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The Self-Pity Wilderness
Leadership is broken because leaders are unbroken Wilderness Wanderings Series: Learning to Live the Zigzag Life Self-pity is the life-destroying quicksand of the wilderness that sucks us in, pulls us down, and squeezes the hope out of us. Often it catches us unaware and, because we are unprepared, it robs us of all confidence and courage so we are left with loss of energy, distorted reality, and deep discouragement… Gradually we are pulled down, down, down until we disappear below the surface of life, all vision gone and our leadership lost in the sink hole of self. What a pity. Self-Pity is not for Wimps It…
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The High-Stakes Wilderness
Leadership is broken because leaders are unbroken Wilderness Wanderings Series: Learning to Live the Zigzag Life The older we get the higher our wilderness stakes become. We have far more at stake in our wilderness wanderings as we grow older than we ever had when we were young. This comes as bad news to many because we think the wilderness is something we get behind us, that, once we get past it, we have a wide-open highway to a great life. Well, we do. It’s just that every great life includes high-stakes wilderness wanderings because, while the intensity of our wilderness times may come and go, they never really…
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The Shoeless Wilderness
Leadership is broken because leaders are unbroken Wilderness Wanderings Series: Learning to Live the Zigzag Life He was a man without a country, with a lost past and a blank future, in a troubled marriage with a son for whom he had no hope. He was just living day-to-day, doing the same thing, running out the string, nothing to challenge him and no expectation of change. Not much of a life, huh? That made him exactly the kind of man God wanted to be one of the greatest leaders in history… Who, HIM, a Leader? It’s absolutely amazing what kind of men and women God chooses to be His…
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The Imperative Wilderness
Leadership is broken because leaders are unbroken Wilderness Wanderings Series: Learning to Live the Zigzag Life The real Jesus Jesus was real. Radically, totally, absolutely real. This means He was fully real God and fully real man in the same person. However, He emptied himself of His divine prerogatives, not of His deity, but of His rights as deity. On the other hand, He filled Himself with human limitations and human needs, yet without sin. This means He desperately needed the Father and desperately depended on the Holy Spirit. Now some may react to the word desperately, and I understand if they do. I don’t mean desperate as in…
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The Inescapable Wilderness
Leadership is broken because leaders are unbroken Wilderness Wanderings Series: Learning to Live the Zigzag Life Every leader will spend seasons of life wandering in the wilderness. It’s inevitable and inescapable. There are no exceptions… The wilderness. Barren, empty, lifeless, colorless, solitary, unending hard sand, rock outcroppings, and rugged mountains. Hot in the day, cold at night. Far from the action, from the crowds, from life and what matters. Yet, in the Bible, the wilderness is the place where the action is, where the holy God shows up, where leaders are called, a nation is formed, and a Savior prepared. It is the place of spiritual warfare, the…
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The Sacred Wilderness
Leadership is broken because leaders are unbroken Wilderness Wanderings Series: Learning to Live the Zigzag Life The wilderness is God’s original temple, His personal dwelling place where He called His followers out to meet Him and be in His presence. It was in the wilderness that God called and commissioned Moses; it was in the wilderness that God gave the Ten Commandments; it was in the wilderness that God formed Israel; it was in the wilderness that God designed and guided Moses to create the tabernacle; it was in the wilderness that God disciplined His people to serve Him and to represent Him among the nations; it was…
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Wilderness Wanderings 2016
Leadership is broken because leaders are unbroken Wilderness Wanderings 2016: Learning to Live the Zigzag Life Happy New Year and welcome to Broken Leadership, the blog of Leader Formation International (LFI). My name is Bill Lawrence, founder and president of LFI, and I want to take a moment to greet you and inform you concerning our early 2016 blog plans. I want to write a series of blogs on the subject Wilderness Wanderings: when a zigzag line is the shortest distance between futility and fruition. If you’re in any kind of leadership position, whether business or professional, educational or governmental, or—the most important—parental, you surely have wondered at times…
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Starting Over
Leadership is broken because leaders are unbroken January 1, 2016. A new year and a new start. Celebrations and all that fun. Resolutions and all that jazz. Bowl games and all that pizazz. A new slate and all that hope. But what do we do with everything we’ve written on the slate of 2015? Does it all just go away? What if 2015 was a wilderness year for you as it was for me in some ways? The wilderness. Barren, empty, lifeless, colorless, solitary, unending hard sand, rock outcroppings, and rugged mountains. Hot in the day, cold at night. Far from the action, from the crowds, from life and…
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How Roger Miller influenced my ministry!
In February of 1966, singer/songwriter Roger Miller released a song called Husbands and Wives. The song was a hit for the artist and has been covered by several other big name artist including the Everly Brothers, Neil Diamond, Brooks and Dunn and Ringo Star…a Beatle sang this song – how cool is that! It is a sad song about a couple breaking up because their own pride has driven them apart. The lyrics of the song go as follows: Two broken hearts lonely, looking like Houses where nobody lives Two people each having so much pride inside Neither side forgives The angry words spoken in haste…
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The Pursuit of Becoming A Better Husband!
I think marriage is one of those pursuits that God felt we needed to spend out entire adult ives working on and with a goal of drawing us closer to Jesus. I also believe that the Lord was clear with his over-arching vision statement for marriage when he said he wanted me to Love my wife just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her (Eph. 5:25) but I must say, how I get to that level of love is going to require some work on my part. In my pursuit to become a good husband I have discovered the following things to…