You Never Know...

Happy Friday Friends!

I hope and trust this post finds you all having a great day on this glorious new day in my Sweet Home Alabama! Additionally, I sincerely hope y'all had a wonderful Thanksgiving yesterday! Our blessings are many, if only we will choose to see them... :)

I want to start off by sharing a story with y'all. Earlier this week a sweet friend of mine was telling me a story about her precious little girls basketball team. One of the parents had made a comment that alerted the coach that perhaps some of the parents were taking this a little too seriously. The coach called all of the parents together and explained that nobody was going to be awarded a scholarship based on these youth basketball games, assuring the parents that there were no college scouts in the stands. He went on to say that the purpose of youth sports was to teach these young people to build others up, to learn how to be a part of a team/family, and to find out who they are. He then stated that this is what his mentor - he then said his mentors name - taught him. And in that moment, my friend began to cry. Heck, she began to cry telling me the story! You see, the mentor who profoundly impacted the coach who is now teaching my sweet friends precious little girl is the late husband of one of my friends very dear friends. My friend had no idea that the coach knew the man that had profoundly impacted his life - he told her several other things about this man's impact on his life - and yet, because the mentor at one time took the time to selflessly pour himself into others, this coach is now pouring himself selflessly into the lives of others, teaching the lessons learned from the mentor, and one of those precious souls he is impacting is the daughter of my friend. Truly beautiful, isn't it?

In my line of work I have had the opportunity to meet some of the smartest, most accomplished, women and men in virtually every field - lawyers, doctors, politicians, business-people, civil servants, coaches, athletes, etc. One of the things that has always interested me is when they knew...when they knew that they wanted to become what they have become, that they were willing to sacrifice so greatly to pursue the fullness of what they were created to be. And over and over again I have heard something like, "It was a teacher in 4th grade who told me they saw something in me..." or, "It was a coach who told me they believed in me." It was a word of encouragement, a statement of belief that launched them into their chosen field of endeavor, to a life of serving others by becoming the fullness of who they could become. And here is the really beautiful part that I believe is critically important to catch: just as the mentor impacted the coach who is now impacting the little girl, the teacher impacted the doctor who now impacts every single patient they serve! Or the coach who impacted the teacher who now impacts every single student they teach! Do you get the point?!?! The ripple is endless! The mentor impacted the coach who is now impacting the little girl who will one day impact the lives of others! Heck, she already is! This sweet spirit not only cheers for her teammates, she cheers when members of the other teams score because, well, they are her friends. And aren't friends more important than winning and losing games?!?! THAT is another Happy Friday... :)

Friends, you never know the depth and breadth of the influence you have in the lives of others. People are listening to and watching you and I. The convictions we live, the words we speak, and the things we do matter. You may never be a doctor however you just might be the person that God uses to speak encouragement to the young girl who will one day become the worlds leading oncologist that finds a cure to cancer! Please think about the number of lives that would be impacted across the world, for generations, with that one! I don't know your vocational calling or how God wants to use you to serve others, I simply know that lives are profoundly impacted by other lives and you never know the reach of yours. And I am keenly aware that this works both ways - positive and negative. Just as the positive word, the belief in another, can breed life, the pursuit of dreams, etc., the negative word, the tearing down of another, breeds death, destruction, etc. The battle is real and it is not a choice of whether you are going to be in the battle or not - if you are breathing, you are in the battle. You simply must choose which side you will fight for, you must decide what your influence will be!

You and I truly never know the impact of our words and actions. I simply ask, and pray, that we will be intentional with them. You never know whose life you are impacting or when the ripple will end... 

A few things for us to consider as we reflect on this Happy Friday...

"Success is secondary to impact. Success is a list of what you win, gain and attain - it may pass, it may remain. Impact is the test; the hearts, minds and lives you touch, enhance and forever change..." - Rasheed Ogunlaru

"Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it." - Hebrews 13:2

"The more you manifest a servant's heart in all you do, the more of an impact you'll have on people's lives." - Jim George

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 well.

Kev

A Couple of Reminders...

Happy Friday Friends!

I hope and trust this post finds you all having a great day as a glorious new opportunity begins to dawn in my Sweet Home Alabama! That's what today is, an opportunity! And guess what? You and I get to CHOOSE how we will live it! :)

This mornings Happy Friday would fall into the category of encouragement. I want to encourage us in how we think and how we choose to live. I am not going to share anything earth shattering or new...it is all stuff you and I have heard before. I have kind of struggled with that as I prepared to write this message. Thoughts of "we all know this" and "what's the use?" tried to take hold in my mind. I then remembered that it is the things that we consistently do that determine the quality of the lives we live. We have to remind ourselves...as we discussed last week, it is so easy to get 1 degree off course and before we know it, we are hundreds of miles from where we intended to be.

