Zondervan Inspire

Avoid Drawing Blood

From the Editor: Good advice for us all.

Wishing you blessings today,

Keith

Author Catherine Johnson wrote a book fifteen years ago titled Lucky in Love. She's a PhD who was determined to figure out what deliriously happy married couples were so deliriously happy about. So she interviewed them — about a hundred couples in all. She found that at some point along the way, every happy couple had come to a critical point in their relationship where they would vociferously disagree but refuse to destroy each other in the process. "When we quarrel (and we will!), we're not going to do the kinds of things that will damage this relationship long-term," Johnson quoted these couples as saying. "When we disagree, we will not draw blood."

The moment I read that phrase, I decided to put it into practice in my work as well as in my marriage. Because I have deep feelings about so many kingdom issues, I have been known to express myself very passionately in meetings. And as you probably know, passion can beget passion. Effective leaders do not fear passion. They welcome it. But from time to time passionate discussions digress into personal attacks, and real people get really hurt. In my view, leaders must head that off before it happens.

From Axiom: Powerful Leadership Proverbs

by Bill Hybels

Any comments or testimonies today?

Wired for Touch

From the Editor: Not only do I need to increase my exercise quotient, I could stand to increase my “hug” quotient, too! It’s amazing how something so simple as loving human touch can have such a profound impact.

Wishing you blessings today,

Keith 

Have you ever watched a newborn baby? They cry and cry until they are picked up and held, and often just that skin-to-skin contact seems to comfort them. That desire to be touched stays with us throughout our lives. That's why a hug from a coworker is a great pick-me-up in the midst of a stressful day. It's why we hold hands at funerals. Our bodies are wired to desire this touch: a recent study by scientists at the University of North Carolina found that people who hug a lot have a lower risk of heart disease!

Once we were on a plane flying home from Korea. On the same plane was a proud set of parents who had just adopted a little girl. This cute little baby appeared to be several months old. We asked the father how old she was, and he said, "She's a year old." To our surprised reaction, the father said, "The orphanage where we adopted our daughter is a wonderful place, but they are short-staffed, and the babies spend lots of time in their cribs without being held." That is the power of touch and the problems the lack of it can create.

From The Seven Desires of Every Heart

by Mark & Debra Laaser

Created Out of Love for Love

From the Editor: Today’s post is a good reminder of our purpose on this earth.

Wishing you blessings today,

Keith 

God is love. Jesus revealed greater insight into the mystery of God who is relationship — perfect, loving relationship between Father, Son, and Spirit existing eternally. How else could God be love, since love requires an object — other persons to love? There's only one God, not three, but God at the center of his Being exists in loving relationship.

As a husband and wife in a healthy, loving relationship discover, love creates children to invite into relationship, and in so doing love expands. God created us out of love and for love, inviting us into his Divine Community of ever-expanding love. All the prophets who wrote thousands of years before Jesus made it clear that loving relationship is God's motive for creating us.

From Soul Revolution: How Imperfect People Become All God Intended

by John Burke

I Want to Be Heard

God wants us to talk to him, and we want him to listen. The Psalmist says, "I cried out to God for help; I cried out to God to hear me" (Psalm 77:1–2). In addition, God wants us to hear him: "Give ear and come to me; hear me, that your soul may live" (Isaiah 55:3). In order to connect with God and with each other, we must talk to God and to each other — and we want to know that both God and other people hear us, because being heard is a clue that we are fully known.

From The Seven Desires of Every Heart

by Mark & Debra Laaser

Any comments or testimonies today?

Listen with Your Heart

Sometimes, the people we care about the most are often the ones who seem to have the hardest time hearing us. (Conversely, sometimes we have a difficult time listening to those we love the most.) To complicate the issue further, really hearing someone always involves more than just understanding facts or issues. Listening involves hearing the heart of someone — hearing someone's feelings. In our counseling practice, we've found that very few people have the skill to identify, much less share, their emotions. Learning to listen to others' feelings and thoughts and to share our own will increase our intimacy with one another.

From The Seven Desires of Every Heart

by Mark & Debra Laaser

Any comments or testimonies today?

Upset the Apple Cart

If community involves things such as knowing and being known, serving and being served, loving and being loved, and celebrating and being celebrated, then most relationships, psychiatrist M. Scott Peck asserted, are constantly devolving into pseudo community. It's the great temptation for small groups of people to slide into a state where they're not quite telling each other the truth and they’re not quite celebrating each other. Instead, they tolerate each other, they accommodate each other, and they settle for sitting on the unspoken matters that separate them.

In order to move from pseudo community to genuine community, you have to endure a little chaos. To break free from falsehood, someone has to upset the applecart and say out loud, "As far as I can tell, we're not experiencing real community here. We're not where I want for us to be, anyway. Frankly, I’m holding back. I’m not giving you the final 2 percent of what I'm thinking. And I'm not really hearing what you have to say, either."

From Axiom: Powerful Leadership Proverbs

by Bill Hybels

Any comments or testimonies today?

Reckless Self-Giving

Jesus gave moral teachings that encouraged his followers to become the type of people who naturally care for the good of others because he wanted them to be united as a family. The life of heaven focuses on the good of others. It picks up the spoon not to fill its own belly but to offer a bite to the other starving stomachs in the room. This is the best life possible because it is the very type of life that is going on within God. The Father gives us his Son. The Son gives us his life. The Spirit gives us understanding of all that is true and praiseworthy. This reckless self-giving is the activity of heaven. Jesus said that all God wishes for you and me — all he encourages us to do and be, the entirety of our moral obligation — is summed up in this kind of reckless self-giving toward God and others.

From Seven: The Deadly Sins and the Beatitudes

by Jeff Cook

Any comments or testimonies today?

Privacy Plus Time Equals Destruction

Privacy plus time equals destruction. The idea is part of our deep subconscious. If we are alone, it is only a matter of time before we'll be snuffed out. There's a simple explanation for why we feel this way: We were not made to be alone.

In Genesis 1, as God creates stars and land masses, oceans and ecosystems, he looks at the things he has made and, over and again, thinks to himself, "It is good. It is good. It is good." Then in Genesis 2, he creates a man, the crown jewel of his entire creation. This should be the culminating moment. God has placed in his beautiful world the one who was meant to become his son. But here God stops. He pauses. And for the very first time, when God speaks, he does not create something new. His words, in fact, have a hint of melancholy. Looking on the man who shares his breath, God says, "It is not good for the man to be alone" (Genesis 2:18).

From Seven: The Deadly Sins and the Beatitudes

by Jeff Cook

Any comments or testimonies today?

Love Makes You Do Crazy Things

Love makes you to crazy things. Who do you love? Do you love people who don't know Christ? But honestly, many so-called Christians don't. You don't have to look far to find churches full of people who are insulating themselves from the world, hunkering down, avoiding PG-13 movies and secular music. These inward-looking religious types keep their distance from anyone who drinks beer, cusses after a bad golf swing, smokes anything, has a tattoo, or wears designer jeans with holes in them. They avoid homosexuals. They criticize rock stars. They stare disapprovingly at purple hair and Mohawks. And they're afraid of MTV. Too many believers are avoiding "that kind" of person. And they've forgotten that Jesus came for that kind of person.

From It: How Churches and Leaders Can Get It and Keep It

by Craig Groeschel

Any comments or testimonies today?

It's Not By Accident

Anytime you see God-honoring values being lived out genuinely and consistently, it's fair to assume that a leader decided to identify a handful of values and put a Bunsen burner underneath them. Every time she or he taught about the value or publicly praised someone for living that value out, it was like raising the temperature of that burner. Perseverance. Compassion. Servanthood. Generosity. Whatever the value, if it's alive and well in a local church today, it's not by accident. It's only there because of intentional, committed, dedicated effort.

When you heat up a value, you help people change states. Want to jolt people out of business as usual? Heat up innovation. Want to untangle confusion? Heat up clarity. Want to eradicate miserliness? Heat up generosity! New "states" elicit new attitudes, new aptitudes, and new actions. It's not rocket science. It's just plain chemistry. Which is a lot about heat.

From Axiom: Powerful Leadership Proverbs

by Bill Hybels

Any comments or testimonies today?