Bono and faith

I came across an article recently about U2's Bono and his faith. Real interesting. The following exchange between Bono and took place just days after the Madrid train bombings in March 2004, an act of terrorism that left 191 dead and more than 1,800 wounded. The two men were discussing how terrorism is often carried out in the name of religion when Bono turned the conversation to Christianity, expressing his preference for God's grace over "karma," offering an articulate apologetic for the deity of Christ, and giving a clear presentation of the gospel message.

Bono: "My understanding of the Scriptures has been made simple by the person of Christ. Christ teaches that God is love. What does that mean? What it means for me: a study of the life of Christ. Love here describes itself as a child born in straw poverty, the most vulnerable situation of all, without honor. I don't let my religious world get too complicated. I just kind of go: Well, I think I know what God is. God is love, and as much as I respond [sighs] in allowing myself to be transformed by that love and acting in that love, that's my religion. Where things get complicated for me, is when I try to live this love. Now that's not so easy."

More to come....

Angry person cut me off!!

Today, somebody very angry cut me off near Chik-fil-A, and I didn't do anything! I could see the look on his face- "you slow driver!!" is what his faced shouted.

It seems like every few days now we’re hearing about a new shooting or beating or killing. Whether it’s Peducah, Kentucky, Columbine, Colorado, Camden or even a few weeks ago, Washington Twp, NJ. What these stories are missing though is that violence most often occurs between people who know each other. It’s not random acts of violence against strangers that happens most regularly but it’s actually between people who don’t know how to manage their anger between each other.

The statistics are mind boggling. Nearly sixty percent of all the murders in America are between people who know each other and don’t know how to manage their anger. Last year four million women were beaten by their husbands who would supposedly profess to love these women more than anybody else. Last year more than ten million children were abused by parents who didn’t know how to control their anger.

No wonder Psychology Today called this generation “The age of rage.” The problem is that almost no one is teaching real anger healing, only Anger Management. I'll talk more about that later on this week.....

LO$T at Honda

I'm sitting here in the lobby of Penske Honda, waiting for the power steering pump of our minivan to be repaired. It's making this "screeching cat" noise that's not good! Thankfully, it's warranteed.

As we began our LO$T series last week, I thought "how many times do we have to outlay 'fast cash' for things, and in doing so causes stress? " Even though this car issue is covered under a warranty, I would not want to have to pay for this - it would be hundreds of $$$.

I just got off the phone from a friend in town who just lost his job. He's feeling pretty low, discouraged, and financially uncertain. I prayed for him. Financial pressure is something we all face, but it's never welcomed. I'm re-committing to be a good steward financially personally thru this series and find it a great reminder of how we are stewards of the life God gave us.

My prayer for you is that you'll find your way out if your LO$T in the world of personal finance!

Act in Faith

I've been sharing some thoughts about how this new year can be the best one yet for you. Here's another nugget: Act in faith.

You have to launch out into new territory in 2008. The Bible says that the key to changing anything is faith. If you want to change your circumstance, it takes faith. If you want to change your personality, it takes faith. If you want to change anything in your life, you have to have some faith.

Jesus says this in Matthew 9. "According to your faith it will be done to you." That is a very simple statement but it's very powerful. “According to your faith it will be done to you.” That means we tend to get out of life what we expect.

What are you expecting in 2008? "I think it's going to be another tough year, depressing, rigorous. It's going to be a real bummer." Guess what your year is going to be? A real bummer!

What do you expect is going to be in your own life? "The same old, same old. Nothing’s going to change in my life." Guess what? Nothing's going to change in your life in 2008.

We tend to get out of life what we expect because "According to your faith it will be done to you." The person who says, "I can!" and the person who says, "I can't!" are both right. We get out of life what we expect because "According to your faith it will be done to you."

So you need to start expecting more. Start expecting more of yourself, start expecting more from God, start expecting more out of life. That's the principle of faith.