I want to share a few excerpts from a blog titled Be the thermostat, not the thermometer which was published on March 4, 2018. You can read the full blog at theeverydaystray.wordpress.com.

"The words thermometer and thermostat sound awfully similar but there is a huge difference. A thermometer is like a mirror, it reflects the temperature of its environment. You'll notice that the language of a thermometer is always influenced by what is going on around it. So when the temperature of a room is hot, the reading is high - if the temperature of the room drops, the reading drops too! Thermometers are in a constant state of change, meaning they can be both "up" and "down" within minutes."

"A thermostat, on the other hand, is used to regulate its environment."

"So we should always be the thermostat, not the thermometer. Why? Because anyone can tell you the temperature. When there's a problem, everyone can see there's a problem. When times are busy, everyone can see that it is busy. If we act like thermometers, and reflect our surroundings, we end up changing as often as British weather changes - which is a lot! When things go well, we are a vision of calm but when things start heating up, we lose our cool too. This is where the quote "show me your friends and I'll tell you who you are" comes from, because it is normal for people to become a product of their environment. But rather than be influenced by life's temperature - we should influence it!"

"What's especially important about being an effective thermostat, or leader is not letting everyone's else behavior effect yours. Thermostat leaders are a rare bunch that set the temperature for themselves, their teams or their organizations. They carry the positive attitude that creates the positive environment! They actively monitor the environment while constantly having a pulse on productivity, morale and stress levels. If the temperature for a team gets too hot because they're under pressure, or they're understaffed or they have looming deadlines, thermostat leaders cools things off by acting as a calming influence. While thermometer leaders lose trust, thermostat leaders build trust!"

"We all have it in us to be thermostats. The real question is: do you want to reflect the environment or do you want to be the change? Don't only fix things when they break, build things that last. True leadership isn't about reacting to the atmosphere, it's about setting it. Change people's expectations, change their perspective, lay the foundations for other to become thermostats too! The best advise is to read people before you lead people. Don't be afraid of standing out because you're different or you think different or you act different - so much good will come from worrying less about being like everybody else!"

So good! So powerful! So true! My wish, hope, and fervent prayer for each one of us Friends, is that we will be thermostats. It is a choice and we will have to make this choice over and over again as each new day dawns! This one is here...let's choose to be thermostats TODAY! :)

Have you ever really observed a dog? Or any other animal for that matter? My chocolate lab is not worried about trying to be a beagle or poodle or any other kind of dog. She is simply her. I tell her I love her and I think she is beautiful - yes, I talk to my dog!!! :) - and yet whether I tell her I love her, she's beautiful or I don't, she still always just loves me and follows me around wherever I go. She is not concerned about what I say to her, she is too busy being her own best self and loving me.

How different would our world be if we lived our lives that way? Simply embracing who and what we were created to be, instead of being jealous of what we are not or focusing on what we think we lack? It really is crazy, isn't it? Here you and I are, fearfully and wonderfully made, created on purpose for a great purpose for which we perfectly equipped, lacking nothing and we spend so much time, energy and thought wishing and trying to be something that we were never created to be. It really would be humorous if it were not so sad. Can you imagine if that during this day my beautiful chocolate lab decided that she was now going to be a bird? Can you even imagine what a failure she would be at being a bird? And how far she would be from becoming all that she was created to become? So why do we do it?

Friends, I beg and implore us to stop all the craziness. You, whoever and wherever you are, are special, you are more than enough, you are perfect. Please, be the you that you were created to be. Please don't worry about someone else's life or journey...it is theirs to walk not yours. This world needs the you that you were created to be, not some knock off version of someone else. If you have lost your way, please spend this weekend rediscovering who you are and what you were created to be. And for all of us, let's spend each day of our life striving to become all that we were created to become. We need to look no further than our fur babies to have this type of excellence modeled for us. :)

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 well.

Kev

Look For It!

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 am so excited for this day! It is going to be a great one!

In a post titled One Degree Off Course, which can be found at uncommoninfluence.com, the writer shared the following:

"I have a friend named Larry who is a retired Air Force Pilot. One day he shared with me an interesting fact about flying. He said that, for every single degree you fly off course, you will miss your target landing spot by 92 feet for every mile you fly.

That amounts to about one mile off target for every sixty miles flown.

If you decided to start at the equator and fly around the earth, one degree off would land you almost 500 miles off target."

Here is the chorus to the song Slow Fade by Casting Crowns:

"It's a slow fade when you give yourself away

It's a slow fade when black and white have turned to gray

Thoughts invade, choices are made, a price will be paid

When you give yourself away

People never crumble in a day

It's a slow fade, it's a slow fade"

Earlier this week someone at my work did a really great job. When I was sharing it with our leadership team I suddenly realized that we hadn't talked about something like this in a long time. A year ago we were very intentionally looking for the good things others were doing and celebrating it. Heck, we even put a plan in place to make sure everyone knew about the great thing someone else had done. And yet, when I was talking about this one person, it struck me that we had not talked about things like that in a long time. Sure, we tell folks when they do a great job, we make sure they are valued and appreciated however we were no longer looking for the little bits of good that each one of us do every day. We are 1 degree off course, we are slowing fading...

I honestly don't know what happened. Could be the pandemic, could be the civil unrest, could be the political...whatever you want to call it! The bottom line is, we were no longer intentionally looking for the little bits of good that each and every one of us does every day. 

In a post about Andrew Carnegie that can be found at bible.org that was published on February 2, 2009, the writer wrote:

"A reporter asked Carnegie how he had hired forty-three millionaires. Carnegie responded that those men had not been millionaires when they started working for him but had become millionaires as a result.

The reporter's next question was, "How did you develop these men to become so valuable to you that you have paid them this much money?" Carnegie replied that men are developed the same way gold is mined. When gold is mined, several tons of dirt must be moved to get an ounce of gold; but one doesn't go into the mine looking for dirt - one goes in looking for gold.

That's exactly the way we pastors need to view our people. Don't look for the flaws, warts, and blemishes. Look for the gold, not the dirt; the good, not the bad. Look for the positive aspects of life. Like everything else, the more good qualities we look for in our people, the more good qualities we are going to find."

Beautiful and brilliant, isn't it? We spend so much time looking at and for the dirt, we don't even attempt to find the gold. Let's be different, Friends. Let's look for the gold in everyone. It is there! Just like mining for actual gold, we may have to move tons of dirt to find it but it is there. Please, I implore each and every one of us, let's make a commitment this day, right here and right now, let's look for the gold in each and every person we are blessed to have in our lives and to cross paths with today!

Finally, I want to share a quote that speaks to my heart:

"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." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

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 well.

Kev

I Refuse!

Happy Friday Friends!

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

I am so fired up for this Happy Friday! The heart is full, the conviction is strong! Let's go! (I wish someone else was awake in the Haslam household so I could high-five someone!) :)

Last Sunday our Pastor, Steve Huskey, preached Part 1 of a series that he has titled "No-vember." (I don't know if that is the way he spells it...it is the way I spell it!) :) I want to share a few of the notes that I took...

- We need to say no to our rights and yes to our responsibilities

- "If they could just see it..."

- We are so convinced that what we see is right

- Everybody has a different perspective - we all have different views

- Modern politics is driven by panic and fear

- Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger...anger leads to hate...hate leads to suffering

- First Passion, First Priority = Love God, Love People

- With God's help we can choose to love all people

- He read this scripture: As a prisoner of the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy a the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.

- Always be humble and gentle

- Be patient with each other making allowance for each others faults because of your love

- Starts in your heart = humble, gentle, and patient

- Be humble because your viewpoint is not the only one

- What I see is not all there is to see

- We need to be humble

- We need to be patient because we might be right

- What closes the gap of division is being gentle

- What unites us is not our political views but our people views

As I have thought and prayed about that message, asking God to search my heart, to make me the man He has created me to become, two words kept coming to my mind over and over - I Refuse! They are screaming at my from the depths of my soul, begging me to live a life worthy of the calling I have received! This morning I will make these declarations realizing fully, that as with any commitment, I will have to intentionally choose to make them again tomorrow, and then the next day, and then the next day, and so on until the moment I see Jesus face to face! And, if I have the privilege of seeing you face to face, or you have my phone number, please love me enough, care about me enough, to hold me accountable! :)

I refuse to hate anyone! We are all flawed, hurt and broken. Just because your brokenness might look different than my brokenness doesn't mean I am right and you are wrong or vice versa. It simply means we are both human.  

I refuse to judge another! Heck, I am having a hard enough time trying to figure out how I am supposed to be the Godly man, husband, father, leader and friend that God has called and created me to become. I don't mean to be selfish or anything but I really don't feel like I am an authority on how you are supposed to live your life!

I refuse to stereotype/generalize anyone or any group of people! There are good and bad people in every race, religion, political party, etc. I refuse to be so weak minded to label a whole group as good or bad. And I just have to say this; I really struggle with the "bad people" label...I hate labels! :) People are not good and bad...they are healing and broken. There is a difference. All of us are created for a purpose, some of us just choose not to live it. The last thing the broken need is for me to be labeling them as bad...they need love, not judgement and condemnation. I refuse to play this game! I have friends, people I love dearly, from every race, religion, sexual orientation, political party, occupation - including the currently unemployed, and from multiple states. 

