Last Tuesday, Pastor Paul Scanlon of Abundant Life Ministries came and spoke to the staff at Celebration Church.
It was good stuff.
One of the things he talked about was creating an atmosphere of growth. He used a laptop as an analogy for human tendency. If you let a laptop sit there, it will eventually “go to sleep.” The same goes for us as humans. We naturally tend to maintain the status quo and be lazy.
But use a laptop just a little bit and the possibilities are limitless. Force a human to grow and his/her possibilities are limitless.
So I’ve been thinking about creating an atmosphere of growth in my own spiritual life.
For starters, there are a handful of things I know I need to be consistently growing in regardless of what season or stage in life I’m in.
- Reading/meditating/memorizing the Bible
- Praying (not just for my needs, but others as well)
- Ability to love and show love
- Being a light to those who don’t know Jesus
Those are the ones I can think of right now. I’m a systems kind of guy, so what I plan on doing is looking up some related scripture, memorizing them and taking a look at my progress on these areas each month.
Let’s call this Phase 1 of creating a growth environment. ;)
heard you speak at joyce meyer women conference every word you said was a message for me to take to my pastor. It is as if he is walking in your footstep. thanks for your words of encouragement.
@Winifred: Thanks for reading this article. Just for clarification, I am not Paul Scanlon. I was just writing about him. ;)
Thought you’d like this. we need to to get together soon on some of this stuff i’m processing from the Asian American Pastors I met in NyC.
1st culture- dominant culture in society or org, 2nd culture- reactive..
3rd culture- adaptive.. it’s a mindset and will to live learn serve in any culture even in the midst of pain and discomfort
you are big time 3rd culture.
For real. Pastor Paul’s message had so many good, thought-provoking points.
Didn’t know you had a blog. I just added you to my blogroll and subscribed to your feed. Looking forward to reading some more from Pastor Big. ;)
lovin the blog alex. it’s crazy how how Pastor Paul’s message has so many threads that take us in so many directions. anyways…see ya when you get back. -big john