Featured Post: Mark, I am recalculating route now

This featured post comes from Mark Brown, who is the former CEO of Bible Society New Zealand, as well as the founder of Global Scope Media and Global Scope Ministries.  More info. about him can be found here.

Mark, I am recalculating route now

And Jesus answered them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.  I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.” Luke 5:31-32

I was recently in the US and had a hire car.  Thankfully it has GPS to help keep me on the right path, but I cannot count the number of times the patient GPS voice reported, ‘recalculating route now..’  And thankfully even though I had accidentally taken the exit 10 miles too early, the nice GPS machine was able to get me back on track.  I could almost hear it sigh and quietly mutter under its breath ‘oh not again.. recalculating route now’. The greek behind the word ‘sinners’ talks of one who deviates from the path towards God.  To sin is to get lost, to be distracted, to stray off the path God intends for us.

My GPS is my Bible.  It shows me not only that when I am off route, but it displays to me what I need to do to get back on track.  But what would happen if I had put the GPS machine in the trunk of the car?  I would be in big ‘where am I?’ trouble. In the same way, I need to spend time with my Bible often.  Not just once a day, but often, making it part of my approach to life, being guided along the right path consistently.  Reflecting on passages throughout the day.

And repentance: when I come before Jesus and confess my sin and am washed anew, well that is when God says, Mark, I am recalculating route now, you are back on the path towards me.

Praise God!

Mark Brown

Featured Post: Seven Better Questions You Can Ask in the Midst of Adversity

I'm starting another addition to this blog.  Every so often I will feature a post from someone else's blog that I'm currently following.  This post comes from Michael Hyatt, Chairman and CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers.  You can find the original post here.

SEVEN BETTER QUESTIONS YOU CAN ASK IN THE MIDST OF ADVERSITY

Ihave several friends who are going through enormous uncertainty right now. Some are out of work. A few others are on the precipice of divorce. Still others have been diagnosed with cancer—one who is pregnant. In these situations, most of us ask, “Why is this happening to me?”

Photo courtesy of ©iStockphoto.com/Yuri_Arcurs

Years ago, two months after I became the publisher of one of our book divisions, we lost a major author to a competing company. This had a significant negative impact on our bottom line. At first, I was angry. Then I became discouraged. Finally, I realized I was asking the wrong question.

Instead of asking “Why did this happen?” I started asking, “How can this make us better?” Immediately, I sensed a shift in my spirit. It began energizing me. In retrospect, losing the author was one of the best things that could have happened to my division. We grew from the experience in ways that would have never happened otherwise.

I learned a valuable lesson: the answers we get are often determined by the questions we ask. If we ask bad questions, we will get bad answers. If we ask better questions—empowering questions—we will get better answers.

If you are going through a difficult, uncertain time, here are seven better questions you can ask yourself and your team:

1. What if this isn’t the end but a new beginning?
2. What if the answer to my prayer is just over the next hill?
3. What if this is necessary in order for me to be prepared for the next important chapter in my life?
4. What if God knows exactly what I need at this particular time?
5. What if God is speaking to me through means I would not have chosen for a blessing I cannot see?
6. What does this experience make possible?
7. What will I be telling my grandchildren that I learned was so valuable in this season of my life?

How is this related to leadership? As I have written numerous times before, leaders must lead themselves first—even when they don’t feel like it. Sometimes it just starts with a better question.

Book Review: Emotional Intelligence

The subject of this book review is Daniel Goleman's Emotional Intelligence, a good book despite its flaws when looked at from a Christian perspective.

My wife introduced me to this book.  She had read it a number of years ago (it was first published in 1995), and one day as she was perusing a collection of second-hand books she found a copy and gave it to me because 1) she knows that I like to read and 2) she loves me.  I found it quite interesting although I had to read it through a filter of sorts, but more on that later.

The basic premise of the book is the our concept of human intelligence is flawed, or at least incomplete. Goleman stressed that we put too much emphasis on the type of intelligence that can be measured with an IQ test.  He places more of an emphasis on what he likes to call emotional intelligence which incorporates certain aspects such as self-discipline and compassion.  The two types of intelligence must go together in order to have a complete picture of the individual.

This book introduced me to some new concepts, or at least gave me a name for them and told me how they happen.  The one that I remember the most is the concept of a "emotional hijacking".  An emotional hijacking is when the emotional centers of the brain override the rational/cognitive centers.  You, no doubt, have experienced this in one way or another, such as when you got so angry/sad/excited that you ended up doing and/or saying things that you know cognitively that you should not do and/or say.  A very simple way to put it is that it's like being drunk without the liver damage.

There are a lot of positive aspects to this book, but its main downfall for me is that it comes from a very humanistic approach.  Evolutionary concepts are found throughout the book, mainly connected to how the human brain formed and why it functions the way it does.  He also heavily espouses the idea that people can be changed if given the correct education.

I, obviously, do not have the same world view as Goleman does, but that did not prevent me from learning a lot on how people, myself included, function in regards to our emotions.  So if you are interested in a good read and are able to tolerate the author's perspective, search around and pick up this book.  You'll feel more intelligent when you're done.