In order to start acting in faith that means you've got to stop having a pity party. You've got to stop feeling sorry for yourself. “Poor me! I'm such a victim. Life is unfair.” Of course life is unfair! Whoever said it was fair? God never said that. This is a world filled with sin and because of that, life is unfair. But you have to go on with life anyway. You stop having a pity party and stop rehearsing the past, regretting the past, and you get on with the present and the future. The more you regret 2007, the more you waste of 2008. The more time you spend thinking, "I wish that hadn't happened! I wish I could change that. If only I could go back, reverse the clock and redo history," and you're rehearsing and regretting, you'll not only make yourself miserable right now, you're setting yourself up for more of the same. The way you set yourself up for more failure is by focusing on past failures. Whatever you focus on you tend to reproduce in your life. "According to your faith it will be done unto you."

What you need to do is learn from those failures. Let me give you the real secret of success. Every successful entrepreneur knows this. Real success is built on failure. Failure is the way you become a success. You figure out what doesn't work. When Edison figured out on the 200th or so time, what would make a light bulb stay lit, he did that because he knew 199 ways that didn't work. You never call it a failure in your life. Call it an education. You learn from it.

Some of you are highly educated people. You know lots of things that don't work in your marriage. You know lots of things that don't work in your personal life. You know lots of ways that don't work at making a living. You know lots of ways that don't work in raising kids. That's ok. Build on that. You never or rarely get it right the first time.

Failed?? Probably Not this bad......

Real Success comes from your ability to stand up after life's failures.

There was a guy, a general, who lost two-thirds of all the battles he fought in the American Revolution. George Washington. He won the war.

There was another guy who graduated 42nd out of a class of 43. Then he went out and conquered Europe. Napoleon.

There's a guy who lost almost every election he ran for – 10 or 12 – until finally he was elected President. Abraham Lincoln. He lost more than he won.

Edison tried over 200 different elements before he figured out what was the right element to use in the light bulb. Over 200 failures before he had a success.

In 21 years, Babe Ruth hit 714 home runs but he struck out 1330 times. He struck out nearly twice as often as he hit a home run. He once said, "Never let the fear of striking out keep you from taking a swing.
A famous novelist in England, John Creasy, got 753 rejection slips from publishers before he published his first book. He went on to publish 564 books. Can you imagine the persistence of the man putting up with over 700 rejections before his first book got published and then went on in his lifetime to publish 500 more?

R.P. Macy failed seven times as an entrepreneur in retailing and then he started Macy's department store.

It’s always too soon to quit. The Bible says we need to stop making excuses, admit when it's our fault and get on with life. I've discovered that people who are very good at making excuses are rarely good at anything else. They spend all their energy thinking up reasons why they can’t do what they're supposed to do.

Two other reasons why we fail

The First cause of failure was failing to plan. Here are two more:

2. Because we don't listen to others. We don't listen to good advise when it's offered. The Bible says in Proverbs 15 "Plans fail without good advise." You need to get all the advice you can. Get good advise.

Why don't we listen to the advice of other people? Because we think we don't need it. It's called pride. Ego. Ego stands for "Edging God Out." When you think you know more than God and you push Him out of your life, you're on an ego trip and that's a trip that leads to a dead end. The Bible says, "Pride always leads to destruction." An arrogant attitude leads to a fall. When I think I know it all and I can figure it all out myself, I'm setting myself up for failure, if I don't listen to the advise of others, if I don't listen to the advise of my wife/boss/husband/other people around me, if I think I'll just do it my way. You're never going to get anywhere if you think you've already arrived. The guy who gets too big for his britches, will eventually be exposed in the end. That's the problem with pride.

We fail to plan and we fail to listen to other people and we fail as a result.

3) We give up too soon. These are the three greatest causes for failure. We give up too soon. Proverbs 24:10 "If you give up when troubles come, it just shows that you are weak." Failure is the path of least persistence. The problem is that often during trying times we stop trying. We give up.

If at first you don't succeed, welcome to the human race. If at first you don't succeed, you're normal. Very few people make it on the first try. Oftentimes, we give up just when success is around the corner. It's always too soon to quit. You're never a failure until you give up. We often just give up too soon.

