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July 26, 2011

The Truly Miraculous

There is a difference between what is difficult to believe, stupendously improbable–and the miraculous. The difficult to believe encompasses those things which we, from our own cultural standpoint, find hard to think true. For example, that the church might grow more rapidly in an area where there are some Western missionaries, but not many. Or [...]

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July 18, 2011

Faith

Faith is not a magical formula. Faith is not just belief. To be faithful is to be loyal – to keep faith with your sovereign. To have faith is to be loyal to God and obey what He has told you to do. To have faith is to pursue the commands and vision and purposes [...]

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July 17, 2011

Money

Money is not a method of keeping score.It is not security in the bank. It is not a treasure. Money is a slip of paper, or a metal coin, which represents the possibility of trade. Money is simply a symbolic representation of the value we place on the few minutes we have, the dreams we [...]

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July 16, 2011

The blessings we have

When pondering why people in other places around the world are perhaps not as advanced or productive as you are, consider your blessings. If you’re reading this via the Internet, the following probably holds true for you: When a heat wave of 100+ degrees blankets your area–you keep working in air conditioning. You don’t have [...]

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July 15, 2011

Lazarus 2.0

Sometimes, God allows our dreams to nearly be killed before providing a route of salvation–as a way of trusting our faith: as he did with Abraham.Sometimes, God allows the dream to die entirely so that he can provide the ultimate reassurance: resurrection. Resurrection can only come to that which is dead. Unless we are willing [...]

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July 14, 2011

Try getting smaller

We look at a huge task–reaching a nation, reaching a people group, reaching a city–and we say, “It can’t be done.” Primarily because we don’t know how. All we can see is us, going, spending ourselves, crashing-and-burning, perhaps even getting martyred–and for what? How will the little that we can do make a difference? Instead [...]

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July 6, 2011

When will you pop the question?

To achieve a vision requires doing something. To achieve a big vision requires lots of people doing something. What a visionary has to get good at: “popping the question”: asking lots of people to do something. Often popping the question is very personal. You risk rejection. Is the vision worth your fears?

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July 5, 2011

Setting impossibly high standards

Goals and numbers can be limiting: what gets us to the goal we set might not get us very much beyond it.

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July 4, 2011

Do I really want independence?

Today is the fourth of July in America–independence day. It’s the day we celebrate our declaration of independence from Britain. Independence is a very American trait–but it is not necessarily a Godly one. God calls us to be interdependent with others. He calls us to a life of service, of dependence, of humility. He says [...]

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July 3, 2011

Building a community is the hard part

You can develop a vision and you can identify the things that need to be done. And you can even do some of them. But if a vision is bigger than you, then you’ll need more than just you working on it. That means you have to build a community. Getting people involved is the [...]

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July 2, 2011

It’s not about selling books

I’ve been taking a very hard look at our website. For every element on the page, I’ve been asking – how does this contribute to the overall goal? And where, on this page, are the things that directly contribute? That really “matter”? You have to be ruthless about this. If your goal, like mine, is [...]

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July 1, 2011

Are you a success?

“Am I a success” is a difficult question to answer. Many people have definitive “measures” of success that they try to sell. They say, “You’re a success if you say/do/have/are _x_.” What they use to fill in the blank–their “x”–could be anything: millions of dollars, time spent with family, children raised to follow the Lord, [...]

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June 30, 2011

Moving

Some people start talking with others about their vision and their passions—and eventually decide to do something together. Some people find they have to get up and move from the place where they are to another, completely different place. Some people find it’s enough for them to write, incessantly, about a particular vision, and create [...]

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June 29, 2011

Busy and Productive

There is a difference between being busy and lazy, as the famous fable of the far-thinking ant and the shortsighted and apathetic grasshopper tells us. However, there is equally a difference between being busy and productive. To be busy can mean to be industrious—but it can also mean to simply be active at every moment. [...]

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June 28, 2011

The Blame Game

At least once a year there is an event which causes us to gasp aloud. An honor killing is a good example: a girl walking alone is attacked and raped by someone from the next village over, and then killed by one of her own family members out of shame. Bad boys aren’t responsible for [...]

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June 27, 2011

What is sowing?

Jesus told parables to get his point across. One form of parable that he constantly used was that of a farmer sowing seed. Of course, he wasn’t talking about his disciples being farmers. He once told Peter he would make him into a fisher of men. So we might ask ourselves—in our context, what is [...]

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June 26, 2011

Why are you doing that?

Whatever it is that you’re doing—why are you doing it? Are you using that website because everyone else is (and particularly all the cool people who are in the know)? Are you using that device because others are using it? Is that hobby a waste of time or a true time of rest, relaxation and [...]

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June 25, 2011

Choices

What works in the city, may not work in the country. What works with the elderly may not work with the young. What works with Christians may not work with non-Christians. What works with business owners may not work with students. What works with literates may not work with illiterates. What works with Muslims may [...]

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June 24, 2011

Leave eternity for later

Part of the problem with we Christians is this: we spend a lot of time trying to help people solve a problem they don’t know they have—or at worse, don’t believe exists. Some do not believe there is a Heaven (or Hell for that matter). But the vast majority are already believers of one sort [...]

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June 23, 2011

You will be hated

Jesus didn’t say you "won’t be famous,"he or "you won’t be wealthy," or "you won’t be a celebrity." He didn’t ask us to give up something most of us probably wouldn’t have anyway. Nor did he say "people won’t enjoy you" or "people won’t like you." He wasn’t asking us to give up private, personal [...]

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