Life Talk with Craig Lounsbrough

Integrity - To Understand and Live It

Integrity.  You’ve heard that “Integrity is doing the right when nobody’s watching.”  It’s not about being a crowd pleaser, or working to get some sort of edge.  It’s not agenda driven, other than we do the right thing for no other reason than it’s the right thing…and that’s not an agenda.  That’s a conviction.  It’s not about the cost of doing the right thing, or the long-term effects, or the short-term effects, or whether it will be popular or not so popular.  It’s not about the response of a person, or an organization, or a certain cultural group, or some philosophical leaning, or anything like that at all.  It’s doing the right thing for no other reason than it’s the right thing.  That’s it.

Now, a lot of people ask what the right thing is.  And in our culture, the right thing is too often based on the wrong criteria (or at least a terribly skewed one).  In the culture today, the right thing is typically based on its level of acceptance, whether that’s in our social group, or among our co-workers, or in some organization that we’ve aligned ourselves with, or it fits the current cultural climate.  Is it politically-correct, or tolerant, or does it embrace diversity (whatever that might be at any given moment).  Often it’s these criteria that define something as the right thing.  But the right thing is never defined by whether it adheres to an agenda or not, and it’s not driven by whether it happens to be popular or vogue or trendy.  The right thing will always be bigger than any of that, and it will never succumb to any of our puny definitions and our fleeting agendas.

So, what is the right thing anyway?  Well, here’s an idea that’s probably not all that popular or vogue or trendy.  But here’s an idea.  Jesus put it this way.  He said, “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.  This is the first and greatest commandment.  And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

Now, maybe you’re not a religious person, or maybe you’re not really a people person, or maybe you’re not either of these.  However, the principle is basically the same…am I acting out of love?  Love is not tolerance.  Love is not permissive.  Love is not about diversity.  It’s not about embracing some cultural ethic because it liberates people to chase what (in the end) is going to destroy them.  It’s not about liberty defined as permission to indulge in behaviors that will do nothing but indulge us to our own demise.  Love isn’t about any of that.

It’s about understanding that there are an immovable set of ethics, morals and values that in the current culture have been labeled as constraining, antiquated, irrelevant, out-moded, or any other number of other definitions that have been assigned to them.  And love understands that we can incessantly label these ethics, morals and values in these ways, but those labels won’t change the fact that what these ethics, morals and values are trying to protect us from remains unchanged.  Love will not give ourselves permission to destroy ourselves, even though we give ourselves permission to do that.  Love understands that in the scope of this existence there are principles that if ignored or defied will send us to our own destruction.  And while our culture would ignore such truths, love with not.  And it is this stubborn refusal to ignore these truths, and to commit to abide by them regardless of the cost that are the hallmarks of this thing that we call ‘integrity.’ Integrity is the refusal not to love, despite whatever that might cost us.  Be advised, being a person of integrity comes a great price.  But the price of not being a person of integrity is infinitely greater.

Additional Resources

Discover an array of additional resources on our website at www.craiglpc.com.  Find all of Craig's thoughtful, timely, and inspirational books at Amazon. com, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold.  Also, take a moment to explore Craig's Public Speaking Resources for information regarding the resources available to your business, ministry, or organization.

At times, the innumerable dialogues regarding the state of our nation appear to be less dialogues and more something akin to agenda mongering and rights crusading.  It seems that we have hijacked the solemn rights and sacred liberties afforded us and have forced them into servitude around our ego-centric agendas and myopic special interests.  The altar of self is where nations perish.  And on that altar we have too often found ourselves tediously picking apart the fabric of liberty and meticulously editing the founding principles of this nation so that we might justify those agendas and rationalize those interests in the name of the very freedom we are abusing.

In response to these actions, leaders and heralds of debatable origins spout bold platitudes and chart even bolder courses that often have little substance and are void of the balance achieved through the merging of wisdom seasoned by time, the vision gifted through deep struggle, and the astuteness afforded by heritage.  It seems that we are adrift on the tides of whimsy instead of the currents of calling, and that the sails borne by this ship of state are too often driven by the fickle winds of politically-correct agendas and bane opportunists instead of buoyed firm by the hard-core values born of faith and legacy.

And has the insanity of such realities been adopted as our norm?  Has our identity as a proud people become the mess that we’ve permitted it to become?  Is this who we are, and are we satisfied with those who of their limited vision and selfish notions run on anemic platforms that perpetuate this very mentality while at the very same time saying those platforms do not?  And in the mess of it all, have we chosen to follow those who talk about what has perished with themselves having little to no idea of what has actually perished?

A Longing Undefined

There seems to be a longing born of a great absence.  And there is likewise a passionate searching arising from that absence that appears to be seizing this nation today.  In a malaise spawned of comfort we have increasingly distanced ourselves from the founding principles of our nation, yet we have not distanced ourselves so far that we fail to feel the bruising impact of this profound absence.  And it is within this perplexing state that the soul of an entire nation of people are finding themselves plagued by a sense that something has perished that should never have perished.  And in this, there is an ever-stirring sense that it is somehow our solemn duty to find this thing that has perished and restore it so that this cherished nation might rise to heights that excel those summited at even at its most glorious moments.

The Core Challenge

While it may appear simplistic, I would suggest that we begin with something simply powerful.  I would suggest that this grand undertaking might begin by reclaiming two simple yet potently unifying principles upon which this nation was rigorously founded. 

First, I would suggest that freedom that is not exercised for the common good is freedom absconded and assaulted.  Freedom exercised for self is nothing more than greed in disguise, for to hoard assets of any kind is to simultaneously move someone else somewhere else into a deeper state of impoverishment.  And to create scandalous agendas driven by self-interest is to sequester others with the shackles of our unrestrained ambitions.  Therefore, freedom rightly exercised on behalf of the person standing next to us is impoverishment decisively crushed under the heels of liberty, and spurious agendas wholly exposed under the piercing light of principle.  And when these things transpire, freedom is free to be free.  And nothing man can devise can stand in the way of that.

Second, I would further suggest that morals abandoned as a means of granting ourselves permission that these morals would not have granted us is freedom traded for license.  Such a trade-off is nothing less than cultural suicide.  Freedom is never license, and we would be wise to understand that the distinction between the two is so utterly profound that they cannot exist in proximity to one another.  Rather, freedom is the manifestation of a deeply held confidence that if we are afforded choice, mankind is innately principled by morals and sufficiently sacrificial in nature due to an adherence to these morals that we will fight all lesser impulses and consistently choose with selfless integrity.  Without these timeless morals, decay and anarchy will be our lot.  With them, the impossible will be our servant.

A Noble Calling

It is my belief that we are a far greater people than we have chosen to become.  I would stand by the conviction that we are not what we have fallen to, and inherently we know this.  And in the carnage of freedoms abused and morals abandoned there yet lies tremendous potential.  And that potential lies not in legislative bodies, or towering institutions, or stirring platitudes, or political platforms of any design. 

Rather, this potential resides in each of us.  For great nations are built on individual people all of type and sort who seize the principles of freedom for all, who zealously hold to timeless morals despite the cost, and who join with other like-minded people in an indomitable march of mankind that nothing in all of mankind can stand against.  It is the common man and the common woman who intentionally lives out these principles in their sphere of influence, whether that be large or small, that changes lives, awakens nations, and alters history.

May we all take such stands.  And as a result, may there emerge a ground swell of epic restoration unprecedented that sweeps our hearts, seizes our souls, and restores the greatness that has been the enduring hallmark of this great nation.

Additional Resources

Discover an array of additional resources on our website at www.craiglpc.com.  Find all of Craig's thoughtful, timely, and inspirational books at Amazon. com, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold.  Also, take a moment to explore Craig's Public Speaking Resources for information regarding the resources available to your business, ministry, or organization.

It's Not About Being Ordinary

It’s not about being ordinary, because we all are.  In talking about myself, I’m about as ‘ordinary’ as they come.  But, it’s not about being ordinary.  It’s about recognizing that being ordinary does not limit us to ordinary things.  That’s the beauty of it.  We’re all ordinary, which gives us everything that we need to be extra-ordinary.  God granted you and He granted me all of the elements, all of the ingredients (if you will) to do what we never thought we could do.  You come packaged with resources that (if used correctly) can accomplish things that are greater than the sum total of those resources.  And if there’s some tragedy in all of that, it’s that people don’t use them correctly, and therefore they never accomplish the great things that were theirs to accomplish.

