Even better than intimidating suitors

You might want to worry less about terrorizing or retro-fitting prospective suitors and worry more about preparing your daughter to choose wisely. And that means building a wall. Instead of intimidating all your daughter’s potential suitors, raise a daughter who intimidates them just fine on her own. Because you know what’s intimidating? Strength and dignity. Deep faith. Self-assuredness. Wisdom. Kindness. Humility. Industriousness. Those are the bricks that build the wall that withstands the advances of Slouchy-Pants...

Gospel Coalition 

Stark: gradual change (or the lack thereof)

Today, the fossile record is enormous compared to what it was in Darwin's day, but the facts are unchanged.  The links are still missing; species appear suddenly and remain relatively unchanged.   As Steven Stanley reported, "The known fossil record...offers no evidence that the gradualistic model can be valid."  Indeed, the evidence has grown even more contrary since Darwin's day.  As the former curator of historical geology at the American Museum of Natural History  noted, "Many of the discontinuities [in the fossil record] tend to be more emphasised with increased collecting.  

For the Glory of God, p180

Keep the big win in mind

Keep the end in mind. Don’t just think of small goals. Think of the big win. What will persisting to the end do for you? If the reward is big enough, we can stay on task when the difficulties become discouraging. This trick has seen me through seemingly impossible circumstances more times than I can count. 

Michael Hyatt

Evans: 1% more

Sir David Brailsford, the architect of British cycling success in the 2012 Olympics, talks about 'marginal, incremental gains'.  He points to the importance of working on improving a whole host of small things by a mere 1% margin.  So, for example, better sleep results from each cyclist using the same pillow wherever the team happens to be staying overnight.  Add all these marginal gains up and the upshot was that UK cycling virtually swept the board of medals.

So where are your 1% improvements going to be?  Our church was challenged to do 1%  more praying on a Saturday evening, take 15 minutes more out of the day to commit Sunday to God, and make 1% more smiles - it's amazing what a smiling face does to someone's sense of being welcomed!

Ready Steady Grow, p53

Evans: quality leaders

Put godly, capable leaders into almost any situation and, given God's good grace, they will take the work forward.  That's why almost any scheme can be made to work.  It's not so much the particular plan which is the silver bullet, but the quality of the people leading it.

Ready Steady Grow , p49

System 1, System 2 and the discomort in learning

If our goal is "teaching them to obey" all that Jesus commanded, then we may want to rethink our commitment to comfort on Sundays. Recent brain research has shown that when a person is comfortable, the more analytical functions of the brain (necessary for learning) remain disengaged. Psychologists refer to the brain as having a "system one" and a "system two." System one is the intuitive functioning that is active when relaxed, like when vegetating in front of a television or listening to a pleasantly clear sermon in a comfortable seat on Sunday morning.

System two is the analytical functioning of the brain that is required to rethink assumptions, challenge ideas, and construct new behaviors and beliefs. System two must be active to learn. Research shows that the brain shifts from system one to system two when forced to work; when challenged and uncomfortable.

That's why most people concentrate better in settings with some background noise. The challenge of focusing on my friend's voice amid the clatter in the coffee shop shifts my brain from system one to two. By having to work to listen I actually listen better than if we were to meet in the silence of my office. Of course there can also be too much background noise, making listening impossible, like at a NASCAR race or Chuck E. Cheese.

Think of it like riding a bike. Coasting downhill will never engage your muscles. A steep incline will make riding impossible. If your goal is stronger legs, you need some resistance, but not so much that you can't proceed....

...We can all agree that Jesus was a brilliant communicator, but when we study his methods, it is obvious that the comfort of his audience was not a significant consideration. In fact, Jesus taught in a manner that challenged (sometimes baffled) his listeners. He expected them to work in order to understand his teaching. He asked them questions, wrapped his teaching in opaque parables, and often taught in distracting settings.

