Life Talk with Craig Lounsbrough

”In the Footsteps of the Few - The Power of a Principled Life” - Part Four

"In the Footsteps of the Few - The Power of a Principled Life"

I Was Thinking - To Think Outside the Box(s)

I was thinking.  And the more I thought, the more I realized that there is a whole lot to think about.  But in my thinking, I thought that most of our thinking (despite how much there is to think about) is really pretty standardized and chafingly rote.  We think in predetermined patterns and pre-existent templates that require no thinking, other than the commitment not to think.  We think in the way that others have chosen to think because they’ve already done the thinking, which relieves us of the need to do so.  We think we think, but the more I think about that, the less I think we think (if you know what I mean).  So, while there’s a whole lot to think about in this big, wide world of ours …we don’t. 

It seems that our thinking is constrained in a manner that there’s really not that much thinking going on at all.  Rather, more often than not our thinking is a tired process of monotonously gathering up a predictable handful of stale but safe thoughts.  And if we play with them long enough, we figure that maybe they’ll freshen up and something innovatively fragrant might actually emerge out of the rot.  If something actually does, we’re usually scared of whatever it is.  If it doesn’t (which is typically what happens) we become increasingly convinced beyond hope that life is actually as stale as we thought it was.    

 

Why?

Most of this appears to happen because we think within boxes that we randomly (and sometimes not so randomly) borrow.  We think within predetermined boxes because anything outside of those requires some innovation wherein we let the leash out a bit, let our thoughts find their legs, and let them run.  But we’ve discovered that sometimes that simply takes too much thought, far too much energy, and far, far too much courage, for it is much easier and much, much safer to just sit.  Or worse yet, we fear that once our thoughts have caught even the slightest whiff of a life running at full stride, they will forever refuse the short leash. 

What if our thinking were to open up fresh venues and pull back some hitherto hidden veil that suddenly revealed vast horizons that leaves ignorance no place to hide?  And what if the magnitude of such revelations is such that it handily crushes the complacency within which we’ve found so much comfort?  What if?  And out of the fear that such things might actually befall us, we peruse the stank back alleys of complacency, hastily borrowing boxes that we find deep in the darkened hovels of mediocrity.  And life becomes a journey lived within suffocating boxes rather than an adventure crafted of breathless horizons.

 

Our Box Collection:

The Box of Societal Norms

We think within the box of societal norms.  We grant these norms legitimacy because most of the people around us adhere to them in one form or another.  Because all these people adhere to them, we naturally grant these norms a morality, assuming that others would not dare embrace them if they weren’t sufficiently ethical or moral.  Therefore, (despite the terribly narrow nature of both the boxes and our logic), they are deemed acceptable.  To our relief, we quickly discover that if we think within these boxes we are far less likely to be met with rejection, or ridicule, or disdainful judgement, or some other rather distasteful response.  We desperately want to be in the good graces of those around us as that’s far more comfortable and far less dangerous than being in some other more adverse state of relationship with these people.  Therefore, the rules of the box rule out the role of thinking.

 

The Box of the Mundane

We think within the well-worn boxes of the mundane as that path is quite well charted, rigorously predictable, and therefore void of anything dangerous because other people have figured out where all the dangerous stuff is and either removed it, or they’ve created paths around it.  We know that venturing off the path in life is ref with all sorts of calamity that’s just waiting to happen, and so in the box of the mundane there’s nothing to venture off on because there’s one and only one path.  It might be mundane, it might go nowhere, but it’s safe (if you happen to define ‘safe’ as refusing to live in order to effectively avoid being hurt).  In an increasingly busy world that’s careening in every conceivable direction, the box of the mundane allows us to perfectly function on autopilot since there’s only one path that we can walk.  Better yet, if we so choose we can simply sit along the side of this singular path, as this box generously allows us to somehow think (because we’re not) that sitting is a journey.  Therefore, the rules of the box rule out the role of thinking.

 

The Box of Our Fears

We think within the box of our fears, as anything on the outside of those walls is filled with horrific danger (often of the most fabricated sort).  We’ve probably ventured out there a time or two, and when we did, we got hurt.  And so, when we were hurt, we put our pain on emotional steroids which exponentially magnified our fear.  We then took that fear and fashioned a monster that doesn’t exist, and we hunkered down in our box horrified by the fiction of it all.  And while the space out there is a whole lot bigger than the infinitesimally tiny space in here, at least it’s safe.  And safety (in our minds) is a decent trade-off, so much so that we amply decorate the box and make it homey with the scant furnishings of justification, rationalization, denial and other carefully appointed excuses.  We settle into the scantily upholstered armchair of mediocrity and wile away our days pretending that we’re not pretending.  Therefore, the rules of the box rule out the role of thinking.

 

The Box of Our Families

We think within the box created by our families as we engaged them growing up.  In many unhealthy families, their boxes were shaped by their own demons and assorted hobgoblins that they handed the reins of power over to.  Over time, they dutifully passed those onto us lock, stock and barrel.  Sometimes these families demand that family members stay within those boxes because, somehow, we will vanish into the dank darkness of another life, or be whisked off to parts unknown by friends, or fall headlong into a career if we dare step outside of them.  Other times, family members may prompt us to move outside of the box because they have come to recognize the life-sucking quality of the box.  Yet, while they prompt us to step out, they did not know how to do so themselves.  Therefore, we must do the most daring thing imaginable and think through exactly how in the world we’re going to do that.  Therefore, the rules of the box rule out the role of thinking.

 

The Box of Self-Esteem

We think within the box crafted by our low self-esteems.  These are often the smallest of all boxes because we dare not create any room whatsoever for anyone else to come in lest they see how pathetically awful we really are.  Sitting in our confining hovel, we know full well that there’s great adventure and untapped possibilities outside of our boxes.  There’s a good chance that we studied it, or read about it, or on those better days taken a slight peek outside before slamming the door shut again.  In fact, knowing all of that is often the most difficult thing of all.  We know outside this box of ours there’s more life than we can wrap our solitary minds around.  We constantly hear the invitations to come out.  We can imagine adventure because we’ve imagined it so many times that we can almost touch it in our minds, which makes us think that somehow we’re touching the adventure out there (which in fact, we are not).  But we doubt our ability to function in it, or find a place in it, or seize it in the cultivation of our dreams, or much less survive it.  Therefore, the rules of the box rule out the role of thinking.

 

I Was Thinking

I was thinking that there are a whole lot of boxes.  Lots and lots of them.  But I was also thinking that they are just boxes and nothing more.  A box is not a fortified prison with towering walls and tangled barbwire, even though we have come to see it as such.  It’s just a box and nothing more.  And as a box, it doesn’t hold us.  Rather, we hold it.  I don’t ‘think’ that we have the power to move beyond our boxes.  Rather, I ‘know’ that we do.  And when we realize that power and move beyond our boxes, the parameters of our lives will explode exponentially in a manner that we will be free to think about all the many things that this big, wide world of ours has to think about.  When we do, the role of thinking will finally destroy the rules of the box.  And when that happens, we will be genuinely free.  And when we’re free we won’t be imprisoned by the dark specter of endings.  Rather, we can embrace the majesty of our purpose, and we can run with the power of our calling.

And so, I think I really, really want to think outside the boxes.  So, I think I’ll start getting rid of them.  It might take some time.  I’m going to have to be honest about them and grieve what they’ve already stolen from me.  It might be scary (in fact, I know it will be).  I may wonder what in the world I’m doing at times.  People may wonder what I’m doing as they peer out from the cracks in their own boxes.  But to not get rid of the boxes is to rot away in a box.  And I know that that is not the life for me.  And might I say, I don’t think that’s the life for you either.  So, let’s begin the process of letting the role of thinking destroy the rules of the box.  And let’s be free.

”In the Footsteps of the Few - The Power of a Principled Life” - Part Three

"In the Footsteps of the Few - The Power of a Principled Life"

To Believe In Something Better - The Rise Against What Is

Our humanity is ingeniously fashioned in a manner that it can handily break the realities that would seek to break it.  Our existence need never be held hostage nor pressed into servitude to the sordid realities of all that is happening around us.  Rather, we are able to stand in spirited opposition to those realities, and in the face of them we are capable of crafting brilliant and utterly resilient solutions that crush those realities by transforming them.  We are dreamers and the authors of visions.  We have the ability to conceptualize marvelous things and actually begin the act of crafting them even at those times when the presence of them or the hope for them is entirely non-existent.  We are a powerful bunch vested with immense potential that exceeds even that which we understand. 

Yet, we bring these abilities to bear against a world that would wish to press us flat in its skepticism.  The world becomes embroiled in the selfish pursuits that it crafts as it chases things born of greed, gluttony and selfishness.  The world would bend us to its darker ways rather than be bent to a better way.  The world would prefer to kill both us and itself rather than give up what it has selfishly given itself over to.  Indeed, the world has sold its soul to something that it is convinced will liberate the soul that it sold.  Therefore, in the insanity of a world gone rogue, the world will viciously fight for the things that are certain to destroy it.

The weight of living in a world such as this, as well as the incessant press of darkness that such living spawns can at times leave us wondering if our influence might be too insufficient to wrestle the world out of a darkness that has become so terribly dark.  We stand as single entities, bringing what light we can.  Most times, that light seems swallowed in the vast darkness that seems to advance without restraint.  We are left in the squalor of a battle that seems lost, only holding the line so that we can delay the full descent of evil and grant ourselves a few precious moments before life is over.

 

To Believe In Something Better

But we forget.  We are extraordinarily quick to lose touch with a greater reality that infinitely surpasses the darkness which surrounds us.  Our perspective becomes one of gradual defeat and continual hopelessness.  Our understanding of who we are and Who we serve is lost in the grief of a battle seemingly hopeless and ground perpetually surrendered.  We fall prey to the lies of the darkness whose own darkness is completely dependent upon our fear of it.  Therefore, the darkness must appear dark beyond what it is in order to create the fear necessary to insure its own survival.  It is not an undefeatable foe.  It is, in fact, a foe that fears lest we discover the power that we possess and the vulnerability that it has.

Therefore, to remind us of who we are in times such as these and to fan the flames of our passion, I have compiled a number of quotes that I have had the privilege of authoring.  It is my desire to call us back to lofty dreams and rigorous passion.  To remind us that the darkness is the absence of light and therefore is totally dependent on the light remaining absent.  As such, the darkness is terribly vulnerable as it possesses no means by which to stop the light other than creating fear in us.  These quotes are written to set us free and send us out in the marvel of our humanity to change a world that is too ill-equipped to change itself.  To say that we stand for something better, and that we will be that ‘something better’ in the standing.  It is my hope that these quotes will move you to move your world, for I believe that you can, and I believe that you will:  

 

The Rise Against ‘What Is’

“If it didn’t go all that well today, tomorrow is the opportunity that I have to do what I did today without doing it the way that I did it today.”

 

“Pull every dream that you’ve ever had from all of the places that you’ve abandoned them, brush them off, set them in front of yourself, run the fingers of your heart over each of them, fight the lie that you’re not enough to achieve them, and realize that the dream was not too big.  Rather, the belief in yourself is too small.”

 

“Let us not fall prey to the leaching negativity and rank pessimism that runs unleashed all around us.  Rather, with the utmost determination we must bring ourselves to understand that these lies have been given legitimacy by people who thought themselves as powerless in the face of them, rather than recognizing that we have the power to rip the face off of them.”

 

“You, yes you are the impossible waiting to happen.  And the only reason that that sounds impossible to you is that you haven’t been daring enough to push the possible out to the point where it becomes what you once mistook for the impossible.”

 

“I am begging you to let nothing shackle you that God has sent you to unshackle.”