I refuse to let my circumstances define the depth, breadth, or fullness of my life! I will set the temperature in every room I enter instead of just measuring it. The circumstances might not be what I want or wish they were however I have a choice as to how I respond to those circumstances. With God's mighty help I will be a light in every situation. 

I refuse to live a day without hope! Every day is the day the Lord has made and His mercies are new each morning. I will greet every morning with a hopeful, expectant heart. I will seek the Lord each morning, first thing, and I will live my life fully in the hope of his promises.

I refuse to be single-minded! I want to know what the friend of mine with a different viewpoint thinks. Maybe my friend is right and they are the very person God has sent to alter my perspective. If I am so busy telling my friend how wrong they are, shouting my viewpoint, how in the world am I every going to learn?

I refuse to not let might light shine! If I cross paths with another person, I will smile, be polite, courteous, and kind...I could care less what race, religion, sexual orientation, political party or occupation they are. They are a human being and my Bible tells me to love people. Simple as that and I absolutely refuse to keep any love I might have from anyone. We all need love, a smile, an encouraging word, a helping hand and as long as God let's me stay on this earth, I absolutely refuse to withhold whatever I have to give from anyone.

I refuse to live in fear! I will live a life filled with faith and hope. Oh yes, I need God mightily to live this one out but I refuse to live in fear. I don't care the situation or circumstance, God is still on the Throne and He will be with me just as He has been through every other storm of life I have faced until this point.

I refuse to not live up to all God has called me to be. He has put passions in my heart to love, care for, and serve others. I will exhaust every talent, gift, and ability I have within this body to encourage, empower and equip people to become the best they are capable of becoming - whoever they are and wherever they are!

O.k., a little fired up here this morning but I got a few more things I have to get out of this heart...

I was listening to the radio yesterday morning while working out. The host said something like, "It doesn't matter who is in the White House, they don't decide how we live in our communities. What we are as a community is up to us." I do believe this is true and I fully get the heart of what the host was saying. As I thought and prayed about his words, this little nugget of wisdom came to me...

Who do I, and you, have the most control or influence over? In fact, who is the only person you and I can control? Ourselves...that's it. And, many of us fail miserably in controlling ourselves! And yet, we spend hours yelling and screaming at each other, trying to control one another. Please think about that for a minute.... We can't control ourselves, at least most of us can't to the degree we wish we could, and yet we think we can, should and/or have the right to control another. I refuse to play that game! I am going to simply work tirelessly with God to become the man, husband, father, leader and friend He has called and created me to be. To this point that has kept me busier than I want to be for 53 years. If I can help you, please reach out and let me know...I will always help you any way I can. In the meantime, I am not going to try to control you as I am going to be very busy over here trying to get my rear-end under control!

I now want to put some tools in the toolbox for you...things for you to think and pray about. You can use them, or not, however you want. I simply refuse to keep for only myself quotes and scriptures that I have found helpful to me in my life.

"Nothing is easier than saying words, nothing is harder than living them day after day. What you decide today and commit to today, you must redecide and recommit to tomorrow and each day that stretches out before you." - Arthur Gordon

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. - Lamentations 3:22-23

Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it. - Proverbs 4:23

So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. - Isaiah 41:10

This is the day the Lord has made. We will rejoice and be glad in it. - Psalm 118:24

When Mother Teresa received the Nobel Prize, she was asked, "What can we do to promote world peace?" She answered, "Go home and love your family."

"Let your light shine so bright that others can see their way out of the dark." - Uthpai Umesh

"We are all so desperate to be understood, we forget to be understanding." - Beau Taplin

"Your perspective is always limited by how much you know. Expand your knowledge and you will transform your mind." - Bruce H. Lipton

"No matter what happens in life, be good to people. Being good to people is a wonderful legacy to leave behind." - Unknown

"We are not responsible for the circumstances we are in, but we are responsible for the way we allow those circumstances to affect us; we can either allow them to get on top of us or we can allow them to transform us into what God wants us to be." - Oswald Chambers

"Sometimes being understanding is more important than being right. Sometimes we need not a brilliant mind that speaks but a patient heart that listens. Not a keen eye that always sees faults but open arms that accept. Not a finger that points out mistakes but a gentle hand that leads." - Pavithra Ram

"Recognizing my blindness is the first step toward regaining my sight." - Jonathan Lockwood Huie

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 well!

Kev