Qualification not Elimination
Written by Sam Williamson. When we think about the tests of God, most of us shudder. Yet I believe that they can be a key to Hope and Joy. Let me explain. I began flying lessons in 1997. These lessons taught me to take off and land, to navigate using aviation charts, and to communicate with air traffic control. I particularly liked learning to land. On my second flight, my...
Read MoreLeaning & the Power of Our Life
A week or so ago, while in a worship time giving my life to God as I was lead by the songs, God spoke something I was not expecting. It was in the context of what I was giving to God – my thoughts, words and presence, my calling. He said, “Gary, you can’t wing it.” I knew exactly what He was referring to. I had been living at a pretty fast pace, from phone call to meeting to...
Read MoreHearing God and Controlling the Conversation
In 1989 the company I worked for was dying; it was losing money like the prodigal son, it had a two-year sales drought, and our owner—though previously successful—was out of cash. The company asked me to demonstrate our software to one of our prospective clients. Actually, our only prospective client. If we didn’t land this deal, we were out of business and I was out of a job. The night...
Read MoreWhat’s your Why?
“For this I have been born, and for this I have come into the world.” Jesus “I’m bored with my life” and “I’m afraid to make a change.” I hear these two thoughts almost daily in conversations with others and I’ve uttered them more than a few times myself. Apathy and anxiety. Seemingly opposites and yet we can somehow live with both. ...
Read MoreReplenishing & Reorienting for 2012
I don’t know about you, but Christmas is always a little hard on my soul. I love having family around, watching Christmas movies, great meals, getting presents for my wife and kids that I KNOW they will love. But spiritually and emotionally, at a deep level, I am usually very depleted. It could be the busyness of the “season”, simply the end of a full-on year of life, battle...
Read MoreClarity in Motion
It’s amazing how we can think too little or too much. We can think about a desire or idea to the point of it’s suffocation or we can move on it without letting it fully form – to it’s demise. God has given us these two pieces of counsel: “Desire without knowledge is not good – how much more will hasty feet miss the way!” Proverbs 19:2 NIV “Do what...
Read MoreYou Are Not Alone
“In the presence of eternity, the mountains are as transient as the clouds.” – Robert Green Ingersoll You’re not the only one who gets discouraged. I do. You’re not the only one who works too hard and too long knowing the striving may not be coming from a noble place. I do. You’re not the only one who stares at a list of things that have to get done or...
Read MoreNight Vision
It feels like night vision is required when looking into our own life or the life of another. We can make out the shape of some things that seem to be significant in the discovery of who we are, but they remain fairly dim and undefined or can disappear altogether. I remember several late evenings (actually early mornings) getting up and walking into the kitchen to get a pain reliever for a...
Read More“Creativity is just connecting things”
I’m guessing that you know that Steve Jobs, founder of Apple, died yesterday – October 6, 2011. Here is a man who much of the world was aware of…for good reasons. It’s often fascinating and beneficial to see how a person like this thinks. Here is a quote that stand out to me. “Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did...
Read MoreCold Front or Season Change?
It seems like clarity and perspective often comes to me in the morning as I’m in the shower. I don’t know if it’s the power of quite, warmth and water or that my mind has not yet become cluttered with the day’s demands or that God is preparing me for the day. A few showers ago, I was thinking about my state of being. I was aching, tired, somewhat lethargic and discouraged. This...
Read MoreStirred Up
“So the Lord stirred up the spirit of Zerubbabel…and Joshua…and all the remnant of the people.” (Haggai 1:14) As I read this passage in the book of Haggai my heart said within me, “I want my spirit to be stirred by God.” There are few worse moments than those times when my alarm goes off early in the morning and I lay in bed not quite able to fully wake up. It’s in those...
Read MoreGod will make you one of His specialist
Years ago, I ran across this statement from Oswald Chambers – “Soak continually in the one great truth of which you have had a vision; take it to bed with you, sleep with it, rise up in the morning with it. Continually bring your imagination into captivity to it and slowly and surely as the months and years go by, God will make you one of His specialists in that particular truth.” This...
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