Rest from your Labor this Labor Day

Dear Friends:For those of us living in the U.S., this weekend marks the Labor Day holiday. This holiday was initiated by workingmen during the height of the Industrial Revolution in the late 1800s.It was a time of incredible production in U.S. history when new technologies were transforming the nation:The national railroad network and then the automobile provided faster transportation.The invention of the telephone made communication faster.The introduction of the assembly line streamlined production.The light bulb made it possible for people to work longer hours.The result of the Industrial Revolution was a time of enormous material prosperity in the U.S.Yet, this prosperity came at a staggering price.At the time, it was not uncommon for the average American laborer to work 12-hour days and seven-day weeks. Children as young as five could be found toiling in mills and factories, working conditions were often extremely unsafe, and workers often had inadequate access to sanitation facilities, fresh air, or rest breaks.Finally, workers started standing up for themselves.They formed unions. Workers went on strike to pressure factory owners for better working conditions. Out of all this came changes like child labor laws, better working conditions, and shorter working hours. (And, of course, Labor Day!)Although we may feel far removed from the Industrial Revolution, perhaps we haven't made as much progress as we think. The technological revolution we're living in now pulls and pushes us in similar ways.In our "always-on" world where we are constantly available 24-hours a day via email and the internet, we have a hard time disconnecting from our work. We now live what I call "High Octane" lives.The result of the High Octane Life is that we easily lose touch with the people and priorities that are most important to us.Do you feel like you've lost your connection to God?How about your spouse, good friends, parents, or kids?Have you lost touch with a hobby or a passion that used to bring you joy?When was the last time you spent time in nature marveling at God's amazing creativity?It's time to take a stand for yourself.[tweetthis]For the sake of your soul. You need to take a holiday from technology. You need to disconnect from the wired life of always available and always on. [/tweetthis]And you need to re-connect. You need un-interupted time to connect with the people and passions that bring joy and meaning to your life.So here's my challenge for you this weekend is simple:Find a way to disconnect in order to re-connect.Here are a few ideas to get you started:Choose a day this weekend where all technology stays off. Go on a screen fast. Put away your phone, laptop, and TV.Turn off all push notifications on your phone. Or better yet, leave it on airplane mode or do not disturb when you're not using it.When you go out this weekend to spend time with family or friends, leave your phone at home. (For you parents who may need to have a phone in case the babysitter calls, leave it in your pocket or purse instead of having it out to check emails and updates.)Decide on a no phones or technology rule in the bedroom. Make your bedroom a sanctuary for sleeping and connecting intimately with your spouse.Pick a time each day to disconnect from technology. Intentionally choose a specific time to turn on and off the Internet each day. (For instance, maybe you don't connect to it until 9:00 am and turn it off at 8:00 pm.)Invite someone you love to join you for a day without devices and tell them why you're doing it.Just sit somewhere for a few hours. Get out into nature. Bring a journal and a pen. Consider what you need to disconnect from in your life in order to re-connect to the people and priorities that truly matter the most to you.Sit quietly with God for a few minutes in silence. Let his love for you wash over your soul.If you choose to accept my challenge, I'd love to hear from you. Just reply to this email. Let me know how you are disconnecting from technology and how you are re-connecting.With you on the journey,Steve Smith   

Nine Attitudes that Lead to Happiness Now

What makes a person happy?  That's a question, men and women through the ages have tried to answer. We, like those who came before us, try to live a life that will marked by happiness and contentment.  But how can we find some assurance that the way we are living will actually bring us happiness?Following Jesus is about the transformation of our attitudes about life--those inner dispositions that rise up within us from time to time as we live our life; do our job and raise our family.  Jesus was concerned with the inside--knowing that we'd be concerned with our outside world and the outer markers of success in life. He will not allow his followers to camp out in the suburbs of the Kingdom he is ushering in.  He wants the Kingdom to be birthed within each heart. [tweetthis]The Beatitudes are nine needed attitudes to find happiness in this life--right now. [/tweetthis]His Beatitudes --nine statements about the inner life of his followers focus on nine specific attitudes that followers of Jesus need to cultivate to truly be happy and to really live in the blessing of God.One of the best ways to understand what the Beatitudes of Jesus are about is to realize that the beatitudes are about our attitudes. The transformation of our attitudes in life—those inner dispositions about life, our self and God. Each of the nine attitude statements offered us by Jesus reveal a shifting of the tectonic plates of our soul. These nine attitudes challenge our long held and often fortified beliefs about what really makes a person happy.  We have long held and closely maintained systems that have shaped our own understanding of how a person finds happiness. Many of our beliefs are cemented in our ideas about security, position, money and success.  Yet, Jesus turns our programmed systems of belief on it's head. Each attitude shows us a whole-other-way to live.There is a specific call to action in each of the attitudes. We are told to BE the attitude—not just hold to a certain belief. When we become the actual attitude that Jesus describes—then the blessing comes—then our happiness is anchored in something more real that circumstances, temporary events or nice geographical settings such as mountain vistas and sandy beaches. Happiness is not circumstantial not is it related to positions we find ourselves in at any particular moment. True happiness and blessing is inside—and reveals to us a Kingdom within each heart right now.When we cultivate the attitudes of Jesus, we sense a shifting inside:

• We discover a true sense of happiness and well-being.
• We discover our programmed way for happiness that is shaped by culture both in the church and around us in the world.
• We find a whole, new way to live that begins on the inside and centrifuges to those around us.
• We learn to live with a new foundation, authored by Jesus and lived out by the early church—modeled by the early church fathers and mothers yet, ignored in our current state of affairs.
• We live less obsessed with our daily crisis and challenges and live in a Kingdom perspective of the wider, greater dimension than just self.
• We see in a whole other way of looking at life, self, and the world. In holding to the larger story, we tolerate the smaller story of trials and tribulations right now.

