This post is a guest appearance of sorts, Lindon Josefski, a friend of mine, who runs the Bundy Photo Challenge, shared this with me, and I instantly knew I wanted to share it with you. So without further ado, here are a few deep and well chosen words.

While down the farm spreading some fertilizer around some pawpaw trees, I thought, these trees are a little like us. Think about it, to start with while it was dry, we decided we had better set up some irrigation to keep them alive. Just like we need to be born again or baptized to be given eternal life (or to be kept alive).

Well that was fine, the trees flourished for a while. But just recently we noticed a number of the trees going yellow and the leaves going a little funny. We soon discovered that this was a mineral deficiency. Just like in our Christian life after we come to Christ, we go along fine, but some of us start to slow down and go off a little without spiritual minerals in our lives. So, fertilizer is needed to help the trees grow well as the soil does not have what the tress require to survive. We need that too, some maybe more than others, but we all need it.

Fruiting is another problem that you will get if the tree is not fed properly. Small fruit, deformed fruit, fruit that is not that good or even no fruit. As Christians we should have the best A1 grade fruit in our lives to share with others in this world. Gods Word is what we need to feed on. Without it we will die spiritually. But unlike these trees that get fed once every now and then and just take up what they need, we need to be constantly fed. Every day we need to meet with our Lord just to make it through.

So feed up on Gods Word today, tomorrow and every day so that you can grow strong in Him, so that you can do His work in this dying world.

Checklist

• Pineapple (complex huh)

Settings

• Focal length: 50mm (prime lens)
• Aperture: 1.8 (wanted to blur out the background as much as I could as it’s not the most fitting for the shot)
• Shutter speed:

  1/125

• ISO: 400
• White Balance: Auto

What I liked?

The Final Result?

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I will be starting with the Cutlery challenge but will also be backdating posts as I get time to do so…

So, Cutlery…

Checklist

• Cutlery: I raided my parents good set of course
• Table in the sunlight to set up on
• Satin pillow case
• Breadboard to stand upright and hang the pillow case on…

Line up the shot in the morning sun

Settings

• Focal length: 50mm (prime lens)
• Aperture: 2.8
• Shutter speed: 1/100
• ISO: 200
• White Balance: Auto

The final result?

Feel free to Comment and subscribe

Well it is that time of year where everyone seems to recap their milestones in some way, so I figured I would jump on the bandwagon in my own way.

This list is in no way definitive or complete, but just what came to mind. I will also say that some of the things that made the list are not totally new but I have attained a far greater understanding of them.

1:People pleasing gets you nowhere.

There is a desire in each of us to please others, in some the desire is strong, in others, not so much, but everyone, at some level desires to please other people, this in and of itself is not a problem, but there is a place where it can become one.

For me, people pleasing is a very strong desire, and unfortunately there is a time when it starts to take its toll not only on me but on my family. So this year I have had to learn to choose my battles, say no to some projects in order to be able to properly do what the Lord has inspired me to do.

2:Take the time to understand others motives.

It is easy to judge others by ones own standards, but in my experience this year, while there are absolutes which must be upheld, most interpersonal problems can be averted or minimized by taking the time to “put yourself in someone else’s shoes” so to speak.

I think this concept was framed so well by Rudyard Kipling when he wrote;

Ah, we judge each other harshly,
Knowing not life’s hidden force;
Knowing not the fount of action
Is less turbid at it’s source.

His words are still true today, lets remember to consider motives before we judge actions.

3:Deal with issues when they arise

This one is good advice for everyone, but especially good if you are a procrastinator like me. If there is something uncomfortable you don’t really want to do so you have it on indefinite hold, or waiting for a better time… DO IT! I am speaking to myself as much as anyone here, “a convenient time” is nothing more than a dream. as a matter of fact, the longer you wait, the more unpleasant the task will become, and the larger it will seem.

