iLonnie.com

Archive for October, 2007

My good friend JB Myers has a website. In this site he talks about Christians and addiction. There is much false information on this subject. You would do yourself a favor if you were to check out his site.

to get to it click here: JB Myers

Lonnie

Paul’s sermon was powerful. The Roman ruler had to deal with it. He found the perfect answer. It has been nearly 2,000 years and his solution is still the favorite one for those who do not wish to deal with a decision.

Felix spoke up and said, “That’s enough for now! You may leave. When I find it convenient, I will send for you.” (Acts 24:25).

We have a word to describe this behavior – procrastination. I love the words of the poet:

Procrastination is my sin.
It gives me endless sorrow.
I have decided to give it up
And I will begin tomorrow.

We live in a society that rewards procrastination. We really do not give the early bird the worm. When is the best time to get great deals on Christmas gifts? The answer is: “On the first day after Christmas.” We do not reward the early, but rather we punish the tardy. If all taxes that were filed during January had an automatic 10% rebate, there would be little need to provide extensions to tax payers.

Why do we procrastinate? There are several reasons:
(1) Fear. We are afraid we will not succeed so we delay trying.
(2) Busyness. We stay busy doing good things but let that busyness crowd out the important things we ought to do.
(3) It works! By putting off hard tasks till tomorrow we really don’t have to deal with them today. Unfortunately a lot of our hard work is just the easy work that we did not do when it was still easy.

Here are some ways to overcome procrastination.

1. Quit lying to yourself.
Some people tell themselves that they work better under pressure and looking down the barrel of a deadline. No you don’t, it is just that you have waited till the last minute so often and now you have come to associate yourself with pressure. We work best in a calm environment.

2. Break it down.
Don’t put off the task because it is too big. Start with something, even if it seems insignificant. There is an old proverb that says, “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

3. Make a list and be accountable to it.
Better yet, make the list the night before. It is always easier to think we will get up early the next morning to do the task that we could have done the night before.

The tragedy of life is not that it ends too soon, but that we wait too long to begin it!

Lonnie Davis

Jon Bennett loves to fish and hunt. Naturally his three sons inherited their daddy’s love of the outdoors. A few days ago he told them he was going squirrel hunting and naturally they wanted to go. He told the nearly five-year-old Dylan that he would take him, but wanted to make sure he understood what they were going to do.

“Son, were going to hunt for squirrels. Do you know what we will do when we see one?”
“We will shoot it,” Dylan said.
“What happens to the squirrel,” Jon asked.
Dylan said, “It will be dead.”
“Then what do we do?” dad asked.
Dylan thought for a minute and answered, “I don’t know.”
Jon said, “Well, we eat it.”
Dylan said, “I don’t like squirrel.”
“Well son,” Jon said, “If we kill it, we have to eat it. We don’t kill anything that we don’t eat. Are you okay with that?”
“Yes,” Dylan said.
“Son, are you willing to eat the squirrel?”
“Yes,” he said again. He paused and then he asked, “Can we take the fur off first.”

Though he did not want to eat fur, little Dylan was willing to do whatever he needed to do in order to do what he wanted to do and to please his father. There are two great truths in this story.

The first truth is this: people do what they have to do in order to do what they want to do. I want to hunt and if I have to eat fur, then I will. One of the wisest sayings I’ve ever heard was this: “To become what you want to become, you must do what you don’t want to do.”

The second truth is this: We must be willing to do anything for our father – our heavenly father. A four-year-old can’t possibly understand all the reasons why we have to eat what we kill, but daddy said it was so and so he believed his father. We may not understand all of God’s principles, but we have to trust that He knows best. At the end of our life we will be able to look back and see that our Father knew best all the time. I love the way one man put it, “Life can only be understood looking back, but must be lived looking forward. Just trust God. He will take care of you.

Next time God allows a hard task into your life, you can pray, “Do I have to eat the fur,” as long as you are willing to do whatever He calls on you to do.

Lonnie Davis

A nineteenth century preacher, Dwight L. Moody once said, “The measure of a man is not how many servants he has, but how many men he serves.” As wise as this is, it is merely a commentary on a statement of Jesus. “Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all.” (Mark 10:43-45)

These words by Jesus are not some cheap words born out of philosophy, but rather a principle that He lived by. Jesus affirms this by concluding with these words, “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve.” (Mark 10:45).

If you were to ask 100 preachers what the greatest need in the church today is, the answers might vary, but every answer would be rooted in leadership. No church outgrows its leaders. No church with great leaders can be mediocre. Great leaders bring greatness to themselves and others. “Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant.” Leadership is about serving others. We can also add, no family outgrows its leaders. No family with great leaders can be mediocre. Great leaders bring greatness to themselves and to their family.

Dave Thomas, the founder of Wendy’s, became a wealthy man by living this principle. He was a high school dropout whose formal education included a G.E.D. He explained his life this way, ““I got my M.B.A. long before my G.E.D. At Wendy’s M.B.A. does not mean Master of Business Administration. It means Mop Bucket Attitude.” To the world, Dave was the leader of Wendy’s. To Dave, Dave was the head of the mop bucket brigade.

This was the way Jesus did leadership. On the last night he would spend with his disciples, he sat around the table with them. As they sat there, Jesus did a most surprising thing. “He got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him.” (John 13:4-5).

Jesus washed the feet of Peter, Andrew, James, John, and the others at the table – including Judas. They were shocked, but Jesus knew the secret. If you want to be great, you have to serve.

The church, your family, your workplace all need more people with a MBA – mop bucket attitude. Leaders with that kind of MBA are people who are not here to be served, but are here to serve others. These are true leaders.

Lonnie Davis

You don’t know his name, but in 1840, John Janney was the chairman of the Whig Party. Your teacher almost made you study his life. He is the man who was nearly President of the United States. Here is how it happened. The 1840 election was won by the Whigs. The new President was William Henry Harrison. His name you know. His Vice-President was John Tyler of Virginia who, of course, became President when Harrison died shortly after taking office. No one could have known, but in the election that year, the man who was Vice-President was destined to be President.

Here is the strange twist: at the nominating convention, John Tyler and John Janney were tied for votes to be the Vice-President. Only one man was left to vote and his vote would decide the nominee. That man who was still to vote was John Janney himself. John Janney did what was then considered to be the honorable thing. He voted for his opponent, John Tyler.

So you see, John Janney was the man who was nearly President of the United States. All he had to do was to vote for himself. There is a little bit of John Janney’s story in all of us. Maybe we weren’t nearly the President, but all of us can look back on our life and see something that we might have been. We might have been a business owner, a professional athlete, a teacher, a doctor, a lawyer, a nurse, or simply rich. We might have been, but we are not.

Of course, we can be happy where we are and whatever we are, but sometimes we get to thinking about what might have been. None of these “might have beens” ought to alarm us, but there is one “might have been” that I don’t want to look back on my life and regret. I do not want to come to my final day and say, “I might have been a Christian.” To live one’s life as a Christian is more important than living our life as an athlete, a teacher, or the President of the United States.

More than a century and a half later, we can look back on John Janney and realize that it does not matter today whether he served as President. Today all that matters to John Janney is whether he lived his life as a Christian.

There are many “might have been a Christian” stories out there. Millions who have been offered the chance to be Christians have delayed the call for a lifetime. A century from now, no one will remember their names or write about what they failed to become, but the story of rejecting Christ is sadder than that of nearly President, John Janney.

Lonnie Davis