The first four beatitudes focus on our exaggerated and embellished view of life as we see it on our own. The first four attitudes are dispositions within each person. These are the lenses through which we look at life, other people and ourselves.

1. Blessed are the poor—reveals our obsession with security and what security really is.
2. Blessed are those that mourn—shows the necessity of giving up that which we clinch and crave and learn to relax in the letting go of what we hold most dear and vital in life. Inner freedom comes as we let go.
3. Blessed are the meek—lays the foundation that by giving up control in life we learn to receive all that God desires to give us.
4. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst—uncovers the deep desires for what will gratify us—but never satisfy us.

The need for security; our propensity to hold tightly what we think we know and value most; our issues of control and the deep desires for what we think will satisfy us and our “rights” to pursue the fulfillment of self are confronted with a clarion call to live in a whole, other way is foundational to living well in the heart of Jesus. The Beatitudes show us the way.The next three Beatitudes flow from the first four attitudes being transformed. As we cultivate the right inner attitudes, then we are ready to extend our lives for the sake of others.

5. Blessed are the merciful—shows our need to accept others no matter their circumstances and to realize their Belovedness—not just our own.
6. Blessed are the pure in heart—reveals the holiness of everyone and everything and to observe the mystery of God in our dailiness, events and world around us not just the epiphanies.
7. Blessed are the peacemakers—shows us that peace flows first from within us and is our inside job to cultivate and then give to others.

The last two attitudes are about embracing suffering not ignoring it. Suffering is inevitable in following Jesus. He suffered—so will his followers. It cannot be avoided and our attitude towards suffering is important.

8. Blessed are those who are persecuted—lays down a core truth that the followers of Jesus must move beyond self-interest and the daily obsessions with our own lives to the plight of others who are less fortunate.
9. Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you—helps us understand the role of criticism and rejection and helps redefine our true identity as the Beloved sons and daughters of another world.

 (If you're new the blog, you'll want to look back and scroll through earlier entries where I'm trying to give my voice to each attitude and Beatitude).

Toxins in the Heart

When Jesus told us “Blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God” (Matthew 5:8), he was clarifying a method for experiencing God as well as a clarion call to find God in a new way.Religion can become so polluted. They pathways to God can become very congested. Jesus brings clarity to the way we find God. The method that Jesus uses for us to experience God is more simple than complex and more uncomplicated than we might expect.  In the United States alone, there are now more than 175 different denominations--all claiming to believe the right thing and to do religion in the right way. But who is really right? Who has the pure and unadulterated form of religion?Jesus helps us and rather than turning to religion, we can turn to a teaching that helps us really experience God in a way we all long to do in our lives. We experience God when our hearts are pure. A heart that is sincere is the heart that has the breakthroughs and epiphanies where light shines in the dark spaces. The alternative to a pure heart helps us truly capture what a pure heart is not.Polluted. Complicated. Murky. Divided. These are all descriptor words they help us understand purity in a more profound way. A polluted heart is a heart that has been exposed to toxins, contaminants and poisons. These vary from person to person and culture to culture. These toxins may be emotional garbage from our pasts, cutthroat competition, loveless and cheap sex, magic show religion and paranoid loneliness.   These, and other forms of murky living and shallow values, erode the pure nature of a heart’s capacity to experience God. How do you see toxins in the church today?  How can we practice more of an anti-toxic way of loving God and keeping life a bit more simple?In other stories and teachings of Jesus, he elevates the posture of a child likeness as being the real way adults should lean into their faith. In the child’s heart—we find a zeal of passion that is resilient; an abandonment of care that is refreshing and a singleness of mind to do one thing and not multi-task. We have much to learn from children should we take the time to allow them to be our teachers perhaps more than PhD s and experts.We tend to make everything more complicated that it perhaps should be and I find a propensity to bring our own human systems and man-made matrices into how we do faith. [tweetthis]To become more simple in our approach to God--is my friends to become more pure. [/tweetthis]Pure religion is really boiled down to two things from one of the authors of a book in the Bible: taking care of widows and orphans and that's it! But look at all of our programs!  Look at our lists of things we all need to do in order to be right--or live right? What has happened to us? People can make a lot of spiritual garbage. Our garbage piles up and hurts us. Spiritual Pollution--that is what has happened to us.Like the Quakers sang years ago, these words are a clarion call to us today: "'Tis a gift to be simple and a gift to be free." I often work with pastors across the world. The private lament of so many is, "Things in church are way to complicated."  "Isn't there a more simple way to do all of this, Steve?"  Why, yes, yes there is. It begins with one's own heart--not trying to fix systems or repair a religion. When one person chooses to be more pure--then a more pure form of worship, joy and life will soon result.Purity of heart is a daily filtering task. There is a lot we need to take out of our hearts in order to experience the purity Jesus is calling us to. What we watch for entertainment; what we give our minds to read about; what we take in---affects the purity of our heart. It’s also important to be aware that often it is what’s inside that broods and festers that snares us: seething anger; rotting envy; lurking malice—these and other internal vices divide the heart and form internal bastions we fortify rather than dismantle in our life and work.To be pure is to attend the daily task of seeking to live well from the inside out.