The incredibly disappointing thing is that people look at who they are through the lens of who ‘they’ are.  And through that lens (which is incredibly limiting) we don’t see all that we are.  We have this vague understanding of ourselves, which leaves a whole lot of ourselves unknown, or ill-defined, or misunderstood, or mis-defined altogether.  And we walk through our lives with this less-than-accurate understanding of who we are.  And that understanding (whatever it happens to be) is typically a horribly marginalized and minimized view of who we really are.  So we might be ordinary, but we diminish the incredible abilities that are inherent in being ‘ordinary.’  Remember, “being ordinary” (as much as we diminish it) “does not limit us to ordinary things.”

I think that God wants you to see who you are.  The whole of who you are.  Not just the good, but everything that’s maybe not so good as well.  Not just the stuff that we’re proud of (if we even have anything that we’d say we’re proud of) but all of the stuff.  Not just the successes, but the failures as well.  Not just the bright and shiny things within us, but the dark places too.

Because all of that is the stuff of the ordinary.  And God waits to take everything that’s ordinary within you and do something extra-ordinary with it because “We’re all ordinary, which gives us everything that we need to be extra-ordinary.”  That’s what God does.  He takes whatever we are and He makes it into everything that we are not.  He’s not looking for us to build all that up so that it eventually adds up to something that God can use.  He’s looking for us to surrender all that’s ordinary about us to Him (in whatever condition it’s in) so that He can build it up to something He can use.  “It’s about recognizing that being ordinary does not limit us to ordinary things,” because we have an extra-ordinary God who wants to birth a bunch of extra-ordinary things in your life.   

Additional Resources

Discover an array of additional resources on our website at www.craiglpc.com.  Find all of Craig's thoughtful, timely, and inspirational books at Amazon. com, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold.  Also, take a moment to explore Craig's Public Speaking Resources for information regarding the resources available to your business, ministry, or organization.

We Are More - Understanding Our Capacity

“Whatever you see within yourself, let it be the whole of yourself.  For too often we have been brutalized by our own sense of inadequacy and we’ve been held hostage to the lesser choices born of such a debilitating sense of self.  Know this, that latent within you there lies more than ample resources begging to be called forth to smash the chains forged of such an incapacitating sense of self.  And it is my prayer that you would press against everything within you that would hold you back, and that you would raise whatever voice you have and extend that call.”

You are more than you realize.  A lot more.  You’ve probably heard that before, and if you haven’t, you’re long overdue.  You are more than you realize.  But the thing is, we don’t feel that we are ‘more.’  If anything, the things that happened to us would suggest the opposite…that we’re less than what we hoped we were (and probably a whole lot less).  Whether that’s failure (in any of the million different ways that we fail), or ridicule, or jobs lost, or relationships that blew up, or dreams that went up in smoke, or friends that walked away, or opportunities that drifted away, or family members who were critical to the point that we wished they went away…or whatever it might be.  The statement that “we are more than we realize” just doesn’t seem to fit this stuff.

In my recent book, “The Self That I Long to Believe In,” I wrote this:

“The majesty of our humanity and the capabilities laid out within us are nothing short of marvelous; so much so that we are barely cognizant of it.  That in and of itself may be why we don’t recognize them and therefore don’t believe that they exist.  All of us run deep with untapped potential that is rustling just under the surface of our lives waiting to be unleashed.”

We are ‘more.’  Our circumstances don’t have the power to refute that or change that.  For sure, our circumstances can lead us to believe that we’re not ‘more,’ and they can be very convincing in doing that.  Our circumstances can also lead us to believe that we’re a whole lot less than we thought ourselves to be, and those circumstances can be incredibly convincing as well.  But our capacity exceeds the failures that we experience and the criticisms that are thrown in our faces.  Our abilities are not defined by what people have said, or the choices that we have made.  Our abilities exceed all of those.  They are greater than the limits of our imaginations, and they are not limited by people or choices that have proven to be less than imaginative.   

That “more” will always be there whether you use it or not.  It sits at the ready whether we recognize it or not.  We are ‘more.’  That’s not the issue.  The issue is will we understand that we are ‘more,’ and will we allow that ‘more’ begin to shape us into ‘more.’ 

Additional Resources

Discover an array of additional resources on our website at www.craiglpc.com.  Find all of Craig's thoughtful, timely, and inspirational books at Amazon. com, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold.  Also, take a moment to explore Craig's Public Speaking Resources for information regarding the resources available to your business, ministry, or organization.

