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I just finished up the second of two really good books i had not planned on reading. 
The first was "Just Walk Across the Room" from Bill Hybels. Bill does a great job of pointing out how natural it can be to share your story and the good news story through a relational approach. He identifies several things we can do to be open to new relationships – the starting point for sharing. I also appreciated that Bill identifies coming to faith as a process, which we may only be used in a small part of this process and that it is not our responsibility to convert someone, but only to come beside people as they walk the path. I definitely recommend this book.
The second was "Integrity" by Henry Cloud. Unlike "Just Walk Across the Room", (which i knew would at least be decent since i like Hybels style and was a topic i wanted to read on) i had no intention of reading "Integrity". I got it as a freebie promotional (buy one book full price, get 3 from this group for free). I was very pleasantly surprised. The book wasn’t what i expected at all. Cloud defines integrity as a wholeness of character, so the book was actually on character. I don’t believe i have ever read a book focused solely on character before. This was a very easy read, very well written and impressively insightful. I found myself having "ah hah" moments as i went through the book and in fact Cloud addressed several problems i have been kicking around that i was unable to pinpoint before this read. Cloud covers six main points (with dozens of takeaways from each) that identify people with integrity; they:
- Are able to connect with others and build trust
- Are oriented toward reality
- Finish well
- Embrace the negative
- Are oriented toward increase
- Have an understanding of the transcendent
I would highly recommend this book for anyone who is looking to grow personally or is responsible for the development of others. Cloud does a good job of identifying what keeps some people from reaching their full potential.
 You have to learn to be patient
and learn to fail
before you can learn to win.
 I love the water. We live on the banks of the Mohawk river. I’ve also lived at the ocean in Virginia, where i learned to surf (every morning before work from March to Dec.). We usually vacation at the ocean. In the spring, white water rafting guide at the Hudson river gorge is my second job (it doesn’t pay much, usually just enough to support my rafting habit!) So it should be no surprise that i would rent a sea kayak while on vacation in the keys. This year, for the first time, we rented a 2 man kayak. Both the kids are old enough to paddle now, but not really strong enough to paddle a kayak alone for any distance.
The beginning of the week had been cold and very windy so we didn’t play on the water much, but by Wednesday the weather had turned warm and there was a gently warm breeze off the ocean. Thursday i had taken Jasmine and Jared (on seperata trips) out kayaking for some paddling practice and to do some fish spotting (the only fish we spotted were dead due to the cold waters). Thursday evening i headed out alone for a bit to explore the surrounding water. Friday morning was beautiful, warm and sunny with a gentle breeze blowing, so Jared and i hopped in the kayak and set out for the islands off in the distance. My initial guess was that they were about 1.5 miles out into the bay (we were on the bay side of the keys), should be an easy paddle and would get Jared pretty far off shore with nothing around us but the kayak; a new experience which he would surely get a kick out of. I had underestimated the trip to the islands by about a mile and it took us about 30 minutes of easy paddling to cover the roughly 2.5 miles to the islands. When we arrived at the island a wind kicked up and the water became quite choppy, so much so that i had a hard time turning the kayak with out blowing into the island. I was thinking that the islands must be acting as a barrier for the wind on the bay and being so close to them we were just beyond that barrier. Either way, the water was cold and becoming very choppy, the wind was really kicking up and we were to far from home to tip over in the cold water, doing so would most like leave Jared hypothermic. So i turned the kayak directly into the wind and paddles as hard as i could, hoping to escape the grip of the wind and waves. The waves were tumbling over the front of the kayak (luckily we were both fully scurted) as i dug in; left, right, left, right, left, right. After about five minutes of paddling as hard as i could, struggling to keep the kayak pointed straight into the wind (so the waves wouldn’t tip us) we had gone about 400 yards and we the wind was just as strong and the waves just as choppy. I realized that the wind must have come up behind us while we were paddling to the island and we didnt realize until we turned around into it. I was looking at a 2+ mile paddle directly into a 20 – 30 mile an hour wind with high waves and a 6 year old in the front of the kayak. I began to pray. I was not so worried about me as Jared. If we tipped the water was too cold and we were to far off shore, the results would surely be devastating. I prayed and paddles continuously; I’m a pretty strong paddler, but paddling into this kind of wind, struggling to keep the kayak from turning was exhausting and my body was aching with less than half the distance back covered, “God, please give me strength and if you are feeling up to it, you could calm the wind!”. The trip back would take us about an hour of paddling as hard as i could. OK, so at this point you are probably asking “what was Jared doing? Was he scared? Was he crying? Could you console him?” Well, Jared is apparently invincible. As i am sitting in the back, paddling for dear life and pleading with God, Jared is sitting in the front laughing and singing!! “Joy to the world, ….”, “Hey Papa, did you see that one! That wave was huge!! it almost got in my lap”, “Papa, can you paddle any faster? I’m getting hungry.”, “Papa, can we go over there?”. 
