember that we have a role to play. We are stewards. We function in obedience and response to God but the work, and ultimately the glory, for any success, in any endeavor, goes to God alone. And so, I want to encourage you, in those moments of success, to stay close to the heart of God. Cause there’s gonna be moments where God just miraculously breathes on something and it’s in those moments, we should be grateful that He allowed us to be a part of that journey.
Merry Christmas friends. I absolutely love this time of year. I’ve always loved this time of year, but I think as I’ve gotten older, I’ve gotten a little bit sappier and even a little more weepy this time of year because ‘ve grown to feel the weight of what the Christmas season really means, and I think all of us understand there’s something that’s just not right with the world that that even when good things happen, they’re not ultimately fulfilling.