The majesty of our humanity and the capabilities laid out within us are nothing short of marvelous; so much so that we are barely cognizant of it.  All of us run thick with untapped potential.  We are rich with possibility and formidably equipped to tease the cusp of the impossible and to overcome it in the teasing.  The essence of our being is immense beyond words and the breadth of it eclipses any syntax to frame it all.  Despite the incomprehensible complexity of it all, the entirety of this essence is precisely consolidated and ingeniously joined so that the full measure of it might be released without any of it wasted or missed in the releasing.  We are crafted to enhance all that exists around us and to make everything immeasurably more than what is.  We are marvelous in ways so grand that such marvel escapes us although it resides right within each of us.  Indeed, we are created in just this way.

This potential is not something of muse, as we might presume it to be since we tend to see so little of it.  It’s not some hollow ideal that is more the trappings of some imaginative author who spins such ideas because they don’t have the courage to face the realities of who or what we really are.  This is not about some feeble attempt to bolster our belief in ourselves as we watch the worst of ourselves create a world that we’re turning into the worst of itself.  This potential is real.  Very real.  It may visit us rarely as it is much easier to access the lesser side of ourselves.  But, it is real and it is always waiting.

Playground Feuds and Turf Wars

We have misplaced the majesty of our humanity in the lesser battles that we readily (and rather ignorantly) join.  We cast ourselves as heroes selflessly battling for the soul of a community, a family or a nation when in fact we are engaged in playgrounds feuds of no greater importance than those played out on elementary playgrounds.  We lay claim to some turf, which is less about what the turf might actually be and more about the fact that it’s turf (whatever it might be).  We see ourselves on some colossal pilgrimage born of calling or destiny or the rallying of the masses against some great evil, however we have justified it.  It must be pointed out that at times the pilgrimages are in fact colossal and of significant importance, but too many times what’s colossal is the appetite of our egos verses the worthiness of the venture.  And so, too often we engage in these dirty little mongering turf wars that are more the stuff of mud-slinging than anything that might raise up humanity or change the course of history itself.

We wallow in the bane of blustering banter and then we gorge it fat on reckless arguments whose goal is to win, with us long having forgotten what exactly it is that we’re trying to win.  Everything becomes a tit-for-tat circus of push and shove that might be attributed to two toddlers fighting over a toy that neither of them really wants in the first place.  The focus becomes on finding some weakness, some point of hidden vulnerability, some crack in the proverbial armor that we can exploit in the pursuit of pursuing.  We want to posture ourselves as some sort of valiant and sturdy victor, and if perchance we fall to the throes of defeat we then position ourselves as the victimized victim whose defeat clearly illustrates the impenetrable validity of their cause.  And in the depravity and insanity of all of this we have misplaced the majesty of our humanity and we have wholly abandoned our calling.

To Reclaim Our Majesty

Might it be time to be accountable to who we’ve become so that we can make ourselves accountable to what we can be?  Are we willing to divest ourselves of all the lesser things that we have elevated as greater things and engage in both a pointed and painful evaluation of who we’ve become?  And once we’ve done that, are we brave enough to look at the damage that we’re incurred in the becoming?  Can we relinquish our claim to whatever bit of turf we’ve claimed and lay our playground feuds to rest in deference to a cause far greater than the tiny space that we occupy?  Can we shake ourselves out of ourselves sufficiently to wake up to the far greater things that lay ‘round about us?  Can we begin to see others as less enemies and more people whose differing views may inform our own?  At what point we will understand that partnership and camaraderie must be preserved even when differences of beliefs or opinions would do their level best to blast us into warring camps?  When will we forfeit what we’ve become in order to become something so vastly superior to what we’ve become?

It’s not that such a shift is impossible (despite the fact that the behaviors exhibited in our world might suggest otherwise).  But in the face of the reckless insanity all around us, will we dare to dare?  Will we raise ourselves up to embrace the fullness of our humanity?  Will we cast off the scourge of selfish agendas and the saber-rattling born of insatiable egos?  Will we be what we’ve chosen not to be at whatever cost we might pay to do so, recognizing that the cost of not doing so is far, far greater?  Will we shed all that we’ve become to become all that we can be?  In essence, will we reclaim the majesty of our humanity as it was created and tenderly fashioned to be?

I Believe

I am utterly confident in our ability to do all of those things.  I have great hope in humanity.  I have even greater hope in the God that bestowed us with abilities that in fact mirrored His own.  And for that reason, I have a pervading and insatiable hope.  Though some might say so, I do not believe that kind of hope to be misplaced.  I believe in us; in you and me.  I believe that we have not done well, but I believe we can yet do very well.  I believe in something better.  I believe that we can join together in a mutual assault on the mounting challenges in our world instead of engaging in mounting assaults on each other.  I believe, and I hope that everyone of us might join me in that belief.  And in that joining might we rigorously inventory how we can be different.  And then let us go and begin the process of making things different.  Let us reclaim the majesty of our humanity in the care of humanity.

Additional Resources

Discover an array of additional resources on our website at www.craiglpc.com.  Find all of Craig's thoughtful, timely, and inspirational books at Amazon. com, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold.  Finally, take a moment to explore Craig's Public Speaking Resources for information regarding the resources available to your business, ministry, or organization.

Thinking It's Over When It's Not

It’s over…we tell ourselves.  It’s over.  Whatever it might be (or might have been) it’s gone and there’s no getting it back.  The loss is too big.  The obstacles are too daunting.  Things have changed so much that whatever we lost no longer has a place in the current reality that we’re living in.  We’re one person (just one person) trapped in a downward spiral that’s far more powerful than all of us put together.  The glass isn’t half empty.  The fact is, there is no glass.  We can’t pick up where we left off because where we left off...left. It’s over…so we think.

In processing all of this for myself, I wrote this quote:

“The last time I saw it, its hull was crushed and it laid helpless against the incessant swells that rolled up upon the shallows within which it laid canted and broken.  Yet, in the hands of a seasoned sailor who saw potential in the carnage, it was hauled out the swells, lovingly repaired, and the next year it pushed out past the swells that had held it helpless and it sailed again.  And although our hulls are crushed beyond hope of repair and we find ourselves helplessly awash in the incessant swells of our sin, with God we too can sail again.”

Sometimes things are ‘over’ only because we believe them to be over.  We’ve been told that they’re over.  Or everyone around us says that they’re over.  Or the cultural climate seems to say that they’re over.  Or those without vision have never realized that they lost anything because they never saw what they had in the first place, so they tell us that nothing’s over because nothing was lost to begin with.  Or people have chosen to believe that they’re over because that’s easier than hoping that they’re not.  We don’t want to look the fool and try to save something that’s no longer there to save, so we tell ourselves and those around us that it’s over…so we think.  But we can sail again.

Is something really over?  Have we actually lost something that we can’t reclaim?  Is it gone forever?  Or, is that what we’ve chosen to believe.  It’s my sense that most things aren’t over (at all).  Rather, it’s our belief that they are (which is a ‘belief,’ but not necessarily a ‘reality’).  It’s more our attitude, or our fears, or our unwillingness to challenge popular thinking, or our unwillingness to risk grabbing hold of a vision, or a lack of belief in ourselves, or more importantly, a lack of belief in God.  In the Bible, Jesus said, “What is impossible with man is possible with God.”  Do you get that?  Do you understand what that opens up?  Do you understand that our perception that something is over does not take into account that with God, nothing is over?  That our families, our communities, our dreams, our relationships, our nation can sail again?  That there are always possibilities, even when all we see are massive impossibilities?  That what we feel we have to walk away from are things that have a ton of possibilities still living and breathing within them?  Is something really over?  Really?  You might want to think about that because you’d be amazed at all of the things that can sail again.

Additional Resources

Discover an array of additional resources on our website at www.craiglpc.com.  Find all of Craig's thoughtful, timely, and inspirational books at Amazon. com, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold.  Also, take a moment to explore Craig's Public Speaking Resources for information regarding the resources available to your business, ministry, or organization.

Becoming Accountable

Accountability…might it be time to be accountable to who we’ve become so that we can make ourselves accountable to what we can be?  Are we willing to divest ourselves of all the lesser things that we have elevated as greater things and engage in both a pointed and painful evaluation of who we’ve become?  And once we’ve done that, are we brave enough to look at the damage that we’re incurred in the becoming?  Can we relinquish our claim to whatever bit of turf we’ve claimed and lay our playground feuds to rest in deference to a cause far greater than the tiny space that we occupy?  Can we shake ourselves out of ourselves sufficiently to wake up to the far greater things that lay ‘round about us?  Can we begin to see others as less enemies and more people whose differing views may inform our own?  At what point we will understand that partnership and camaraderie must be preserved even when differences of beliefs or opinions would do their level best to blast us into warring camps?  When will we forfeit what we’ve become in order to become something so vastly superior to what we’ve become?

