Category: Vision

“Gilded with Goodbyes…”

“Every moment of every day is ‘gilded with goodbyes,’ per Frederick Buechner. It may sound somber to say that you’re experiencing everything for the last time, but this perspective makes every moment a holy moment…if you want to ‘win the day,’ you’ve got to live like it’s the first day and the last day of your life.” Mark Batterson, Win the Day, pg. 150.

Panzy Pacifists?

“We are so utterly ordinary, so commonplace, while we profess to know a power the twentieth century does not reckon with. But we are ‘harmless,’ and, therefore, unharmed. We are spiritual pacifists, non-militants, conscientious objectors in this battle-to-the-death with principalities and powers in high places…we are ‘sideliners’—coaching and criticizing the real wrestlers, while content to sit by and leave the enemies of God unchallenged. The world cannot hate us; we are too much like its own. Oh, that God would make us dangerous!” Missionary & Martyr, Jim Elliott.

No Sales on True Success

Remember Emil Zatopek, the greatest runner of all time? While turning his life-story into a movie script, I analyzed his running ‘rituals’ (AKA habits). Emil Zapotek was ordinary in ‘every’ way. He measured five foot seven on tiptoes and weighed 145 pounds, soaking wet! He possessed little natural talent, and his running style was hopelessly unorthodox. Sportswriters said he ran like a man “who had been stabbed in the heart,” “a man who had scorpions in his shoes,” “a man who was wrestling an octopus on a conveyor belt”! That didn’t keep “the Czech Locomotive” from doing what (I believe) will never be done again.

Emil Zatopek won triple golds in the 1952 Helsinki Olympics, setting Olympic records in the 5,000 meter, 10,000 meter and (26.2 mile) marathon. From 1949 to 1951, he won 69 consecutive races. That may be more impressive than UCLA’s 88 game winning streak (as it was single-handed…or is that -footed?)! And he would end his career (of 18 years of competition) 18 world records (do the math and that’s an average of one per year)!

How did Emil do what he did? His 1951 military file highlighted one defining characteristic: ‘doggedness’. Many runners were faster than Emil-but no one trained longer or harder or smarter. He never stopped setting stretch goals, always trying to beat his past, personal best. He took pride in his accomplishments but he also made an admission: “Whoever surpasses my training will also break my records.

While on sentry duty, Emil would run in place in combat boots for hours. embodied kaizen. During training runs, he would wear a gas mask to deprive himself of oxygen. He often carried his wife, Dana, on his back or pulled her through the snow on a sled. He may not have invented interval training-but he certainly re-invented it! And Emil ran so hard for so long that he passed out on the track more than once! “You cannot jump to the second floor from the pavement,” he said. “Step by step, though, a man will come to the fifth floor.

At this point, you might be wondering why so few people have heard of Emil Zatopek. In November 1969, he was sent to the uranium mines for courageously resisting Soviet occupation (in Czechosloavkia)  “I have already got to know the workld from on high,” he said. “Now I am getting to know it from down below.” Emil would spend the next 5 years doing forced (slave) labor.

The Communist regime did all they could to erase Emil Zatopek’s name from history. His name was removed from the stadium in his hometown of Kopfivnice. His athletic accomplishments were deleted from textbooks. They tried to bury him 150 meters below ground in a uranium mine but Emil’s legacy outlasted the Soviet Union itself! His athletic achievements merit the silver screen (indeed). Even more, his uncompromising character deserves to be celebrated (by everyone).

We love success stories like his. The sacrifices that made them possible—not so much! We want success without sacrifice, but it doesn’t work that way. At the heart of every success story is someone who was willing to make sacrifices that no one else was willing to make. Success will not be shortchanged, and it never goes on sale.

One of the hardest pills to swallow in the Gospels is this one: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow Me.” The best decision you can make for yourself is to make a decision against yourself. It’s discipling yourself to do the right things day-in and day-out, week-in and week-out, year-in and year-out. If you pay the price, the payoff will be far greater than the sacrifices you made. Mark Batterson, Win the Day, ppg 123-125.

Holy Calling, Sacred Work

“I take off my shoes when I write because I consider writing to be holy ground—a sacred trinity of writer and reader and God. You are giving me five hours of your time, give or take. With God’s help, I’m going to give the best book I’ve got. Taking off my shoes is a ritual reminder that writing is a divine calling. I don’t just type on a keyboard, I worship God with the twenty-six letterers of the English alphabet.” Win The Day, by Mark Batterson, pg. 115 (italicized and bold type added by me, ‘dkb’).

The Power of a God-word…

“Prophets use words to remake the world. The world—heaven and earth, men and women, animals and birds—was made in the first place by God’s Word. Prophets, arriving on the scene and finding that world in ruins, finding a world of moral rubble and spiritual disorder, take up the work of words, again to rebuild what human disobedience and mistrust demolished. These prophets learn their speech from God. Their words are God-grounded, God-energized, God-passionate. As their words enter the language of our communities, men and women find themselves in the presence of God, who enters the mess of human sin to rebuke and renew.

“Left to ourselves, we turn God into an object, something we can deal with, some thing we can use to our benefit, whether that thing is a feeling or an idea or an image. Prophets scorn all such stuff (really, it’s pursuing false comforts, ‘wanting-it-all’ [like Lucifer], AKA idolatry). They train us (instead) to respond to God’s presence and voice (through repentance and regeneration).