Dissecting Our Appetite for Life

We have concocted a dangerous elixir that has intoxicated us into living a drunken stupor and we call it "life." This dangerous cocktail may be different for each one of us but at the core—all hazardous libations have at the core: the quest for power; the longing for esteem and the demands for security. This unholy trinity of concoctions are as old as Satan’s three temptation of Jesus. Yet 2000 years later, we still face a daily battle to find a sober way to live well and lead well.In my work, I see pastors, missionaries, doctors, teachers and small business owners bellying up to the bars of life which over promise and under-deliver when it comes to what makes us genuinely happy and soulfully satisfied.We have heard Jesus’ words but we will not heed them. He said it plainly—as if to jar us back to our senses so that we could truly know how to live with a sense of robust sanity. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they will be filled—satisfied” are his exact words found in Matthew 5:6. This particular attitude for living sanely flies in the face of American culture which includes leaders in both the church and the marketplace sphere.Our hunger and thirst should be for something so different from the drink we are drinking and the bread we eat that never seems to satisfy us. There is a keen difference in knowing what will gratify us but has no possibility of satisfying us. Jesus’ beatitude is a knife that sharply cuts through our confusion and it is really important to what does really satisfy a human being?Jesus is poking around in what our appetite centers on in this life? What are we craving and desiring in the gut of our soul? Our appetite is more than what we are in the mood for on a Friday night after a long week of work and demands. Our appetite is that which will truly sustain us---nourish us—make us healthy or addicted.We tend to have Jesus as an “add-on” like a pickle on our hamburger or chopped onions on a grilled brat. But Jesus will not set himself up as someone who will simply spice up our lives. No, Jesus sets the record straight for us right here by telling us plainly that he is really interested in what we are yearning for; desiring and longing to put at the core of our lives.The way Jesus puts it, makes us sit with our hunger and thirst more than we tend to do. In our fast food nation, we can so easily have a little bit of Jesus and then move on and get back to our demanding lives. So he turns our tables upside down though, when he says that what we hunger for really matters in this life—it matters so much in fact that our hunger will actually determine if our deepest needs will ever be met.We live so superficially full—filling our lives with so many condiments that we may actually be missing out on that which really—and truly---satisfies us.My health journey for the past 18 months has forced me to look at my own attitudes about food more than I ever have in my life. Through a set of wake-up calls, I looked into the mirror and saw someone who had drifted; someone who had lived to eat; someone who had never really looked at the DNA of my appetite. Now, sixty pounds lighter, I face this question more head on than I never knew possible. My transformation is this—to shift to really know that I am what I eat. If I eat unhealthy—then I am unhealthy. But as I shift the paradigm in how I look at my desire and what really fills me and makes me healthy—then the shift happens.My doctor is watching me closely. My blood does not lie. The numbers in my blood report reveal this shift that is happening and thankfully, for me, it’s all in the right direction.[tweetthis]Jesus is offering us a paradigm shift that will change us; make us deeply satisfied and alter the trajectory of our lives. But it begins with what we desire, long for and yearn for in our appetite.[/tweetthis]Jesus unpackages this by giving us the word “righteousness”—a word we actually know little about today because of the moral chaos we are in.   To hunger for what is right and true and to develop an appetite for rightness and truth is at the core here. And this is where it gets hard.We our elixirs  we drink in our churches and businesses have altered our sense of reality. (Yes, the church and its leaders are not immune from getting drunk on power, size and more).  We’re not really sure anymore about what is right and what really is the truth? In our efforts to not offend anyone, have we now sat at a banqueting table feasting on our right to choose; our right to decide our own gender; our right to our own opinion about what really does satisfy us? This is no feast when we have omitted the things in life which make a person truly healthy and truly able to live well.We are not living well but feasting on everything and every opinion. We seem to be fasting from doing what is right to doing what is popular. Living in a right way has never been popular—it wasn’t in Jesus’ day and it will not be ours.But our own satisfaction is at stake here. Jesus says it plainly. We will never be satisfied if we feast on all that gratifies us. In my own healthy journey, I am a witness to this. By living in ignorance I was in fact abusing my body. I had to learn. I had to do the most major paradigm shift of my life. I was confused about what really would bring me satisfaction. I lived for decades thinking eating all that I wanted was the satisfaction I was seeking. But know, I am learning more and the shift continues to happen.I think this shift is what Jesus is after in this beatitude---a shift in our understanding about what really brings satisfaction to us as modern, successful, busy and educated folks. We have some unlearning to do and it begins with this question: What are you hungry and thirsty for in your life.Answer this question and you will be on your way to more satisfaction than you though possible.  