Skye Jethani, Leadership

Stark: Copernicus and Enlightenment agenda

...it simply was not typical in this era to give much credit to predecessors.  Thus for example, Galileo falsely presented the telescope as his own invention, and Newton went to great lengths to erase traces of his debt to Descartes. But the more important reason Copernicus has been presented as the lone genius who revolutionised science is that it suited the ideological agenda of those who were (and remain) determined to impose notions of an "Enlightenment" and a "Renaissance" on Western history.

For the Glory of God, p140

Spurgeon on staying cheerful for work

Labor is light to a man of cheerful spirit!
You can work all day and almost all night, when the spirits are right. But once let the heart sink and your soul lack encouragement, and then you grow weary, and cry, “Would God it were evening, and the shadows were drawn out, that we might rest from our toil.”
Success waits upon cheerfulness.
The man who toils, rejoicing in his God, believing with all his heart, has success guaranteed.
He who sows in hope shall reap in joy.
He who trusts in the Lord and laughs at impossibilities, shall soon find that there are no impossibilities to laugh at, for to the man who is confident in Jehovah, all things are possible. It is thus of paramount importance that the spirits of the Christian should be constantly kept up.

SOURCE: C.H. Spurgeon, sermon delivered on October 18, 1863.

from Thriving Pastor

Quick Review: All Hell Let Loose

...by Max Hastings


Short review for a big book: a huge one-volume history of WWII.  In short: a global perspective of the most significant events, but with the everyday lives of military and civilian woven in.  Harrowing, to say the least; sometimes disturbing and distressing.  WWII isn't all Churchill and the tidy movement of troops.

Not a book to read at bedtime.  Which is a caution: explicit descriptions of death, violence, destruction, with the explicit language also.  But you emerge knowing why we must remember, and why we must prevent anything like it again.

Welch: doing hope (something of a manifesto) -the last quote!

We must do hope...We have bought the lie that tragedy is the last word...

How will I practice hope?  I plan to take a sabbatical from worry and pursue an obstinate optimism.  I anticipate falling on my face, but much less often than before. 

- I have some reasons to worry in the near future.  I plan to go completely against type and speak with hope to my wife when the threat comes closer.

- I know I have to practice, so I am going to meditate on passages like Psalm 27 and Psalm 46.

- I will speak about hope to my friend who has cancer.

- I will pray that I have power to turn quickly to Christ when I am afraid.

-I will listen to worry and go after it at its roots.

How will you protest? How will you do hope?

Running Scared, p308 &310.

Welch: facing fears

Fears tend to lose their grip when people face them. As Emmi Bonhoeffer states, “From the very moment one feels called to act is born the strength to bear whatever horror one will feel or see.  In some inexplicable way, terror loses its overwhelming power when it becomes a task that must be faced.”  Conversely when we experience past difficulties as uncontrollable and unpredictable, we are more likely to carry and accumulate fears and worries.  

Running Scared, p298

Two key words for prayer

Our Father...

I'm convinced that most of our problems with prayer originate from a failure to comprehend these two words.

Our Father,  Richard Coekin, p30

Welch: do my concerns drive God crazy?

We have absolutely no evidence that God ever throws up his hands and says “You are driving me crazy! What more can I say?” If he says “Do not be afraid” hundreds of times, there is no reason to think that he will be silent during your struggles.  How strange it would be for God to say, “Okay, you persuaded me. You aren’t my child.”  How backwards!  He is the One who persuades us. 

Running Scared, p225

Welch: defeating fear of opinion 2

My world must be very small for me to be preoccupied with the opinions of others.  What a relief to be offered something bigger, something more important than the anxieties that keep me awake at night. 

Running Scared, p199

Welch: defeating fear of opinion 1

The only appropriate and healthy response is to treat others the way God has treated us.  The result?  People’s (perceived) opinions don’t have the same power to crush us any more.  Instead, we are less concerned about how we are treated and more concerned with how we treat others.  Rejection may still hurt, but it won’t control us. 

Running Scared, p188-9