“Micah, the final member of that powerful quartet of writing prophets who burst on the world scene in the eighth century B.C. (Isaiah, Hosea, and Amos were the others), like virtually all his fellow prophets—those charged with keeping people alive to God and alert to listening to the voice of God—was a master of metaphor. This means that he used words not simply to define or identify what can be seen, touched, smelled, heard, or tasted, but to plunge us into a world of presence. To experience presence is to enter that far larger world of reality that our sensory experiences point to but cannot describe (nor really discover)—the realities of love and compassion, justice and faithfulness, sin and evil…and God. Mostly God. The realities that are Word-evoked are where most of the world’s (true and lasting) action takes place. There are no “mere words” (there!).” Commentary re. the Book of Micah in the Message Bible, pg. 1269, by Eugene Peterson (words in parenthesis added by me).

President’s Proclamation

Someone has said, “if I were the President of the United States, I would prayerfully and powerfully proclaim the following”…

“Good morning, Fellow Patriots, and may God bless America. We indeed need His blessing, for as a nation and world, for we are in dire straits. The moral bankruptcy and economic inflation are beyond alarming and historic. We must unite NOW to seek God’s face to heal our hearts and land. The institution of marriage and family are under attack and assault like never before. Simpler and lifelong friendships are failing at a precipitously dangerous rate as well, as most people spend more time with their phones than anyone or anything else! We need face-to-face time together more than shallow, fleeting and fickle digital ‘connections.’ In fact, a Facebook friend is very often not even a scant resemblance of real and true friendship: we know this, yet we continue to fool ourselves and take this convenient, purported ‘easier’ path. But as ‘all roads lead NOT to Rome,’ so social media really leads nowhere, too…except to emptiness from longing for true and lasting, real-life connections, not merely virtual ones. Posing has replaced possession, and ‘paid-for’ positioning and placement has been exchanged for earned respect, trust and united, relational strength and power. Evil and Hell no longer tremble at our ethics and resolve, for we are almost entirely self-absorbed and even hedonistic. As men, we hide from our wives and loved ones, run from our responsibilities and children and refuse to face ourselves in the mirror, especially the mirror of God’s Living, Revealing and, yes, oftentimes, CONVICTING Word. We have forsaken conviction and healthy guilt for excuses and condemnation. Our heart of hearts knows it…and our respective worlds feel its hideous fallout. May Jesus have mercy on us as He did the thief on the cross, granting us not ‘only’ repentance to paradise-life hereafter but also regeneration to some eternal-life-living, here and now, by His Holy, Sustaining Power. This Power of Truth-in-love will heal us, help us reach our potential and foster us into fulfilling our destinies. But we also desperately need each other…and we need to CHANGE OUR OWN WRONG WAYS NOW! OUR CHILDREN…AND OUR FUTURE EXISTENCE AS A NATION…ARE HANGING IN THE BALANCE. So I implore you ‘TODAY, WHILE IT IS STILL CALLED TODAY,’ to put down your axes (cell phones), sheath your swords (of selfishness) and, instead, pick up your rakes (of honest introspection), grab your dustpans (of heartfelt remorse) and let’s ‘work TOGETHER, while it is barely yet day, for the night is coming quickly, when no man can work’. Let us take advantage of our God-given freedoms that both Messiah and men have fought, bled, died and paid for. Let us seize our slight and fleeting moment of End-time opportunity and shine with character in Living Color to our generation, which is this world’s Last Generation. Let us love in action like never before, dance in sorrow, sing in the fierce spiritual and natural battles that rage all around us and take up the Good Fight with trumpet and trowel, like Nehemiah’s clarion call of old. If we don’t, a New Day will come very soon, but it will NOT be to our liking, much less for our good, nor for our children’s (protection and preservation and) divine purpose but will be a brutal and scathing totalitarian, international regime of ‘complete’ control and unprecedented evil. We all already know far too well the infectious contagion of plandemics, like Covid, and the unnecessary, socialistic, sinister shutdowns of small businesses but, even scarier and more dangerous, the epidemic of drugs, especially fentanyl and its unknown lacing, unprecedented addictions and unexpected deaths. Promiscuity and perversion are also rampant and destroying our youth (from the inside, out and from the outside, in!), our homes and the very fabric and foundation of our formerly God-fearing, Judeo-Christian Culture. Demonic transgenderism is devouring minds, permanently ravaging bodies and souls, and transforming lives into horrific black holes of confusion, deception, despair and even premature death. The Dark Side is enraged, enlarged, equipped, effective and is fiercely trying to encompass every facet of our brief and frail lives, as it attempts to control, oppress and even possess not ‘only’ our pocketbooks but also our prized possession of family and friends…and, thereby, wipe-out our future generations together. This tragic travesty must be stopped and defeated at all costs! This can only happen when we unite in our commonalities as “One Nation UNDER God” and ‘Seize the Day,’ Together as One, first in prayer, then in godly pursuit of “justice for ALL,” including our innocent unborn babies. May God give you and ‘yours’ and me and ‘mine’ direction, courage, strength and power in whatever days we have left on this planet to fight HIS Battle and, that, with Fatherly Focus on Him and His Fierce and Freeing Love, come arrow or missile from friend or foe! Let’s pray together now: “LORD God Jesus, empower us to do and live right in your true and liberating Light. Make us ‘good and faithful’ minister-managers of what…and who…You’ve entrusted to our care…including our prayers. And may we all be saved and healed and restored to You, Your Great Purpose…and one another, not to mention the lost sheeple. Surely You come quickly to us and this ol’, dying world and we want to be ready for that Great Day of Your Return so we can be found worthy to Escape with You in Your Victory and Usher in YOUR RULE OF PEACE AND KINDNESS FOR A THOUSAND YEARS…AND BEYOND. In Your Wonderful, Restoring Only-saving Name, Yeshua Hamashiach, AMEN!”