“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”
-Gen. 1:27
We were made in the image of God.
We were created for joy.
We were created for greatness.
We were created for good.
We were created for conquest.
We were created for wonders.
The imprint of God is engaved upon us.
Though that is true, there are external factors that threaten to erase God’s imprint from our lives. Intending to distort His purpose in us, these “enemies” can make us forget and reject who we really are.
We could be in a state of forgetfulness right now.
If so, we must remember:
We were made in the image of God, and His imprint is engraved upon us.
Carl is a balloon salesman who along with his wife Ellie, have a dream. Their dream is to visit a place called Paradise Falls.
The couple has grown old together in the restored abandoned house. Unable to have children, they repeatedly try to save up for their trip to Paradise Falls, but something always seems to come up that requires their savings. One day, Carl is finally able to buy tickets to South America. On the day he plans to surprise her, Ellie gets sick with what will become a fatal illness.
The rest of the film details Carl Fredrickson’s quest to honor his wife’s legacy and redeem the dream that had gone unfulfilled for so very long.
And through a harrowing adventure that contains talking dogs and a flying house, Carl steps into his dream at long last.
In the real world exists many Carl Fredricksons.
People that wake up everyday to unfulfilled hopes and unrealized dreams.
There are countless stories behind these sleeping dreams.
Mistakes. Missed opportunity. Injustice. Lack of access.
And there are millions of reasons why these dreams sleep, but there is only one reason that they awaken:
Someone decides to wake them up.
Someone stops making excuses. Someone stops blaming others. Someone stops regretting the past. Someone stops focusing on the why-nots.
Someone makes a choice to live differently.
To be courageous.
To be dangerous.
To take a leap.
To renounce the familiar.
To do something never been attempted.
And yes, it’s risky.
But a dream has never been redeemed without exercising a little faith.
The Mad Hatter: [Points to Alice’s heart] In there.
Like Alice we have, “lost our muchness”.
Lost our moxie, our courage, our imagination. We have stopped hoping, dreaming, and believing.
Resigned to a hopeless, dreamless, faithless world we do our best to convince others to live there with us. Instead of inspiring others into “muchness“, we lead them into leastness. Having allowed ourselves to be made small, we do our very best to shrink others.
I had a conversation with high-school senior a few weeks ago. As is my custom with any high-school upperclass student, I asked what she was going to do after she graduated.
Her face crinkled up.
“Maybe I will get a job.”
“Maybe I will go to school.”
“Maybe I will…”
I interrupted.
“What do you want to do?”
“Hmmmm. Maybe sports medicine.”
“Cool. What school do you want to go to?”
“I don’t know.”
“Okay. Let me ask you this: If I gave you 10 million dollars right now, what would you do? Where would you go? What is your dream?”
“Oh. Maybe I would go to UCLA or University of Arizona. Then I could work in someone’s practice.”
“What if you had YOUR OWN PRACTICE? What if you had a huge sports complex with your name on the front and you helped train and rehab the best athletes from all over the world? Wouldn’t that be cool?”
“Yeah, it would.”
I smiled back, but she didn’t seem too convinced. Recalling the conversation, it appeared that the legions of leastness had already gotten to her. Had already crushed her hopes, sabotaged her dreams, and broken her beliefs.
Somewhere along the way she lost her muchness.
So I tried to give her some of mine.
I’m still hoping, dreaming, and believing in the impossible. Still jotting down ideas and scribbling plans that have never been seen before or heard of at all.
For many of these impossible dreams I am:
Too old, too young, too poor, too little known, too this or too that.
And many of these impossible dreams are:
Too wild, too crazy, too dangerous, too risky, too unprecedented, too strange, too odd, too expensive, too this or too that.
But I refuse to listen to the legions of leastness.
Their favorite way to start a sentence is, “That is too…”, and then they fill in the blank with a word designed to steal muchness.
But I’m determined to keep my muchness.
And I am hoping that you are determined to keeping your muchness too.
“You’re mad, bonkers, off your head! But I’ll tell you a secret: All the best people are.”
This 2002 film is about a father and husband whose son is diagnosed with an enlarged heart who then finds out he cannot receive a transplant because HMO insurance won’t cover it. After receiving this information, he decides to take a hospital full of patients hostage until the hospital puts his son’s name on the recipient’s list.