Not only that, if you put it off long enough, other ugly tasks will join it in the back of your mind and ruin every bit of relaxation you will try to enjoy.

You know what that annoying job is, don’t argue with me, just go and do it.

4:Hyper-connectivity is not the answer

There is this lie that most of generation Y and practically all the millenials buy into, and that is

“Your satisfaction in life, your perceived importance and value to others is directly linked to how connected, visible and contactable you are”

My guess is that nobody has said that to you in as many words, but if you examine how you use technology, I think you will find it disturbingly true.

Hyper-connectivity does not actually do any of those things, but it does do something else… it blasts holes in your productivity the size of a small armored vehicle. Every time you change task (moving from “Important task #1″ to checking email/twitter/facebook) you then have to build all that momentum again when you return to your task, this statistically destroys any hope of productivity you may have.

What I have started doing, is walling off bricks of time to focus on one task, during this time, I switch my phone to flight mode, turn off my Gmail notifier, exit twitter, Disconnect from IRC, sign out of Google chat, Skype and WLM. Now this might shock you, but while I was off the grid, nobody fainted, ranted, raved had a heart attack or probably even noticed my absence.

The results are freakishly good, and don’t believe me? try it yourself.

If you want to know more about this (and other productivity goodness) watch this great video of Tony Schwartz.

5:Play to your strengths

In the past, I have fallen into the trap of  trying to be a “Jack of all trades” the truth is, it is not possible to truly excel at anything when you are focusing on everything. Identify your “One thing” and cut away the dreams of mastering your secondary lines of work, return to them if you have the time once you are an expert in your field of choice.

There is a great message called “10 Steps to Excellence” By Dr Sam Pipim if you want to hear about following your “One thing” (and the other 9 points of great advice)

6:Success is found in ones own redundancy

This one is a tough one to learn, we like to make ourselves irreplaceable but in reality, all that will do is ensure you never get to progress to bigger and better things. whatever job you have, find somebody willing to learn, and teach them, it will free you up also strengthening your organization.

When I started out, I began by trying to become proficient in as many tasks as possible and gather the various responsibilities to myself, eventually I became capable of more jobs than I physically had the capacity to do and burn-out became a big issue for me.

Learn from my mistake: become a master of succession in leadership, trust me, you will never be out of a job.

7:God is still in control

This is the final, and most important point. Even when things don’t go your way, have the faith to believe some purpose greater than you is being worked out. If you really believe that, it will give you peace and great resilience even in the face of adversity. As one of my favorite passages says

And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. – Romans 8:28

I Hope some of the things I have learned this year has been of some interest to you. If you plan on applying any of them yourself, or have some of your own you would like to add, please tell me about it in the comments.

This post brings us to the end of our three-part series, I hope it has been as interesting for you to read as it has been for me to write about, please comment, subscribe and share.

3:Success is not yet Measurable

You are working long hours, there is that deadline on Friday, you are throwing everything you can at it, and you have the ulcer to prove it. With an hour to spare you open up a new fresh email to your boss starting with the statement “It is finished”. Relief floods your system when you click send. you achieved! you attained the results needed. Well that is the way it can work in the secular world…

In Spiritual leadership, it is not always so clear. our goals are invisible ones. thought we can see the effects of success (numerical growth) it is not really a meaningful metric for success.

This is because God is the discerner of hearts, we can look for signs but ultimately it is up to the divine judge, we have no control over the free will of others, what we do have control over is ourselves, thanks to the radically free will, placed in us by God, himself.

Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived captured this when he wrote in Ecclesiastes 12:13

Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.

Leader or member, that is what it all boils down to, if we diligently live our lives in this way, though we may not be able to clearly measure our effectiveness now, there will be a day on the other side of eternity when the books will be opened and we will finally see the true nature and weighty importance of our earthly assignment, it’s successes and losses will be revealed to us. Once it is illuminated with the light that only comes from the throne of God, we will finally see that even many of the events that seemed to be failures were really war-changing victories in the Great controversy.

I encourage, exhort and challenge you to live your life, as stated by Solomon, Fearing (Revere and respecting) The Lord, and keeping his commandments, this is your whole duty, and if you do so, on that Great day, you will see that no matter how your life looked here, it was really victory after victory in the name of the great prince Emmanuel!

I just wanted to take a moment of your time to tell you about a regular Photo comp I take part in. It is called the “Bundy Photo Challenge” and it is open to anyone who wants to enter. Whatever level you are at, please join the experience. It is good fun and it will encourage your photography skills to grow.

You might be surprised with what you  come up with.

If you are interested, send an email off to the Organizer bundyphotochallenge@yahoo.com.au and get yourself on the list!

Lastly, if you don’t own a camera or for some other reason do not want to enter the comp, there is one other thing you can do that is very much-needed. Vote in each competition and tell your friends to do the same.

You will now be returned to your regular programming schedule

Steve Jobs was possibly one of, if not the most significant person to ever walk into the technology industry, and as I am sure most of you are aware, he died today.

In his wake he leaves a battery of world-changing products like the iPod the iPhone, the many iterations of the Mac, the iPad, even Pixar studios, and the list goes on. I have watched the life of Steve Jobs with great interest, some of his qualities I have found admirable while others questionable. Love him or hate him, he changed the world, and I believe he had two vital qualities that enabled him to do this.

Vision and Passion.

In a world of people with their eyes closed, bathing in an ocean of selfish apathy, Steve broke the trend and dreamed big. Not only did he dream big, he had the passion to bring it into reality, he was not prepared to stop for anything or anyone. These two qualities turned him into a tremendously powerful and influential man.

He understood something about life that many people do not grasp, and he stated it at a Stanford University graduation ceremony;

Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.

As a Christian I sometimes wonder what that kind of vision and determination would lead to if properly understood by those with the Gospel as the focus of their life? Would the world be carrying their Bibles around and paying them as much attention as they do an iPhone?  Would there be global revival and would we see the Latter rain fall?

If what we profess to believe really is true, we can afford to dream big, because God is there to enable and guide us.

The Church needs more people like Steve Jobs, people who will move forward with Vision and Passion.

The question is… why can’t that be you and I?

Here is part two of my observations, my objective here is simply to provoke thought and consideration, I welcome any comments and hope this post might give you a slightly different perspective.

2:Every decision is important

Decisions are important in every organization, they can destroy or build up, make or lose money, have you promoted or fired. Whatever job you happen to have, think of the worst decision you can make; what are the consequences? worst case scenario, you have no job, and thus you look for another one. In a Church this is vastly different, decisions are not simply temporal, they have eternal meaning, especially when they infringe on an area of principle.

To the Christian, preferences are good, but in importance, rank somewhere between preferring watermelon over oranges and what toothpaste to use, but when you start redefining or treading on principles and you can draw not-so-friendly fire before you have finished the sentence. Why? because to a christian a principle, is of eternal significance. It is the difference between eternal life and eternal death, no value can be placed on that reward. It is beyond measure. To Illustrate: is one day of blissful life (as opposed to death, non-existence) worth $1? how about one cent? well with eternity as the measure of a christian’s reward, that is one cent times infinity. See my point? what we are dealing with is of inestimable value, no wonder people get so upset!

There is another facet of these ‘high stakes’ to be looked at as well… If a leader in a secular organization teaches someone something which is wrong, the consequences are painful, but as I illustrated in the last paragraph, the eternal significance makes it very different. You are not teaching someone how to accomplish a task, or how to make some extra money, you are fitting them for eternity, you are in a literal sense, teaching survival skills.

If you are already thinking all this is too much for mere mortals to be entrusted with… you are exactly right. leaders, teachers and indeed all Christians must choose to submit to the will of God, We believe that Jesus is the head of the church, and as God, he is amply qualified to take that role, but we believe he works through humans to accomplish his vision and mission. So the challenge for spiritual leaders is to know God intimately, so they can clearly discern his plans, and then go about executing them in his strength.

