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Tag Archives: Leighton Ford

Finding Your Voice

  One of our key tasks as Christian leaders is to do the kind of interior work so that we find our own voice i.e. the voice God has given us for the world. That is no small task. This has been a life message of my mentor, Leighton Ford, over the last 30 years. When I was with him last month, he shared this wonderful poem by Mary Oliver. It has served as a rich companion to my meditation on Jesus as He bravely launched His ministry and resisted the Evil One (Matt.3-4). Too many people never find their own voice and simply repeat the things they have heard for their entire lives. Too many of us don’t lead as a result. May God give us grace to be brave and let our voices be heard. Take some time and prayerfully read this lovely poem. Then go back and read Matthew 3:13-4:11 and. Read more.

Finding Your Voice

One of our key tasks as Christian leaders is to do the kind of interior work so that we find our own voice i.e. the voice God has given us for the world. That is no small task. This has been a life message of my mentor, Leighton Ford, over the last 30 years. When I was with him last month, he shared this wonderful poem by Mary Oliver. It has served as a rich companion to my meditation on Jesus as He bravely launched His ministry and resisted the Evil One (Matt.3-4). Too many people never find their own voice and simply repeat the things they have heard for their entire lives. Too many of us don’t lead as a result. May God give us grace to be brave and let our voices be heard. Take some time and prayerfully read this lovely poem. Then go back and read Matthew 3:13-4:11 and consider. Read more.

My Five Most Important Lessons – Leighton Ford

Leighton Ford has been one of my primary mentors for the last 32 years. He has walked with Christ for 80! Yes, 80 years.  I asked him over lunch recently his most important life lessons. Here they are: 1. Start with what you have been given (i.e. your raw material, what is in you through blood, your family/cultural history). 2. Listen to the voice most true to your heart (i.e. following the invisible thread of God in your life). 3. Be willing to listen to other voices too (e.g. secular novelists, new Christians as they talk about faith, theologians who differ from you). 4. Learn to be thankful for what seems thankless (e.g. pain, loss, betrayal, failure). You will become more than what you would have been otherwise. 5. Open your life to contemplate beauty and cultivate wonder.

My Five Most Important Lessons – Leighton Ford

Leighton Ford has been one of my primary mentors for the last 32 years. He has walked with Christ for 80! Yes, 80 years.  I asked him over lunch recently his most important life lessons. Here they are: 1. Start with what you have been given (i.e. your raw material, what is in you through blood, your family/cultural history). 2. Listen to the voice most true to your heart (i.e. following the invisible thread of God in your life). 3. Be willing to listen to other voices too (e.g. secular novelists, new Christians as they talk about faith, theologians who differ from you). 4. Learn to be thankful for what seems thankless (e.g. pain, loss, betrayal, failure). You will become more than what you would have been otherwise. 5. Open your life to contemplate beauty and cultivate wonder.

Books that Have Formed Me Spiritually: Part 2

This blogs flows out of a question a friend recently asked Pete and I around books that have most shaped our journey with Christ. I noticed a couple things: I follow authors more than books so each author is a person whom I respect and resonate with. I love books that, for me, are profound but nuanced in very practical ways. I read them more than once. I read them slowly and prayerfully. The Attentive Life, Leighton Ford I know Leighton personally. Every time I’m in his presence I cry. That’s because every time I’m in his presence I’m given presence – attention, value, time stands still. In this book Leighton leads us to experience God’s presence the way I do when I’m with Leighton.  New Seeds of Contemplation, Thomas Merton This book led me into a conversion of heart that slowed me down to enjoy God and receive His love in deeper ways. Again, doing for. Read more.

The Boston Marathon Tragedy

Yesterday’s attack at the Boston Marathon was tragic.  What can we say to others? to ourselves? Where was God? I offer you two fragments that help me in times like this. 1. Be comfortable in being silent. Job’s three friends “wept aloud, tore their robes and sprinkled dust on their heads. Then they sat on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights. No one said a word to him, because they saw how great his suffering was (Job 2:11-13). It is when they started talking that they got in trouble! Notice their presence “with him,’ i.e. Job, in his suffering. 2. The ultimate knowledge of God is to know that we do not know. Thomas Aquinas was a brilliant theologian who had written 20 very large volumes about who God is and how He works. On December 6, 1273 something happened to him that brought his teaching and writing to an end.. Read more.