Today I had the opportunity to discuss personal missions, talents, gifts and purpose today with my 9-year-old Sunday School students. We talked about Moses and various other people from the Bible and about their personal life missions--how their gifts, talents and experiences prepared them for the things they were to do, how they had little faith in their abilities in the beginning, how their faith AND their abilities grew over time with the help of God, and the differences they made in the lives of others. Of the many valuable gems of wisdom found in these stories, two things really stood out for me in our discussion that I wanted to share with you. The first thing is that as each of us shares our talents and gifts with others, we mak...

What would you be prepared to do for your friends? For those who have read the E-Myth - I wandered into the world of business after having an Entrepreneurial seizure. For those who haven't read the E-Myth - I decided to sack my boss and march into the world of business with no training or experience of what happens next. I knew that I could provide excellent services and that I would be better at it when freed from the dogma of other people's perceptions of how I should go about my business.  The reality was that I had no idea of what running a business was and spent over two years in the very harsh school of the idiots guide of how not to run a business. Indeed, I didn't even have a business as all of my services could only be perform...

So. I posted a series of doodle cartoons on my facebook profile that caused quite a stir amongst my atheist friends. It would seem passion runs high amid the non believers! I found myself embroiled in a series of debates and realised a couple of things: firstly, it takes great faith to be a staunch atheist (I will come back to this) and secondly that some people are so fiercely attached to their beliefs, they simply cannot entertain even the notion that they might be wrong.  This makes some determined atheists as fanatic and as rigidly immoveable as the religious zealots they point the finger at and scoff.  The idea that atheism is a belief was not welcomed by one particular friend and so dictionaries were whipped out (as you do) o...

Ask yourself what the worst investment you’ve ever made is and you will probably be instantly drawn to a financial situation which turned sour. It could have been a loan to a ‘friend’ that was never returned, or a dabble on the stock market that went wrong. It may even be a pension plan that went under. Either way, it’s probably financially motivated. In my late teens/early twenties I had a habit of making bad investments. These investments were usually in the form of loans to ‘friends’, which never seemed to find their way back to me. Many did get repaid – but they were not the one’s I was focussed on at the time. This led to me feeling an assortment of negative emotions as I recounted how wronged I had been. Being endowed with a tru...