Category Archives: Orange Zone (proclaiming the Gospel)

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21 Reasons Why People Don’t Listen When You Speak

Do you ever wonder, are people really listening when I speak? People may look like they are listening, but how do you know if you are actually impacting them? Afterall, the goal of speaking is not to just get people to sit still until you are finished talking. You want to impact them and help them grow.

How to get people to listen to you when you speak

You want to serve people in some way through your speaking.  I’m still processing each one of the bullet points I’m about to share. I hope I never stop growing, and if I ever do, anyone please hit me over the head with a bag of nickles and remind me to keep improving!

HERE ARE 21 STUMBLING BLOCKS THAT MIGHT KEEP PEOPLE FROM LISTENING TO YOU WHEN YOU SPEAK

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ARE YOU TRYING TO LIVE UP TO IMPOSSIBLE STANDARDS? BE FREE!

photo by Thomas HainesI have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing! -Galatians 2:20-21

Our faith muscles are strengthened as we meditate on the grace of God, not on his impossible standards.

Can you imagine ever saying to someone that “Christ died for nothing!”? Yet the Apostle Paul says that in our actions and in our beliefs we may as well be saying that out loud. That is really convicting. I think leaders in particular sometimes get baited by performance, goals and expectations put on them and fall into this trap of trying to live up to impossible standards.

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12 Step Checklist to Make You a Better Speaker or Teacher

Whether you are speaking to a large group, facilitating discussion in a small group, or mentoring an individual, you can never stop improving as a speaker.

“Communication is the real work of leadership.” –Nitin Nohria

Teaching through a translator in Torino, Italy

Teaching through a translator in Torino, Italy

WHETHER AT HOME OR ABROAD HERE IS A CROSS-CULTURAL CHECKLIST I USE AS A SPEAKER TO HELP PEOPLE LISTEN & GET SOMETHING OUT OF MY TALKS…

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How to Handle Defeat or Failure Gracefully

I recently had a day of parenting that I would call a failure. I really love my kids so when I feel like a failure as a parent that can be really discouraging. The next morning as I was spending time with the Lord trying to restart so that I would not let my sense of defeat cause me to lose heart, I was reminded of a metaphor that helped.

How to handle failure

LIKE THAT FEELING OF FAILURE WHEN YOU HAVE LOST A GAME

I have coached for a long time and currently I’m coaching a 12 and under baseball team. It is inevitable in any sport that a player is going to have a bad day. I have walked my kids through many of these situations and one common thread stands out. As the parent standing with my kids as they feel a sense of failure or defeat, my hope is always that they can simply learn from it and then move on quickly to the next opportunity for growth. It is hard to watch one of my kids remain downcast over a bad day on the field. What I love is when one of my kids can deal with their emotion of disappointment in a reasonable amount of time, and then find something to learn from and lift their chin and move on.

It sounds cliche to say that what matters from failure is how you deal with it and move on. But it is true. And I see in the Scriptures that our heavenly Father has a similar perceptive. God expects us to fail, massively, and often. Yet similar to a parent who is pulling for their child to learn, grow, and move on… God has that kind of perspective.

CONTENTMENT COMES FROM HUMILITY

A passage that encourages me along these lines is Psalm 131. It is a psalm about contentment. And contentment comes from humility.

My heart is not proud, Lord, my eyes are not haughty; I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me.But I have calmed and quieted myself, I am like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child I am content. Israel, put your hope in the Lord both now and forevermore. (Psalm 131)

LISTEN TO YOUR HEAVENLY FATHER’S VOICE WHEN YOU FACE DEFEAT

How are you handling small or massive failures or defeat? Are you like the child after a game who keeps his head down and can’t snap out of it.. making a big deal out of something that really in the grand scheme of things is not that big of a deal? I’m grateful that although I met discouragement recently by a bad day of parenting, that once again (as usual) God’s Word helped me snap out if it and just learn and move on in hope.

REFLECTION

  • Identify a recent time when you felt defeated. How did you handle it?
  • Have you ever tried to cheer up or encourage another person after the lost a sports game? Can you remember a time when someone you know sat in disappointment for way too long? Was that hard for you to watch? Why?
  • Consider this week how God the Father truly views failure and defeat. Like the Psalm above encourages us, try to “calm and quiet yourself like a weaned child” in the lap of your Father, and then chin up and move on. It’s probably not as big of a deal as you have made it out to be in God’s perspective.
  • Remember what Job cried out in great hope: “I know that my redeemer lives…” (Job 19:25). God is actively at work redeeming you especially in the midst of your failures and defeat.
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If Jesus isn’t Who He said He was, the World has No Hope | 10 Reasons

I recently had the privilege of sharing the Gospel with a young man in a foreign country who grew up in a family that taught that the way to God is only through believing the message of a different book than the Bible. After sharing the Gospel with him for a couple of hours I pleaded with him to take my Bible and read the story of Jesus for himself to see how different his story is from this other religious book.

Jesus brings hope

Although he listened intently to everything that I told him about Jesus and seemed to want to believe it… he would not accept my Bible because he said that his father would disown him or kill him if he came home with it. This is where my mind went: