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Showing posts with the label Dreaming

What To Do First to Make a Profit

The PF Women Team at our Annual Team Retreat  ~ 2018 Today on Seth Godin's blog, he said: It's tempting to decide to make a profit first, then invest in training, people, facilities, promotion, customer service and most of all, doing important work. In general, though, it goes the other way. Yes, it does. If you are waiting to make a profit before you do these things, in my experience you're  not going to make a profit. So many organizations, ministries and churches are struggling with financial issues. I know your pain. As anyone who follows our story knows, our ministry was in a ton of debt four years ago when I came on as director.  Since that time, we've gotten out of debt and turned a profit every year.  God has done amazing things through out team, for which we give Him the glory! I find that what Seth is saying here is absolutely true, with one disclaimer. For Christian leaders, spiritual disciplines must always be first. Before we started i...
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Getting What You Don't Even Pray For
(How Incredible Is That?!)

We don't have some things, because we don't ask God for them. James 4 tells us that. I also believe that as we delight ourselves in the Lord, He gives us the desires of our heart. (Psalm 37:4) Sometimes God answers when we don't even ask for the desires of our heart. Perhaps it's because we don't see how God would do it within our current structure. Translation: our current box.   We forget that His ways and His thoughts are higher than ours. (Isaiah 55) He can give us our desires even when it doesn't seem feasible at all. He is truly omniscient. I love that, and so much more about Him.    I'm a homebody at heart. Most would never guess it, but at the core I'm an introvert who could live in my pajamas, with a dog by my side, writing books until Jesus comes back. But  I was convinced   that one day upon retirement I was going spend my days in between pj's and book writing, taking road trips. These jaunts would be for purpose of encouraging le...
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The One Question I'm So Sick Of (And a prayer...for us)

"What do you want?" This is a very popular question people are often asked in business, in counseling, in coaching. I've never had a problem knowing and describing exactly what I want. Ever. My entire life I have been able to define and articulate what I want, how I want it, when I want it, and who I want it from right down to the exact details. For all of that realization, I am often frustrated. Because I've found that defining what you want doesn't solve your problems. Even knowing what you want and going after it wholeheartedly doesn't solve all your problems. Because sometimes no matter how hard you try, it doesn't go the way you want it to go. Sometimes it also takes more than one person to make it work. Like the song says, "It takes two to make a thing go right...it takes two to make it outta sight..." It's been my experience that anything I want that is possible to achieve by myself, is no problem. When I desire somethi...
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Afraid Your Dreams Won't Come True?

Have you ever been afraid that you wouldn't accomplish your life's dream by the time  you die?  I read 1,000 Places to See Before You Die and all I could think of while reading it was, "If I race around to see all these places I won't have time to achieve my dream."   A few weeks ago I told Larry, "If I pass away before achieving my dream, please don't have a funeral." You think I'm kidding?  I was dead serious, pardon the pun. I said it would be an embarrassment for him to have a celebration of my life and have to admit to everyone that I never reached what I set out to do. At least two or three of my friends would probably show up and share a nice memory or two. Hopefully my kids would share more than the story about me substituting vanilla coffee creamer for milk in the recipe for homemade creamed corn two Thanksgivings ago. It was disgusting but I did it out of desperation since the stores were closed. I thought it would work since th...
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Keep Calm and Keep Working...

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What to do when you get rejected

The life of a writer can be really rollercoasterish (I'm aware that's not a word) and if you let it get to you, it could put you permanently between a case of Prozac and a dozen donuts. Lucky for me Dunkin Donuts is less than a mile away. Remember yesterday when I talked about there always being a next? Well, I know what I'm talking about, from experience. They say a man with an experience is never at the mercy of a man with an argument. I think that works for a woman too.  I'm sure there's always a next. As sure as Chick-fil-A has the best iced tea... As sure as this presidential election has shaped up to be the lamest ever... I'm confident, absolutely sure , 100% positively certain there is a next. Are you breathing? Then there's something for you to do next.  You're never, ever through. Even when you die, you're not through. No, that wasn't a typo. You aren't through when you're physically dead, because you will live forev...
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Go cut a hole in the roof. I dare you!

