I am not a naturally positive person.  I am not sure than anyone is, but there are some people who predominantly choose to see the good.  They rest in the hope and promises they find in the pages of the book of life.  They root out the cancerous people and the toxic inputs into their life that rob them of hope and joy.  They choose to believe that despite everything in the culture that would encourage otherwise, that there is a King overseeing his Kingdom and the end of our story lands on him setting everything right again.

I listened to a young man on a podcast recently describing his investigation of a monastery on-line.  He was convicted as he read about their approach to prayer.

“We don’t find ways to fit prayer into our regular life.  We actually live a life of prayer and we find ways to fit our regular life into that.”

Before we dismiss that as opportunity that only monastics can enjoy, look at the life of Jesus and the rhythms of his life.  Clearly, Kingdom living looks a lot more like what the monks were describing than the life most of us live.

Core values should differentiate you from all other companies in your field.  It should be the particular set of things you value that shapes your decision making, determines resource allocation, decides who you hire, reward, and fire.  It is the set of things that differentiates you in the marketplace and helps protect and preserve what is unique about your company.  It is also the way you make God known.

The human brain is constantly seeking simplicity.  The more information you try to communicate in a product offering or message, the more confusing it is to the listener.  If our brains have to think too hard to sort through the multitude of ideas or what we’re seeing isn’t very easy to understand, we essentially move on to the next thing.

Think of the potential purchasers of your products and services sitting there with a remote control in their hand.  They are having to sift through an ocean of websites, commercials, print ads, or even personal recommendations or online reviews.  The remote control of our brain is clicking through channels and eventually lands on the thing that is most simple or easily understood.

When you culture is healthy and real, it is not just merely aspirational words on a wall.  If it is healthy and real, it incubates like a greenhouse helping everything and everyone grow more fully and abundantly.  It is embodied by the servant leadership at the top, but felt and rewarded in every employee.  There is evidence of it at every turn and it is played out in both the largest and smallest of tasks.

When you look at our government, many churches, and maybe even your family of origin, it is easy to lose heart.  I have spent a lot more time discouraged than invigorated for the heart.  But there is a sense of urgency rising in me.

I have grown a little, I am very clear on my unique identity, and I am flanked by other awakened leaders increasing my resolve…those choosing the culture of the Kingdom.  I want to play the part I was intended for and awaken as many hearts as possible to the necessary invasion of “companies and cultures and churches and cities and families.”

Supermarkets are giving way to Trader Joe’s.  Starbucks is losing market share to local coffee houses.  Craft brews are pecking away at the big brands.  Mega churches are being replaced by house churches or much smaller varieties.  People want to be known, connected, and feel they are part of something substantial.

“Every organization must contribute in some way to a better
world for some group of people, because if it doesn’t, it will, 
and should, go out of business.”

Knowing what is unique, profound, or inspiring about your organization or idea is the “why” behind how you rally the uninspired and distracted.  It is the essential element in getting everyone to know, understand, and buy into the bigger purpose that their work could provide.

Knowing what is unmistakable about you (knowing why you exist) is the necessary step to defining the unmistakable about your business.  Knowing and living into what is unmistakable about your business is the necessary ingredient for sustainable success and the way you ultimately own the “real estate” that only you can.

It might not surprise you that some companies we talk to simply want a strategic plan.  They feel like that is the ultimate solution to all their problems.  We couldn’t disagree more.  That, in a vacuum, will not solve your problems.  In our extensive experience and research, if you don’t walk through the essential steps necessary to get to this kind of strategic plan, the plan won’t be…

• Owned

• Embraced

• Accomplished

As we prayed through how we are to offer proper stewardship over all these processes, exercises, and tools that lead organizations down a transformation journey, we were left with a very clear conclusion, we are supposed to make it available to everyone.

We defined 3 different paths that lead to the same destination:

• Coaching for Your Team - Hire us to work with you and your team directly.

• Get a Coach - Meet with me or another coach and gather around a table with other leaders.

• Do It Yourself - We’re building a free online database of all the tools, processes, and exercises we use to take a team on a complete transformational journey.

This resolve gets tested sometimes.

So how is all of this a problem?  Because I believe that walking that journey toward clarity and transformation will change an individual or organization's future, it feels kinda weighty to carry around.  Sort of a privileged burden.  That is what calling and purpose feels like… a great treasure that you have both the honor and responsibility to offer to the world.

I am not telling you anything you don’t already know (in your heart of hearts at least).  God created us for a purpose and He is about the business of us finding the life He intends for us.  He wants us to go out on the great swelling tide of his purpose and tilt our bow toward unchartered waters.  

There really isn’t any life worth living outside of the one we were created to play.

The journey our family has been on for the last 5-10 years has come at a cost.  We’ve had to downsize, change neighborhoods, simplify, etc., but we and our children really want for nothing.  There have been a few times, however, where things seemed pretty desperate.  We’ve had to get comfortable with the simple truth that while there may be a lot of uncertainty and not much margin… that things aren’t how we might want them to be… we certainly have everything we need.

We are all a by-product of the lives we have lived up to this point.  I left a very dysfunctional home and decided to take a path 180 degrees from everything I had ever known up to the point of my salvation in college.  It wasn’t until I was married that I realized that the muscle memory of my life experiences would inexplicably and without intention, show up in my every day life.

One of the beautiful opportunities of our walk with God is that all of those experiences, even the worst ones, can be redeemed.  As redeemed, they are monetized into a currency that allows us to live more powerfully and have greater impact on others.

For it is for freedom, that He set us free.  It was always intended that we would be unburdened from the yoke of slavery, that we would take our place as sons and daughters of the King, and as those sons and daughters of a King, we would benevolently rule over this Kingdom on His behalf.

Freedom is the cry of all our hearts.  It is our destiny.

Understanding my own identity as a man and understanding all the gaps in my masculine journey to adulthood was a necessary, but very challenging journey.  There was a natural progression of things I needed to learn, know, and understand, that I had largely missed in my matriculation from boy to man.  It is the same for nearly every honest man or woman I have ever come across.

The revelation of all of this, had me doubling back to fill in gaps in my developmental journey.  It also had me aggressively seeking out the wisdom of old age.  It was in this season that I began to see myself as an “Inverse Abraham,” a son of many fathers.  I needed and cried out for maturity, wisdom, and mentoring.

Everyone is trying to climb the mountain.  We are all looking to get higher, achieve, and get to whatever we define “more” to be.  On the way to the summit, however, very few of us divert off onto the less worn paths.  The paths that lead into the clouds with unknown destinations.  Very few leave the “what everyone is doing” to find the “what we most need to do”.

Very few look past getting the “more” and “better” to work on becoming the “more” and “better”

Very few realize that the path to the abundant life requires having the temerity of spirit to ask others to identify the things that we cannot see, embrace what we hear, and then go to work on restoring the things that aren’t as they should be.  That takes humility, courage, and sincerity.