Meekness: A Forgotten Way to Live

"Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth."--Jesus"You're blessed when you're content with just who you are--no more, no less. That's the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can't be bought"--Jesus in Matthew5:5, The MessageMeek? There is not much place for meekness in today’s world filled with clinching teeth, competitive grips and running and living on empty. I’m not even sure many of us have the word “meek” in our everyday vocabulary. Fewer still, seek to live with meekness as one of their most wanted characteristics. We want to be thin, smart, important, wealthy and successful. But who really wants to be meek? We train for our roles in life but we do not train to develop characteristics such as being meek.Yet, Jesus again, smears clean our programmed ways to be happy by telling us that meekness is where the action is. Somewhere along life’s way, we have to stop and look in the mirror for mirrors rarely lie. When we look at ourselves and our inner world—and see if the speed in which we are living; our busyness and our successes are really working for us? Meekness is really an invitation to live another way—perhaps a whole other way. To live the life we secretly long for, we need to have our old programs for “”how to be happy” stripped. We need a new way to live. This is precisely what Jesus does in the Beatitudes. These short statements are all invitations to live well and live with a better goal in mind.But what does meekness look like, smell like and feel like in a world where power, control and dominance are our unholy trinity we live with in our daily lives?Becoming meek is becoming who you really are without the façade of power, position and influence.You’ve noticed I’m sure, like I have, how people seek to impress us with their status. Becoming meek is letting go of all self-aggrandizing statements which tout, “I’m the leader in my field.” “I won this award.” “I have 5,000 followers on social media, so I am really someone important.” You lay down your efforts to say you are the best; have the answer or know the precise answer to almost any question posed to you. Meekness restrains self-promotion.Cultivating meekness is a necessary movement in how you posture yourself at home, at work; at church and by yourself. The world, work and even the church can call out the worst in us, not the best. We play charades. We become people we are not. We live as if the outside is what matters—it becomes, perhaps, all that matters. We re-enforce the false self and wear lots of armor to hide what is really inside. Meekness flushes out what is inside and holds it as honorable, true and right. [tweetthis]To cultivate meekness is to live in a vulnerable posture--exposing your true self and living out of the core of your true self without polish, edits and apologies.[/tweetthis]Meekness is living from the inside and moving towards the outside. It is recognizing your self-worth in God’s eyes—if no one else’s. It is living from a place of inner-peace and calm and moving away from the clanging of cymbals; the buzzers of busyness and the marching cadence which says, “Do something to be someone special.” Being meek is giving up the illusions that we have to impress someone—even God by our doings and our appearances.We live in an assertive world driven by extroverts in our churches and work spaces that make us become “high capacity” machines. Meekness chooses to listen to a different, Greater Voice, which says, “Stop masquerading. Live from your core. Move towards redeeming your false self and let go of hauling all your tips and techniques by the side of the road.”To be meek is to be mild, not brazen. It is to live with the daily flexibility that says, “I want to walk ‘palms up; in this world not clenching and gripping people, opportunities and experiences.When Jesus said, the meek would inherit the earth—what is that suppose to look like? To inherit the earth means that when one is meek, you really do have everything at your disposal because you see the world and people in a different way. You stop using people. You watch them, learn from them and let go of them. In this way, we inherit the wisdom we need to live more simply and more reasonably and definitely more peacefully. To inherit the earth means we can actually gain the whole world but not lose our soul in the process—something that we surely need to learn how to do.To inherit the earth means that we can now enjoy—and learn to live less stressful; less driven lives. We do this by becoming our true selves and all of our life is this one precise journey---to become who we really are. “Naked, I came into the world and naked I will return.” Meekness knows this mantra and says it every day—perhaps multiple times every day. Questions for Reflection:1. Who is a person in your life now that you would say is a meek person?2. How does a person cultivate meekness in life, faith, work and at home?3. How have you experienced the meekness of Jesus?