Are you facing roadblocks on the way to your dream?    God gives people creative ideas to get things done in an unconventional way. Think about the biblical account of the  four people who wanted to bring  their paralyzed friend to Jesus for healing,  but couldn't come through the door because the room was already so full.  They brainstormed to think of how their goal might be reached to get their friend to Jesus, and ended up cutting a hole in the roof and lowering him down to Jesus. It worked! Maybe today you're in a situation where conventional things aren't working. You can't get through and when you try, you encounter "Catch 22's". Things like being told, "you've got a lot of talent but no experience."  You think, "How am I supposed to get experience if somebody won't give me a chance?" You can stand there and get frustrated. You can complain. You can quit. Or maybe... it's time to cut a hole in the roof.
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What makes you afraid?

"You don't write because you want to say something; You write because you have something to say."                                           ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald So, you have something to say. Are you saying it? If not, why? What makes you afraid about saying it? Identifying what makes you afraid is really important. When you identify your fears you can deal with them, and move on with the call to share what God has placed in your heart. Sometimes fears are realistic, other times not. Whether or not, God never intended fear to stop us because fear is not of Him. Just because fear is not of Him doesn't mean that some things we feared may never happen as we fulfill the call. Sometimes we will face giants and mountains but God never intended a giant or a mountain to stop us....
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To create new, do new

I asked myself this question this morning when I saw this on a friend's facebook page. And I immediately shifted gears , put everything else aside and pursued the greatest dream of my heart. How does it feel? Wonderful. This post by Seth really affected me this week too. I acted upon my dreams this morning and moved forward in creating a different outcome. What can you change for a different outcome?
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Of art and miracles

They say a picture is worth 1,000 words.    This is the level of freedom I need to create what's in my heart.  
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How much will you sacrifice to do your art?

Where is your creative space to work on your art? I have logistical space.  My issue is space of time. Others have all the time in the world but no physical space or resources to work on their art.  Either way moving forward requires change to create. Do you need physical space?  Rearrange a room at home. Give up something else in order to prioritize your art. A friend of mine gave up a closet and made it an office. She had to figure out somewhere else to put her clothes but she had a place to work on her art. Do you need space of time to do your art? Do the painful work of examining your agenda. I understand this dilemma.  Currently I'm working several jobs, one of which was supposed to be something I was covering temporarily but has turned out to last longer than I would have ever imagined.  We're coming up on several years now, not months. If you had told me this back then I'd have either told you that you were crazy, ran away, or gone to my docto...
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What do you HAVE to do?

I remember many years ago when I was just coming into adulthood lamenting about some things  I had to do, somebody quipped to me, "Deanna, all you HAVE to do is live, die and pay taxes." I know it might seem odd, but I'm a very analytical person who really started thinking about that statement. What does a person have to do, really have to do, in life? I don't have the full answer to this question yet but one thing I do know for sure, we all do some things we don't have to do. I believe we still do them for a myriad of reasons and one is because we are afraid of the new. New represents change. And change is something that scares many of us. The interesting thing about change is that it has the possibility to make a way for us where there seemed to be no way. Change can bring healing, wholeness, a new lease on life. But it often requires a very deep examination of what we have been doing versus what we might want to think about doing. In my experienc...
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Your contribution to the world

 "Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life." - Steve Jobs 1955-2011 So Steve Jobs passed away this week and lots of people are talking about it, of course.  He was a remarkable man who changed our world forever.   Just a few hours after his death I found the above quote and started thinking about it.  A lot of people have wrestled with this, including myself.  Believe it or not, I lived quite a number of years of my life doing what other people wanted me to do versus what I'm called to do, or long to do.  There are various reasons for this, but that is neither here nor there.  The point is, I understand. The reasons we continue doing what we're not meant to do are so varied -- finances, cultural expectations, relationships and more.  When people like Steve Jobs who have achieved so much pass away, it gives us pause to think about our own contribution(s) to the world.  I know what I want my greatest contribution...
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Do something powerful. Remind yourself.

I feel weird. I mean weirder than usual. I'm living on Zyrtec and Zicam after returning from NC with a bad cold.  Last night before I preached I told the crowd, "Sorry for any accidental heresy that may come out tonight...I'm high on cold medication and really don't know what I might say..." I have to do a bunch of church work today and tomorrow, plus handle four job seeker appointments, and somehow I'll manage this even though my head feels like it has about a million tiny push pins in it. I can't put off doing anything because I leave Thursday morning again for North Carolina for another few days of ministry.  I can't put it off til' later, cuz there is no later... So here I am blogging. I'm sure some may wonder, "why?" If I'm so busy, why do I blog? If I feel bad, why do I blog? If I have other work sitting there that needs to be done, why do I take a break and blog? Because this is an important daily reminder to ...
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