It’s not that such a shift is impossible (despite the fact that the behaviors exhibited in our world might suggest otherwise).  But in the face of the reckless insanity all around us, will we dare to dare?  Will we raise ourselves up to embrace the fullness of our humanity?  Will we cast off the scourge of selfish agendas and the saber-rattling born of insatiable egos?  Will we be what we’ve chosen not to be at whatever cost we might pay to do so, recognizing that the cost of not doing so is far, far greater?  Will we shed all that we’ve become to become all that we can be?  In essence, will we reclaim the majesty of our humanity as it was created and tenderly fashioned to be?

I believe that we have not done well, but I believe we can yet do very well.  I believe in something better.  I believe that we can join together in a mutual assault on the mounting challenges in our world instead of engaging in mounting assaults on each other.  I believe, and I hope that everyone of us might join me in that belief.  And in that joining might we rigorously inventory how we can be different.  And then let us go and begin the process of making things different.  Let us reclaim the majesty of our humanity in the care of humanity.

Additional Resources

Discover an array of additional resources on our website at www.craiglpc.com.  Find all of Craig's thoughtful, timely, and inspirational books at Amazon. com, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold.  Also, take a moment to explore Craig's Public Speaking Resources for information regarding the resources available to your business, ministry, or organization.

Dead-End Roads of Our Making

We chart these paths.  We set these goals.  We ponder where we are, and from there we determine where we want to go.  There’s some sort of road that we’re walking, whether that’s a road of our own making, or it’s a road that everybody is walking, or it’s the road that culturally vogue or socially trending.  Sometimes that road is well defined and clear.  Sometimes there’s very little definition to it all, and we end up wondering if we’re really on any sort of road at all.  And then some of us are just plain lost in the woods.  “There’s some sort of road that we’re all walking.”

Whatever kind of road that we’re on, it’s both amazing and frustrating how many of those roads end up at dead-ends.  It’s stunning that there are millions of people who are standing at the end of some road (or what they thought was a road) and it ends.  It just ends.  They had visualized it going somewhere great, or exciting, or meaningful.  It was the path to their dreams.  It was the road to a life-long relationship.  The highway to fiscal wealth or career advancement.  The byway that led them to everything that everyone else said that they could never do or never be…but it doesn’t go to any of those kinds of places at all.  It dead-ends.  In the middle of nowhere.

A dead-end is likely the product of being on the wrong road.  And if I created the road, it’s probably going to dead-end because it’s probably the wrong road.  Frequently, the dead-end will be up out of sight from where we started this journey (so that we won’t have second-thoughts taking it).  Or, we can actually see the dead-end, but we live in denial of it because we want what we want.  Or, the people around us took it and were too embarrassed to tell us that we would run into a dead-end because they were embarrassed that they ran into a dead-end.  Or, the culture has deluded us into believing that it’s not a dead-end at all (even though it looks strikingly similar to a dead-end).

Dead-ends.  The only road that I know of that has no dead-ends is the one that God lays out for us.  Those are roads of no dead-ends.  Rather, those are roads of endless beginnings.  Forever beginnings.  Perpetual beginnings.  Where the world says that the road will stop, the roads God creates keep right on going.  When the mountains become too high, or the valleys become too low and the roads come to a screaming halt, God has already constructed a bridge or leveled the valley.  “There’s some sort of road that we’re walking.”  And if God didn’t create it, your dead-end is just around the ‘corner.’  If He did create it, you don’t need to worry about the ‘corners.’

Additional Resources

Discover an array of additional resources on our website at www.craiglpc.com.  Find all of Craig's thoughtful, timely, and inspirational books at Amazon. com, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold.  Also, take a moment to explore Craig's Public Speaking Resources for information regarding the resources available to your business, ministry, or organization.

How Do We Look at Time?

“Time is the great intimidator, steadily stealing away precious seconds with no pause in the stealing.  And such thievery leads us to believe that in time, the pilfering of these seconds will eventually exhaust all such seconds, leaving us at the ‘end’ of everything.  Yet, God states that the seconds are actually the countdown to the ‘beginning’ of everything.”

