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The Parenting Wilderness
Leadership is broken because leaders are unbroken Wilderness Wanderings Series: Learning to Live the Zigzag Life Among all the books on parenting that are floating around these days, there is one missing. It’s hard to believe that we’ve overlooked anything, but we are lacking one vital title. I’m not sure how the publishers would respond to this, but in this time of self-publishing, they are not as dominant as they once were, which means this book might make it to the market. The title? Parents Who Did Everything Right and Got it Wrong. There, I told you it would be a best seller. Well, maybe not. Unwanted…
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The Profitable Wilderness
Leadership is broken because leaders are unbroken Wilderness Wanderings Series: Learning to Live the Zigzag Life What would it be like to be left out of your own family? To be unvalued and know it because you are not invited to major family events. You are sent on menial errands to help other family members who then tell you to “shut up” and not make any problems. How painful can it get? Do you think you could grow to be a leader coming out of that kind of rejection? Of course you can, but what kind of a leader would you be? Man’s Look, God’s Look It…
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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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Encourage Spiritual Growth “Ten Things Parents Should Know”
In our modern world we find ourselves surrounded by a plethora of resources including the internet, books, conferences, counselors, and countless “professionals;” all giving advice on the best techniques, the greatest tools, and the most up to date methods to use to be a good parent. How many times have you looked to these resources for the best solutions, techniques, and tools for raising your child? How often do you look to these resources without consulting the best parenting guide available? How many times do you read page after page, chapter after chapter of how to be a successful parent without picking up the most valuable resource ever written? …
