This week, though, I read a quote from Dallas Willard in his book The Spirit of the Disciplines that grabbed my attention. In speaking about some main disciplines for spiritual life Willard writes about the discipline of secrecy:

Secrecy rightly practiced enables us to place our public relations department entirely in the hands of God… …We allow Him to decide when our deeds will be known and when our light will be noticed.

WOW! Conviction. In this age when it is perhaps easier than ever to blog every victory, retweet each complement, and carefully craft our public images, it’s important to consider the questionDr. Willard’s point begs:

Am I confident with God running my PR, or do I feel the constant need to help Him out?

Now these are the nations that the Lord left, to test Israel by them, that is, all in Israel who had not experienced all the wars in Canaan. It was only in order that the generations of the people of Israel might know war, to teach war to those who had not known it before.

(Judges 3:1, 2 ESV)

When Israel entered Canaan, God immediately gave them victory over armies and nations that were much larger and much more powerful than them. It was undeniable that God was with them, and the people all knew it. But He did not allow them to go to war against every nation; He allowed some battles to remain unfought… In Judges 3 we find out why.

God’s purpose behind allowing some of their enemies to remain, we learn, was specifically so that the generation who hadn’t crossed the Jordan or seen God’s provision in the desert, would have to fight some battles of their own. God knew that this generation also needed their own war stories.

God knew it would not be enough for them to only hear about how God had provided for and mightily used their fathers and grandfathers. He knew they needed their own, first-hand experience. They needed their own stories.

I’m thankful that the generations before mine left some battles for us to fight. It’s often through facing these kinds of impossible situations that faith and character are forged.

I needed to also be okay knowing that God is not going to allow me & my generation to fight every battle. He’s not going allow us to solve every problem.

There has to be some battles for the next generation to fight.

The Institute for the Future, as part of its decade-long Future of Work project, has identified 10 skills needed for the jobs of the future:

• Sensemaking
• Novel and Adaptive Thinking
• Transdisciplinarity
• Social Intelligence
• Computational Thinking
• New Media Literacy
• Design Mindset
• Cross Cultural Competency
• Cognitive Load Management
• Virtual Collaboration.

They are currently researching where and how people can learn these skills.

via FastCompany

We’re all are given a certain amount of time here on earth, and if I understand the Gospel correctly, one of our main purposes is for us to use this time to point people to Jesus.  We’re each given a sphere of influence, where we’re suppose to point people to Jesus.

Whatever you want to say about Tebow; if you think he’s a great QB or a terrible one, over-the-top with his faith, or ‘too showy…’  …he’s definitely used his time/influence to point people to Jesus.

Last week, after the Broncos’ amazing win over the Steelers, John 3:16 was Googled over 90 Million times!

This week, in the first half on their game against the Patriots, an organization ran this ad:

Tebow definitely has been. I’m inspired to do a better job.