The faith of a child is amazing. Jared was never scared, he was perfectly confident that his father would take care of it. In his mind he was on an adventure with his Papa and no matter what we encountered we would get through it together.
When did we loose this kind of faith? When did we forget that life is an adventure and we are on this adventure with our father?
Then He got in the boat, his disciples with him. The next thing they knew, they were in a severe storm. Waves were crashing into the boat—and He was sound asleep! They roused him, pleading, “Master, save us! We’re going down!” Jesus reprimanded them. “Why are you such cowards, such faint-hearts?” Then he stood up and told the wind to be silent, the sea to quiet down: “Silence!” The sea became smooth as glass. The men rubbed their eyes, astonished. “What’s going on here? Wind and sea come to heel at His command!”
Matthew 8:23-27, the Message
The main problem in the Christian life, in other words, is not that we don’t try hard enough to be good. It’s that we haven’t accepted the deep implications of the gospel and applied its powerful reality to all parts of our life.
There are two challenges for preachers, those of us called to announce this good news. First is to help people understand theologically that the gospel doesn’t just ignite the Christian life but it’s also the fuel that keeps Christians going and growing every day. The second challenge, which is much harder for me than the first, is to help people understand how this works functionally.
excerpt from Leadershijournal.net:
The Everyday Gospel
Maturity doesn’t mean moving beyond the gospel,
but more deeply into it.
Tullian Tchividjian | posted 1/18/2010
As i read this excerpt from leadershipjournal.net i had an epiphany. I actually find the second challenge easier than the first. I naturally ask the question “what am i supposed to do with this knowledge” when ever i learn something new (or am reminded of something again). I have assumed (maybe incorrectly) that every christian knows and believes that the gospel is the “fuel that keeps Christians going and growing every day”. So, for me the real challenge that consumes the bulk of my thought is uncovering the applications of the truths in this fuel.
 We have a beautiful view out our back doors of the ocean (the back of the house is mostly glass). The water looks amazing, you can see the aqua colors of the water reflecting off the white sand bottom, and the beds of coral reef just 20 feet out. This would be paradise, except its 34 degrees F right now. Yes, i typed that correctly, the low tonight is predicted to be 32 degrees F, with a 20 mile/hr wind the wind chill should be in the teens. Its the coldest weather on record in 130 years and we’re here on vacation this week. It probably wouldnt be as bad if it were just Christa, the kids and I. We could make do and have fun bundled up. But we brought Mim (my grandmother who is 88) with us, so she could get out of the cold. This will most likely be her last vacation, so we were really hoping she would enjoy it. So far that hasnt been the case. We spent the day traveling yesterday, and it was pretty cold when we got here and today we spent most of the day in the car to try and keep Mim out of the cold. I think this has left her generally confused. I dont think she realizes we are in Florida. Its supposed to warm up as the week goes on, with a high of 80 on Friday. I think if we can get Mim outside in the warm, just watching the ocean she will be really happy.
 In a recent article posted to Harvard Business Review, Umair Haque cast his vote of no confidence in leadership as we know it today.
I agree with many of Haque’s premises, but disagree that there is a difference between leadership and buildership. Good leaders mature into leaders who build. The contrast that Haque identifies is most likely a contrast between leadership theory or poor leadership practices and the practices of mature, successful leaders. In fact, the builders that Haques sites as builders have been regarded as some of the greatest leaders in history. I believe we could also add to his list Martin Luther King Jr and Jesus Christ. The fact is, regardless of what we call these men, they led their worlds through significant and necessary change. We can come up with a new and interesting names for it, and we can identify those who have it and those who don’t, and we can criticize the things that are wrong with it and ways to do it better, but in the end it is still leadership: the ability to see a problem larger than ourselves and to move with a larger body of people towards the solution to the problem; this was, is and will continue to be leadership.
Read Haque’s article here and let me know what you think:
http://tinyurl.com/y93h6zk
 Its been a crazy week. We cut over all our email, contacts and calendar from an in-house exchange server to Google apps. We moved all of our disk storage to two new NAS servers. My brother had his Facebook account hacked and we tortured the hacker (see my Facebook page for the short story, its pretty funny). And we made it snow in the sanctuary at Grace (if you are there this weekend you’ll see it!) Oh, did I mention next week is Christmas?? Time to do some Christmas shopping.
Merry Christmas! Stop by and see us Christmas eve: 4:00, 5:30 and 7:00 PM.
Did you know there were 3,500 different English language bibles published?!?!
Mark Waltz had a good post on the topic today:
no-more-bibles-please-a-top-ten-list
What do you buy at Christmas time? Is it things that are truly needed? Is it things that help those who need help? What do you spend your money on? Next week Rex will talk about ways to share the light during Christmas.
What if we could change the world for Christmas?
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. I swam around for about half an hour after they were done and had the chance to see how much coral there is right off shore. There are no fish due to the cold snap, they either went to deeper water or died (we had about 40 dead fish on our beach the first couple days we were here), but i could imagine how many fish must usually be swimming around the coral. I am hoping we can come back some time and see it in its prime.
