Hopeful Anticipation

I don't know that many of us look ahead to our future and are filled with anxious anticipation. Instead of seeing our potential in God's plan we paint a gray, dreary picture of mundane activity and habitual drudgery. We can become easily consumed with the dim prospect of facing the same struggles we are facing today, but with a different date on the calendar and more gray hair. 

In 1 Corinthians 2:9, Paul writes that no eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has conceived the things that God has prepared for those that love Him. This is a verse of hope for our future! It's a tantalizing promise of excitement that God offers for our coming days. It means that He is excited about our future like a father that can't wait to give his children a great gift they've been anticipating. It should change our perspective as we realize what 

God is waiting to share with us-it should give us hope for something more.

What would it take for us to embrace a hopeful future that we look forward to with great anticipation of God's delivery?

High End

I want to be a high capacity leader. Even as I aspire to be this kind of leader I understand that it is a process that cannot be rushed. It involves moving from having potential to making things a reality in my personal life and calling. There are several areas that fall under this concept of "high capacity" but there are a few key areas that came to mind as I meditated on this:

• Ability-actively honing strengths and limiting weaknesses
• Character-consistently striving to be above reproach
• Execution-able to get the right things done in the right time frame
• Humility-honoring others and not self-promoting
• Speech-encouraging other people and building people up even through constructive criticism

I will readily admit that I fall short of these ideals. Diligent focus on these qualities with an eye on personal development will bring me closer to where I want to be.

To Sum Up

We are the sum total of our life experiences. Each positive or painful memory, small thought or grand idea, encouraging or unkind word, minuscule habit or overpowering addiction have all formed who we are today and the person we will become tomorrow. 

I don't know that many people recognize the impact of these small decisions and our reactions. I believe that we tend to move forward without giving intentional thought to the pieces that are building our future. To find maturity and the greatest growth we've got to take a step back from the small picture so that we can begin to understand how our whole life fits together. If we neglect this step we'll find ourselves on an unintended road with confusing surroundings and no idea how we can change our circumstances.

Finding Joy

You only have to read through newspaper headlines or watch five minutes of a news broadcast to find unfortunate news. Stories of human triumph and genuine compassion are typically outweighed by the negative tale. Sadly, this often shifts our personal perspective as well. We begin to only see misery in everything and quickly criticize every experience as soon as we walk away from it (and sometimes in the middle of the moment.) We have become so jaded with the condition of our world that we have become effusive with complaints instead of compliments.

We can moan about the minutia of our lives or we can choose to find joy and strength in unlikely places. It's a simple matter of shifting what we are searching for. The truth is that we will find exactly what we look for no matter where we look for it. Imagine the difference in our demeanor, our spiritual health, our personal interactions, and our community involvement if we began to look for joyful moments instead of sorrow.

"The reward of choosing joy is joy itself."  Henri Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal Son

The People

Ultimately the church is about God. It is His creation and His desired agent for sharing the message of hope

to a broken world. For the church to be effective however, we can't forget that it is about investing in people. Fulfilling our purpose is tied up in getting people to see who God is & how their lives can be transformed. If we understand this truth then we are forced to carefully evaluate everything that we do through the lens of honoring God and helping people. That may sound extremely obvious, but I have watched churches forget this principle even though it seems absolutely fundamental to their existence. 

Thinking about this made me remember the old children's game we used to play with our hands: Here is the church, here is the steeple, open the doors, there's all the people! 

If you're going to be a church you can't forget to invest in people.

Balanced

We can strive to keep parts of our life separate, but we'll quickly find that we aren't successful. Attempting to create partitions between our home, work, spiritual, and physical health will eventually bring frustration and a sense of being incomplete. In the same way that one flat tire negates the effectiveness of three good tires, our lives must be kept in balance. When we neglect an area of our life for too long, we will feel the effects of of this inequity and suffer the consequences as we careen off our intended life path. Taking time to focus in each area is the only way we can find true health and life satisfaction.

Big & Nimble

I was listening to ESPN radio in the car today (as I always do) and heard one of the hosts use a phrase that stuck with me. He said, "If you're going to be that big, you've got be nimble." He was referring to big offensive and defensive lineman that have to be quick on their feet or their size will be a detriment. His point was that you can't just be a behemoth--you've got to learn to move. You'll either trip over your feet or figure out how to maneuver as you change.

It's not a far stretch to see that this doesn't only apply to successful athletes. Even as we grow on a personal level, see our family increase, or watch our church get bigger, the principle is the same. We can't expect to do things exactly the same way and still see the same success. We've got to learn to adapt to our new found growth and be ready to adjust or we'll get left in the dust. You can't just grow--you've got to learn to be flexible to thrive.