 

“I’ve sat with tens of thousands of people and I’ve stared into as many empty eyes.  And I must say that the inexplicable contradiction for me is that despite the gaping emptiness engulfing every one of these eyes, there yet lies within each one a wonderfully formidable gifting, an irrepressible energy, a depth yet undiscovered, riches unfathomed, and the resources to amply transform this ever-darkening world.  And I’ve seen enough eyes to know that if yours are also empty, like everyone else’s they are also full.”

 

“God doesn’t ask if something can be done.  Nor does He ask if we have the resources to do it.  For God is bound by neither question.  And when we stand with God, neither are we.”

 

“You are fully and magnificently equipped to stand up and change the world around you.  And to simply sit down and tolerate the world around you is to squander who you are in the process of never being who you are.”

 

“Do not be ashamed of who you are, for in doing so you are not taking into account the majesty of all that you are.  And without any shred of doubt, I know that you are a person of majesty, for in my innumerable years of working with people I have yet to find even one person who is not.”

 

“Stand up and be the light that God created you to be.  Stand with me and the millions of others like both of us who have bowed before this inexplicably marvelous God of ours and in the bowing have begged that He not let us die until the darkness in the world around us has died first.”

 

“Look in the mirror.  Go ahead and look yet again.  And look not at the reflection, for while this body of yours is marvelously complex in ways that continue to elude the reach of modern science, it is but a simple shell that holds the image of God within you.  And if the shell is that grand, how much more what God has placed inside of it.”

 

“If I let that which I hold to be true fall victim to a world that says it is not, I have in that action surrendered to the voices of those who know nothing of the truth other than to destroy it because it terrifies them.  And if there’s one thing I should be terrified of, it’s not the surrender itself, but the fact that in the surrender I have given the world permission to avoid the very thing that it should fear.”

 

“It’s not the gifts or the abilities or the talents that equip us to accomplish great things.  Rather, it’s the persistent and adamantly stubborn conviction that we will in no way leave the world the way that we found it.  And I would rather join hands with a single person of this kind than sit with a million gifted people who are not of this kind.”

 

And finally…

“I will spend my life believing in you so that you will someday commit to doing the same.”

 

To Believe

We must press ourselves into a sort of reckoning.  We must realign our minds with the truth of who we are, who God created us to be, and the fantastic mission that He gifted us with.  In a battle this pervasive and insidious, we must ground ourselves in a truth so brilliant and pristinely clean that it will handily stand against the wiles of the devil and the depth of the darkness he has spun.  We must align ourselves with a reality so brilliant, robust and muscular that we find ourselves unintimidated by the darkness that now stands quaking in front of us.

We have a God who has called us to great things.  Great things.  He has not called us to defeat or even some slightly marginal victory.  He has called us to complete and unquestioned victory.  And such a call would never have been extended had not this God of ours provided ample resources to achieve that victory.

Before moving to the next chapter, I would encourage you to reread the quotes shared in this chapter.  I would likewise encourage you to pick one that speaks to you, to write it down, and recite it daily.  Let its truth seep deep into your soul and ignite your heart.  Let it breath confidence into your spirit and energy into your convictions.  Indeed, it is time to rise against ‘what is.’  So, let’s rise.

”In the Footsteps of the Few - The Power of a Principled Life” - Part Two

"In the Footsteps of the Few - The Power of a Principled Life"

Not Where We Were - Finding Ourselves Somewhere Else

It seems that we have some vague and rather ethereal sense of where we’re going in this thing called life.  For the more contemplative soul, that sense might be quite refined.  For the casual traveler, it might be a bit more nebulous and scattered.  For many, where they’re going is defined by the tasks of the day, rather than enlarged by a vision for tomorrow.

In many cases where we’re going is far more rigorously defined by all the places where we don’t want to go, rather than the places where we do want to go.  At other times its definition is rather handily shaped by the opinions of others, or it’s carved directly from the bedrock of the value systems that have been built into our lives throughout the whole of our lives.  For others, it’s based on the need to avoid the pain of our past or somehow prove our worth in the face of a self-image that lays battered and bloodied.  Vague or refined, we all have some sense of where we’re going.  And too often, we find ourselves ending up someplace else.

Some of us are not necessarily in conscious pursuit of wherever this place is.  We have this instinctually primal sense that it’s there and we intuitively assume that our path will take a natural course to wherever that place is.  Then, there are others of us who are myopically focused on where we’re going to the degree that everything that we do is wholly defined by that singularly beguiling destination.  Some of the more adventurous souls among us nimbly pursue that destination, spiritedly pulling in as much of everything that we can along the way to accentuate both the journey as well as the destination.  In whatever way we do it, we all have some sense of where we’re going.  And too often, we find ourselves ending up someplace else. 

 

The Detours We Create

Yet, life is not so predictable as to always wind its way to the places that we presumed it to be going.  There are those times when where we were going was bafflingly mistaken as some sort of final destination when in reality it was only a step to a final destination.  At other times the place where we’re going is really a destination that we had fabricated because the place to which life had originally called us appeared too big, or too far, or too steep, or simply impossible in whatever way our limited vision happened to interpret it.  At such times we craft some other less intimidating and thoroughly unfulfilling destination.  Sometimes our destination is to set a course away from our destination so that we can dispense with whatever responsibility or obligation our original destination might have demanded of us. 

And then in the magic of life, there are those times where we have actually pursued some authentic destination with such rigorous tenacity that the trajectory of our efforts has catapulted us past our destination to places that are everything of our furthest and fondest imagination.  However, it might play out, we’re all headed somewhere.

 

The Detours Life Creates

But then there are those other times when life takes a sharp turn that seems little of our actions, nothing of our destination, but everything of circumstances designed to kill our journey and crush our destination long before we get within arm’s length of it.  There’s a sense that something intrinsically unjust, stealthy and evil is always about and on the prowl, and whatever it is, it’s bound to show up if it hasn’t already.  When it does, it undoes everything that we thought was secure and certain, wreaking havoc on whatever our journey had been to that point.  And to whatever degree it wrecks the road underneath our feet, we’re left in a blurring trauma that renders our journey disjointed, our destination uncertain, and our lives dispirited.

 

The Explanation of Detours Missed

How It Happens

Yet, more often than not it’s the not the obvious shifts in our journey that are the core problem.  Sure, life shows up and we get shoved down.  There’s no question that the natural ebb and flow of life, whether it be titanic or miniscule, will happen to us.  Despite our frequently ego-centric inclinations to the contrary, we are not so shrewd or ingenious as to be able to traverse life in a manner that deftly side-steps everything that comes at us.  We don’t dance as well as we think we do.  Our ingenuity falls prey to our arrogance, and the winds that we assumed to be reliable often shift and drive our genius toward some rocky shoal.  And so, life will fall upon us, or ram against us, or pull the ground out from under us, or wreck us.

 

Casual and Careless

Yet, more often than not, the explanation doesn’t rest in life having shown up.  The much more poignant issue is that too often we are passive, flabby and lax in rigorously living out our lives.  We’re far too casual and careless.  Somehow, somewhere the exquisite sanctity of life and the priceless privilege of living it out was supplanted with some sense that it’s too much work or that it’s not going to work, so why try?  The gift is lost in the grind and we lose a sustaining sense of gratitude. 

We get caught in the shallows, forgetting that the deepest waters hold the greatest treasures.  But we would rather forage for trinkets because treasures are too stubborn to just hand themselves to us and we will not succumb to such preposterous demands.  The shallows become our calling when they are nothing more than our coffin.  Therefore, we drift without knowing that we’re drifting because we’re no longer paying attention.  We come to believe that we are living a life of great things because it is too overwhelming to embrace the truth that we have forfeited great things.  The outcome of such passive living is that we end up finding ourselves somewhere else without ever seeing it coming.

 

Preoccupied with Pabulum

Too often we’re too preoccupied with pabulum.  We’re tediously engaged with tiny things and we’re caught in the tedium of minutia because we can gather these things around us and control them when the bigger things are out of our control.  Too frequently we’re goaded by the fear of big dreams and massive possibilities, so we dumb down our lives to anesthetize those fears. 

There’s plenty of pablum to go around.  Therefore, we assume that if we collect sufficient quantities of it, it will add up to something bigger than pablum.  Yet, dreams are never constructed of pablum and our fears are never put at bay by any collection of it, regardless of how massive.  It is an escape, but it is never an answer.  It’s a detour, but it is never a destination.  It is an imitation of what we are attempting to avoid.  Subsequently, pablum gives us a sense that we can circumvent everything that we fear and still achieve everything that we dream.  We’re caught in small things, and the outcome is that we end up finding ourselves somewhere else without ever seeing it coming.

 

Along for the Ride

Frequently we presume that we’re some docile passenger along for a ride that’s going wherever it’s going, so we just let it go to wherever that place is.  We freely surrender to passivity which is an invitation to meaninglessness.  And meaninglessness is the death of the soul itself.  Life is a river, we say.  And the best course of action is to navigate it because entertaining the far-fetched notion of swimming against it is utterly preposterous.  

Assuming that we are along for the ride releases us from any accountability for the ride and where it might end up.  We are innocent.  Or we’re victims of circumstance.  Or our families put us here because they didn’t know any other place to put us.  Or we’re simply being obedient to whatever we’ve subjected ourselves to.    Assuming we’re on a ride that we can’t direct, the outcome is that we end up finding ourselves somewhere else without ever seeing it coming.     

 

The Walls of Denial

At other times, we live in the constructed confines erected from the raw material of denial, causing us to live out a life that is in denial of life itself.  We become squatters living in a squatter’s camp constructed by the flimsy materials of justification, rationalization, blame-placing and projecting.  We pull in the walls due to the reality that materials of this sort are always pulling inward because they will die if we dare to press them outward.  Hemmed in by walls of this sort, the world around us is shut out and moves on without our awareness of it. 

We live in walls that we pretend are horizons, or vast doorways that open to massive expanses and marvelous places.  In time, we come to believe that they are not walls at all as we’ve visualized them as something that they will never be.  We then live out our lives in these confining hovels, convinced that we are forging great mountains and running in wild places.  The outcome is that we end up finding ourselves somewhere else without ever seeing it coming.       

 

Ending Up Where We Wish to Be

We will end up somewhere.  The fact that we have a destination is irrefutable as life is a journey that presents us with no option other than the journey.  We may decide that the nature and course of the journey is irrelevant, and we may take a backseat to passivity.  If we do, we have no right to complain when we end up in some place other than what we may have thought or preferred.

Yet, we can recognize that we are not automatons subject to the flux of the world within which we have found ourselves.  It would seem advisable to recognize that we have an obligation to the course that our life is taking, and that along with that obligation we have been granted a profound degree of power to bring to the course.  If we imprudently succumb to carelessness, or become engrossed by pabulum, or if we just let the ride go wherever circumstances take it, or if we pull close the walls of denial this thing that we call life will wind itself to wherever it’s going with no one at the helm.  And that kind of destination cannot be good.

We would be wise to inventory our lives and determine if we are in some way large or small participating in any of these behaviors.  If so, we need to root them out and expunge them from our lives.  Reclaiming a sense of vision, and then seizing our lives with discipline and intentionality will set us on a path that will land us in places that we’ve dreamt to land.  If we don’t, the place we land may not be on any land that we even remotely recognize. 

”In the Footsteps of the Few - The Power of a Principled Life” - Part One

"In the Footsteps of the Few - The Power of a Principled Life"

What I Want - The Frightening Call of Great Things

I want to be happy, but I don’t think I want to be satisfied; for satisfaction lures me into believing that happiness is found in reaching some point rather than realizing happiness is born of striving for those points.  I want to experience a resilient and wonderfully endearing sense of contentment that neatly threads itself through every part of my soul, but I don’t want that contentment to morph into the baser mentality of complacency.  I want to keep a weathered eye on every horizon, but I want to do more than just watch those horizons from some sorry distance.  Rather, I want to walk their ridges.  I don’t want to contemplate the taking of a journey.  Rather, I want to be contemplating a journey as I’m taking it.

