Failure and success

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The power of faith

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The power of faith

Sometimes you have to throw caution to the winds and just step out in faith. That was a topic of conversation the other day between a successful young church planter in Toronto and myself.

One of the enemy’s cleverest tricks is to keep our focus on what we can achieve by our own efforts.

I was taught a lot about faith as a young leader. The example of several men I personally knew who had taken extraordinary steps of faith in their walk with God took hold of me and challenged me to the core.

We can do a lot by our own efforts, but the kingdom will only really move ahead when we start doing what can only be accomplished by divine intervention.

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What's your spiritual resume look like?

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What's your spiritual resume look like?

I had to construct a resume - a “curriculum vitae” in more official terms. It’s been a very long time since my last one! But the institution for which I am teaching this summer required it.

To be honest, my resume writing skills were so rusty I had to borrow one from a colleague to use as a template. As I read all his impressive achievements, I began to wonder how mine would stack up. Not very well, at least in the academic context.

The word curriculum in Latin means a race. Vita means life. So a curriculum vitae means literally the race of life.

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Lost in translation

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Lost in translation

As we entered the British Museum in London, we noticed a large group of people crowded around a display holding up their cameras. We had seen the same phenomenon in the Louvre in Paris. There it was the Venus de Milo, whose one arm was just about visible above the cluster of cameras. Here it was the Rosetta Stone.

I don’t really think many of the onlookers fully understood what it was, and they certainly weren’t taking time to read the carefully written notice beside it.

The Rosetta Stone was discovered by the French in 1799, but repossessed by the British shortly after and carried off to London. It has been in the British Museum since 1802, where it is the most visited display, to which we can indeed bear witness.

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The challenge of change

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The challenge of change

Change can be lethal. I was trying to exit a congested British roundabout in a large urban centre the other day. I was driving a rented car with everything on the opposite side of normal. Having survived the battle of the roundabout, I fixed my eyes on the busy road at the end of the exit ramp. What I missed was the lady quickly stepping onto the crosswalk with her large umbrella concealing her view of the oncoming traffic. Which was me.

Thankfully in God’s providence and mercy, I whizzed past her and we both went our own ways. Under the cover of her umbrella, she may not even have noticed how close she came to meeting the Lord.

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When the foundations are forgotten

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When the foundations are forgotten

My friend Don and I were leading a mens’ conference together a couple of weeks ago. Prior to the conference beginning, God had laid a word on my heart about returning to foundations. The Lord had also laid a word on Don’s heart based on the idea of a bulldozer clearing ground. You would have expected that the bulldozer was preparing the land for a totally new building, but on further inspection the machine was actually clearing the dirt off old foundations it was uncovering.

The message was clear: build on the foundations that have been laid.