Editor: Richard (Dick) Innes
Published by: ACTS International
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Vol. 15 – No. 1413 April 06, 2013
Thought for the week: "It's not where you start—it's where you finish that counts." – Zig Ziglar
"You can't steal second base and keep your foot on first." – Frederick Wilcox
"Deal first with whatever is causing you the greatest emotional distress. Often this will break the logjam in your work and free you up mentally to complete [the] other tasks." – Brian Tracy
"Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat." – Theodore Roosevelt
"The only certain means of success is to render more and better service than is expected of you, no matter what your task may be." – Og Mandino
"Jesus died over 2000 years ago. Nobody has ever referred to him as the late Jesus—not even heathens. Nowhere in history. Nowhere has He EVER been referred to in the past tense! He is the Living God!" – Anonymous
"If we think of the Holy Spirit as so many do as merely a power or influence, our constant thought will be, "How can I get more of the Holy Spirit?" But if we think of Him in the Biblical way as a Divine Person, our thought will rather be, "How can the Holy Spirit have more of me?" – R. A. Torrey
While there, he bid on a parrot. He really wanted this bird, so he got caught up in the bidding. He kept on bidding, but kept getting outbid, so he bid higher and higher and higher.
Finally, after he bid way more than he intended, he won the bid—the parrot was his at last!
As he was paying for the parrot, he said to the auctioneer, "I sure hope this parrot can talk. I would hate to have paid this much for it, only to find out that he can't talk!"
"Don't worry," said the auctioneer, "He can talk. Who do you think kept bidding against you?"
"To every man there comes in his lifetime that special moment, when he is physically tapped on the shoulder and offered the chance to do a very special thing, unique to him, and fitted to his talent; what a tragedy if that moment finds him unprepared or unqualified for the work which would be his finest hour." – Winston Churchill
"Opportunity comes to pass—not to pause." – Unknown
"Better to be prepared and not called, than to be called and not prepared." – Jim Wallace
Texas Beer Joint Sues Local Church over Lightning Strike!
A bar called Drummond's in Mt Vernon, Texas, began construction on an expansion of their building, hoping to "grow" their business.
In response, the local Southern Baptist Church started a campaign to block the bar from expanding with petitions, prayers, etc.
About a week before the bar's grand re-opening, a bolt of lightning struck the bar and burned it to the ground!
Afterward, the church folks were rather smug—bragging about "the power of prayer."
The angry bar owner eventually sued the church on grounds that the church, "Was ultimately responsible for the demise of his building,
through direct actions or indirect means."
Of course, the church vehemently denied all responsibility or any connection to the building's demise.
The judge read carefully through the plaintiff's complaint and the defendant's reply. He then opened the hearing by saying: "I don't know how I'm going to decide this, but it appears from the paperwork that what we have here is a bar owner who now believes
in the power of prayer, and an entire church congregation that does not."
Today is the only day that you will ever have in your life. Yesterday is now history and you cannot use it. Tomorrow is still a mystery, and you cannot use it. Today is all the present, the only present that you have, a present that needs reception, a clean start, an opportunity to improve on what is left from yesterday and make a solid base for what is yet to come tomorrow. Every day is worth pondering over to avoid wondering about.
A common management strategy to spur achievement is to set aggressive performance objectives that, like the mechanical rabbits that pace racing greyhounds, push employees to maximum effort. Using "stretch goals" can be successful, but unreasonably high performance goals often spawn dishonesty and irresponsibility.
Believing that "it's a matter of survival," a disturbing number of employees conclude that distortion, deception, and even outright falsification of numbers are justified to keep their jobs and earn their bonuses. As a result, almost everyone seems to reach their stretch goals, and management congratulates itself on generating an unbroken string of double-digit growth.
Organizational audits conducted by the Josephson Institute reveal that a high percentage of employees who feel pressured to achieve ever-escalating numerical goals ignore or defer problems and manipulate or falsify reports to help them "hit their numbers." The deceptive accounting tactics that caused a collapse of trust in Wall Street and the mortgage industry illustrate one coping strategy called "backing into the numbers."
Look, pressure is no excuse for cheating, but it is a frequent cause. Responsible management needs to take into account the propensity of employees to tell them what they want to hear. There's nothing wrong with aggressive growth and profit goals, but if organizations do not place an even higher value on character in their hiring, training, promotion, compensation, and discipline practices, all they will achieve is the illusion of success.
This is Michael Josephson reminding you that character counts.
"But let your 'Yes' be 'Yes,' and your 'No,' 'No.'"1
Without a doubt one of the major causes of conflict in relationships is poor communications. And two of the most damaging "no-no" words in interpersonal communications are "you always" and "you never," as these are almost always false statements.
The husband who repeatedly says to his wife (or any family member), "You never do such and such, or you never do thus and so," is almost always expressing an overstatement, and never builds a bridge for resolving the conflict at hand. Or the wife who repeatedly says to her husband (or any family member), "You always do such and such, or you always do thus and so," is also almost always expressing an overstatement, and in so doing, builds a barrier between herself and her loved one.
This type of accusation is usually an unfair criticism from an unhappy, and sometimes angry, person who is projecting his or her own unresolved issues onto the other person.
When misunderstandings occur, it is much wiser, more creative, and more loving to express how one feels without accusing the other person for the way he or she feels. When I am upset and start a sentence with words such as, "You always ..." or "You never..." I am blaming the other person for the way I feel, while in reality nobody can make me feel the way I feel without my permission.
It is important to acknowledge the fact that my feelings are always my responsibility. Furthermore, to the degree that I overreact, my feelings are always my problem. The most loving way to respond when our feelings are hurt is to start our sentence by saying, "I feel hurt ..." or "I feel sad, lonely," or whatever it is I am feeling. This way I am being honest with my emotions; am taking responsibility for them; and am not blaming the other person for the way I am feeling. By taking this approach, we have a much greater chance and opportunity for resolving the conflict or issue at hand. Remember too, that feelings are neither right nor wrong, it's the way that we handle them that counts.
Suggested prayer: "Dear God, please help me to always be open and honest regarding my reactions and my emotions; never blame anyone else for the way I respond or feel; and always accept responsibility for these by communicating how I feel in an open, honest and loving way. Please help me to always be like Jesus in every situation in which I find myself. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully in Jesus' name, amen.
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Oprah Winfrey: "Books were my pass to personal freedom. I learned to read at age three, and soon discovered there was a whole world to conquer that went beyond our farm in Mississippi." – Oprah Winfrey
1. Bible concordance and Bible helps
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"Because the world is hungry,
go with bread.
Because the world is filled with strife,
go with peace.
Because the world is filled with deceptions and lies,
go with truth.
Because the world would die without,
go with the love of God."