I want to robustly celebrate the achievements and vigorously revel in the milestones in a manner completely worthy of them, but I never want to fall to the bane of mediocrity that would prompt me to see them as a terminus.  I want to develop a sturdy confidence born of the advances made, and I want to have that confidence perpetually reinforced by the successes achieved.  Yet, I pray that my failures will always serve to temper that confidence so that it never turns to rot in the form of arrogance.  And in further managing this tempered confidence, I never want it to be so strong that I errantly assume any challenge as too small to be worthy of my time.  I want to be happy, but I don’t think I want to be satisfied. 

For whatever reason I might do it and in whatever way I might do it, I never want to hand myself excuses to round the next summit instead of scaling it.  I never want to slothfully presume the ability to achieve a goal without holding myself accountable to actually getting on the track and running the race.  And I suppose worst of all, I never want to scan my assorted array of trophies, whether they be numerous or few, and in the scanning embrace some languid sense born of complacency that somehow it is done and that I can hang up my hat, when in reality life is never done and no hat is really ever hung.

 

Why Do I ‘Never Want’ to Do These Things?

Laziness is humanity domesticated to its own destruction.  Mediocrity is life pent up in the very iron-clad cages that we create out of the misguided notion that an ‘adventure’ is a product of those misty-eyed idealists who expend their lives chasing dreams too elusive to catch.  Therefore, we create dreams that we can cage so that they simply can’t elude us, and in their captivity we can manage them so that, God forbid, they never manage us.  And what we forget is that a dream caged is nothing more than an anemic, pasty-white wish that is always in the process of dying in whatever cage it happens to find itself.

 

We Are Made for More

We are made for more than all of that.  Our humanity yearns for the next adventure.  We desire lofty summits and distant finish lines that tax the whole of our energies in order to get us to them.  There is inherent within us this incessant sense that where ‘we are’ is not where ‘we’re going,’ and that to park it wherever we’re at is to start dying in that very place.  There is some fixed notion in our psyche and some insistent voice in our souls that will not be silenced and cannot be appeased by lesser agendas.  These call out despite the many ways we work to silence them, and in the calling out they call us out.

Sadly, in light of the calling, we too often surrender to fear and we sell-out to apathy.  We foolishly peddle our resources and pawn off our talents to lesser things so that we can hold up some small, pithy achievement to offset the gnawing guilt we experience over bypassing the greater achievements that were our calling before we were called away.  We can’t show up empty-handed, for that would work against our efforts to squelch the already suppressed voice of passion.  Yet, unless we set our sights on higher things we will always be empty-hearted, for blind obedience to fear and the steady ingestion of apathy leaves everything it touches empty.  And I would propose that emptiness of this sort is the bedfellow of death itself.

Therefore, we achieve something because we must.  And at times we dress up those ‘somethings’ so that they don’t look half bad.  But too often our achievements are an insidious effort to sedate our sense of passion and render it appeased.  They’re the anemic manifestation of our fears, a groveling by-product of our lackluster vision, and a response to the snide voice of mediocrity that herald’s ‘passion’ as the fool’s errand. 

Passion is not fooled, even though we are fooled by the belief that we somehow fooled it.  To numb passion is not to diminish its power.  Rather, it is to diminish our sense of its power.  In doing so we stepped down instead of stepping up.  We swapped mountains for back alleys, and dramatic vistas for fading fences.  And these realities create a grinding angst within us that will not be soothed by anything but heeding the call from which we’ve run.

 

What to Do?

Decide to Do Something

As obvious as it may sound, the first thing to do is decide to do something.  Without the decision to do something, anything and everything is only an idea.  An idea, regardless of how ingenious or bold changes nothing until it is birthed as a reality.  The greatest ideas will only tickle our imagination, but they won’t fire it until they’re released.  They will nudge us, but they won’t force us to jump.  They will call, but they won’t beg.

To do something is to decide to be disciplined.  It’s a decision to take a step rather than toy with ideas.  It is a choice to move from the non-committal ease of playing out various scenarios in our head, to grabbing one of them by the throat and acting on it.  It is not based on cost in stepping out, for the greatest cost of all is in not stepping out.  And it is the sad reality that most of our ideas die without ever having been birthed as realities because we choose to do everything but step.

 

Decide If You’re Going to be Brave

An idea as only an ‘idea’ and nothing more than an idea is safe.  As ideas and ideas only, they’re manageable.  They’re domesticated.  They’re leashed.  We hold them within the safe confines of our minds and our imaginations, toying with them as time permits and returning them to those confines when it does not.  But cut the reigns and turn an idea loose and it may not be as manageable and domesticated as we might like it to be.  So, are we brave enough for the ride that is certain to ensue?

An idea that is given legs is one of the most dangerous things imaginable, but it is also one of the most exciting things possible.  An idea running at full stride is wildly frightening in a manner that unleashes something that was never supposed to be leashed.  It is not about throwing caution to the wind as some might think.  Rather, it’s about stepping into the wind and being swept up by it while wisely holding caution as we do.  It’s about understanding that wisdom is not held hostage to safety.  Rather, wisdom is based on figuring out how we navigate dangerous things in a way that no longer renders them dangerous.  And as such, are we going to choose to be brave?

 

Decide How Important Comfort and Familiarity Are

Unleash your ideas and things will never be the same; guaranteed.  Things will change when great ideas are unleashed because they can’t help but change.  What ‘is’ will become the stuff of a history that will lay beyond our ability to ever reclaim again.  Our ideas are the stuff of the future.  They are never home in the present for the present is only the thing that launches them, not the thing that cultivates them.  If our lives have been expended in the acquisition of comfort and the cultivation of familiarity, our future is our ‘now’ and no idea can sufficiently grow in that.

While the degree of success rests on the magnitude of the idea being released, the greater degree to which it will be successful is the degree to which we unleash it.  And if we prefer familiarity and the comfort that it engenders, we might never truly let an idea loose, or we may well attempt to cram it back into the confines we released it from after we’ve unleashed it.  At best, the ideas are hamstrung.  At worst, they perish.   

 

Get the Resources

If you’ve decided that you want to do something, if you’re sufficiently brave to do it, and if you’re willing to forgo familiarity and comfort in the pursuit of it, then get the resources that you need to make it happen.  Real resources.  This is not about thin and pasty resources, nor is it about material that’s been worn thin.  It’s not about sugary-sweet notions or trite sayings that are fun and fanciful but are shallow and porous. 

Rather, this is about finding bold, honest, timely, daring, frank, deep and brisk material that will thrust you out beyond the confines you saw as the terminus of your dreams.  Find resources that are unforgiving in helping you grow, reliable in content, proven in substance, and thick with wisdom.  Learn from trusted people who have been there-and-back who have likewise taken other people there-and-back.  Grab these resources, let them grab you, and then rigorously apply them without delay or excuse.  When you do, you will start the process of placing yourself in a position to begin heeding the call of great things.

”In the Footsteps of the Few - The Power of a Principled Life”

"In the Footsteps of the Few - The Power of a Principled Life"

Not Where We Were - Finding Ourselves Somewhere Else

It seems that we have some vague and rather ethereal sense of where we’re going in this thing called life.  For the more contemplative soul, that sense might be quite refined.  For the casual traveler, it might be a bit more nebulous and scattered.  For many, where they’re going is defined by the tasks of the day, rather than enlarged by a vision for tomorrow.

In many cases where we’re going is far more rigorously defined by all the places where we don’t want to go, rather than the places where we do want to go.  At other times its definition is rather handily shaped by the opinions of others, or it’s carved directly from the bedrock of the value systems that have been built into our lives throughout the whole of our lives.  For others, it’s based on the need to avoid the pain of our past or somehow prove our worth in the face of a self-image that lays battered and bloodied.  Vague or refined, we all have some sense of where we’re going.  And too often, we find ourselves ending up someplace else.

Some of us are not necessarily in conscious pursuit of wherever this place is.  We have this instinctually primal sense that it’s there and we intuitively assume that our path will take a natural course to wherever that place is.  Then, there are others of us who are myopically focused on where we’re going to the degree that everything that we do is wholly defined by that singularly beguiling destination.  Some of the more adventurous souls among us nimbly pursue that destination, spiritedly pulling in as much of everything that we can along the way to accentuate both the journey as well as the destination.  In whatever way we do it, we all have some sense of where we’re going.  And too often, we find ourselves ending up someplace else. 

 

The Detours We Create

Yet, life is not so predictable as to always wind its way to the places that we presumed it to be going.  There are those times when where we were going was bafflingly mistaken as some sort of final destination when in reality it was only a step to a final destination.  At other times the place where we’re going is really a destination that we had fabricated because the place to which life had originally called us appeared too big, or too far, or too steep, or simply impossible in whatever way our limited vision happened to interpret it.  At such times we craft some other less intimidating and thoroughly unfulfilling destination.  Sometimes our destination is to set a course away from our destination so that we can dispense with whatever responsibility or obligation our original destination might have demanded of us. 

And then in the magic of life, there are those times where we have actually pursued some authentic destination with such rigorous tenacity that the trajectory of our efforts has catapulted us past our destination to places that are everything of our furthest and fondest imagination.  However, it might play out, we’re all headed somewhere.

 

The Detours Life Creates

But then there are those other times when life takes a sharp turn that seems little of our actions, nothing of our destination, but everything of circumstances designed to kill our journey and crush our destination long before we get within arm’s length of it.  There’s a sense that something intrinsically unjust, stealthy and evil is always about and on the prowl, and whatever it is, it’s bound to show up if it hasn’t already.  When it does, it undoes everything that we thought was secure and certain, wreaking havoc on whatever our journey had been to that point.  And to whatever degree it wrecks the road underneath our feet, we’re left in a blurring trauma that renders our journey disjointed, our destination uncertain, and our lives dispirited.

 

The Explanation of Detours Missed

How It Happens

Yet, more often than not it’s the not the obvious shifts in our journey that are the core problem.  Sure, life shows up and we get shoved down.  There’s no question that the natural ebb and flow of life, whether it be titanic or miniscule, will happen to us.  Despite our frequently ego-centric inclinations to the contrary, we are not so shrewd or ingenious as to be able to traverse life in a manner that deftly side-steps everything that comes at us.  We don’t dance as well as we think we do.  Our ingenuity falls prey to our arrogance, and the winds that we assumed to be reliable often shift and drive our genius toward some rocky shoal.  And so, life will fall upon us, or ram against us, or pull the ground out from under us, or wreck us.

 

Casual and Careless

Yet, more often than not, the explanation doesn’t rest in life having shown up.  The much more poignant issue is that too often we are passive, flabby and lax in rigorously living out our lives.  We’re far too casual and careless.  Somehow, somewhere the exquisite sanctity of life and the priceless privilege of living it out was supplanted with some sense that it’s too much work or that it’s not going to work, so why try?  The gift is lost in the grind and we lose a sustaining sense of gratitude. 

We get caught in the shallows, forgetting that the deepest waters hold the greatest treasures.  But we would rather forage for trinkets because treasures are too stubborn to just hand themselves to us and we will not succumb to such preposterous demands.  The shallows become our calling when they are nothing more than our coffin.  Therefore, we drift without knowing that we’re drifting because we’re no longer paying attention.  We come to believe that we are living a life of great things because it is too overwhelming to embrace the truth that we have forfeited great things.  The outcome of such passive living is that we end up finding ourselves somewhere else without ever seeing it coming.

 

Preoccupied with Pabulum

Too often we’re too preoccupied with pabulum.  We’re tediously engaged with tiny things and we’re caught in the tedium of minutia because we can gather these things around us and control them when the bigger things are out of our control.  Too frequently we’re goaded by the fear of big dreams and massive possibilities, so we dumb down our lives to anesthetize those fears. 