Living in the Beatitudes

"The poetry of history lies in the miraculous fact that once on this earth, once, on this familiar spot of ground, walked other men and women, as actual as we are today, thinking their own thoughts, swayed by their own passions, but now all gone, one generation vanishing after another, gone as utterly as we ourselves shall shortly be gone like ghosts at cockcrow." G. M. Trevelyan If you’re like me, you’ve read the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:3-11) a thousand times. You learned them in Sunday school as a child and perhaps tried to memorize them. You may not recall what I'm even talking about here. It not, take a moment and read them. I've given you the reference. Someone, perhaps a teacher, parent or grandmother just knew, a long time ago, re how important they are in life. For a long time, people have been trying to get their head wrapped around what Jesus intended in these short statements.For a year now, I’ve been parked right at their address in the Scripture and read them multiple times a week trying to dig in and suck out the marrow they offer. The fact is, I’ve been nourished and impacted in a big way.These eight paradigms uttered from the mouth of Jesus, himself offer today’s busy worker a whole new way to view life. The Beatitudes lay down a foundation of how to “do” life.   In my work with leaders for 35 years now, what I’m going to say is sad and sobering. [tweetthis]Few leaders in the marketplace and ministry are happy. Discontent is epidemic. Stress is out the wazoo. We have more monetary success than ever before in this history of the world but our inner worlds are in disarray.[/tweetthis] [tweetthis]Few leaders in the marketplace and ministry are happy. Discontent is epidemic. Stress is out the wazoo. We have more monetary success than ever before in this history of the world but our inner worlds are in disarray.[/tweetthis]We have all been programmed with a way to be happy. The beatitudes fly in the face of our programming. The wheels of the bus come off of our lives when we come face to face with Jesus’ own words and his heart for us as his brothers and sisters and his friends.Yet, Jesus, the One who had the audacity to say that “I am the way, the truth and the life…” offered us eight foundational planks upon which we can build a new platform and perhaps really taste and discover—if not really live the life that is truly a life.[tweetthis]What I am finding is that these Beatitudes---there really is something up with them and as I move on with me life, I want these to be the markers of my life.[/tweetthis]What Jesus said in these short, pithy, life-altering statements are primarily two things: Live this way and you will be living in counter-cultural way. And live this way and you will be living in a counter-intuitive way.The Beatitudes are counter-cultural because they simply flow against the stream of our every-day, surviving life. In Jesus’ wisdom, he offers us a way to turn our ordinary life around and live with new ways of looking at life, people, tragedy, success and genuine health.Take the first Beatitude as an example. Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Rock my world, right here! Today, everyone is an expert. Everyone has an opinion. Everyone is selling something. Yet poverty—that posture where you have more questions than answers is the way to live. Cultivating a healthy ignorance can become more life-giving than knowing it all or pretending to know it all.What if pastors could become more poor on Sundays and in Sunday's sermons and simply say, "I've been way too busy this week to even listen to God--much less read my Bible. Perhaps you've had the same week. Could we just sit in some silence? Could we then just do some deep listening to a passage of Scripture. Sing a song and go home and eat lunch with our friends and family?" I'd like that kind of honesty rather than having to listen to a message that seems canned; seems stolen from the internet yet spoken with such authority that it is more shocking than real?  Let's get poor here!What if a business leader could attend a seminar which would help them become more poor than rich—more humble than prideful; more less of a know it all than an arrogant person who people are repulsed by privately but never say so publicly. What if a leader would lead by listening to his team more; his clients more; his competitors more. That kind of poverty would yield something rich, I'm sure of it.[tweetthis]Being poor in spirit is an invitation to become more reflective and not so reactionary. It is learning to live with wonder not facts.[/tweetthis] It is leaning more into mystery than linear thinking. It is giving up the 7 steps and the 21 habits and all that nonsense.Poor folks respond when something of worth is handed them. They respond with gratitude not entitlement. Spiritual entitlement and spiritual greed has become one of the markers of so many Christian leaders today. Spiritual greed is coveting more knowledge, more content; more insights and you hoard it. It’s not assuming the posture of being impoverished by all our books, notebooks and note-taking church. Spiritual entitlement is thinking because you’v been raised in the church or gone to seminary or something like that they people NEED to listen to you. That’s entitlement. To think people NEED your opinion or perhaps even want you opinion. Being poor in Spirit is walking around with palms up not fists clenched. Palms up living is living every day to receive whatever it is the Good Lord might want you give you that day. Then being grateful for it not holding a grudge that “they” got more than you or “they “ got something better than you. Our spiritual greed has not served us well. We are not the envy of other nations. We are not the answer to every problem and the guardian to everyone’s crisis. God is. We are not. That is spiritual poverty.Being poor in spirit for me means shifting how I look at people—especially leaders who seem to fixed---so obsessed on becoming a better something; an even higher status of a being known as a “high capacity leader.” To be honest, that term sickens me. It’s really not a compliment to say such things of anyone; especially one’s own humble and poor self. What is that way of talk anyway? A poor in spirit leader is simply not comfortable with that kind of label wearing, resume taunting person. A poor in spirit leader just shows up and says, “God, what do you have for me today?” It means dumping your plans and living with a dailiness in mind…simply to become so low that you’d say over the loud speaker in your complex. “People, today, we’re just going to do one thing! We’re going to do someone some good today.” That’s it. That’s poor in spirit.[tweetthis]For those of us who can learn this kind of spiritual bankruptcy, ours is the promise of everything.[/tweetthis] Jesus tells us the people who are low; the people who live humbly; the people who act like they are not more than they really are inside; the people who abandon their false, veneer ways of living and simply just choose to be themselves actually get everything. These kind of folks get the Kingdom.Now, for me, this is counter-intuitive. It goes against everything my daddy taught me and everything I sense in the committee meeting that goes on inside my head.Becoming poor in spirit means to walk lowly; it means to live with a daily humility that is grounded in that I am but a vapor here and I will too, soon pass from this earth. I will be replaced. I am not invincible. I am not important. It means to relish in my own belovedness as a chosen child of God—a very important person in God’s eyes and in God’s economy. It means a every day laying down in trying to promote myself and make myself to seem more important than I am. With this kind of living there is a richness—a richness that compels me to become more poor than every before.

