“Pablo Picasso was walking down the street in Paris one day when a woman recognized and approached him. After introducing herself and praising his work, she asked him if he would consider drawing her portrait and offered to pay him for the piece.
Picasso agreed and sat the woman down there and then on the side of the street, brought out a sketchbook and pencil, and began to draw the woman. A small crowd of spectators gathered very quickly, but in only a handful of minutes Picasso had finished the drawing. As he handed it to the woman, he said, “That will be five thousand francs.” Surprised at the price, the woman objected, saying, “But Mr. Picasso, it took you only a few minutes.” Picasso smiled and replied, “No, my dear woman, you are mistaken, it took me a whole lifetime.”
Whatever it is you are going to do today, you have been preparing for it for a lifetime… and you are ready.”
“Ignore your critics. Everyone has them. They will tear down in an hour what they couldn’t build in a lifetime.
But life eventually puts all critics in their place. With time critics become remote and unimportant.
The people who love you don’t care about what your critics care about; they care about you as a human being. Your critics, they don’t see you as a human being. They have dehumanized you.
They see something in you that unsettles something in them. So, they have to decide: attack you or investigate their own dark mystery.
Most people don’t know you well enough to compliment you or criticize you, and it is the unseen moments of our lives that define us.”
“God is on a quest to enter into your heart. He makes many approaches every day. Do you welcome him with open arms, or do you block God from entering into your heart?
We don’t always notice God’s attempts to enter into our hearts, because they are disguised in the ordinary everyday moments of life.
You notice someone in need. Through that moment God is trying to enter deeper into your heart. How do you respond?
You hear about a difficult situation someone you used to be friends with finds herself in. God is trying to enter deeper into your heart. Do you reach out to that person? Do you pray for that person? Or do you simply assign that person to your past and get on with your life?
God is trying to enter into your heart. He wants to occupy every corner of it. As you go about your day today, try to be aware of how God is attempting to occupy your heart and new ways.”
What do you do in the face of these? Do you take them head on, or do they overtake you? Jesus only gives one option. Endurance.
Today, listen to Allen recount an inspiring story about one famous man’s story of endurance and discover how incredible things will happen in your life when you persist.
“The spiritual life is about allowing God to teach us about ourselves. The word education comes from the Latin word educare, which means to draw out. So much of modern education is based on imposing knowledge upon us, stuffing us full of information. But the best teachers have always been focused on drawing something out of the student. The best teachers draw out the-best-version-of-ourselves. They make us more of who we truly are.
Since Socrates and Plato, the greatest teachers have not used a lecture method, but rather a method of questions and dialogue. Everything good and true and beautiful has its roots in God, and thus we discover, in many ways throughout our lives through people, experiences, and opportunities, God is laying questions before us. Always the right question at the right time, if we listen closely. At the same time there are many other people and voices in your life proposing different questions.
The questions we choose to focus on can make all the difference.
The questions we ponder determine the quality of our lives. Ponder trivial and shallow questions and your life is likely to become just that. Spend your days pondering questions that challenge you to explore yourself, others, the world, God, and spirituality in new and exciting ways, and you will live a life uncommon.
I have often said that if you tell me the books you are going to read over the next 12 months, I can probably tell you how your life will change in the next year. The reason is because we become the books we read.
Questions have a similarly powerful effect on the direction and trajectory of our lives. A person who spends the next year pondering, “Should I get divorced?” will have a radically different experience than the person who focuses on the question, “What can I do to renew and transform my marriage?”
The questions we ask of ourselves, of others, of life, and of God have a profound and mysterious impact on our lives.
We are impatient and like the gratification of quick answers, but they do not satisfy. The most important answers are those that we wrestle with. The reason is because we yearn for deeply personal answers to our deeply personal questions. You have to dig long and hard to find many of those answers, but they are worth the soul-work they require.
Be patient with your questions. Nobody has explained this more eloquently than Rainier Maria Rilke: “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
Throughout this series I will lay before you twenty-one questions. Some will intrigue you more than others, but stretch your soul, and try to write down some answer for each question no matter how short. And date your answer. Then come back again, in weeks or months, and answer them again.
