Vulnerability

Why Did They Ghost Me?

Why Did They Ghost Me?

I love gardening. I love helping bring something to life, nurturing it, and watching it flourish.

I am not particularly great at gardening, though. Any improvement I’ve had has come through the school of hard knocks: a plant I put in the wrong soil, a plant placed in the incorrect amount of sunlight, or not giving a plant the right amount of water (my default is always that more must be better—it isn’t).

Relationships are like plants, aren’t they? They are fragile. They are challenging.

Mom & Dad: Show Your Need

Mom & Dad: Show Your Need

“I have one regret of how I parented,” my friend told me. I leaned forward. My friend is a godly man married to a godly wife. He’s kind and gentle and wise. As an educator, he’s witnessed a lot of parenting, good and bad, in his day. His adult children have had their struggles but are good people. I would ask him for parenting advice in a second. What was his greatest regret?

“I wish I would’ve shown my kids my need for Christ more. I worked so hard to show them my godliness that I didn’t show them my need. I should have been more transparent. I should have shown them just how much I needed Jesus.”

Covering Up Our Weaknesses

Covering Up Our Weaknesses

We all have weaknesses and insecurities. Where are your weaknesses? How are you compensating for them? How are you closing yourself off relationally or spiritually from having those insecurities addressed?

Most of us try to hide and compensate for our weaknesses. We are afraid of what others will think of us or we are embarrassed we haven’t been able to get ongoing sin under control. This is one of the great lies of the enemy: that masking our inadequacies is the best way to deal with them, that sharing them will make things worse, and that we can fix them on our own.

This Week's Recommendations

This Week's Recommendations

1.      Why Leaders Need to be Vulnerable: Patrick Lencioni with a great story of how to poorly ask for feedback and the benefits of real vulnerability. 

2.      Netflix’s Real Competitor: Tim Challies shares the haunting quote from the Netflix CEO that Amazon and HBO aren't their competition -- sleep is. “When you watch a show from Netflix and you get addicted to it, you stay up late at night. You really — we’re competing with sleep, on the margin. And so, it’s a very large pool of time.”

3.      A Word of Encouragement About Your Labor: Michael Kruger takes on an often misunderstood verse and explains that, then empowered by the Spirit, our good works are not "filthy rags."

4.      Don’t Spiritualize Ministry Mediocrity: David Prince on how some churches explain away their lack of excellence: "To put it another way, one who says that their commitment to the primacy of preaching, leads them to have little regard for the music, parking, greeting, signage, aesthetics, friendliness, hands-on ministry, evangelism, outreach, care-giving, announcements, and so on, is simply theologizing their laziness and apathy." 

5.      Darwin Was a Slacker and You Should Be Too: Long but thought-provoking article by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, which weaves anecdotes of prodigiously productive workers with scientific studies on productivity and concludes that schedules that include shorter, focused hours with time of rest make the most productive schedules.