Outer vs. Inner Markers of Success

One of the great problems of our day is that nearly all of the markers of success are external. We don’t look within to define success. We look outside. What size is their office? What kind of car does she drive? What neighborhood do they live in? Where did they go to school? Does she have her MBA yet? If all we have are external markers of success then we are complicit in promoting a bloodthirsty culture—one that is about domination, power, and control. We speed up so we can get the validation we think we need. We become aggressive in our pursuits of making life work. We both make choices and use people for our own ends. Success cannot be truly enjoyed because if you stop, slow down or smell the roses, someone—somewhere, might get ahead of you. One business executive confessed to me “When one of my colleagues succeeds at something, a part of me dies. I can’t be happy for her because I know I’ve just been bypassed.” It’s a sad state of the soul.When these external markers eclipse any other guiding values available for us, we become servants to the bitch-goddess of success and our hearts become enslaved one quadrant at a time until we lived dead to honor, enslaved to money, and paralyzed to move in any different direction.It seems that aspirations to be great and to be first are as old as the stories within our Bible. It’s interesting to find even the early followers of Jesus caught in plotting their own legacy so as to be remembered as one among the greats. In five short verses, Jesus shifts their paradigm and stretches their understanding of real leadership.They came to Capernaum. When he was safe at home, he asked them, “What were you discussing on the road?” The silence was deafening—they had been arguing with one another over who among them was greatest. He sat down and summoned the Twelve. “So you want first place? Then take the last place. Be the servant of all.” He put a child in the middle of the room. Then, cradling the little one in his arms, he said, “Whoever embraces one of these children as I do embraces me, and far more than me—God who sent me.”First place is last place. That’s a radical shift in understanding—one enough to make the proud fall and the humble to be exalted. Jesus’ model of leadership was something that the eager-beaver emerging leaders found difficult to grasp. Surely it would be about power! Most certainly it would be about grandeur and greatness. Wrong! This radical new paradigm of leadership took years for the early followers of Jesus to develop and it is no different for us today. Every definition of leadership that you think you already know—already assume and perhaps already embody is turned on its head.[tweetthis]Every definition of leadership that you think you already know is turned on its head.[/tweetthis] (This is an excerpt from Inside Job: Doing the Work within the Work IVP 2015 Chapter 3)Please consider ordering Inside Job through:Amazon: Buy through AmazonorBuy through Potter's Inn: Download a FREE Chapter, Download a FREE Session in the Companion Workbook and learn more!Buy and Learn More about INSIDE JOB through Potter's Inn3 Ways to Help in the Launch of Inside Job:1. Using your social media (Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, Instagram, et) to quote the book, take a pix of you and the cover (a contest for this will be launched soon) and more.2. Think beyond buying 1 copy--buy several copy and give copies to your friends, spheres of influence.3. Start a group study and use the workbook.Get the WORKBOOK and download a FREE Session!4. Share this post now on your own social media platforms. We'd be very grateful for the "SHARE".Thank you for all of your consideration! 

Sabbatical: Going to the End of My Rope

“You’re blessed when you are at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his rule.”—Jesus in Matthew 5:3, MessageMost every person I know needs to dismantle their emotional programming for what it means to be happy in life. We are hard-wired to think that happiness and joy come by chasing the outer markers of success in life: a bigger house, a nicer car, a new toy. I explore this in Inside Job, my new book. We believe a lie and we make a vow that determines how we will live our life and try and try to be happy.Jesus turned this kind of thinking up on it’s head. To be happy—to be blessed—requires a total shift in our paradigm of how we view life. He offered us a paradigm shift in what is called the “Beatitudes.” These statements found in Matthew 5:3-14, are short, pithy and life-altering guidelines which help us not only dismantle our hard-wiring we’ve acquired through culture, church and family, but they help us really see how happiness is cultivated in our lives.In our Sabbatical, Gwen and I have come, face to face, with these statements--these beatitudes. Let me share one here: “Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.” The Message jolts us to our core and says it this way, “You’re blessed when you are at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his rule.”Blessing and happiness come by our emptying ourselves and having to rely on God in a complete and resolved kind of way. It’s when we are so vulnerable; so power-less; so weak and so empty that there is room for God to do his work. Our poverty is exchanged for his blessing. On our own, some of us try to out work and out wit God.We live as Parker Palmer has aptly coined it: functional atheism. We say believe in God and trust God, yet we live in a manic pace, stripping our souls and running our lives on empty. I had to come face-to-face with this humbling realization in our sabbatical--yet, again. We live as if our life, our work and our relationships are totally up to us. We, the, “functional atheist” of the 21st century, have soul work to do. We’d never admit it but we are more functional atheist than experiencing a faith with sustains, nurtures and shows us how to live with resilience . We live and function as if we are the ones having to push the proverbial boulder up another hill—yet again.Poverty in soul, for me meant that I had to accept let go of my grip on my work--and get out of its grip on me, my ministry and my staff. This acceptance--this consent is my daily work--my daily job. This letting go was a relinquishment of power and control. It required me confessing that I find my satisfaction in work--and not in God is not a good thing for me or anyone else around me. It is a shift towards poverty of soul for me. At times during sabbatical, I was anxious that Potter’s Inn might fail; fall apart or even die. We feel so fragile due to raising our support. Our helplessness actually fostered a deep sense of well-being---why? Because it meant letting go. Poverty of spirit meant a handing over to God all that I simply could not do and should not do.God works in us is to foster, nourish and grow a sense of contentment, inner-serenity and shalom that we live with the awareness that simply says this: No matter what my circumstances; no matter how hard this particular time is in my life; no matter how powerless I feel right now, 'All is well in my life and all will be well around me'. True contentment, my friends, is an Inside Job. In sabbatical, I left my work but I had to do my inside job.It is NOT up to me. I relinquish my efforts to be God—to be everywhere at once and to do multiple things that have stripped my soul bear and left me so empty inside. The great work of God is more than planting churches; more than sharing the Gospel; more than teaching. The great work awaiting each one of us the work of our inside job. God truly does desire our well-being. Sit with that thought for a moment and see where it might take you. What if you took a moment today and sat in your emptiness and weakness—feeling depleted and truly at the end of your rope and experienced the hands of God doing one thing: holding you. That’s it—just let yourself be held for a quiet moment. To sit, rather than DO something is an act of submission--and act of letting go--an act of well-being. Hey, I'm all for action, but even action must have it's seasons, right?In the beginning of our time “off” we felt like we truly were at the end of our rope. We were tired, worn out and experiencing some degree of burn out. So many years of pioneering and work had depleted us. A poverty within is what we had to face. As we faced our own spiritual poverty and admitted it and also confessed it—finally—we were brought low to a place of inner desperation and longing. “God, I don’t feel like I can go on. I can’t retire financially. But I’m at the end. Please God, do something. I let go now. It's time for you to do the thing that you must love to do--transform me and people like me."In that kind of confession, it seemed to have ushered us both into a journey of renewal.

