What Friendship Looks Like

Happy Friday Friends!

I hope and trust this post finds you all having a great day as a glorious new day begins to dawn in my Sweet Home Alabama! :)

This week I want to share a few excerpts from The Seven Laws of Love: Essential Principles For Building Stronger Relationships by Dave Willis. This is an excellent book and I offer it my highest recommendation for those who genuinely want to build better relationships in their lives.

The excerpts I am going to share this morning come from Chapter 11 which is titled, Loving Your Friends. The first excerpt comes from a section Dave titled, The Litmus Test Of Friendship.

"Here are a few key traits that should be present in any healthy friendship. These are straight from the Bible, so you can use them as a checklist in your friendships to make sure you and your friends are on a healthy track.

1. Friends forgive.

Friends don't bring up old dirt and gossip about each other. They forgive and seek forgiveness with transparency and humility.

"Love prospers when a fault is forgiven, but dwelling on it separates close friends." (Prov. 17:9). 

2. Friends love unconditionally.

They are there for you when you need them most, not just when it's convenient. We should love each other with the same kind of love God has shown us.

"Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other" (I John 4:11).

3. Friends have your back.

Loyalty is vital to friendship. There's no such thing as a "frenemy."

"There are 'friends' who destroy each other, but a real friend sticks closer than a brother" (Prov. 18:24).

4. Friends tell you the truth.

Even when it's hard to hear, friends will speak the truth in love. An enemy will tell you what you want to hear but won't love you enough to tell you a difficult truth.

"An honest answer is like a kiss of friendship" (Prov. 24:26).

5. Friends make each other better.

Friends don't pull each other down; they lift each other up. They encourage one another toward continuous improvement.

"As iron sharpens iron, so a friend sharpens a friend" (Prov. 27:17).

6. Friends communicate openly.

Friends communicate openly, honestly, and respectfully.

"I no longer call you slaves, because a master doesn't confide in his slaves. Now you are my friends, since I have told you everything the Father told me: (John 15:15)."

Powerful, isn't it? When I read it I thought it a great list of what true friendship looks like and I just had to share it with y'all! :)

And a couple of questions/challenges for all of us:

1. How are you and I doing in our friendships? Are we the type of friend described above? Let us use this as a checklist to search our own hearts and to adjust where necessary. And please, let's not spend our time beating ourselves up over our failures of yesterday...we cannot change them. But, this day right here, well, we have new choices, new decisions and beautiful new opportunities in this day! :)

2. How are our friends doing in their relationships with us? Do we have true friends, as described above? If we think someone is a friend however there is an issue with some of the areas above, let's walk out "friends communicate openly" and "friends make each other better." And please remember, conflict, and properly dealing with it, gives the relationship the opportunity to grow stronger roots. It is not a bad thing if handled properly, it is a growth step.

I also want to share a couple of quotes that I came across this morning in my reading...still in the same chapter - I told ya this book is good!!! :)

"When we love people, we make it a priority to be present with them. True friendship requires availability. We aren't just there in the moments that are convenient for us; we're also there in moments that are important to them."

"...people aren't interruptions to our agendas; people are the agenda."

Please don't hesitate to contact me if there is ever anything I can do for you or your family. I will always help you any way I can. You can reach me at kevin@whatwillyourinfluencebe.com.

Have a great day, a wonderful weekend, please cherish your precious families, and please stay healthy and well.

Kev

Speak Life

Happy Friday Friends!

I hope and trust this post finds you all having a great day as a glorious new day begins to dawn in my Sweet Home Alabama! :)

I loved school when I was in elementary school! I don't remember any teachers names and I can't tell you a favorite subject. I thought it was the greatest thing that I got to spend all day with a bunch of other kids - I loved it for the social aspect. I wasn't a great student - the grades were not important to me, the people were. And in terms of doing school work, I remember a lot of putting off work until the last possible moment - I was too busy playing with my friends - and then turning in sloppy, rushed work.

Several years ago my precious family and I were at my Mom's house going through some boxes of old stuff Mom had saved. We came across a report card of mine from elementary school - I don't remember specifically what grade it was however something tells me it was 3rd or 4th grade. The teacher had written on the report card, "Kevin will never be a very good reader." I was shocked to see it and my boys started laughing. I am an avid reader.

