When I was 18 years old, one of my mentors, Pastor Larry Bettencourt, handed me a CD with a leadership lesson on it. The lesson was called “Standing Tall” by John C. Maxwell. I never heard of him and I definitely never listened to a leadership CD before that time.

I put the CD in my CD players and within 5 minutes I was hooked! I didn’t know the lesson came with notes, so I grabbed a piece of paper and wrote down everything John was saying. I rewound the lessons a few dozen times.

After listening to the lesson, I called Pastor Larry and said, “I want more of this! Give me everything you got!” Over the course of that next year, I’d literally take a lesson home each night and listen to it before bed. I would take some of Maxwell’s leadership DVD curriculum home and go through it over a weekend. I devoured everything I could!

John Maxwell has been a catalyst to so many changes in my life. So much of who I am and what I do is a result of John’s teachings.

To this day, I read everything he writes and still listen to his monthly leadership lessons. Without a doubt, he has been one of the most influential people in my life.

I love John because he was a pastor for 25 years and through his leadership training, he has positioned himself to be influential not only in the church world, but in the government world, education world, business world, etc. He uses the influence God gave him to make a difference for God. That’s definitely a dream and passion of my heart. I’m grateful for John paving the way!

Tonight I get to hear John speak in person for the first time ever. It’s always been a dream of mine to hear him live and get the opportunity to meet him! I’m hoping he’ll be doing a book signing after service so I get the chance to meet him. If I do, you’ll hear about it, trust me! I’m so fired up!

Who has had a huge impact on your life from a distance that you’ve never met or heard live before?

Below is a quote from a sermon by Carter Conlon that has changed my life. I come back to it often. I hope it inspires you to live your life with the proper perspective.

“Isn’t a better testimony to get to the end of this life and just say, “It’s been all God, it’s been all grace, it’s been all goodness, it’s been all mercy, it’s been all glory, it’s been everything of Christ and nothing of me. Isn’t it wonderful if you get to the end and whether you’ve preached to ten or ten million, it doesn’t really matter, but you get to the end of the journey and your children say, “Mom, dad, how did such change come into your life, how did you become the person that you became, and at the end of the journey you don’t have a list of books for them to read, you don’t have a stack of proverbs, you don’t have a whole list of how-to’s, you have only one name on your lips, only one victory, only one direction, only one God.”

–Carter Conlon, Lead Pastor, Time’s Square Church

Thoughts?

Then fourteen years later I went back to Jerusalem again, this time with Barnabas; and Titus came along, too. ² I went there because God revealed to me that I should go. -Galatians 2:1-2

I was in a Q and A session with Keith Moore, and my friend and I asked him how he stays fresh spiritually while on the road preaching all the time. He said, “I don’t do anything the Lord didn’t tell me to do.”

“If You want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans.”

He went on to say that when he meets with Pastors who are “burning out or don’t have peace” he tells them to make a list of everything they’re doing in their lives at that time. Then go down the list and ask themselves, “Ok, when did God speak to my heart to do that?” He said if you can’t figure out a specific time when you KNOW God told you to do that, you should quit doing it.

If you know me, you know that I love setting goals, making bucket lists, life plans, etc. But what I’m realizing with all of those is that they’re mostly my plans for my life.

Psalm 127:1 says, “Except the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it“. I heard someone say they were going to write a book called, “How to miss God and be Miserable!” While that’s funny, it’s so true.

If you’re doing a bunch of things God never told you to do, I promise, you’ll be miserable and you’ll never get the results you’re looking for.

If you’re lacking peace in your life and are miserable more than you’re joyful, you should ask yourself the question, “What am I doing and When did God tell me to do that?”

Then comes the hard part… actually obeying God and quit doing the things He never told you to do. But that’s another blog post for another day.

Thoughts?