Going Unplugged

For me to have a true time of sabbatical—a true time of ceasing from my work, it was necessary and mandatory that I abstain from social media during my season of rest, renewal and restoration. There is no way, that what has happened in me could have happen or would have happened if I would have stayed wired, on and available. You might think you are the exception and that you could rest and renew your heart by staying on and wired but that, my friends is an illusion that you are hooked into actually believing. In order for me, and perhaps you as well, to live sanely and with a sense of vitality and not mere survival, we need to discipline ourselves to go wireless in order that we can live in a robust, abundant kind of way. I had to do this. I needed to do this. Perhaps you do also.In today’s world, fasting from technology and dis-engaging from forms of social media are vitally important and needed. When we are so wired and insist that WiFI be omnipresent, we are submitting ourselves to a false and dangerous world. Let me be clear, I am an advocate for social media. I use it every day. However in my sabbatical, I unplugged and went off line for months and I believe in doing so, I created the space where I could cultivate my inner life; do more inside work so my outside job would go better and cultivated a sense of serenity and well-being that being wired seemed to rob me of in my life. Here are five reasons why:1. Social media nourishes illusions about life that are not true. The images we post ; the snippets of updates we read; the “trending” of our interests builds and re-enforces a false view of life. No picture reveals the whole story, does it? Behind every smile, there is something else we do not see but is as real as all the grins we are staring at online. There is something unsaid behind every post and every instagram photo. Photos don’t reveal our child who is ADD; our son who we caught on a porn site our aging parents feeling unwanted or perhaps unloved. Pictures of men don’t reveal their inner struggles. Pictures of a ladies night out don’t clue us in on one of them having a secret addiction. Images, themselves are not the whole truth.2. When we are always present to social media, we are not present to ourselves, our hearts and God. By skimming scores of quotes, posts and images, our minds are simply taking in what it seems everyone else is doing and everyone else is saying on a particular subject. We don’t take time to reflect, to become mindful of our own thoughts, feelings and convictions. We simply react and “like” things. We grow numb to ourselves—perhaps even numb to the promptings of God. Paralyzed in doing anything else other than hold our phones and go into a catatonic trance—we withdraw to live in a wifi world- a world that is void of human touch; eye contact and presence. We grow impatient in conversation privately insisting and demanding that someone we’re trying to talk to get to the point so we can move on to something else. We do not linger with deeper implications of thoughts and are void of the ability to reflect—that one important aspect in humanity that distinguishes us from my dog and the birds that feed at my feeder. To reflect is what makes us more god-like than perhaps any other quality or characteristic in life.3. Many forms of social media enable us live on the surface rather than moving deeper in our hearts. Social media has a way of enabling us to live at the edge of subjects by reading quotes or hearing a few sentences about a subject. We don’t have the time, we think and we don’t take the time, to reflect more about something. We don’t look at both sides of the argument because our hurriedness causes us to skim and not to process.4. Addiction to social media is as real as an addiction to porn or alcohol. It is as dangerous as a meth addiction. By taking regular times of fasting from social media, we can break and curb what we feel is our “need” of it. Turning your phone off during meal times; turning all forms of beeping, buzzing and vibrating off for two hours a day or going dark or off by 8pm at night creates the needed space for conversation and reflection. Many forms of social media are actually pain remedies. We do not want to be alone or feel alone so we “engage” with an illusionary world that enables us to escape from a world we are navigating. Try fasting from all technology for your Sabbath—a true day of ceasing, which is the literal meaning of to Sabbath—is to cease.5. Social media helps devalues human relationships. Sure, it’s great to get the birthday greetings and to quickly read the news of something you really do need and want to know. But, when we lean heavily into social media by picking up our iphone every 72 seconds to see if something new is posted—while we are having lunch, coffee or a meeting with another human being, we are saying: “My social media life is MORE important than you are.” It’s rude, insensitive and uncaring to use social media in a meeting, during a conversation or sharing a meal. I’ve gotten to the point of asking the person I’m meeting with if they would mind to turn off their phone so we can be focused, present and truly "with" each other in our time together. Social media fosters a culture of living in a true attention deficit world. Can you create a “No Wire Room” in your home or workspace where phones are not allowed?Here’s what helped me to unplug, go dark and get unwired. I asked one of my teammates to read all my emails and to decide what I really needed to know during my sabbatical. Yes, I did this. Do this for your vacation so you can really be “off” and not always checking. The checking is what gets us into trouble. What you think will be a 5 minute email results in getting pulled into so many issues, stories and crises. I put an “auto-responder” on my email telling anyone who needed me that I was off and my teammate would decide how to respond. I told my team that I was not to be called, emailed or texted by them during sabbatical; that if I was needed in case of death or the retreat center had burned down, that only one person was to get me the news. This helped to establish a boundary for them and a boundary for me. It gave me permission to go off the grid and in my going off the grid, I was able to find myself and come back with a greater sense of life inside me than I really knew was possible. We decided to not interact with our staff, Board, donors or anyone related to our work to really help me have the much needed space. It was hard. All have been gracious and kind and this one thing---protective of us during this time. They surely knew how much we needed it. Their silence was, in the end, love to us.Did I look at Facebook some? Sure. Going cold turkey was hard and it is in any form of withdrawal. It was hard for me to give up double stuff Oreos but when I chose to give up those edible demons, something better happened. My desires changed. I wanted to go off of social media; not just that I needed to go off social media and that is precisely the place where transformation happens—not in obeying the rules but by changing what you really want. When our grandson died, I wanted the world to know. When I read something that felt life altering, I did not want to withhold it. So I broke my own rules and posted a few things. But I did not look for responses of how many people liked it. (Well, I tried not to look.)

