Ministry Leaders

The toughest challenges are the ones that you can not control, like the weather. Now that coffee farming in Laos, a business for missions, is part of my reality, I’m faced with this tough truth.

How we respond to failure is a choice, a very hard one. It is particularly hard when it is not our norm, when it shows up, as failure always does. Interestingly, for some it takes longer than others for it to both show up and be dealt with.

Watch this video and visit with me the Oval office, as it existed when Ronald Reagan was President of the United States. Yes, there is a jar of jelly beans behind the lamp.

How do you know what you know? Is everything always clear to you? I know that I learn as my experiences pile up and I am exposed to other ways of thinking. Learning seems to me to be cumulative. Or maybe it is wisdom that is cumulative as the experiences pile up. Guess that last perspective is the right one.

In the Bible it talks about how Jesus grew in “wisdom and understanding.”

Did you ever notice how tough times show up? They are like a thief in the night, kind of like a car accident. You are just driving along, and then you hit the “black ice” and everything spins out of control. I think life is like that, more often than we would like, or are willing to share.

Recently we hit one of those unexpected icy patches. Our son, Brent, has Rubenstein Syndrome.

Standing at a crossroads 120 miles outside of Moscow, the fields stretched to the horizon. We were stuck, waiting for a guide to take us to the next camping destination. There were 7 of us in total, just getting to know each other.

I pulled into the Envoy parking lot and there it was…426 HP, bright orange, 2013, Camaro that existed in my friend’s dream. Now a reality! He confided in me a month or so earlier, that he’d finally convinced his wife that “they” should have the car of his dreams. How much fun is that?

When we share we invite others to participate in the results of our action. When we don’t share, we limit the power of the results to make a difference in people’s lives. This is most clearly demonstrated by the results generated by 12 men, and an unknown group of women,

I woke up with this thought on my mind: It's important to slow down enough to enjoy the journey and to make sure that we don’t get stuck on the road to nowhere in the process. We are all in process and with God’s help we are built to enjoy the journey. That having been said, it is a choice.

As we walked in the Dream Center gym, 160 men and women “in recovery” applauded. We had not done anything other than show up; they were doing life’s “heavy lifting." I wondered what would come next.