Right before John decides to take the law into his own hands, he has a telephone conversation with his wife.
At the height of desperation she says, “They are releasing him, now you need to do something! DO YOU HEAR ME! DO SOMETHING!”
John takes these words to heart and really does something.
And truly, all of us must do the same.
Do something.
No, we shouldn’t take people hostage to get what we want.
But we should do something about the dream that sits inside us.
We need to make the call, send the e-mail, register for the class, write the manuscript, pen the song, take the trip, or do whatever we haven’t been doing that we need to be doing to fulfill God’s plan for our lives.
Stop waiting, procrastinating, and making excuses.
Had a great time yesterday (except for getting lost a few times!).
Our Thursday night speaker was Austin Boyd. Five years ago he attended this conference as a participant, and now he is a published and accomplished author with multiples titles to his credit.
He spoke to us in a session called, “How to Pitch your Project”.
We learned about speaking to editors, how to work on tightening your work, how to “Give a Pitch”, and how to refine your “Elevator Speech”.
He had volunteers offer to “pitch” their idea. I volunteered. Great experience.
Wonderful feedback and encouragement from Austin Boyd and other writers.
What was really funny to me was the fact that I was really nervous about pitching my idea. I speak to large groups almost every week with confidence, but I got in front of these writers and cold feel my voice getting shaky.
Not only was it a different forum (which contributed to my nerves), but there is a certain vulnerability that hits you when you are sharing your ideas with a crowd of people you have never met before.
This is an inspiring atmosphere that stirs you to hone your craft and allow the Lord to draw His greatness out of you. For me, this weekend is really about worship. Worshipping Him by growing in the gift that he placed inside of me.
(P.S. -The picture above is a shot of me with 3 of my “Inspirations”!)
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made straight and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
Today we celebrate not only the memory, but we are challenged by Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream. This dream of love, hope, and togetherness has inspired us to always bear the burden of our brothers and sisters in their time of need.
This dream is as relevant today as it was 40 years ago.
May God give us dreams that change the world in our generation.
I saw a little bird take off to fly today. I watched it take off. I watched how it jumped into the air, flapped its wings and began to soar. The funny thing is, birds never take the branches they stand when they fly. They let go, jump, then fly.
Birds that can’t ever find the courage to let go of the branches they are perched upon, can’t ever fly.
Some of us little birds aren’t flying. Not because we can’t.
But because we won’t.
We won’t let go.
We won’t let go because we are fixated on the wrong things.
We think of liabilities and not possibilities.
Rather than dreams of joyful flight, we have nightmares of painful falls.
By not letting go of the things that make us feel secure, we can’t do what we have been created for.
Flying takes faith.
Faith in God.
Faith in the person that He made us to be.
So next time it is time to fly, don’t close your eyes and brace yourself.
Open your eyes, gaze into the heavens and…believe.
I was working on a post today, was almost finished and realized that it needed to ‘cook a little more’. Sometimes the best ideas need more time in the oven before they are fully ready to eat.
In fact, I think every great thinker/leader/creator/innovator should have an oven full of half-baked ideas and plans that are still cooking.
“It’s a whole lot more satisfying to reach for the stars, even if you end up landing only on the moon.” - Kermit the Frog
Shoot for the moon today.
Why not?
What do you have to lose?
Posted in Media/Culture, Creativity/Innovation, Dream Awake | No Comments »
“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”
-Gen. 1:27
We were made in the image of God.
We were created for joy.
We were created for greatness.
We were created for good.
We were created for conquest.
We were created for wonders.
The imprint of God is engaved upon us.
Though that is true, there are external factors that threaten to erase God’s imprint from our lives. Intending to distort His purpose in us, these “enemies” can make us forget and reject who we really are.
We could be in a state of forgetfulness right now.
If so, we must remember:
We were made in the image of God, and His imprint is engraved upon us.
Posted in Dream Awake, Discipleship | No Comments »
Up is a beautiful movie that tells the story of Carl Fredrickson.
Carl is a balloon salesman who along with his wife Ellie, have a dream. Their dream is to visit a place called Paradise Falls.