Our Sabbatical Journey: Insights on the Road Back to Life

Friends, I"m excited to share that both Gwen and I will be blogging soon about our Sabbatical Journey. As many of you know, we've unplugged, gone under the radar and not worked at Potter's Inn for five months. Fifteen years of pioneering Potter's Inn; giving and giving; caring for the souls of so very many leaders across the world left us tired, worn out and weary. Let me just spill the beans... our sabbatical has exceeded our hopes and expectations in every way. Despite witnessing our grandson dying and consumed with grief in our sabbatical time; despite the marriage of our third son, Cameron--and the addition of Lindsey whom we love already; despite knowing the fragility of raising our support and the thinness of finances at Potter's Inn--we felt called and compelled to take the time we've written about; taught about; coached so many folks across the world to do what we had NEVER done for ourselves----we took a Sabbatical.Both Gwen and I will be sharing our insights, lessons, take-a-ways and on-going questions and nagging fears about re-entry. I'm excited because Gwen has finally said "Yes" to documenting her own journey and pulling back the curtain--so to speak so you can witness her own journey and in her own words. I'll be sharing my road back to health in losing 60 pounds and watching my blood pressure drop significantly. I'll be sharing what I did and how I did it. It's been the biggest paradigm shift I've ever made thus far in my life. With the help of my medical doctor, now turned coach, friend and colleague in our teaching at Potter's Inn, we will both be blogging about the maze of un-doing habits, thinking and addictions and having our minds transformed about how we are now looking at food. I'm afraid for decades, I lived to eat---and now I am eating to live!Living in a world where we live 24/7 being "on", wired to the max and always available, we will both share why we stopped doing "social media" and insights we gained from our technology fast. The blog will be rich with insights we WANT to share and it is our hope that our own journey might benefit you in some, life giving way.Spiritually, renewal has come. A stream has come to the desert and we are rejoicing. We'll be sharing the significant books we've read that have nursed us to life and sustained us with courage for the next leg of our journey.In late May, Gwen and I will be doing our own "Re-entry Retreat" with a wise sage who will guide us to re-enter our life and work with all we've learned in these good yet hard months.You'll need to subscribe to the blog as it will be a DAILY update from Monday-Friday and will be replacing the Food for the Soul Daily Devotion for the month of June and perhaps a bit beyond. We'll see how it goes; how you're enjoying it and what your feedback is for us. So please do leave us comments.If you are subscribed and are already receiving FOOD For The Soul--the daily devotional I send out of my writings, no need to worry. You'll receive a link each Monday-Friday which will direct you to the blog.Take a moment and ask some friends to join you on our Sabbatical Journey and consider our journey as a place to have your discussions about your longings, desires and yearnings in your heart for your own life.This new way of sharing through this blog will begin mid-May. Be on the look for it and share it on your own streams of Social Media! We'd be so grateful.Every blessing,Steve and Gwen