Divine wisdom for decision-making is available, but only if you are humble, and know where to look.

Recently I participated in a conversation about leadership, from secular and religious perspectives (With a certain Zebra). Amid this exchange of ideas, it occurred to me that there are three main differences between these two institutions, of course there are many others, but in application there are three primary areas that I have identified.

If you are not in direct or official leadership I still encourage you to read, If you are a leader but not a Christian, I urge you to read also, as a different perspective can enrich your own outlook on the topic. If you are a Christian it will hopefully help you understand your leaders, perhaps preparing you for leadership in your own sphere of influence and finally, for those who are already effective leaders, your comments are more than welcome. So without further ado here is part one of this Three part series.

1:We are all Volunteers

Aside from the pastor anyway, the people who comprise a church are volunteers, this means that the motivation of an individual to serve or be a part of the whole is not founded in monetary gain. that removes a tool that secular leaders are often accustomed to using, There is no universal standard of currency in a volunteer organization.

What this means for leadership is if you plan to be effective, and bring about the goals of the organization, you need to learn better leadership skills. I know “better” is a subjective term but what I mean is that you can not just give direction, or “orders” for want of a better term. The solution lies in being a servant leader, you must not only lead by example, by their side but you motivate by loving. If a person has a good relationship with another and has respect for that person they are far more motivated to take part in the vision that person is communicating.

The final point I will make here is that you can NEVER (yes, I am aware this is an absolute statement) motivate or lead anyone by pretending to love them.  You should never plan to show affection for someone so they will follow your lead, this is just plain dishonest, so get that idea out of your head right now.

The key to this whole point, Christian or not, is;

Lead because you love. Do not Love because you Lead.

Anders Behring Breivik a name  unknown to the world, just this weekend, became an global headline.

Anders is responsible for the deaths of  over 90 people after he bombed a central area of the Oslo CBD(killing 7), then proceded to gain access to an island where a summer youth camp was being held. Here he shot and killed at least 84 people.

This is truly a dark event, one that will not soon be forgotten (I will indeed be keeping all involved in my thoughts and prayers), but after this atrocity was perpetrated what was he labeled?  Terrorist? insane?  No, he has been freely labeled a “Christian Fundamentalist” by officials and by the media.

After hearing of this I did some digging, in that short amount of time I discovered that he has ties to the Neo-Nazi movement, he was a prominent freemason, was baptised into a Protestant church at the age of fifteen, but later, in 2009 posted the following statement online…

“Today’s Protestant church is a joke. Priests in jeans who march for Palestine and churches that look like minimalist shopping centres. I am a supporter of an indirect collective conversion of the Protestant church back to the Catholic.”

The significance of his statement coupled with the event and the aforementioned media response blew me away.

See, my mind went straight back to September 11 2001, the first large-scale “Terrorist attack” which sparked all kinds of talk about the “War on Terror”. Terrorism was the buzzword, however, slowly that was replaced in the media and public consciousness by terms like “Fundamentalist organizations” or “Islamic Fundamentalism”.

Now we see another move in focus, with this new, horrific event, the taget comes closer to ‘home’. Is Mr Breivic called a Neo-Nazi Freemason? no, he is called a “Christian Fundamentalist” apparently grouping fundamentalist Christianity with terrorist actions.

As a Seventh-day Adventist Christian I believe the Bible foretells this shift. Where the world begins to view Christians in a dangerous light. All that has to happen is for the definition of “Fundamentalist Christianity” to move in a different direction and the events foretold in the book of Revelation could jolt into motion.

How significant this particular event will be, I am not sure, but what I am quite sure of, is that this is another brick in the wall, using the devilish deeds of very unchristian people who profess faith in Christ to reshape the world’s perception of actual Bible-based Christianity.