The couple has grown old together in the restored abandoned house. Unable to have children, they repeatedly try to save up for their trip to Paradise Falls, but something always seems to come up that requires their savings. One day, Carl is finally able to buy tickets to South America. On the day he plans to surprise her, Ellie gets sick with what will become a fatal illness.
The rest of the film details Carl Fredrickson’s quest to honor his wife’s legacy and redeem the dream that had gone unfulfilled for so very long.
And through a harrowing adventure that contains talking dogs and a flying house, Carl steps into his dream at long last.
In the real world exists many Carl Fredricksons.
People that wake up everyday to unfulfilled hopes and unrealized dreams.
There are countless stories behind these sleeping dreams.
Mistakes. Missed opportunity. Injustice. Lack of access.
And there are millions of reasons why these dreams sleep, but there is only one reason that they awaken:
Someone decides to wake them up.
Someone stops making excuses. Someone stops blaming others. Someone stops regretting the past. Someone stops focusing on the why-nots.
Someone makes a choice to live differently.
To be courageous.
To be dangerous.
To take a leap.
To renounce the familiar.
To do something never been attempted.
And yes, it’s risky.
But a dream has never been redeemed without exercising a little faith.
Posted in Media/Culture, The Future, Leadership, Dream Awake | No Comments »
Mad Hatter: You’ve lost your “muchness”
Alice Kingsley: My “muchness”?
The Mad Hatter: [Points to Alice’s heart] In there.
Like Alice we have, “lost our muchness”.
Lost our moxie, our courage, our imagination. We have stopped hoping, dreaming, and believing.
Resigned to a hopeless, dreamless, faithless world we do our best to convince others to live there with us. Instead of inspiring others into “muchness“, we lead them into leastness. Having allowed ourselves to be made small, we do our very best to shrink others.
I had a conversation with high-school senior a few weeks ago. As is my custom with any high-school upperclass student, I asked what she was going to do after she graduated.
Her face crinkled up.
“Maybe I will get a job.”
“Maybe I will go to school.”
“Maybe I will…”
I interrupted.
“What do you want to do?”
“Hmmmm. Maybe sports medicine.”
“Cool. What school do you want to go to?”
“I don’t know.”
“Okay. Let me ask you this: If I gave you 10 million dollars right now, what would you do? Where would you go? What is your dream?”
“Oh. Maybe I would go to UCLA or University of Arizona. Then I could work in someone’s practice.”
“What if you had YOUR OWN PRACTICE? What if you had a huge sports complex with your name on the front and you helped train and rehab the best athletes from all over the world? Wouldn’t that be cool?”
“Yeah, it would.”
I smiled back, but she didn’t seem too convinced. Recalling the conversation, it appeared that the legions of leastness had already gotten to her. Had already crushed her hopes, sabotaged her dreams, and broken her beliefs.
Somewhere along the way she lost her muchness.
So I tried to give her some of mine.
I’m still hoping, dreaming, and believing in the impossible. Still jotting down ideas and scribbling plans that have never been seen before or heard of at all.
For many of these impossible dreams I am:
Too old, too young, too poor, too little known, too this or too that.
And many of these impossible dreams are:
Too wild, too crazy, too dangerous, too risky, too unprecedented, too strange, too odd, too expensive, too this or too that.
But I refuse to listen to the legions of leastness.
Their favorite way to start a sentence is, “That is too…”, and then they fill in the blank with a word designed to steal muchness.
But I’m determined to keep my muchness.
And I am hoping that you are determined to keeping your muchness too.
“You’re mad, bonkers, off your head! But I’ll tell you a secret: All the best people are.”
-Charles Kingsley
Posted in Media/Culture, The Future, Leadership, Creativity/Innovation, Dream Awake | 1 Comment »
There is a scene in ‘John Q’ that always gets me.
This 2002 film is about a father and husband whose son is diagnosed with an enlarged heart who then finds out he cannot receive a transplant because HMO insurance won’t cover it. After receiving this information, he decides to take a hospital full of patients hostage until the hospital puts his son’s name on the recipient’s list.
Right before John decides to take the law into his own hands, he has a telephone conversation with his wife.
At the height of desperation she says, “They are releasing him, now you need to do something! DO YOU HEAR ME! DO SOMETHING!”
John takes these words to heart and really does something.