There’s plenty of pablum to go around.  Therefore, we assume that if we collect sufficient quantities of it, it will add up to something bigger than pablum.  Yet, dreams are never constructed of pablum and our fears are never put at bay by any collection of it, regardless of how massive.  It is an escape, but it is never an answer.  It’s a detour, but it is never a destination.  It is an imitation of what we are attempting to avoid.  Subsequently, pablum gives us a sense that we can circumvent everything that we fear and still achieve everything that we dream.  We’re caught in small things, and the outcome is that we end up finding ourselves somewhere else without ever seeing it coming.

 

Along for the Ride

Frequently we presume that we’re some docile passenger along for a ride that’s going wherever it’s going, so we just let it go to wherever that place is.  We freely surrender to passivity which is an invitation to meaninglessness.  And meaninglessness is the death of the soul itself.  Life is a river, we say.  And the best course of action is to navigate it because entertaining the far-fetched notion of swimming against it is utterly preposterous.  

Assuming that we are along for the ride releases us from any accountability for the ride and where it might end up.  We are innocent.  Or we’re victims of circumstance.  Or our families put us here because they didn’t know any other place to put us.  Or we’re simply being obedient to whatever we’ve subjected ourselves to.    Assuming we’re on a ride that we can’t direct, the outcome is that we end up finding ourselves somewhere else without ever seeing it coming.     

 

The Walls of Denial

At other times, we live in the constructed confines erected from the raw material of denial, causing us to live out a life that is in denial of life itself.  We become squatters living in a squatter’s camp constructed by the flimsy materials of justification, rationalization, blame-placing and projecting.  We pull in the walls due to the reality that materials of this sort are always pulling inward because they will die if we dare to press them outward.  Hemmed in by walls of this sort, the world around us is shut out and moves on without our awareness of it. 

We live in walls that we pretend are horizons, or vast doorways that open to massive expanses and marvelous places.  In time, we come to believe that they are not walls at all as we’ve visualized them as something that they will never be.  We then live out our lives in these confining hovels, convinced that we are forging great mountains and running in wild places.  The outcome is that we end up finding ourselves somewhere else without ever seeing it coming.       

 

Ending Up Where We Wish to Be

We will end up somewhere.  The fact that we have a destination is irrefutable as life is a journey that presents us with no option other than the journey.  We may decide that the nature and course of the journey is irrelevant, and we may take a backseat to passivity.  If we do, we have no right to complain when we end up in some place other than what we may have thought or preferred.

Yet, we can recognize that we are not automatons subject to the flux of the world within which we have found ourselves.  It would seem advisable to recognize that we have an obligation to the course that our life is taking, and that along with that obligation we have been granted a profound degree of power to bring to the course.  If we imprudently succumb to carelessness, or become engrossed by pabulum, or if we just let the ride go wherever circumstances take it, or if we pull close the walls of denial this thing that we call life will wind itself to wherever it’s going with no one at the helm.  And that kind of destination cannot be good.

We would be wise to inventory our lives and determine if we are in some way large or small participating in any of these behaviors.  If so, we need to root them out and expunge them from our lives.  Reclaiming a sense of vision, and then seizing our lives with discipline and intentionality will set us on a path that will land us in places that we’ve dreamt to land.  If we don’t, the place we land may not be on any land that we even remotely recognize. 

”LifeTalk’s” Thought for Life - The Power of Principles

Welcome to LifeTalk’s Thought for Life.  Christianity stands for principles that are not stood for in our culture.  It stands for something lofty, but costly.  It stands for principles that are timeless rather than those that suit the times.  Consider this “Thought for Life:” 

“So it is that this man named Jesus handily performed feats that were astounding in their scope and utterly impossible in their nature.  And as if that were not enough, He then does something as outrageous as inviting us to a life of doing the same.  And yet it would seem that the most astounding and impossible thing of all is for us to blithely reject that invitation in favor of the aching emptiness and endless darkness that rides hard on the heels of just such a rejection.”

I hope that you ponder that thought today.  Discover all of my daily quotes on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Linkedin and Instagram.

 

Additional Resources

Discover an array of additional resources on our website at www.craiglpc.com.  Find all of Craig's thoughtful, timely, and inspirational books at Amazon. com, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold.  Also, take a moment to explore Craig's Public Speaking Resources for information regarding the resources available to your business, ministry, or organization.

”LifeTalk’s” Thought for Life - The Power of Principle

Welcome to LifeTalk’s Thought for Life.  Christianity stands for principles that are not stood for in our culture.  It stands for something lofty, but costly.  It stands for principles that are timeless rather than those that suit the times.  Consider this “Thought for Life:” 

“So it is that this man named Jesus handily performed feats that were astounding in their scope and utterly impossible in their nature.  And as if that were not enough, He then does something as outrageous as inviting us to a life of doing the same.  And yet it would seem that the most astounding and impossible thing of all is for us to blithely reject that invitation in favor of the aching emptiness and endless darkness that rides hard on the heels of just such a rejection.”

I hope that you ponder that thought today.  Discover all of my daily quotes on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Linkedin and Instagram.

”LifeTalk’s” Thought for Life - God’s Arsenal

Welcome to LifeTalk’s Thought for Life.  We spend our lives acquiring what we think we need to fight the battles that we think we’re fighting.  In a world fraught with fear and uncertainty, we assimilate whatever grants us this sense of invincibility and power for whatever battle we think we’re fighting.  Consider this “Thought for Life:” 

“I do not weaponize my life for God by rigorously acquiring an expansive arsenal of sophisticated munitions.  Rather, I empty out the arsenal of everything but God, for at that point the arsenal is filled to capacity.”

I hope that you ponder that thought today.  Discover all of my daily quotes on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Linkedin and Instagram.

Who Are You Giving Yourself Away To?

Who are you giving yourself away to?  To what propaganda have you come to subscribe?  To what bit of media polished bias or refined political spin have you succumb?  Who has your ear, and therefore holds the heart to which your ear is attached?  What are the voices that have methodically and patiently lulled you into some sort of comatose complacency where you no longer engage this rare, but incredibly precious thing that we call common sense?  What podium have you obediently sat in front of that has led you to believe that you cannot think for yourself, or maybe that you can, but that you don’t need to?  Who has told you that facts are irrelevant, and that the truth is simply an irritating obstacle to be quickly discarded if they don’t neatly fit on the preferred end of some ever-changing political spectrum?  Who are you giving yourself away to?

”LifeTalk’s” Thought for Life - Ignoring Our Conscience

Welcome to LifeTalk’s Thought for Life.  We ignore our conscience because we want to do what it says we shouldn’t.  But, we also ignore the consequences of ignoring it.  Consider this “Thought for Life:”

“Disabling your conscience is like disabling your smoke detector.  It doesn’t stop a fire.  It just leaves you ignorant of the fact that there is one.”

I hope that you ponder that thought today.  Discover all of my daily quotes on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Linkedin and Instagram.

”LifeTalk’s” Thought for Life - Running After Stuff

Welcome to LifeTalk’s Thought for Life.  We run after a lot of stuff.  Our time, our energy, our finances, and much of our lives are spent chasing stuff.  And when we catch that stuff, we typically find that it doesn’t do for us what we thought that it would do for us.  Consider this “Thought for Life:”  

“The insanity of it all is that the search for that which will fill us incessantly drives us to pursue the very things that will empty us.  Yet, the greater insanity is to find ourselves utterly perishing in our emptiness and yet declaring to our dying day that the emptying was the filling.  And that is emptiness of the most chilling sort.”

I hope that you ponder that thought today.  Discover all of my daily quotes on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Linkedin and Instagram.

Asking the Right Questions Verses Responding for the Wrong Reasons

Too often we don't take the time to really ask why we support what we're supporting.  We get swept up in some energizing movement, or we're utterly captivated by some cause.  Something feels inherently good and the premise that drives it appears sound.  We find that an army of people have raced to the forefront of this cause, or it's embraced as long overdue, or it appears right for the times.

But in all of that, do we ask the larger questions?  Do we ask if there is some underlying issue that's bigger than the cause that prompted it?  Is there more here than just the excitement of the moment or the rallying cry of the population?  Do we proceed with a wisdom that will solve the larger issues, or will we just perpetuate all of those by running amuck in lesser things?  Change is needed.  But if it is not thoughtful change, nothing will change.

The Path to Losing Our Freedom

Our freedoms are not a "right."  They are, in fact, a "privilege."  They are not ours to abuse.   Rather, they are ours to cherish.  But as we abuse these rights by demanding our right to them or exercising them in ways that will destroy these very freedoms, we forget that they are fragile.  Very fragile.  They are not permanent.  They are not guaranteed.  They will not stand under the weight of our misuse of them.  And if handled inappropriately or abused in one of the many ways that we abuse them, we may someday find ourselves without them.

We are a nation that is losing it's mooring.  We are blatantly rewriting our history and thoughtlessly discarding truth in some mad dash of ultimate destruction.  We are using our freedoms to destroy ourselves.  And I would think that that is the saddest use of these cherished and long-held freedoms that I can think of. 

 

 

”LifeTalk’s” Thought for Life - Freedom is Precious

LifeTalk's "Thought for Life" is a weekly one-minute thought that touches on one of today's pressing issues.  Each of these brief presentations is centered on one of Craig's personal quotes.  All of his quotes are specifically written to challenge, inform, and inspire.  Today's thought is:

“If I don’t passionately desire freedom for all of my fellowmen, it’s likely that I haven’t been sufficiently freed from my selfishness so that I might see their captivity.”

Follow all of Craig's daily quotes on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Linkedin and Instagram.

”LifeTalk’s” Thought for Life - We Need to Stop

Welcome to LifeTalk’s Thought for Life.  We need to stop.  We need to put down our calendars, set our phones aside, strip ourselves of the voices incessantly clamoring for our attention and listen.  Just listen.  For life is not what we’re chasing.  It’s what we’re leaving behind in the chasing.  Consider this “Thought for Life:”  

“Rich is the person who stops long enough to listen to a bird sing in the celebration of spring, peer into the deep blue of a drowsy summer sky, draw in the pungent aroma of fall’s leaves, and watch the listless kiss of a winter’s snow.  For in doing these you have witnessed that which money cannot purchase and man cannot create.”

I hope that you ponder that thought today.  Discover all of my daily quotes on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Linkedin and Instagram.

”LifeTalk’s” Thought for Life - Fear or Faith

Welcome to LifeTalk’s Thought for Life.  We spend our lives acquiring what we think we need to fight the battles that we think we’re fighting.  In a world fraught with fear and uncertainty, we assimilate whatever grants us this sense of invincibility and power for whatever battle we think we’re fighting.  Consider this “Thought for Life:” 

“I do not weaponize my life for God by rigorously acquiring an expansive arsenal of sophisticated munitions.  Rather, I empty out the arsenal of everything but God, for at that point the arsenal is filled to capacity.”

I hope that you ponder that thought today.  Discover all of my daily quotes on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Linkedin and Instagram.

”LifeTalk’s” Thought for Life - Building Bridges or Barries

Welcome to LifeTalk’s Thought for Life.  We build bridges or barriers.  If you think about it, everything that we do builds one or the other.  And the function of a bridge is quite different than the function of a barrier.  Consider this “Thought for Life:”  

“Every decision will build a bridge or a barrier.  Therefore, what stands in front of you at this moment illustrates the decisions that you made on your way to this moment.”

I hope that you ponder that thought today.  Discover all of my daily quotes on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Linkedin and Instagram.

Podcast Short: Am I Passionate for the Right Things?

Am I Passionate for the Right Things?

“In full uniform, the color guard marched by as part of the parade.  And as they did, he forced his horribly slumped and deeply aged body out of his worn wheelchair and stood to ram-rod attention.  He held a salute until the guard had passed, and then he feebly collapsed back into his wheelchair.  As I stared in ever-warming admiration, emblazoned across his hat I saw the words “WWII Veteran.”  And while I deeply admire his stirring passion for our country, I stood there wishing that my passion for the cause of Christ might someday be strong enough to lift me out of the many wheelchairs within which I sit.”