Don’t be in a rush to answer the questions. Sit with them. Go deep into the questions. Answer them, and then answer them again. Date them. Come back to them. Add to them. When you add something, date the additions.
This is not because you will change your mind. The process is more profound than that. You will discover deeper parts of yourself. As you discover your deeper needs, talents, hopes, desires, and dreams, it is natural that your answers to many of life’s most important questions will change.
The questions in these videos are simply designed to begin the process. They will fan the fire in your heart, and you will begin to recognize the questions being posed to you in the midst of your everyday activities.
Some questions are big picture, and some questions are nuts and bolts practical. Both are necessary. Some questions are beautiful, and some questions are ugly. If we are to thrive and grow, we need to face both with courage. But all in all, as we do this soul-work, our questions should become ever more beautiful.
Enjoy the series. Together they form 21 questions that will absolutely change your life. So, get yourself a journal, and keep watching…”
Video Transcript: “The idea of developing a spiritual life can be intimidating. Daunting. But it needn’t be. People often ask how they can get started, so here are some thoughts…
A tree with deep roots can weather any storm. We all experience storms in our lives. It is not a question of whether or not we will experience another storm. That is not the question, but rather, when will the next storm be approaching? And when the storm arrives, it is too late for a tree to sink roots. When the storm arrives, it either has the roots or it does not.
I have been battered around in the storms of life in both scenarios. For some of life’s storms I was caught off guard and unprepared, and those storms damaged me significantly. But I have also encountered storms at times in my life when I was firmly committed to the daily routines of the spiritual life. These storms did nowhere near as much damage. The storms you have experienced in life have passed. You can do nothing to prepare for them or to change them. You may be still picking up the wreckage that those storms unleashed in your life.
There will be more storms in your life. I don’t know what and I don’t know when, but they will come for they are part of every person’s experience of life.
So begin to prepare today for the coming storms. Begin to develop deep roots by fostering a rich inner-life. Foster a rich inner-life by committing yourself to a daily routine of prayer and reflection.
I recommend three practices to ground your daily prayer and reflection:
1. The Prayer Process, which is explained in detail in the book I Heard God Laugh and the video series that accompanies it. It can also be found in the description below.
2. Daily Journaling, just write down whatever comes to your mind for a few minutes each day. Date your entries so you can come back to them over time and see how far you have come, how much you have grown.
3. Spiritual Reading, because books change our lives, because we become the books we read.
Why does it matter? Why is it important for each of us to establish a daily routine of prayer and reflection?
When Jesus was on the cross, he cried out, “I thirst.” In response to his desperate plea the soldiers gave him wine mixed with gall. This bitter combination would have only increased his dehydration and added to his misery.
I meet people every day who are crying out, “I thirst.” And the world gives them wine mixed with gall, which only increases their dehydration and adds to their misery.
We are each thirsty in our own ways today. You know your thirst, and I know mine. Your thirst may be different next week, and it may be the same. But the reality is our souls are thirsty. And we cannot satisfy a spiritual thirst with a worldly potion.
Dig The Well Before You Get Thirsty. I chose this title because our spiritual thirst is real and isn’t going away. Every day we are blessed to be on this earth, we will have a need to drink the living waters that God wants to freely give us. But we have to dig the well. How? By developing a daily practice of prayer and reflection. That’s how we dig the well. That’s how we gain access to the living water that Jesus spoke about.
Most people in our culture today are severely spiritually dehydrated. You may be in that place yourself. If you are, do not be discouraged, but don’t be a victim either. Start digging your well today. Find a quiet place, sit with God, and pour your heart out to him. He will comfort you in your afflictions and afflict you in your comfort. He will encourage you and challenge you, but most of all, he will love you. And his love and acceptance will hydrate your soul like never before.”
The Battle for Your Heart: What Will You Choose? – Feed Your Soul: Gospel Reflections
THIS WEEK’S GOSPEL IS LUKE 23:35-43
What are you living for? Approval? Success? Power? This week, Jesus reveals something terrifying in the Gospel: all of those things are waging a battle for your heart.
Today, Jack asks a powerful question that will direct the course of the battle, and the outcome all depends on one decision. What will you choose?