And truly, all of us must do the same.
Do something.
No, we shouldn’t take people hostage to get what we want.
But we should do something about the dream that sits inside us.
We need to make the call, send the e-mail, register for the class, write the manuscript, pen the song, take the trip, or do whatever we haven’t been doing that we need to be doing to fulfill God’s plan for our lives.
Stop waiting, procrastinating, and making excuses.
Do something.
Posted in Leadership, Dream Awake, Transformation | 1 Comment »
What amazing adventure will go on today?
Where is going to take you?
Who are you going to meet?
What are going to see?
How brave will you be?
How much faith will you need?
What amazing adventure will you go on today?
Posted in The Future, Creativity/Innovation, Dream Awake | No Comments »
Had a great time yesterday (except for getting lost a few times!).
Our Thursday night speaker was Austin Boyd. Five years ago he attended this conference as a participant, and now he is a published and accomplished author with multiples titles to his credit.
He spoke to us in a session called, “How to Pitch your Project”.
We learned about speaking to editors, how to work on tightening your work, how to “Give a Pitch”, and how to refine your “Elevator Speech”.
He had volunteers offer to “pitch” their idea. I volunteered. Great experience.
Wonderful feedback and encouragement from Austin Boyd and other writers.
What was really funny to me was the fact that I was really nervous about pitching my idea. I speak to large groups almost every week with confidence, but I got in front of these writers and cold feel my voice getting shaky.
Not only was it a different forum (which contributed to my nerves), but there is a certain vulnerability that hits you when you are sharing your ideas with a crowd of people you have never met before.
This is an inspiring atmosphere that stirs you to hone your craft and allow the Lord to draw His greatness out of you. For me, this weekend is really about worship. Worshipping Him by growing in the gift that he placed inside of me.
(P.S. -The picture above is a shot of me with 3 of my “Inspirations”!)
Posted in Creativity/Innovation, Dream Awake, Family | No Comments »
“…when David had served God’s purpose in his own generation, he fell asleep.”
-Acts 13:36
We can only influence the world for God to the degree that we’ve allowed God to influence us.
When we espouse a God that we have not fully embraced, we become living contradictions housed in human form.
Conversely, when we are greatly influenced by God, we are able to greatly influence for God.
Our generation will be dramatically changed by people of great influence.
The questions are:
1. Who will these people be?
2. How will these people influence their generation?
3. Will the world be a better place because of their influence?
May it be said of us 1000 years from now, “…they influenced their generation for God.”
Posted in The Future, Dream Awake, Transformation, World Change | No Comments »
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made straight and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
Today we celebrate not only the memory, but we are challenged by Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream. This dream of love, hope, and togetherness has inspired us to always bear the burden of our brothers and sisters in their time of need.
This dream is as relevant today as it was 40 years ago.
May God give us dreams that change the world in our generation.
Posted in Media/Culture, Dream Awake | No Comments »
I saw a little bird take off to fly today. I watched it take off. I watched how it jumped into the air, flapped its wings and began to soar. The funny thing is, birds never take the branches they stand when they fly. They let go, jump, then fly.
Birds that can’t ever find the courage to let go of the branches they are perched upon, can’t ever fly.
Some of us little birds aren’t flying. Not because we can’t.
But because we won’t.
We won’t let go.
We won’t let go because we are fixated on the wrong things.
We think of liabilities and not possibilities.
Rather than dreams of joyful flight, we have nightmares of painful falls.
By not letting go of the things that make us feel secure, we can’t do what we have been created for.
Flying takes faith.
Faith in God.
Faith in the person that He made us to be.
So next time it is time to fly, don’t close your eyes and brace yourself.
Open your eyes, gaze into the heavens and…believe.
Then let go.
Then jump.
Then fly.
It is what you have been created for.
Posted in The Future, Dream Awake, Faith | No Comments »
I was working on a post today, was almost finished and realized that it needed to ‘cook a little more’. Sometimes the best ideas need more time in the oven before they are fully ready to eat.
In fact, I think every great thinker/leader/creator/innovator should have an oven full of half-baked ideas and plans that are still cooking.
So….what is cooking inside of you?
Posted in The Future, Creativity/Innovation, Dream Awake | No Comments »