Am I passionate for the right things?  Not just passionate.  But passionate in the right way.  Sure, there’s a lot of voices out there.  There’s a lot of causes out there.  There’s a lot of yelling, and screaming, and arguing, and hostile behaviors, and noisy propaganda, and a bunch of edgy people on more than one rant advocating for these causes.  On top of that, the causes themselves shift depending upon the temperature of the culture, or the agenda of the people pulling long strings behind closed doors.  There are causes that represent the demands of a handful of people who find the foundations of their cause so ill-defined or fragile that constructive dialogue is replaced with destructive actions.  Greed is rampant.  Power-mongering runs wild.  Principles have been discarded because they impede the progressive thinking that end up resulting in regressive outcomes.  And in this mess and in the midst of all of this noise, am I passionate for the right things?

Consider this.  There are some things that are timeless.  There are some things that are woven into this existence that you can’t remove.  There are principles and ethics that are foundational.  You can try and remove them, but there’s a huge cost to that.  Civilizations throughout history have messed with them, or attempted to adjust them to suit a particular cause, or worked to rid their culture of them altogether.  And the outcomes are never good.  History will tell us that rather plainly, if we’re willing to be honest about history. 

And so, I want to be passionate about something that’s timeless, because I want it to live on beyond my life.  Something that this culture can reliably build on both today and tomorrow and for every tomorrow after that.  Something that’s certain to sustain my kids and grandkids and great-grandkids.  And nothing that we can create on our own will do that.  What we create is too weak, and too fragile, and too shallow, and too lackluster to do that.  That kind of stuff is only something that God can create. 

And so, it’s this God and what He created and principles that He built it all around, it’s that stuff that I choose to be passionate about.  Not man-made stuff because that doesn’t last.  Rather, it’s God-created stuff.  It’s the principles that shaped this existence at its core that I will surrender my passions to and be passionate about.  Because if I’m not passionate about that stuff, passion won’t matter because very shortly nothing will.

”LifeTalks” Thought for Life - Not As Helpless As We Think

Welcome to LifeTalk’s Thought for Life.  Sometimes we feel helpless.  In the midst of tragedy, or painful losses, or devastating moments, we often feel that we are helpless to do anything other than standby and watch.  Yet is that really all that we can do?  Consider this “Thought for Life:”  

“Prayer inserts me into the middle of any battlefield regardless of how gruesome or bloodied.  And in the carnage of whatever that battle might be, it allows me to deliver a force greater than any raging on that field.”

I hope that you ponder that thought today.  Discover all of my daily quotes on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Linkedin and Instagram.

”LifeTalk’s” Thought for Life - An Existence Without God

Welcome to LifeTalk’s Thought for Life.  It’s my sense that God doesn’t need me to speak to you.  He’s quite capable of doing that without me.  But there are times when I sense that He wants me to speak something of Him to you.  And this is one of those moments.  Consider this “Thought for Life:”  

“I don’t always preach God, for His existence is obvious.  Rather, I preach what will happen to our existence if we deny His.”

I hope that you ponder that thought today.  Discover all of my daily quotes on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Linkedin and Instagram.

”LifeTalk’s” Thought for Life - What is Truth?

LifeTalk's "Thought for Life" is a weekly one-minute thought that touches on one of today's pressing issues.  Each of these brief presentations is centered on one of Craig's personal quotes.  All of his quotes are specifically written to challenge, inform, and inspire.  Today's thought is:

“Decisions based on timeless truths will never leave our tomorrow regretting the decisions of our yesterday, for such truths will always supersede any ‘then’ or ‘now.’”

Follow all of Craig's daily quotes on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Linkedin and Instagram.

Being a Lamp That’s Lit

Jesus calls us to be the "light of the world."  The fact is, we are all lamps.  We all have the capability to cast light into a darkened world.  And furthermore, we can actually cast a compelling and far-reaching light if we choose to.

But even though we are a lamp with great potential, is that lamp ever lit?  Are our lives ever really bright and casting something hopeful into the darkness around us.  Yes, we are all lamps.  But few of us are lit.  And the question is, "Are you a lamp that's lit?"  The answer to that question will have immense bearing on your life and the lives of those around you.

Discover additional podcasts as well other resources on our website at www.craiglpc.com.

Uniqueness - Not as License

Sometimes fully being oneself in plain sight can be viewed as rather weird or downright odd.  Sometimes our uniqueness is labeled as strange, bizarre, quirky or slightly peculiar. ‘Different’ in a culture of uniformity is too frequently labeled as eccentric, curious, “out there,” slightly unconventional, eerie, a tad bit unorthodox, or being something akin to being a dork.  Our uniqueness can have dramatic social implications, causing us to be the outsider, the alien, the cultural misfit or just so plain weird that we’re a social phenomenon entirely unto ourselves with no place within which to fit at all; being relegated to the outcast. 

These kinds of conclusions are quickly drawn and judgments are carelessly rendered rather than seeing uniqueness as potentially fresh, distinctive, or entirely singular. Far too often uniqueness is directly correlated with weirdness, dumping it into an entirely negative and typically unredeemable social sideshow.  Uniqueness is pathetically reduced to oddity.It is then seen as entertaining because face it, “odd” is entertaining.  The throngs of society curiously mill about these sideshows seeking some form of entertainment or amusement at the ignorant expense of the miracle of uniqueness.  If you happen to have had the misfortune of having been dumped in some sort of sideshow because of your uniqueness, you’re seen as a permanent resident unless you reinvent yourself and sacrifice your uniqueness as part of that reinvention.  The cost to do that is astronomical and deadening.  

The Loss of Rendering Conclusions and Judgments

These various labels that we apply to others or have applied to us create a sharp and tainting distinctiveness that separates and excludes, rather than incorporates and includes. The profound asset of our uniqueness becomes a crippling liability.  We have these various labels dogmatically slapped on our foreheads in exceedingly bold type with the whole of our person then being identified based on whatever’s been scrawled on the label and slapped on our foreheads.  Following the brutality and ignorance of uniqueness branded as oddity, or worse yet as a deficit, we are forever relegated to the sideshow of life. The richness of our uniqueness is then lost to us, and lost to a world wallowing in stereotypes.  In such a“lose-lose” situation, we are all diminished in ways that we may never make up.

Rightly Exercising Our Uniqueness

In a culture that embraces tolerance and diversity, let’s make one point very clear. Being unique is not about taking license by being oneself and using it as a stage to elicit attention, or make some sort of controversial cultural statement, or use it as a pedestal to flaunt immoral behavior, or generate some sort of shock factor in those who are watching us be “us.”  Simply put, possession of uniqueness does not include permission to use that uniqueness with impunity to create something that we’re not in order to fulfill a personal agenda or fuel a social mission of some sort.  Our uniqueness is not a lifeless stool to be snatched up and errantly or thoughtlessly used in the service of whatever cause we choose to use it in.  Being authentically oneself is much more responsible and careful than that. 

Being oneself is about embracing a deep respect for the stunning and entirely vibrant uniqueness of all of creation; a uniqueness that has been carefully crafted, unapologetically exercised and fully manifest in each and every one of us. It’s respecting that uniqueness within us not as license to be itself at the cost of everyone else around it, but something that builds upon everything else around it.  It is not a pedestal to demand tolerance of the aberrant behaviors that we take license to construct from of our uniqueness.  Rather it’s a place where we bow in some soulful combination of deep appreciation and mind-boggling awe as we look to carefully unearth who and what we are without twisting or tainting who we are in the process.  It’s has nothing to do with revisionist mentalities or self-decreed permission where we seize our uniqueness, plop it as some lump of clay on a potter’s wheel and methodically shape it to our designs or our likening without regard for what it really is.  Uniqueness used in these ways will cease to be unique.

Uniqueness Gone Bad

The uniqueness of our individuality under the total control of the individual is likely to be driven by selfish and self-centered agendas that will make us unique, but uniquely troubled, dysfunctional, disoriented and distorted.  The power of uniqueness in the hands of limited people with unlimited parameters is dangerous indeed.  In a culture of self-determination, personal rights and the territorial thumping of our chests to declare that we’re the masters of our own fates we take license with our uniqueness that is not necessarily ours to take.  The cultural mindset of brazen independence creates a misguided sense that we are indeed of our own making, and that if we don’t shape who we are in whatever image we’ve determined that to be, we will have completely squandered our lives.

Uniqueness Well Handled

It seems that our uniqueness is not something to be shaped by us, but understood by us.  It’s not to be engineered by us, but explored by us.  It’s not to be created by us, but cultivated by us.  We do not set its agenda; rather we discern it so that we know enough of it to know the agenda it has set for us.  Our uniqueness is a precious gift that’s designed to be understood so that we can participate in making it the most that it can be, not shaping it into what we want it to be. 

Our uniqueness holds within it the clues and the resources that tell us who we are, why we’re here and what we’re supposed to do with this gift called life.Our uniqueness is most effectively nurtured and cultivated within moral and ethical parameters that don’t inhibit that individuality as the culture assumes, but rather creates a place for us to maximize that individuality.  Moral and ethical parameters keep our uniqueness pure, supple and free from all the things that would tarnish it and ultimately destroy it.  Uniqueness is a priceless gift that is as fragile as fine china, as tough as fired steel, and as broadly expansive as the creative genius of God.  It is a gift beyond our ability to handle, but not beyond our ability to surrender to something greater than us so that it will eventually become something greater than us.  Uniqueness surrendered and lived out in the enabling power and protective place of moral principles and ethical standards paves the way for that uniqueness to rise to unparalleled heights, to be more than we can think or imagine, and to grow far beyond the horizons of any vision we could craft for it. 

You are unique . . . that’s already an established reality.  Amazingly, you are one of a kind. You’ve got one and only one shot at life.  So, what are you going to do with the immense gift of your uniqueness?  You will kill it or cultivate it.  What will you do?  Consider it.

 

Additional Resources

Discover an array of additional resources on our website at www.craiglpc.com.  Find all of Craig's thoughtful, timely, and inspirational books at Amazon. com, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold.  Also, take a moment to explore Craig's Public Speaking Resources for information regarding the resources available to your business, ministry, or organization.

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Darren and a Plastic Fish - The Size of Smallness

We seem small.  We look around at the mounting difficulties and challenges in our world today and we simply seem too small to make any sort of meaningful impact.  We witness the flood of irrational agendas, the rampant greed, the destruction of morality, the corruption in leadership, and the insanity of organizations that propagate questionable platforms, and we feel far too small to speak into any of those things.

Yet, small is big when understood correctly.  After all, everything big started as something small.  Everything big is a compilation of small things.  Everything big requires the work of small things to sustain them.  In essence, small is big.

Craig's recent message outlines the fact that size does not suggest power.  That we are capable of making a significant impact despite how small we might feel.  Take a moment and enjoy this thought-provoking and timely message.

Being a Lamp That’s Lit - Part Two

Being a Lamp That's Lit

So let’s begin at the beginning and ask the first question that needs to be asked . . . are you a lamp that's lit?  Matthew chapter 5 talks about being a light, but we might want to first ask the fundamental question, am I a lamp that's lit in the first place?

How many of us are lit and ablaze?  We’re all lamps . . .  every one of us.  But how many of us are lit and burning and casting light, because it’s one thing to be a lamp, and it’s quite another thing to be lit.  If you walk through life being a lamp that’s not lit, you will live a diminished life and you will add to the diminishment of those around you.  And that is tragic.

