Please note: the podcast for part 4 of this message will be available on Wednesday 3.31.10.  Thanks for your patience.  You can download the slides with scriptures and quotes by clicking Positioned for Growth-4 3.28.10.

Did you see the story last week on CNN about Angie Sanclemente?  She was a model in Columbia, South America and even won a prestigious beauty contest.  Then they found out that she lied about the contest- she’d been married before.  Her life went downhill—today she’s one of the kingpins of the largest drug networks in the world.  How did that happen?  She grew up in a poor neighborhood with dirt streets and crushing poverty.  She was smart and industrious, and promised herself she would never go back to her old neighborhood.  When she was given the opportunity to excel with her gifts, she chose to lie, cheat and eventually it caught up to her.  In desperation she turned to the drug dealers that hang around the modeling world.  She became a powerbroker in a trade that now forces her to live on the run as one of the most wanted criminals in the world.

Dr. Henry Cloud addresses this need for “foundations for life-long success” in his writings:

“Life will not work until we have the character to make it work, and we can only get that through spiritual growth doing it God’s way. Therefore, we have to commit to the process of growth instead of only committing to the desired result. That means we have to join the structures that will help us do that, like a small group, mentor, accountability relationship, etc. and get on the path of character change.”

Today we finished the “Postured for Growth” series with these final three principles:

1.  Integrated characters understand the need for rest and are able to use it.
2. Growing people are also invested in helping others to grow.
3. The integrated character is growing in many areas of life–not just one.

Meditation questions:

1-    Do I rest well?  Do I take time to recuperate and prepare for the week ahead?  Is my rest level 1 (absence of work) or level 2 (disengaging, renewal, re-creation)?

2-    Who am I helping to grow?  In what areas are they focusing their energy?  How is it helping me in return?

3-    What are my growth fronts?  What is the connection of my various growth areas, how do they complement one another?

Growing is life.  We choose to allow Christ into the center of our values, choices, and plans.  Then He guides us to grow and heal, redeeming areas that are broken or immature.  He loves us too much to ignore lack of integration in our character!  Then He leads us into adventures that stretch us, help us to grow and teach us to embrace difficulty.  He leads us into lives of meaning and hope, for ourselves and others.

I’ll leave you with this quote by Donald Miller from his book,  A Million Miles in a Thousand Years:

“If you watched a movie about a guy who wanted a Volvo and worked for years to get it, you wouldn’t cry at the end when he drove off the lot, testing the windshield wipers.  You wouldn’t tell your friends you saw a beautiful movie or go home and put a record on to think about the story you’d seen.  The truth is, you wouldn’t remember that movie a week later, except that you’d feel robbed and want your money back.  Nobody cries at the end of a movie about a guy who wants a Volvo.

But we spend years actually living those stories, and expect our lives to feel meaningful.  The truth is, if what we choose to do with our lives won’t make a story meaningful, it won’t make a life meaningful either.”

I’d love to hear your feedback on this series.  What principles hit home for you?

-Don Riling

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We’re taking a break today from the “Positioned for Growth” series.  Our guest speaker at Mosaic is Clark Barnard, director of the YWAM base in Iquitos, Peru.  Clark also taught Friday and Saturday at our annual leadership retreat.

The theme of the whole weekend is from the leadership principles of Ernest Shackleton, who led one of the most amazing rescues in history during an Antarctic polar expedition.  Thomas Pychon commented after studying Shackleton: “You wait- everyone has an Antarctic.”

It’s a painful truth about life. Despite meticulous planning and careful risk assessment, there will always be some life challenges that will push us to the limits of our character and skills to cope.  The key is to respond with a willingness to learn, and loads of courage.

Thank you to Clark Barnard for his investment in our leadership community this weekend. His messages are timely.  We’re focusing on our unique mission for the years ahead; we need the practical and timeless truths we’ve heard this weekend.

Next week we’ll finish the “Positioned for Growth” series.  Thank you to each of you who have sent feedback; I’m encouraged by the hunger for growth I’m witnessing.

Don Riling

Lead Pastor, Mosaic Church

Don’t forget: you can listen to Clark’s message at Mosaic today by clicking here or going to the podcast button on your right.  You can also subscribe to the weekly messages via Itunes podcasts.

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We’re beginning something new with this series.  You can now download the message slides in PDF format by clicking Positioned for Growth-3 3.14.10. This gives you the scriptures and quotes from each message.  The podcast of the message is always available on iTunes, or by clicking here.

This week we covered the next three principles (of 12) of growth by Dr. Henry Cloud:

7. People of mature character submit to mentors further down the road than themselves.

8. People of integrated character are able to balance enjoying the present with not wanting to stay there.

9. Mature people push themselves to do things they never have done before.

How does adversity help us grow through adversity?  John Ortberg shows us four ways in his book, “The Me I Want to Be.” (p.236-242)

1) “Rising to a challenge reveals abilities hidden within you (and beyond you!) that would otherwise have remained dormant.”

Example:  Joseph

“God wasn’t at work producing the circumstances Joseph wanted.  God was at work in bad circumstances producing the Joseph that God wanted.  God isn’t at work producing the circumstances you want.  God is at work in bad circumstances producing the you he wants.”

2)  “Adversity can deepen relationships.”

“Somehow suffering can soften a heart and deepen friendships in a unique way…

Loss is not simply something to be recovered from.  Hope does not mean returning to happiness as soon as possible.  God comes to us in our grief and shares it.  In that shared grief, we find love.  ‘Mourn with those who mourn,’ Paul says.  Love meets in shared suffering and broken souls like no other kind of love.”

3) “Adversity can change your priorities about what really matters.”

“It is as if in normal life we step onto a treadmill and begin running after something-money, security, or success-when adversity knocks us off.  Suffering enables us to see the folly of chasing after temporal gods, and when people suffer, they often resolve not to return to their old way of life when things normalize.  But the key to accomplishing that is taking action before normal life takes over again.  We have a finite window of time to make changes;  otherwise we will drift back to our old patterns.”

4) “Adversity points us to the Hope beyond ourselves.”

“When circumstances look bleak, when the stock market is down, or when your morale is sinking or your assets are shrinking or your health is collapsing, you may wonder, Is anything going up?

Yes.

The chance to trust God when trusting isn’t easy is wide open.  The prospect for modeling hope for a hope-needy world is trending upward.  And the possibility of cultivating a storm-proof faith is always going up.  This is so because certain truths remain unchanged;  God remains sovereign, grace beats sin, prayers get heard, the Bible endures, heaven’s mercies spring up new every morning, the cross still testifies to the power of sacrificial love, the tomb is still empty, and the kingdom that Jesus announced is still expanding without needing to be bailed out with human efforts.

God is still in the business of redemption, specializing in bringing something very, very good out of something very, very bad.”

“We sometimes yearn for a problem-free life, but that would be death by boredom.  It is in working to solve problems and overcome challenges that we become the person God wants us to be.  Every problem is an invitation from the Spirit, and when we say yes, we are in the flow.

So don’t ask for comfort.  Don’t ask for ease.  Don’t ask for manageability.  Ask to be given a burden for a challenge bigger than yourself-one that can make a difference in the world, one that will require the best you have to give it and then leave some space for God besides.  Ask for a task that will keep you learning and growing and uncomfortable and hungry.”

*********

Ask yourself these questions.  Take some time and really think about them:

1-    Do I have mentors in my life?  Do I have the courage to submit to their input?

2-    Am I content with today, while hungry to grow tomorrow?

3-    Do I seek new experiences– that will help me grow and face my fears?

Thank you for all of the feedback.  It’s helpful to know so many people are digging into these principles.

-Don Riling

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