3 Points to Ponder
- “Every time we say ‘Yes’ to something, we are also saying ‘No’ to something else. Make sure your ‘Yes’ is going to have the impact you desire before committing.”
- “Time is the great equalizer. No matter how rich, poor, old, or young, we each have only 24 hours in a day. And we each decide how we will use that time. If someone were to follow you today, what would they say about how your time was spent?”
- “To be all in will require some ‘Yeses’ that stretch you. Just like weight training, our abilities need to be stretched to get stronger and to do more. But, it can’t be constant. Just like muscles, there is a time to rest so the desired growth can happen. Critical discernment is an awareness of where you are at in this cycle — do you need to stretch or rest? Only you know the true answer.”
2 Quotes to Share
“Your future is created by what you do today, not tomorrow.” -Anonymous
“You don’t need more time… you just need to decide.” -Seth Godin
1 Story of Impact
Sitting in my office in December 2015, Mark Hoffschneider, Missions Director for Lutheran Church of Hope, shot me a text. “Can you give me a call?” Earlier that year, we had prayed, planned, and put an Advent project in front of his church to install 100 cement floors for the entire community of Sylvain, locally buying all the material and utilizing the local labor force. I quickly picked up the phone and he said, “We have a good and bad problem. People have really responded to this project and money is pouring in. Could you do more than 100 floors? We are strong believers that any money that comes in needs to be used specifically for this project, so we hope your answer is yes.” The next week, he told me the project was 400 floors. The next week, it was over 600. The final tally came in at 787 floors. Woof! What was going to be a nice-sized project just turned into a major, major project. But, we are a “Yes, let’s do it” type of people and if God has given us this money to steward, then we will do all we can to deliver. Over the next 12 months, the team planned and executed on installing all those cement floors, utilized all local labor and materials, GPS’d each location, took before and after pictures, and performed a dedication with a Bible for every family. The physical numbers of this project are staggering – purchasing 12,524 bags of cement, preparing 40,000 yards of hand-mixed concrete, and providing over 3,000 opportunities for daily employment. But more importantly, as people watched, asked questions, and prayed with us, 75 people from 33 different families dedicated their lives to Christ. Our “Yes,” even when it looked overwhelming, opened the door to more “Yeses” down the road. But a key point in this — we had committed to this project, as it was in our wheelhouse to deliver on our mission to be love in action. Right now, what in your life do you need to say “Yes” to in order to open doors of possibilities? Conversely, are there places where you said “Yes” out of obligation that are now standing in the way to a more strategic “Yes”?