The Irish play-write, George Bernard Shaw was interviewed by a reporter who asked him, “Mr. Shaw, if you could live your life over and be anybody you’ve known, any person from history, who would you be?”  Listen carefully to what he said.  George Bernard Shaw said this.  He replied, “I would choose to be the man George Bernard Shaw could have been, but never was.”  Will that be your commentary on your life?  When the end comes and the years are dwindling, will you say, I would choose to be the man I could have been, but never was?

George Bernard Shaw was a lamp that, by his own admission, was never lit.

“Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl.”  You . . . all of you . . .  all of us are lamps.  And the question that I have for you is “are you lit?

 

Additional Resources

Discover an array of additional resources on our website at www.craiglpc.com.  Find all of Craig's thoughtful, timely, and inspirational books at Amazon. com, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold.  Also, take a moment to explore Craig's Public Speaking Resources for information regarding the resources available to your business, ministry, or organization.

Dealing With Grief and Loss - An Autumn’s Journey

Grief and loss are something with which we are all well acquainted.  Some of the losses that we've experienced are small, while others are utterly overwhelming.

Our natural response in our loss is to press past the pain in an effort to resume our normal lives as quickly as possible.  But in the rush to heal and free ourselves from the pain, we miss the immense growth that is awaiting us in the pain itself. 

Craig's recent message outlines the fact that "There is great purpose in great pain."  However, if we live in denial of our pain or place all of our efforts on simply stopping the pain we will forfeited the priceless growth that await us in the pain.

Take a moment and enjoy this thought-provoking and timely message.

Being a Lamp That’s Lit - Part One

Being a Lamp That's Lit

So let’s begin at the beginning and ask the first question that needs to be asked . . . are you a lamp that's lit?  Matthew chapter 5 talks about being a light, but we might want to first ask the fundamental question, am I a lamp that's lit in the first place?

How many of us are lit and ablaze?  We’re all lamps . . .  every one of us.  But how many of us are lit and burning and casting light, because it’s one thing to be a lamp, and it’s quite another thing to be lit.  If you walk through life being a lamp that’s not lit, you will live a diminished life and you will add to the diminishment of those around you.  And that is tragic.

The Irish play-write, George Bernard Shaw was interviewed by a reporter who asked him, “Mr. Shaw, if you could live your life over and be anybody you’ve known, any person from history, who would you be?”  Listen carefully to what he said.  George Bernard Shaw said this.  He replied, “I would choose to be the man George Bernard Shaw could have been, but never was.”  Will that be your commentary on your life?  When the end comes and the years are dwindling, will you say, I would choose to be the man I could have been, but never was?

George Bernard Shaw was a lamp that, by his own admission, was never lit.

“Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl.”  You . . . all of you . . .  all of us are lamps.  And the question that I have for you is “are you lit?

 

Additional Resources

Discover an array of additional resources on our website at www.craiglpc.com.  Find all of Craig's thoughtful, timely, and inspirational books at Amazon. com, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold.  Also, take a moment to explore Craig's Public Speaking Resources for information regarding the resources available to your business, ministry, or organization.

Grief and Loss - Part Two

Grief and Loss

Deep Growth in the Grief and Loss of Life's Seasons

There's an old Chinese proverb that states:

"Be not afraid of growing slowly, be afraid only of standing still."

I'm going to talk about grief and loss in this podcast.  And if there's ever times in our lives when we end up "standing still," it's during times of grief and loss.  My intent in this podcast is to help us understand how grief and loss, even devastating grief and loss, rather than causing us to "stand still," can actually facilitate great growth.  

Grief and Loss

One of my books, “An Autumn’s Journey – Deep Growth in the Grief and Loss of Life’s Seasons” deals with the issue of grief and loss, so I'll be drawing from that book a bit this morning.  I ended up writing this particular book for a number of reasons.  Unfortunately, I don't have time to go into those reasons this morning.  Suffice it to say, I have had my own grief and loss, and for over forty years I've walked with thousands of people through their grief and loss.  Obviously, all of that created some of the motivation to write.

In reality however, the thing that really created the impetus for me to take on the task of writing about grief and loss was the unexpected death of my own mother on October 14th of 2007.  In those final hours of her life, on her deathbed, I promised her that I would write.  I made that promise to her because for years she had encouraged me to write.  And so, the journey from her deathbed, to her funeral, to closing out her personal affects and affairs, to visiting her graveside on a cold Christmas Day some two years later is the journey outlined in this book. 

Now, time this podcast only affords me the opportunity to say a few, very brief things of the many things I would like to say to you on the subject of grief and loss. The premise that undergirds everything that I am going to say in this podcast is simply this . . . "There is Great Purpose in Great Pain."

So, in order to build a foundation to support this premise, I'm going to pull several different thoughts together.  First, I want to talk about pain as tremendous opportunity.  Then I want to briefly talk about how and why we miss those opportunities.  Once I have those two thoughts in place, I want to share with you two basic ideas, two principles that you can begin to incorporate into your own times of grief and loss to turn your pain into great gain.

 

Additional Resources

Discover an array of additional resources on our website at www.craiglpc.com.  Find all of Craig's thoughtful, timely, and inspirational books at Amazon. com, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold.  Also, take a moment to explore Craig's Public Speaking Resources for information regarding the resources available to your business, ministry, or organization.

Podcast Short: The Problem Is Not the Problem

The Problem Is Not the Problem

We all have…problems.  And there’s a real good chance that we have a lot of…problems.  Life comes with problems.  It’s part of the deal.  It’s a natural part of this thing that we’re all doing called life.  Life comes with problems.  But the real problem is not that life comes with problems.  The real problem is what we do with them.

In the majority of cases, the problem is ‘not’ the problem…despite the fact that we think it’s the problem.  The problem is how we’re choosing to deal with the problem.  That’s the problem.  In fact, I would go so far as to say that in most cases the problem actually creates less problems than the way that we’ve chosen to deal with the problem.  The ‘real’ problem is that we don’t want to deal with the ‘real’ problem.  And all we have to do is look around at our culture today to realize that we have cultivated, and refined, and ingeniously perfected a whole bunch of ways to do that.

We want to immediately minimize the problem out of our frantic efforts to wave off the gravity of it at any cost in order to salvage our self-image.  Or we want to blame others for it so that we are magically free of any culpability from the problem that we (through our geed or stupidity or arrogance) created.  We want to devise clever narratives to excuse whatever we did that created the problem so as to hand ourselves a free pass and by-pass accountability for the carnage we caused.  We want to see the problem as arising from circumstances beyond our control, leaving us utterly innocent, squeaky clean, and nothing more than the wounded victim of the choices that we refuse to own. 

Or, we have come to determine that the problem is marvelously self-serving, and that it grants us some sort of cherished leverage that we would lose should we actually solve the problem.  Therefore, we perpetuate the problem, turning a blind-eye toward those who are suffering because of the problem.  Or, most deviously of all, we spin the problem to be the brain-child of some ill-defined, but dark and foreboding force intent on our destruction.  And these people, or these organizations, or these clandestine groups clustered in some darkened room, or whatever they might be become enemy that they never were, and we become the victim that it is, in fact, the victimizer.  The real problem is rarely the real problem.

But when we fall prey to our lesser selves and enslave ourselves to the fear of accountability, or risk tarnishing our cherished reputations by being exposed as the culprits, or have to expend cherished resources to clean up the mess we made when we would much prefer to hoard those resources for ourselves, or when we seize the opportunity to turn our failures on others in order to elevate ourselves above them in some sickening power grab, or when we choose whatever gain the problem might grant us over the destruction it will wield in the lives of others…when we do any of these, we are creating a problem far bigger than whatever the real problem was.  Far bigger.  And we would be utterly foolish to think that these choices will not come back to haunt us with an unparalleled vengeance that we cannot begin to imagine.  Yes…the real problem is rarely the real problem.

It takes courage to step up and own what we have done.  It is the brave individual who will refuse to elevate themselves at the expense of others.  It is the person of integrity who will unflinchingly stare into the mirror of their decisions and own what they see staring back at them.  It is the man or woman of wisdom who will recognize that to embrace the consequences of our choices, and to own the outcome of our behaviors is the single path to freedom, and that any other path will always, always, lead to enslavement.  And it is the person of faith will understands that God can only forgive that which we repent of, and that there is nothing so large that He cannot, and will not, forgive.  God is in the business of wiping slates clean and handing out new starts.  Yes…the real problem is rarely the real problem.  And if we are to begin the process of wiping out the problems in our world, we must wipe out the way that we have chosen to deal with them.  We must…

“Do not deceive yourselves.  If any of you think you are wise by the standards of this age, you should become “fools” so that you may become wise.  For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight.  As it is written: “He catches the wise in their craftiness…”.

• 1 Corinthians 3:18-19

ECA Ordination Message - The Magnitude Of the Message in the Need of the Moment

The message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is everything that the world needs in a time when the world is madly pursuing everything that it doesn't need.  Our world is desperate for that message.  However, our less than thoughtful handling of the message of the Gospel has diluted it to the point that its appeal is nearly gone.  We have subjugated it to our particular interpretations, shaped it to our personal agendas, inserted our own biases, preached it for our own gain, presented it more as entertainment than transformation, and assumed that we have the power to deliver it by our own means.  A message manipulated and diminished in such ways will have no appeal to a dying world.

Craig's recent message to a group of ordination candidates thoughtfully and yet unashamedly challenges us to preach the richness of the Gospel free of the encumbrances that have left it weak and pathetic.  This message is a call to restore the purity and power of the message in a world that is desperate for us to do so.  

Discover additional resources at www.craiglpc.com.  You will also find daily resources on all of our Social Media platforms.

Grief and Loss - Part One

Grief and Loss

Deep Growth in the Grief and Loss of Life's Seasons

There's an old Chinese proverb that states:

"Be not afraid of growing slowly, be afraid only of standing still."

I'm going to talk about grief and loss in this podcast.  And if there's ever times in our lives when we end up "standing still," it's during times of grief and loss.  My intent in this podcast is to help us understand how grief and loss, even devastating grief and loss, rather than causing us to "stand still," can actually facilitate great growth.  

Grief and Loss

One of my books, “An Autumn’s Journey – Deep Growth in the Grief and Loss of Life’s Seasons” deals with the issue of grief and loss, so I'll be drawing from that book a bit this morning.  I ended up writing this particular book for a number of reasons.  Unfortunately, I don't have time to go into those reasons this morning.  Suffice it to say, I have had my own grief and loss, and for over forty years I've walked with thousands of people through their grief and loss.  Obviously, all of that created some of the motivation to write.

In reality however, the thing that really created the impetus for me to take on the task of writing about grief and loss was the unexpected death of my own mother on October 14th of 2007.  In those final hours of her life, on her deathbed, I promised her that I would write.  I made that promise to her because for years she had encouraged me to write.  And so, the journey from her deathbed, to her funeral, to closing out her personal affects and affairs, to visiting her graveside on a cold Christmas Day some two years later is the journey outlined in this book. 

Now, time this podcast only affords me the opportunity to say a few, very brief things of the many things I would like to say to you on the subject of grief and loss. The premise that undergirds everything that I am going to say in this podcast is simply this . . . "There is Great Purpose in Great Pain."

So, in order to build a foundation to support this premise, I'm going to pull several different thoughts together.  First, I want to talk about pain as tremendous opportunity.  Then I want to briefly talk about how and why we miss those opportunities.  Once I have those two thoughts in place, I want to share with you two basic ideas, two principles that you can begin to incorporate into your own times of grief and loss to turn your pain into great gain.

Podcast Short: What I Don’t Want to Hear

Might I Say - What I Don't Want to Hear

We hear a lot of things.  A whole lot of things.  We’re incessantly bombarded with sheets and shards and streams of information.  It’s about bits and bytes and boatloads of data that we ingest and digest without even realizing that we’re doing that.  Either consciously or unconsciously we compile all of that sordid stuff into some sort of choppy mosaic about the life around us and the world within us.  And as insidiously dangerous as it is, in time this rather indistinct and somewhat dubious mosaic becomes our reality.  In essence, it becomes our existence.