As I thought about this Happy Friday last night, I wondered what would have happened if I had actually known what my teacher had written. I would like to tell you that it wouldn't have mattered however something tells me that those words could have spoken deeply to the heart of a little boy who genuinely loved school, even if not for the reason my teacher would have hoped. Would those words of death hovered over my life? I will never know because I had a Mom who 1) loved me unconditionally, 2) always told me that I was as smart as anyone else, it might just take me a little longer to do my school work than others, and 3) never told me what my teacher had written.

In the spring semester of what was my sophomore year of college, I was taking an English class at a Junior College. I was still slumbering through the education process. The teacher assigned a research paper to the class. I can't remember the teachers name, unfortunately, or the exact length of the paper. At the end of the class, the teacher asked if he could see me for a moment. When I went to see him he told me he didn't want me to write a research paper on what had been assigned to the class but rather he wanted me to write my research paper on the University of Arizona men's basketball team that had just gone to the NCAA Final Four. And with that one simple request the research paper went from something I had to write - 5 pages?! That is so long! Use bigger font, increase line spacing, narrow the margins - to a paper I got to write - 5 pages?! How can I fit all of this into only 5 pages? Smallest font possible, single space everything and widen the margins. :)

A wise teacher, who took the time to know his students, had lit a fire. What I have learned as I reflect back on that time is that I didn't have a learning problem and I wasn't lazy, I had a motivational problem. I wasn't interested in the things that others had told me to write about. Instead of telling me to write about what the teacher wanted me to write about, he told me to write about what he thought I wanted to write about. It changed everything.

I remember the first time my teammates at the school I transferred to after leaving that junior college told me that I was smart and a good student. I can't remember the exact context or what made them come to this conclusion however I distinctly remember thinking, "What?!?! Clearly they don't know me!" But they were serious. And as different things would happen and they would say things about what a good student I was or how smart I was I started acting like a good student and I believed in myself...I didn't want to disappoint them. I wanted to be who they told me I was. And from that very first semester, with these incredible encouragers, I never got anything less than an A- all the way through my Masters degree.

The words we speak into the lives of others matter. We get frustrated with each other and then, in an emotional moment, we speak words that cause great harm. I pray we will choose a different path.

Having been around college kids the vast majority of my career, I have found that the problem for most is one of motivation, not intellect or laziness. What we all need, more than anything else, is someone who will take the time to get to know us, to learn about the things we are passionate about and then encourage us to pursue that thing - whatever it is - with everything that is within us.

Please, if you have the honor and privilege of being around young people - be it a son or daughter, a student, an athlete, etc. - please speak life into their lives. No, they might not respond this time - that might not be your place in their story. However perhaps your role is to simply shepherd them on to the next person until they finally hit that moment where the spark flies and the fire is ignited. While you might not be the match that lights the fire, you do have a choice to be the wood that allows that fire to get started.

The words you and I speak matter. The Bible tells us that life and death are in the power of the tongue (Proverbs 18:21). Which are you and I speaking? We will leave every single soul we interact with better or worse...which will we choose? 

As I reflect back on these few moments I share with you, I get kind of emotional. What if I knew what the teacher said? How come an English teacher took the time to know me and to care enough to have me do a completely different assignment than everyone else? What did my teammates see that nobody else, mostly me, had never seen before? I don't know the answer to any of these questions however as I look at foundational moments, the moments that are most directly responsible for who I am today, I see these moments with great clarity.

And with the clarity I see the moments, I had these quotes come to me that I am to share with you this morning...

"Never tell a young person that anything cannot be done. God may have been waiting centuries for someone ignorant enough of the impossible to do that very thing." - G. M. Trevelyan

"Every child needs a champion." - Attributed to multiple people

"Treat a man as he is and he will remain as he is. Treat a man as he could be and he will become what he should be." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Please don't hesitate to contact me if there is ever anything I can do for you or your family. I will always help you any way I can. You can reach me at kevin@whatwillyourinfluencebe.com.

Have a great day, a wonderful weekend, please cherish your precious families and please stay healthy and well.

Kev

Finding Peace

Happy Friday Friends!

I hope and trust this post finds you having a great day as a glorious new opportunity begins to dawn in my Sweet Home Alabama! :)

I am going to start this Happy Friday with a challenge for all of us: I challenge all of us to live this day in such a way that when we lay our heads on our pillows tonight, we are proud of how we have lived this day, that we have complete peace in our spirits. That's it...

So easy to understand, so difficult to actually live out! But why? As we sit here and look forward to this day, have you ever thought about all of the things we have no control over? I don't mean that as discouraging but rather as freeing - it's kinda hard to beat yourself up over something that you could not control and yet, we spend inordinate amounts of time trying to control the uncontrollables, and sacrificing our peace in the process. We have absolutely zero control over how any other human being walking the face of the earth will act, what they will say, what their attitude will be, etc. and yet we have complete control over how we act, what we say, what our attitude will be...and how we will respond, or unfortunately react, to those annoying people. :)

Have you ever thought about your job? Think of all the things that determine "success" in your line of work that are completely outside your control. Oh yes, we can control doing the things we should be doing, putting things in place to enable success, and yet, at the end of the day, there are so many things outside our control that ultimately will determine whether something was a success - however you want to define that - or not. 

I am not going to keep going down this rabbit hole however all I want to clearly establish is that our peace at the end of this day is not dependent on any other person, the job you have or any of the other countless things we chase in our pursuit of peace. The peace I am talking about is dependent on and found solely in one person - the one reading this right now. :) Gotcha!

I want to unpack this with two short quotes. 

"Animals are born who they are, accept it, and that is that. They live with greater peace than people do." - Gregory Maguire

How do you and I live? Do we accept who we were born to be? We don't have to look very far to see how many in this world live however this is not about them, it's about us...each one, individually. Please remember, we have no control over anyone other than ourselves. You and I can choose to accept who we are - all of it! - and become the best version of who we were created to be. Just as a fish would look ridiculous trying to be a bird and a dog would fail miserably at trying to be an elephant, you and I will ultimately fail at trying to be anything other than who and what we were created to be. And this constant striving to be something we were never created to be in the first place will lead to discontent which means we have no peace. It really isn't that hard to understand...

Look, I might not know you personally however I do know that my Bible tells me that every single person - please read that again! - is fearfully and made, created on purpose for a great purpose for which they are perfectly equipped, lacking nothing. That means YOU are not a mistake! YOU were created on purpose and thus, your life has a purpose! YOU have everything within you to become all you were created to become. Oh, Sweet Friends, please let this Biblical truth wash over you again and again. And that brings to mind a question all of us are going to have to answer at some point in our lives: who do you believe? Are you going to believe what the world says or what the God of the universe says? And are we believing it in word only or are we actually living it out? Each one is free to choose, each one will choose and what ultimately hangs in the balance? Our peace. My fervent prayer for all of us is that we will not sacrifice our peace believing lies about whose, who and what we are!

"Live your life, sing your song. Not full of expectations. Not for the ovations. But for the joy of it." - Rasheed Ogunlaru

Have you ever watched 4-year olds color, draw or paint? They truly believe every piece of art they create is a masterpiece. Why? Because nobody has told them yet that it isn't. They haven't yet been beaten down by a world telling them that their gift is dumb, stupid or useless. They haven't yet heard that they are inadequate or not enough. Sadly, in a few short years, they will be told these things and they will quickly stop doing this thing that has brought them such great joy.

What brings you joy? What is the thing - singing, dancing, writing, drawing, woodwork, encouraging, teaching, speaking, etc. - that brings you joy? Are you doing it? Maybe it is metaphoricaly buried under tons of dirt, hidden in the deepest recesses of your heart. I don't know what it is however I know that every single one of us has a passion for something and that we have an aptitude to do that thing very well. And I simply want to encourage all of us to develop every talent, gift and ability we have to the fullest potential we are capable. When we do this, our soul comes alive and we live an incredibly inspired life.

Some will read this and say something like, "That's just positive thinking stuff" or "What a bunch of junk!" I certainly respect their right to have their opinion and I also respectfully disagree. As we go about our days, grinding away, we lose sight of whose we are, who we are and what we were created to be. From time to time we need to sit back and find ourselves on the map of this beautiful journey called life. If we do not intentionally remind ourselves of whose we are, who we are and what we are created to be we will slowly start drifting off course until we are lost. I simply hope each one of us will be reminded today of how truly special we are and that we will pursue our individual greatness today. When we do this, peace will meet us at our pillow.

Please don't hesitate to contact me if there is ever anything I can do for you or your family. I will always help you any way I can. You can reach me at kevin@whatwillyourinfluencebe.com.

Have a great day, a wonderful weekend, please cherish your precious families and please stay healthy and well.

Kev

You Are So Powerful

Happy Friday Friends!

I hope and trust this post finds you all having a great day as a glorious new day begins to dawn in my Sweet Home Alabama! This one right here is going to be a great one! :)

In case you did not know, or perhaps have forgotten, you are so powerful...

Earlier this week I was reading a Bible study plan titled, Follow Me: 21 Timeless Leadership Lessons. I read this quote and it has stuck with me all week:

"Regardless of where God has put you, you have a choice to make. Choosing positivity is deciding to find and focus on the good instead of the bad. Make no mistake about it; both good and bad will always be present. No matter how good life is, there are challenges that you could whine about. No matter how bad life is, there are blessing that you could rejoice about. There is always something to complain about and always something to be thankful for. The choice is yours." - Unknown

To choose positive or negative...that choice is ours, each one, individually! You might be thinking, "Yeah Kev, one of those, 'just be positive things' but you don't know about my challenges, my struggles, my situation." You are absolutely right, I don't. But I can testify what I have learned in my life and, perhaps more importantly, I can learn from my Bible and great men and women who have come before me.

Have you ever heard of Viktor Frankl? You might have read some of his quotes...he has a lot of great ones and you are going to read some more here in a minute! :) You know, when you want to learn something from someone, you usually want to learn from someone who has actually experienced what they are talking about. It is one thing to have always had everything go your way and to stand there and tell everyone, "Just be positive." It is quite another to have seen the darkest side of humanity, to walk through hell on earth, and to stand there and tell everyone that "Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way." Yeah, Dr. Frankl said that.

Please let me tell you about Dr. Viktor Frankl, to give you a littler frame of reference so you understand why his words carry so much weight for me. Dr. Frankl was an Austrian  psychiatrist and psychotherapist. According to viktorfrankl.org, in 1942 he and his wife, Tilly are arrested by Nazis and sent to a concentration camp. His mother and father are also sent to concentration camps. His father would die of exhaustion later that year. In 1944, "Viktor and Tilly, and shortly later his 65 year old mother, are transported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. His mother is immediately murdered in the gas chamber, and Tilly is moved to the Bergen-Belsen camp. After a few days Frankl is selected for transfer to a labor camp. He is brought to Kaufering and later Tuerkheim, subsidiary camps of Dachau in Bavaria." He was liberated by U.S. troops on April 27, 1945 and within the span of a few days, he learns about the death of his wife, his mother and brother, all of whom were murdered at Auschwitz. He spent 3 years of his life in concentration camps, at least a year in a labor camp, and his entire family is murdered. He has seen the very worst of man, he has endured unspeakable circumstances and yet, here are some of his thoughts...

"When we are no longer able to change a situation - we are challenged to change ourselves."

"Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose."

"The one thing you can't take away from me is the way I choose to respond to what you do to me."

"Success, like happiness, is the unexpected side effects of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself."

"If we take a man as he is, we make him worse, but if we take man as he should be we make him capable of becoming what he can be."

"No man should judge unless he asks himself in absolute honesty whether in a similar situation he might not have done the same thing."

"In times of crisis, people reach for meaning. Meaning is strength. Our survival depends on our seeking and finding it."

"Man's main concern is not to gain pleasure or to avoid pain but rather to see a meaning in his life."

"Just as a small fire is extinguished by the storm whereas a large fire is enhanced by it - likewise a weak faith is weakened by predicament and catastrophes whereas a strong faith is strengthened by them."

I don't know about y'all, but I am just awed by his perspectives. He has every reason, every right, to be angry, bitter, negative and yet, he chooses not to be.

I have to share one more little story about his life. Again, this comes from the Viktor Frankl Institute at viktorfrankl.org.

"In the Tuerkeim camp he comes down with typhoid fever. To avoid fatal vascular collapse during the nights he keeps himself awake by reconstructing the manuscript of his book Aerztliche Seelsorge on slips of paper stolen from the camp office."

In a concentration camp, sick with typhoid fever, depriving himself of sleep to keep himself alive and pursuing his purpose. I am simply awed...

Why do I say you are so powerful? Two reasons:

1. Your life has meaning. You do have a purpose that is greater than you. You simply have to choose to pursue it.

2. You choose your attitude, every day. As Dr. Frankl's life attests, it is not determined by our situations or circumstances, it is a choice we make.

So yes, Sweet Friends, you are powerful. Each one of us simply has to choose, every day, whether we will use the power we have.

Finally, I have to share a quote I came across yesterday - it may, or may not, relate to this topic...depends on how you look at it! :)

"Consider the right of others before your own feelings, and the feelings of other before your own rights." - Coach John Wooden

Please don't hesitate to contact me if there is ever anything I can do for you or your family. I will always help you any way I can. You can reach me at kevin@whatwillyourinfluencebe.com.

Have a great day, a wonderful weekend, please cherish your precious family and please stay healthy and well.

Kev