Why we fail: Excuse #1

The number one reason we fail in life is we don't plan ahead. We make decisions and don't look at the consequences of them. The Bible says (Proverbs 20:7) "A sensible man watches for problems and prepares to meet them but the fool never looks ahead and suffers the consequences."

Was it raining when Noah started building the ark? No. He had to plan ahead. In fact the rain didn't come for 120 years. But that's how long it took him to get the thing built.

Jesus often talked about the importance of planning. A number of stories about Jesus talk about it. He said, there was a guy who goes out and starts to build a tower but he can't finish it because he doesn't have enough money because he forgot to plan. He tells the story about the king who went out to battle but he lost because he didn't count his soldiers; he didn't plan ahead.

It's the old cliche "If you fail to plan, you're planning to fail."

Why we fail (and how to avoid failure in 2008)

Stop making excuses.

If I want to start over, start fresh, I have to stop making excuses for my failures. I've got to stop blaming other people; I've got to stop using rationalizations. I've got to stop seeing myself as the victim of my circumstances.

Let me be clear on this: Other people can hurt you, without a doubt. Other people can harm you, without a doubt. Other people can scar you, without a doubt. But nobody can ruin your life except you. Nobody can ruin your life without your permission. You have a choice and that is you can choose how you're going to respond to those hurts. You don't know what's going to happen in ‘08. You have no idea. But you can choose how you choose to respond. The Bible says that the starting point is to just be honest and accept responsibility for my part in the problem.

Proverbs 28:13 “A man who refuses to admit his mistakes can never be successful. But if he confess and forsakes them he gets another chance.” He gets a fresh start. He says the starting point to starting over is to be honest and face up to the problems, that most of the problems in my life, most of the failures, are my fault.

That’s pretty hard for us because we like to pass the buck. We live in a society, a culture, that loves to shift the blame. We blame the environment, the economy, the government, our parents, the stars, biorhythms – now we blame El Nino. It's always somebody else's fault. Everything is attributed to something else. But God says, Most of your failures you caused

Let me give you three of the most common reasons in the next few days.....

Start Fresh This Year

If you had 2007 to live over again, how many of you would probably do something differently? The reason we do that is because we fail. We make mistakes. Sometimes you give life your best shot and you still come up short. Sometimes you study for the test and you still fail. Sometimes you work really hard in your job and you still get laid off. And sometimes you work really hard on making a strong marriage and it just doesn't make any progress; it's going nowhere.

The fact is, you're going to fail quite often in life. It's not a matter of if you will fail -- you will fail many, many times, because nobody's perfect. We all make mistakes. You're going to have setbacks. You're going to have problems. You're going to make mistakes. You're going to have defeats, loses. You will fail.

As we begin this New Year – 2008 – I want us to look at How Do You Make A Fresh Start? What is God's way of making a fresh start? Regardless of what happened in '07, how do I get a fresh start?

The Bible says that God is very interested in your future. Isaiah 40:3 “The Lord says, `Forget about what has happened before. Do not think about the past. Instead, look at the new things I'm going to do.'" Circle "forget about". Forget about what's happened before. He says don't think about the past. It's over. The book's closed on it.

If you don't get anything else I say today, I want you to get this: God is far more interested in your future than He is in your past. Some of you think God is fixated on your past. All He wants to do is remind you of the things you've done wrong. You're wrong! God isn't interested in your past. He's interested in your future. That's where you're going to spend the rest of your life. He says, “Forget about your past. Forget about the former things. Don't think about it. Look at the new thing I'm going to do.”

Today I want us to look at "How Do You Make a Fresh Start in 2008?"

The best way we learn is always through a story. You're going to hear a very practical example of how to make a fresh start from a woman who did that when she thought everything had gone wrong in her life.

I want to give you a formula for starting over. START. I hope you'll remember this and pass it along to friends when they have failures. Regardless of what kind of failure you had in 2008. You may have had a financial failure, or maybe a relational failure, a failure in your marriage. You may have had a moral failure. You may have really blown it and you may have made some decisions you're so ashamed of you hope nobody ever finds out about. Regardless of the failure you've had in your life, here's how you start over.