How do we look at time?  As a thief?  As something that moves way too fast?  As something that robbed our youth and is eroding our lives with every tick of the clock?  Do we see it as something that there’s never enough of?  Do we see it as something that moves faster the busier that we become, so there’s never any chance that we will ever be able to catch up?  Or, do we see it as something that drags when we’re bored, so much so that we’d gladly forfeit the time just to get out of the boredom?  If we’re tired of life, or frustrated with our circumstances, or if we just don’t care anymore, do we wish that time didn’t exist in the first place so that we’d be free of whatever it is that we want to be free of?  How do we look at time?

But is it possible that time is a resource?  And in the expending of that resource (that we call time) is it possible that we can invest in something that we never really thought of?  Something that we never really considered?  Is the trade-off expending time that we can’t get back, for something that we can?  Are we investing in something that can change a life, or alter the trajectory of a marriage gone sideways, or bring healing to someone who’s wounded, or give a bit of light to someone who’s living out their life in nothing but darkness?  Is time a resource (when used wisely) can shape a community, touch a nation, or change the world?  And more profoundly than all of that, is it something that God has given us to use now that it can have an eternal impact that is not bound by time at all?  Is time the thing that we use to bring people to a God Who’s deepest desire is to ultimately bring all of those people to a place called “eternity” where there is no time? 

If we use our time to achieve things like this, the passing of time and the loss of that time in the passing is infinitely offset by the good that came out of that time.  No, we can’t get time back.  No, it’s not a renewable resource.  When it’s gone, it’s gone.  But what if the expenditure was offset by the good that came out of that time?  What about that?  And what if that expenditure touches a life for an eternity of time?  I would think that that is time well spent, and I would think that it makes the time we have the place from which we change things for all of time.

Do We Search for the Truth?

Do we search for the truth, or do we search for ways around the truth?  Do we even take the time to consider a question like that out of the long-held assumption that we are, in fact, looking for the truth because (we assume) that that’s the obvious thing to do?  What insanity would behoove us to do anything less?  But do we search for the truth, or do we search for ways around the truth?  Maybe we should consider the fact that there are a whole lot of reasons why we actually might stoop to something less.

Truth be told, the truth may not be what we want it to be.  It may not support our agendas, or our desires.  In fact, it might actually render those things as erroneous and all-together ill-fated.  The truth may not support all of the things that we passionately wish to believe, or have talked ourselves into believing.  Or truth may dare to go so far as to actually call the entirety of those beliefs into question, and call us out for believing in them in the first place.  Do we search for the truth even when it takes the foundations that we’ve laboriously built with the sweat of our brow and the best of our years, and does truth handily expose those foundations as weak, entirely misappropriated, and as nothing more than sand piled in every place except the right place?  Will we search for truth even when it looks us square in the face and tells us this kind of stuff?  Will we search for it knowing that there is a very distinct possibility that it will tell us everything that we don’t want to hear in every way that we don’t want to hear it?  Will we search for truth even then?

I don’t know that we do.  In fact, what we seem to search for the most are ways to circumvent the truth.  Our search does not seem to be ‘for’ the truth, but rather it seems to be far more vested in ways to get ‘around’ the truth.  We would not even begin to label our actions as such because such actions would immediately call the whole of our character into question.  But what we label something does not make it what we’ve labeled it.  Our search seems to be one of committed avoidance.  It is one of intentional evasion, of manufactured detours, of clever deviations that are so slick that we don’t even realize that we deviated.  It’s not that we run from the truth as much as we diligently work to create pathways around it, that in the end, never get us around anything.  I wonder if that’s really more of what we do.

And as such, these evasive endeavors are quite naturally filled with such familiar things as slippery denials, evasive rationalizations, ambiguous justifications, relentless blame-placing, rogue fear-mongering, the incessant spinning of events, the bogus editing of facts, and the mind-boggling contortions where we take reality and make it something other than reality.

But likely the most dangerous of these is the self-endowed liberty that we have granted ourselves to make truth whatever we wish to make it.  Therefore, it’s not about avoidance, because conveniently, that’s no longer necessary.  Rather, it’s about creating, which is avoidance of the most calculated, but ill-fated sort.  It’s about making truth whatever we want it to be.  It’s about making it fit whatever agenda, or belief system, or value system, or platform, or whatever it is that we want it to fit.  If truth will not grant us that which we wish, we will simply edit it until it does.  But in the end, it is no longer truth, and truth be told, we will eventually find that out, and we’ll probably find it out the hard way.

Truth.  Do we search for it, or do we do something else with it?  You might ask yourself, in a truthful kind of way, what you’re doing with it.

“Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

• Jesus Christ