Month: February 2016

March 2016 Reading Challenge book: START by Jon Acuff

Our new group the 2016 Reading Challenge is off to a great start! Last week we met to discuss our February book, Fearless: Imagine Your Life Without Fear by Max Lucado. And this week we’re starting our March book, Start: Punch Fear in the Face, Escape Average, Do Work That Matters by Jon Acuff.

This book ties into our theme for the year, Courage, as a guide to not just settle for average in life but to have the courage to go for awesome.

In Start, Acuff talks about the five stages of a successful life, which used to be tied to your age during a time when people tended to stick with one career their entire working life:

  1. Learning (20s)
  2. Editing (30s)
  3. Mastering (40s)
  4. Harvesting (50s)
  5. Guiding (60s)

But now, according to Acuff, the stages are no longer tied to when you were born, but to when you decide to live. You just have to Start!

This week we’re reading chapters 1 and 2. Chapter 1, “You Are Here,” introduces the concept of the five stages of life and shows how things are different now. In chapter 2, “The Start,” he talks about the importance of not only being wildly enthusiastic about your future, but also being extremely realistic about your present—where you are now. He also says that the Start is the only part you truly control and you can’t really predict the finish.

We’ll meet at the end of the month—on Wednesday, March 30, at 7:00pm at NorthStar Church—to discuss the book together. Email me at randy dot elster at northstarchurch dot org for more information.

Thought for today: Monday, February 29, 2016

Let us be on the watch for opportunities of usefulness; let us go about the world with our ears and our eyes open, ready to avail ourselves of every occasion for doing good; let us not be content till we are useful, but make this the main design and ambition of our lives.

—Charles Spurgeon

HT: What’s Best Next: How the Gospel Transforms the Way You Get Things Done by Matt Perman

Truth for tonight: Sunday, February 28, 2016

These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.

—Deuteronomy 6:6-9 NIV

Thought for today: Saturday, February 27, 2016

There is another that has made you, and preserves you, and provides for you, and on whom you are dependent: and He has made you for himself, and for the good of your fellow-creatures, and not only for yourself. He has placed before you higher and nobler ends than self, even the welfare of your fellow-men, and of society, and the interests of his kingdom; and for these you ought to labour and live, not only in time, but for eternity.

—Jonathan Edwards

HT: What’s Best Next: How the Gospel Transforms the Way You Get Things Done by Matt Perman