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This has been an amazing week of God Intersections for me. My normal “vital activity” every week is to meet with three God Intersections. The purpose of those meetings is to simply hear where folks are at (everyone has a story), model what God is doing in my life and find out how I can help. This week I’ve had over 15 intersections (a record) all around a fairly common theme. That theme is “my business (or life) is NOT working very well”.
Transforming our lives into it’s best possible version is of great interest to many of us. We are tired of the same old life, same old pain, same old results.
The million dollar question is “How does transformation happen”? What is our role in the process? What is God’s role in the process?
And so we begin (again?). We search for new knowledge that will jump start the process. We read books, go to seminars, listen to sermons, pray, read God’s word, serve when we can etc. We do all this for the purpose, perhaps unspoken, of becoming a better version of ourselves and Jesus Christ. And after we do all this we find we are incrementally different which we don’t mind but it seemed like a lot of work for such little change.
As I pondered my learnings from 2009 I realized what a rich year it was. God imparted more things to me during 2009 than any previous time I can remember. Things like:
Well it’s the day after Christmas and all is very quiet around the Miller household. The ladies are shopping, the young men are sleeping and I’m writing. It has been weeks since my last blog. I’ve been kind of blocked and probably lazy.
This week has been interesting and I’m glad to see it behind us:
In my last blog I talked about choosing to operate our lives and businesses in God’s Economy. All great stuff until something really difficult hits us forcing us to decide what we REALLY believe.
Well guess what, that something hit the Miller household this last couple of weeks. My wife was laid off. This severed half of our income and all of our health benefits (drat!). And in an instant I was given the opportunity to practice all this stuff I talk about (or should I say preach).
As this idea of Prospering in the New Economy has evolved, I’ve been pondering how God will use these concepts for His purposes and our Provision. And, of course, as I journey this path, God provides the answers right on time. In this case part of the answer came in the form of an article by Chuck Bentley, CEO Crown Ministries (www.crown.org). In the October issue of MoneyMatters Chuck wrote about “The Security you seek is in God’s Economy”. As I read Chuck’s article a God-Idea formed in my head regarding the basis of Man’s (or the World’s) Economy and God’s Economy.
My last blog discussed how to prosper in this “New Economy”. I put forward a simple 4 step process for doing just that. Step 2, Form Communities, has caused the most interesting string of thinking and dialogue. The main question is “How the heck do I Form a Community?”.
Let’s start with my definition of Community. Community is a group of relationships that choose to gather around a particular passion, God-calling, idea or offering for the purpose of sharing life and values. Community is completely voluntary with each member contributing as much or as little as they desire.
All of us have experienced some degree of difficulty and uncertainty in the “Great Recession” of the last 18 months or so. Some substantially more than others. Questions remain unanswered:
Does the term “God’s Rhythm for our Lives” speak to you? Have you ever experienced that state in your life and/or business where you seem to be “in sync with the universe”? This idea of “God’s Rhythm” in my life has been percolating in me for several years. And as readers of this blog know, I’ve been pondering the idea of releasing control of my life to God for the last year or so. Interesting how long it takes to “get a voice” for what God is teaching us.
As many of you know, I started a business last year to help business owners trust God with their businesses and lives. The idea is to facilitate small groups of business owners to encourage one another, build authentic relationships and improve our bottom line(s). We call these groups Leadership Productivity Forum’s (LPF).
In the early days of LPF God made it clear (yes God talks to me, mostly through my thoughts) that my primary goal is to SERVE the business owners He Intersects me with. He set out several additional guidelines. They included:
