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The Lifetime Wilderness
Leadership is broken because leaders are unbroken Wilderness Wanderings Series: Learning to Live the Zigzag Life Rumors were flying. Reports were circulating. Terror was rising. Babylon was marching. The world was changing. Confusion reigned. Waves of hope crested and crashed with each new report… The hope was that Egypt, Judah’s great alley and protector, would rescue the country. Then came bad news—Egypt was defeated by Babylon. Then came good news. Nabopolassar, Nebuchadnezzar’s father, the king of Babylon, died, and the prince rushed back to the capital of his empire to be crowned king. Maybe with the press of his new responsibilities, he would forget about Jerusalem. But no, he…
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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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Short-Term What, Long-Term What? Choose Well.
Of all the wisdom and insight I learned in a three-year lay counseling training, one really stands out. I think of this little chart as “the doghouse.” Decision-making often involves choosing between short-term pleasure or short-term pain. (Usually it’s more like short-term inconvenience.) Short-term pleasure often leads to long-term pain, and short-term pain often leads to long-term pleasure. What doesn’t work, and is a horribly unrealistic expectation for life, is short-term pleasure leading to long-term pleasure! (Wouldn’t THAT be nice?!) Maturity and wisdom is displayed by the choices we make, especially when we exercise patience and self-control, not insisting on the instant-gratification jolt of “I want it NOW!!!” Many of…
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Lead by Loving
If you asked twenty good men today what they thought the highest of the virtues, nineteen of them would reply, Unselfishness. But if you had asked almost any one of the great Christians of old, he would have replied, Love. . . A negative term has been substituted from a positive . . . The negative idea of Unselfishness carries with it the suggestion not primarily of securing good things for others, but of going without them ourselves as if our abstinence and not their happiness was the important point. — C.S. Lewis The poignant words struck my soul. What if we lived and led by Lewis’ observation? What if…