Beware of your thoughts, they become your words.
Beware of your words, they become your actions.
Beware of your actions, they become your habits.
Beware of your habits, they become your character.
Beware of your character, it becomes your destiny.
– Unknown
Sin Through Weakness and Goodness
Bad and mediocre people are tempted to sin by their own habitual weaknesses. The earlier lies or thefts or adulteries make the next one that much easier to contemplate. Having already cut so many corners, the thinking goes, what’s one more here or there? Why even aspire to virtues that you probably won’t achieve, when it’s easier to remain the sinner that you already know yourself to be?
But good, heroic people are led into temptation by their very goodness – by the illusion, common to those who have done important deeds, that they have higher responsibilities than the ordinary run of humankind. It’s precisely in the service to these supposed higher responsibilities that they often let more basic ones slip away. – Ross Douthat, New York Times, November 13, 2011
Love and Bowels
A key to understanding how Christians are called to love each other comes from a very unlikely place. Read the account of Judas’ death in Acts chapter 1:
Now this man [Judas] purchased a field with the reward of iniquity; and falling headlong, he burst asunder in the midst, and all his bowels gushed out. (Acts 1:18 KJV)
Even though the account of Judas death seems to be contrary to understanding Christian love, It is key to understanding a first century metaphor that John uses in a letter to an early Christian community. The passage is found in John 3:11-18:
For this is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another. Do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own actions were evil and his brother’s were righteous. Do not be surprised, my brothers and sisters, if the world hates you. We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love each other. Anyone who does not love remains in death. Anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him. This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth. (1 John 3:11-18 NIV)
1 John Summary Sheet
The Grain on Which we Live
It’s remarkable that men should be so arrogant and secure when there are so many, indeed countless, evidences around us to suggest that we ought to be humble. The hour of our death is uncertain. The grain on which we live is not in our hands. Neither the sun nor the air, on which our life depends, lies in our power, and we have no control over our sleeping and waking. I shall say nothing of spiritual things, such as private and public sins which press upon us. Yet our hearts are as hard as steel and pay no attention to such evidence – Martin Luther, 1483-1546
Stand Where You Feel Led
In the end, that is what we all must do. Stand where we feel led. Stand straight, stand tall, and try hard to remember that other folks might be led to stand elsewhere.” Phillip Gulley
Zilker Hillside Theater
Free summer Footloose the musical
Real Leadership
“We need to believe in ourselves and our future but not to believe that life is easy. Life is painful and rain falls on the just. Leaders must help us see failure and frustration not as a reason to doubt ourselves but a reason to strengthen resolve…Don’t pray for the day we finally solve our problems. Pray that we have freedom to continue working on the problems the future will never cease to throw at us.”John W. Garner On Leadership (New York Free Press 1993), 195, xii
Basic Army Leadership
This post is less about army leadership and more about finding a better way to share content. The embedded presentation is hosted on www.slideshare.net.
Basic army leadership
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Leadership Coaching