It seems that we tend to be busy about a whole lot of nothing.  We can meticulously tally the tasks of the day only to be inordinately perplexed that for some reason the sum total doesn’t come anywhere close to reflecting the sum total of everything that we expended in accomplishing those things.  So consumed are we in the tasks of ‘nothing’ that we don’t have time to think about ‘something’.  Therefore, we have irreparably fallen in love with plug-and-play and pre-fab.  We like things pre-packaged, prepared, and predetermined.  We’re looking for answers that were already ingested, digested and reflexively regurgitated for our reflexive consumption by whatever source we happen to have happened upon.  In essence, we don’t think.  And in fact, there are few things as dangerous as that.    

We’re going to ingest a whole lot of something.  That’s inevitable.  And if that ‘something’ shapes us with that much force, we might be wise to ask what that ‘something’ is. 

We live in a world roiling with bias and flushed murky with politically-correct agendas.  We have splintering splinter groups proffering philosophies of every shape and sort.  We’ve got the thematic propagation of ‘diversity’ that’s more about a permission to be permissive.  Too often it’s about the ‘spin to win’.  It’s less about truth and it’s more about triumph.  It’s about the resolute and rather gritty proliferation of the agenda to the degree that truth becomes the agenda and the agenda becomes the truth.  Therefore, truth becomes negotiable and pliable in a forced and placating servitude to an onslaught of dubious agendas.  However, truth in the service of an agenda becomes opinion.  And too often opinion is bias off the leash and running wild.

So, we need to listen for a change.  We need to question…aggressively and responsibly.  We need to ruthlessly investigate and corroborate.  We need to quit being complacent consumers and become invested investigators.  We need to use truth as a steeled template, not as a fluffy convenience.  We need to bring the sturdy compass of ethics to point out the true north in every decision whether that true north is to our liking or not.  We don’t need to be worldly wise, for that’s an oxymoron of the most deceptive kind.  Rather, we need to be wise in the ways of God and life.  We need to be sufficiently stubborn to reject the pabulum of the masses, yet pliable enough to hear the beating hearts underneath the pabulum.  We need to be bold and brazen in a manner stitched tight by wisdom and lent compelling by reason.  We need to be beacons of light knowing that the crowd is apt to label us as sorely antiquated and ridiculously ill-informed.  We need to listen in the bravest form imaginable.    

It would behoove us to remember that to live passively is to live dangerously.  To live inquisitively is to live wisely.  To live boldly is to live robustly.  And to live our lives based on timeless principles is to honor God rather than worship everything else that pretends to be God.  May we choose to abandon the former and judiciously embrace all of the latter.  

“Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil.”

• Ephesians 5:15-16

 

Additional Resources

Discover an array of additional resources on our website at www.craiglpc.com.  Find all of Craig's thoughtful, timely, and inspirational books at Amazon. com, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold.  Also, take a moment to explore Craig's Public Speaking Resources for information regarding the resources available to your business, ministry, or organization.

”LifeTalk’s” Thought for Life - Talk is Cheap

Welcome to LifeTalk’s Thought for Life.   “Talk is cheap,” as the old saying goes.  We say a lot of things, more due to the fact that we believe that we’re supposed to say those things, or we say so them because, in the end, they’ll get us what we want.  Consider this “Thought for Life:” 

“The degree of my commitment to a cause will not be in direct proportion to the degree that ‘I am willing’ to sacrifice for it.  Rather, it will be in direct proportion to the degree that ‘I am sacrificing’ for it.”

I hope that you ponder that thought today.  Discover all of my daily quotes on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Linkedin and Instagram.

New Beginnings - Seeds in Pain

New beginnings.  The way our lives frequently go, we doubt the existence of new beginnings...at least for us.  We've had too much loss, far too much pain, and circumstances that seemed anything but kind to us.  And as we look down the road of our lives, we can only envision more of the same.  We really don't believe in new beginnings because all we've come to believe in is survival, and we frequently feel that we're doing that all that well either.

But our new beginnings lay in our painful endings.  No one likes to hear that, and few of us actually believe it.  But the seeds of our new day, our new month, our new life lay scattered about in the midst of our losses.  There are new beginnings awaiting you in the brokenness of your pain.  And it's worth looking beyond your pain for a moment to gather the seeds that lay there waiting for you.

Podcast Short: Is Anyone Listening?

Is Anyone Listening?

Is anyone listening?  In the world within which you live, is anyone listening?  Does your voice matter?  The pain that you carry, the confusion that dogs your steps, the fear that drains your soul, the dreams that lay buried in a distant past, and a future that you sense is already being buried by the same things that buried your past…is anyone listening?  In those moments when loneliness is all that you know.  At those times when the loneliness has gone on for so long that you have little alternative than to believe that loneliness is the single story that life has penned for you, and that there is no other story…at those times is anyone listening?

Is there anyone who cares that you cry?  Is there anyone who is willing to place themselves aside in order to make sufficient space for you to place yourself in their arms?  Is there anyone who is willing to pick you up, to wipe clean the wounds that you have, to light a candle in your darkness, and help you press out into the light?  Is there anyone who’s willing to get their hands dirty so that you might begin the process of getting yours clean? Is there anyone listening…at all?

And if perchance someone does listen, are they listening?  Really?  Or do we sense that they are listening out of obligation?  Are we their project, or their charity case, and that in some way they are simply using us in some misguided way to fulfill some guilt-induced obligation to give back to society?  Are we the box that they check in the ‘good deeds’ column of their lives because they haven’t checked a whole lot of boxes in that column?  Or are they listening because focusing on our pain grants them an escape from their own?  Or are they listening because to play the hero in our life is to make them feel that they have a life, or at least some sort of purpose in life so they don’t stumble through life feeling purposeless?  Is anyone listening?  Anyone?

In the Bible God says, "Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you.”  God will listen.  Not out of obligation.  Not because you are a project.  Not because you are a charity case.  Not because God is checking a box.  Not because He’s escaping from anything, or needs to play the hero, or to grant Himself some sort of purpose.  There is none of that.

God is listening.  And He’s listening because to hear you warms His heart.  To hear you thrills His soul.  To hear you is the culmination of everything that He created, including you.  He created the entirety of this world, and then He placed you in the middle of it so that you might know this God, and that He might love you.  Intimate relationship.  Unbroken relationship.  A forever relationship.  And when we broke that relationship through our sin, He refused to let that brokenness stand.  That brokenness stood against everything for which God created ‘everything.’  So deep was His desire to listen to us, to connect with us, to hold us, and heal us that He sent His Son to die to heal what we broke.  Yes, He listens.  He created us to be heard, and when we messed it up He did nothing less than sacrifice His Son to heal what we broke.  Yes, God listens.  He refuses to do anything less.  He listens.  And because He does, He’s waiting for you to speak.  And so, do the thing that you were created to do…talk to God, for He’s listening.

 "Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart."

• Jeremiah 29:12 and 13

There Is No God - Evidence to the Contrary

There is no God.  It’s not an unfamiliar statement.  In fact, it permeates much of our modern thinking, which begs the question if our modern thinking is really either ‘modern’ or ‘thinking.’

We Don’t Want a God

I think that the mentality that ‘there is no God’ is centered primarily on the fact that we don’t want a God.  Therefore, out of convenience, we simply declare that there is none, for we fear that the experiences that we crave will be snatched from us, the pleasures that we wish to indulge in will be made taboo, that we will somehow be punished if things feel too good, and that this doting judge-like figure will frown on most everything that makes us happy.  So, we decide that we don’t want a God.  And subsequently, we declare that there is no God.

Podcast Short: Good as the Enemy of the Best

Good as the Enemy of the Best

“That’s good enough.”  How many times have those words come out of our mouths?  The idea of this lackluster commitment to the living out of our lives has become so prevalent that we’ve learned to articulate it in a whole bunch of different ways.  The rather robust vernacular that we’ve created to wave off responsibility and say “that’s good enough” includes such catchy phrases as “that’ll get us by until Monday,” or “that’s good enough for government work,” or “that’s doable,” or “that’s in the ballpark,” or however we say “that’s good enough.”

The whole phenomena of “sliding by” or “skating by” has always been a byword of history.  Subsequently, any vague concept of a ‘work ethic’ seems to have become much less an ethic and much more of a remotely fuzzy idea.  We’re constantly working out ways of how not to work.  And in doing that, we forfeit doing all the incredible things that we could be doing.

Many of us seem to have developed this fairy-dust type of magical thinking where things will just be there for us.  Because we can’t see the efforts and the work of those who fill the shelves of our stores, or keep the wheels of commerce greased, or who relentlessly ply the seas of a forty-plus hour work week, they tend to become invisible.  And so, things are just there because they’re there.

Ultimately, our gifts, talents and abilities are sacrificed on the altar of laziness and entitlement.  We lose who we are, we lose what we could do, and in essence we lose our lives.  At best, whatever our best could have been is lost.  Tragically, in time we gradually lose a sense that we could actually do great things, and we forfeit the transformational reality that our best is both achievable and far beyond anything we could have imagined with the best of our imaginations.  We forget that to be our best is the best thing that we can be.

Being our best is asking how can we take ourselves to our own limits in any given situation?  It’s asking, how do I intentionally leave every situation and every person with more than what they had when I first encountered them?  Being our best involves walking away from every situation with less than what we had when we encountered it because we left something behind in the exchange.  Being our best asks did we press it as far as was humanly possible, and did we walk away with nothing else we could have given?

And so, commit to being your best.  Shun anything that is anything less than that.  Realize that you were created to ‘best’ your own ideas of what your best is.  Be your best, and in doing so transform yourself and transform those around you in the best way possible.

“Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.”

• Galatians 6:9

A Noble Calling - A Noble Response

Life calls us to many things.  We will have to step-up in more ways and in more situations that we'd likely prefer at times.  And when we have to step-up, the manner in which we do so becomes extremely important.  We can do so in ways that are less than admirable or less than honest.  We can attempt to side-step something, manipulate it to our convenience, shape it to our likes or dislikes, engage it in a way that invites the praise of the people that we admire, or we can ignore it altogether.  At some time and in some place, we will have to step-up.

As we watch the world today, many people are stepping-up in less than admirable ways.  It has become less about integrity and a whole lot less about honesty.  Stepping up has been hijacked by agendas of all sorts.  It has been compromised by lesser things that have created a nation of lesser people.  But we have the ability to step-up in ways that are noble...truly noble.  We can address situations thoughtfully, ethically and with the guiding hand of timeless wisdom.  We can change our families, our communities and our world by stepping-up to the challenges of life in ways both noble and brave.  We can all step-up in ways that makes stepping-up something beautiful and life-changing.

Podcast Short: What Is Better...Really?

What Is Better...Really?

What is “better?”  I mean, the definition of “better.”  When we change something, we tend to label the change as “better,” whether it’s better or not.  If we adjust something, or alter something, or eliminate it altogether, we define the changes that we make as “better.”  We initiate new programs, or we reconstruct old ones, and in doing so we say that we are making things “better.”  We craft new policies, or we tear down old businesses, or we adopt new beliefs, or we upgrade this, or we downgrade that, and we label all those actions as “better.”

But “better” based on what?  What’s the criteria that determines if something is, in fact, “better?”  Is it based on the current cultural climate?  Or, is it based on the trends that tend to be trending?  Or, is it based on the desire to make a name for ourselves, or get ahead, or beat the opposition, or bring down a boss, or lift up a cause, or promote a philosophy, or demote anything that irritates us?  Is it based on our desire to make a win-fall, or get ourselves out of a freefall, or just create a free-for-all?  What do we base the idea of “better” on?

Labeling something as “better” is often a justification for something that’s anything but “better”.  It’s that label that we attach to our actions, hoping that people will pay a whole lot more attention to the label, and a whole lot less attention to the actions that we’ve pasted the label on.  Sadly, most things are not better.  They’re certainly ‘something,’ but they’re not “better”.

But what should “better” be based on?  “Better” is when others benefit, even if we don’t.  “Better” is driven by the need of the common man, as the common man is the common cause.  It’s something in the service of a hurting world, and not something that serves to hurt the world.  “Better” is something that we do that leaves the world “better” than what we found it, even if we end up not being “better” in the service of that world.  It’s sacrificial.  It’s recognizing our responsibility to the lives around us, not the agendas within us.  “Better” is when we end the day having gained nothing, but having given everything.  “Better” is where love is given legs to run and greed can’t find its shoes.  The world needs to be “better” in a “better” way.  And that starts with you, and it starts with me, and it starts with rejecting anything that is not truly “better.”  

To Think With Thought - Words of Wisdom in Difficult Times

Few of us think with thought.  What I mean is that too few of us really examine the times that we're in verses getting caught up in the times that we're in.  If we're not caught up in a particular cause or some compelling agenda of some sort, then there's a good chance that what we're caught up in is the fear and insecurity of these various causes and agendas.  We're typically rather reactive rather than thoughtful.  We reflexively respond, rather than digging deeper and asking the difficult questions.  We move to 'fight-verses-flight' rather than something more calming and productive.

This podcast is a selection of Craig's quotes designed to give us comfort, perspective, insight and confidence as we face the uncertain times that we are living in.  These quotes assist us in being thoughtful in a manner that allows us to not only effectively navigate these times, but bring something of stability and healing to them as well.  They are written to help each of us become more thoughtful about the times so that our response to them can be more productive for us as well as those around us.  

Conscience or Convenience

We each have a conscience.  Whether we listen to it or abide by it is another story.  But we each have a conscience.  The issue with our conscience is what will we do with it?  The immediate answer might be that we will listen to it.  But do we really do that?  What if our conscience says "no" to the things that we want to say "yes" to?  What if it takes us in an entirely different direction than the direction that we would like to go?  What if is says that our dreams will be our downfall despite the fact that we are deeply passionate about those dreams?  What if it calls us to something that we feel is either horribly frightening or terribly inconvenient?  What if?

Too often we follow our conscience if the following is easy or if it's in keeping with our agendas.  It's easy to follow our conscience when it lines up with everything that we want.  But when it doesn't we often edit it, tweak it, put a hefty spin on it, or ignore it altogether.  And it is in making decisions like these that we end up in places that we never wanted to be.  It is the ignoring of our conscience that leads to the destruction of our lives.  Our conscience is not this shrill and nagging voice.  Rather, it is one of our most reliable compasses that keeps us out of the most terrible of places.

”LifeTalk’s Thought for Life - The Notion of God

Welcome to LifeTalk’s Thought for Life.  The notion of God does not set well with some people.  Sadly, that notion was often shaped by people or situations or less than admirable agendas that did not reflect the true nature of this God.  And if we’re going to reject something, maybe we should reject it on its true merits, not those that have been imposed upon it.  Consider this “Thought for Life:”  

“I can staunchly reject the notion that I was created to live in relationship with God.  But should I do that, I will be unable to reject all of the consequences for which I was not created.”

I hope that you ponder that thought today.  Discover all of my daily quotes on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Linkedin and Instagram.

 

Additional Resources

Discover an array of additional resources on our website at www.craiglpc.com.  Find all of Craig's thoughtful, timely, and inspirational books at Amazon. com, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold.  Also, take a moment to explore Craig's Public Speaking Resources for information regarding the resources available to your business, ministry, or organization.

Podcast Short: All Is Lost - Or So We Think

All Is Lost

Everybody seems lost these days.  People don’t like to admit that, or they refuse to admit that…but everybody seems lost these days.  I suppose that the greatest kind of ‘lost’ is to be ‘lost,’ but to deny that you’re ‘lost,’ even though you are.  That’s about the worst kind of lost that I can think of, and we certainly see a whole lot of that kind of ‘lost’ today.  Everybody seems lost these days.

Let’s face it, we live in a world that’s lost.  In one way or another (or to one degree or another), the world’s always been lost.  There’s a pattern to our humanity that should cause us to wise up a bit, and that pattern is that (as a species) we’re pretty consistently lost.  It just seems that we’re a bit more lost these days.

And in our world today, the more that we work to become un-lost, the more ‘lost’ that we seem to become.  As a culture, we walk around pretending that we have reliable maps and accurate compasses to get us un-lost.  But we have neither.  We attempt to create them, or make them, or say that we have them when we don’t.  We claim that we have the policy, or the formula, or the philosophy, or some recent enlightenment, or some supposedly brilliant or revolutionary idea from which we can now draw the maps and fashion the compasses that we’ve been looking for, for so very long.  And we grab hold of these new maps and compasses, and we use them to recalibrate wherever we are (and wherever it is that we think we want to go), and we end up deeper in woods than we’ve ever been before.  The woods of our lives and our culture are littered with discarded maps and broken compasses.  Everybody seems lost these days.

Of course we’re lost.  We’re lost because the woods that we’re in are bigger than the resources that we have to get out them.  And those woods become increasingly bigger the more that we convince ourselves that we can get out of them by ourselves.  Where we are is too big for any map or any compass that we can create.  And while we tend to bristle at the idea, God holds the map and has the compass.  A sure map and a steady compass.  And while we’re likely to continue to refute that reality, or work to ignore it in light of our incessant stubbornness, He’s got the map and the compass.  And all we have to do (all we have to do) is ask Him for it.  And I wonder (I wonder) exactly how lost we’re going to have to become before we finally ask Him.

 

Additional Resources

Discover an array of additional resources on our website at www.craiglpc.com.  Find all of Craig's thoughtful, timely, and inspirational books at Amazon. com, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold.  Also, take a moment to explore Craig's Public Speaking Resources for information regarding the resources available to your business, ministry, or organization.

”LifeTalk’s” Thought for Life - Talk is Cheap

Welcome to LifeTalk’s Thought for Life.  We need to stop.  We need to put down our calendars, set our phones aside, strip ourselves of the voices incessantly clamoring for our attention and listen.  Just listen.  For life is not what we’re chasing.  It’s what we’re leaving behind in the chasing.  Consider this “Thought for Life:”  

“Rich is the person who stops long enough to listen to a bird sing in the celebration of spring, peer into the deep blue of a drowsy summer sky, draw in the pungent aroma of fall’s leaves, and watch the listless kiss of a winter’s snow.  For in doing these you have witnessed that which money cannot purchase and man cannot create.”

I hope that you ponder that thought today.  Discover all of my daily quotes on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Linkedin and Instagram.

The Problem is Not the Problem

We all have…problems.  And there’s a real good chance that we have a lot of…problems.  Life comes with problems.  It’s part of the deal.  It’s a natural part of this thing that we’re all doing called life.  Life comes with problems.  But the real problem is not that life comes with problems.  The real problem is what we do with them.

The Problem is Not the Problem

In the majority of cases, the problem is ‘not’ the problem…despite the fact that we think it’s the problem.  The problem is how we’re choosing to deal with the problem.  That’s the problem.  In fact, I would go so far as to say that in most cases the problem actually creates less problems than the way that we’ve chosen to deal with the problem.  The ‘real’ problem is that we don’t want to deal with the ‘real’ problem.  And all we have to do is look around at our culture today to realize that we have cultivated, and refined, and ingeniously perfected a whole bunch of ways to do that.

Do We Search for the Truth - Or For Ways Around It?

Do we search for the truth, or do we search for ways around the truth?  Do we even take the time to consider a question like that out of the long-held assumption that we are, in fact, looking for the truth because (we assume) that that’s the obvious thing to do?  What insanity would behoove us to do anything less?  But do we search for the truth, or do we search for ways around the truth?  Maybe we should consider the fact that there are a whole lot of reasons why we actually might stoop to something less.

Do we search for the truth even when it takes the foundations that we’ve laboriously built with the sweat of our brow and the best of our years, and does truth handily expose those foundations as weak, entirely misappropriated, and as nothing more than sand piled in every place except the right place?  Will we search for truth even when it looks us square in the face and tells us this kind of stuff?  Will we search for it knowing that there is a very distinct possibility that it will tell us everything that we don’t want to hear in every way that we don’t want to hear it?  Will we search for truth even then?

Better or Worse - The Clouding of Our Choices

Will the choices in front of us make us better or worse?  Will they improve our lives, or diminish our lives?  That depends on who and what is informing those decisions.  Is it people with questionable agendas, or is it a culture trending on a rogue wave of self-gratification, or is it our own lack of thoughtfulness and integrity?  Whatever it might be, we might ask who and/or what is informing our decisions?  And how much are they clouding that decision to the point that we will be set up to pay a potentially unimaginable price in making it…for we have all paid such prices before and we would be the fool to pay them again.  For the wrong information, and the wrong motives, and the wrong value system will leave you on the wrong side of every choice, and choices that leave you on the wrong side never make your life better.

The Battle - I'd Rather Be David

Battles.  We all fight them.  Sometimes they're just the minor things that are a natural part of the day-in and day-out living of our lives.  Sometimes they're unspeakably brutal and unexplainably savage, making no sense as to why they're happening.  Battles can sometimes be something more of a minor irritant, or they can be something that leaves our lives in flames, cinders and ash.  At times we battle people, we battle circumstances, we battle society, we battle injustices, or we battle within ourselves.  Either way, we all fight battles.

But how do we fight them?  Do we fight them just to survive them?  Do we choose not to fight and opt to surrender as the easiest course of action?  Do we fight them by playing the victim and therefore not really fight them at all?  Do we have someone else fight our battles for whatever reason we have them fight them?  Battles will come as they are a natural part of our existence.  But how will we fight them?  And how much does that choice dictate the outcome that we will live with?

 

 

We Are a Message - Sending a Message

You are a message.  You cannot live your life without someone, somewhere watching you.  Your existence is not solitary to the point that that existence does not impact another life.  Your's is not a life of isolation.  You are not insulated from the rest of the world in a manner that that world is not impacted by you.  You are a message, whether you like that or not.  And because you are, you might ask what kind of message you are sending.

Think about it.  The fact that we are a message to others positions us to change things.  Sometimes we feel inadequate, small, and something more of an anomaly in this infinite existence within which we find ourselves.  But because we are a message, we can touch other lives.  In fact, we can change other lives.  And in the changing, they can likewise go and change other lives themselves.  You are a message and because you are you might wish to consider what kind of message you're sending, for the quality of your life and that of generations to come will be effected by the message that you leave.

How Have We Come to This Point? The Rejection of God

How have we come to the point where the message of the Gospel is largely considered irrelevant in 21^st century America?  How is it that God is outmoded, outdated, antiquated, and has nothing of value to say to us as we live out our lives today?  How is it that the God Who created ‘all of this’ has been left behind by the very thing that He created?  How have we come to this point?

But maybe the question is not “how,” but “why.”  Why have we come to this point?  Why have we come to visualize God as some ancient artifact that might have worked for less educated people living out their lives in some primitive society hundreds, if not thousands of years ago?  Why have we relegated Him to a period of time long gone, and in doing so completely failed to recognize that times might change, but people don’t?  Why have we come to see God as entirely outmoded in light of our progressive philosophies, or our ever-shifting ethics, or our new morality?

God is most relevant thing in existence.  His principles apply to our world today probably more than any time in human history.  He alone holds the truths, the ideals, the values, and the principles that can assist us in navigating the profound challenges of our times and our lives.  The principles handed down to us in the Bible are entirely sound, uncompromisingly relevant, timely in ways that are mind-boggling, and sufficiently powerful to assist us in navigating the descending darkness of the times that we live in.  God and His principles are the most relevant thing that I can think of.