One morning I sat down to spend time with God.

Sometimes I make a specific appointment with him and other times I don’t. I’ve found that he’s flexible and can always see me on a whim. I don’t know how he does this with such a full schedule, but I’m grateful.

Our time didn’t start off well. Yeah, I showed up, which is an accomplishment because half the time we make plans, I ditch. But here, now, something was off. We didn’t have the usual...

One time I visited a new church. During the worship time, the man in front of me turned around, laid his hand on my shoulder and said God had a word for me. I was shocked. I wasn’t used to this type of thing. If God wanted to say something to me, why not just tell me Himself?

But I was curious, so I said to go ahead. Slowly he shared the word with me, and as he did, my mouth almost hit the floor. Everything he said was right on. How did he know this? He said things, secret things, that...

Sometimes when I drop our children off at Sunday school, I wonder what’s really going on. Don’t get me wrong – it’s a great church with a great children’s program. There are whimsical characters painted on the walls, shelves full of toys, boxes of crafts, reams of Bible curriculum. There is a check-in and check-out process so parents leave with the right child.

And there are lots of people who love our kids – from the director of the program to the shift...

I participated in the National Prayer Assembly hosted by America's National Prayer Committee and was asked to lead prayer for emerging leaders. I think of an emerging leader as one whom God is lining up to lead. It's not a distinction of chronological age, but rather the work of God--children and youth can be emerging leaders as well as older people. It depends on whom God is in the midst of preparing to release into leadership.

We must be praying for these people now. Here are seven things...

Last time we talked about the benefits of creating a role and outcome statement for employees. Now let's talk about how to do it. Only 60% of U.S. employees strongly agree that they know what is expected of them at work, which leaves 40% guessing and the engagement level plummeting.

At my day job at EnergyCAP, Inc., we’ve created role and outcome statements for every employee, which are accessible to the entire company. Like I said, doing so has yielded big benefits for our employees,...

A few years ago, the Barna Group released results from a multiple year survey involving 3,000 self-described Christians. The survey was about spiritual gifts. Although it’s clear from the Bible that spiritual gifts matter deeply to the health of the Church, the survey revealed four troubling statistics.

28% Think They're Empty-Handed

For example, 1 Corinthians 12 says twice that spiritual gifts are given to each believer, but 28% said they didn’t have a spiritual gift....

At a recent “Strengths Bag Lunch,” employees of EnergyCAP, Inc. (ECI) discussed how to get better at “Responsibility.” The entire company has taken the CliftonStrengths assessment, which measures 34 areas of talent. The idea is to help people to develop their top areas of talent into strengths, and then utilize their strengths to achieve their outcomes.

This simple approach yields great results. Studies show that when folks are able to do what they do best every day,...

I read the story of a man who was accused of a crime he didn’t commit, and because he didn’t have fancy lawyers, he went to prison.

He spent 19 years there, and although he didn’t do what they say he did, he decided to make the most of it. He learned to speak Spanish and play seven instruments and earned a college degree.

He came up for parole four times, and even though he learned to do these civilized things and behaved well, they weren’t good enough reasons for the...

If you want to build a strengths-based culture in your organization, it won’t happen overnight. Sure, you may want your coworkers to take hold of strengths instantly to receive the tremendous benefits of focusing on strengths like: increased productivity, retention, job satisfaction, positive interactions with coworkers, and so forth.

But remember, Rome wasn’t built overnight. A strengths culture isn’t built overnight either. If it takes you more time to get momentum and...

Note: A few months ago, a college ministry approached me for help. It wanted to inspire its people to pray more. This post is based on the advice I gave.

Let’s say you’re the director of prayer for a college ministry.

One of your goals is to motivate your people to pray more. But this isn’t easy. Everyone seems to be as busy as ever. They have endless choices for spending their time. And “praying more” doesn’t seem to be a pressing concern. To be...