56 Sermon Illustrations on Optimism

Back in the days of sailing ships a young sailor went to sea for the first time. The ship encountered a heavy storm in the North Atlantic. The young sailor was commanded to go aloft and trim the sails. As he started to climb, he made a mistake and looked down.

He started to lose his balance. At that moment, an older sailor underneath him shouted, “Look up, son, look up!” The young sailor looked up and regained his balance.

When things seem bad, look to see if you’re not facing the wrong direction. When you’re looking at the sun, you see no shadows. When the outlook isn’t good, try the uplook — it’s always good!

*

[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #4996]

There were two farmers. One was a pessimist, the other was an optimist.

The optimist would say, “Wonderful sunshine.” The pessimist would respond, “Yeah, I’m afraid it’s going to scorch the crops.” The optimist would say, “Fine rain.” The pessimist would respond, “Yeah, I’m afraid we are going to have a flood.”

One day the optimist said to the pessimist, “Have you seen my new bird dog? He’s the finest money can buy.” The pessimist said, “You mean that mutt I saw penned up behind your house? He don’t look like much to me.” The optimist said, “How about going hunting with me tomorrow?” The pessimist agreed.

They went. They shot some ducks. The ducks landed on the pond. The optimist ordered his dog to get the ducks. The dog obediently responded. Instead of swimming in the water after the ducks, the dog walked on top of the water, retrieved the ducks, and walked back on top of the water.

The optimist turned to the pessimist and said, “Now, what do you think of that?” Whereupon the pessimist replied, “Hmmm, he can’t swim, can he?”

________

From John Haggai, “How to Win Over Worry.”

In 1852 many California vineyard workers were going bankrupt because of a drought. All the grapes shriveled up on the vines. One vineyard owner picked them anyway, took them to market and advertised them as "Peruvian delicacies." We've been eating raisins ever since! (Bob Russell, TAKE COMFORT, Cincinnati, OH: Standard Pub., 1991, p. 79).

[Holwick - raisins have been around much longer than this, of course. According the the SunMaid website, commercial grape production started with the accidental drying of a crop of Thompson's seedless grapes in 1873; see ]

In search of hope without tragedy.

“Hope: The Heart’s Great Quest” By David Aikman Servant 220 pp.; $9.99, paper

About 500 pages into “The True and Only Heaven,” his expansive book about the life and death of optimism, Christopher Lasch wondered about the possibility for a rebirth, not of optimism, but of hope. Optimism’s confidence in unending and universal progress, he had observed, lived on evidence that things were going well and were likely to go on getting better. With such a flimsy basis, optimism could not survive the persistent experience of tragedies that have so cruelly walloped the human family. Now the question is, can we find a hope to replace our lost optimism? What we need, Lasch mused, is “a more vigorous form of hope which trusts life without denying its tragic character.” Is there such a hope?

Though he does not include Lasch’s book in his impressive list of sources, David Aikman has written his own answer to Lasch’s question. There is indeed the sort of vigorous hope that Lasch looked for. There is a hope that is based in God’s promise rather than evidence of human progress. The promise is a new creation rather than gradual improvement on the old one. Thus, Christian faith offers a life beyond the “tragic character” of this world to hope for and Someone above our tragedy-prone existence to trust our hope in. It is, therefore, a hope that will survive adversity and tragedy. And, since our spirits need hope as much as our lungs need oxygen, I can only applaud Aikman’s passion to show that Christian hope is the one and only true hope.

To support his purpose, Aikman, for many years a foreign correspondent for “Time” magazine, succinctly surveys the faith of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam in 21 pages and then — in 47 fast-turning pages — neatly reviews the major thinkers from the Age of Enlightenment to the New Age to show that other religious faiths offer no hope at all and that any hope that secular thought offers is a false one. This done, he reviews what the Bible along with selected theologians teach us about Christian hope. All this is done with the sprightly style and easy-to-open packaging that we would expect from a seasoned reporter.

Aikman shows quite splendidly that what Christians are given to hope for is a life of bodiless blessedness after we die and a good world for us all to live in later on. But just as important as what we may hope for is who we put our hope in — not ourselves nor signs of progress, but the Maker of the universe who is now Christ the Lord.

But granted the greater importance of what we hope for and in, it is also interesting to think about the sort of experience that hope is. Aikman tries out a few definitions and quickly rejects them; hope, he cautions, is not a desire or a wish. Nor is it a disposition. It is, as the Bible suggests, more like an eager expectation — which is close enough, I suppose — except that eagerness is, after all, a lively desire, and we often expect things we certainly do not hope for (“Expect the worst and hope for the best.”).

But not to quibble about definitions of so slippery a thing as what actual hoping is. Aikman senses the difficulty, so he offers a few vivid metaphors, like this one: “Hope is like the lion in the forest, triumphant over all the animals, patient, never hurried, always king of his domain.” Taste in metaphors, as in all else, is indisputable, so enjoy this one if it illumines what you do when you hope.

What motivates Aikman, in any case, is the effect of Christian hoping on daily living. Christian hope provides its own evidence in the miraculous manifestations of its power in the life of people who have it. It is fitting, then, that Aikman should save to the last chapter a review of how Christian hope for the next world “revolutionizes” the “way ordinary people live their lives” in the present one.

It is probably true that most Christian people do not spend much time “eagerly expecting” life in heaven or in the new earth. What most of us consciously worry about and hope for is fixed on the same worldly things that everybody else hopes for. We hope for the good things we eagerly desire for our families and friends and for ourselves, things we believe are possible, things none of us can be sure of. We hope for our children’s safety, happiness, and success. We hope for our own comfortable retirements. We hope for the healing of our spouses’ diseases. And the like. (Saint Paul says that we are most miserable if we have hope only for this life, but it is equally true that we are also pretty miserable if we have no hope for this life.)

So it seems natural that we should want to know how our Christian hoping for life in God’s future affects our chances of getting what we most hope for in our present. Is there any connection? Aikman is eager to prove there is. And, as a triumphant climax to his objective research, he offers us several personal examples of “The Fruits of Hope.” The fruits are harvested from some ordinary people’s extraordinary experiences of the power of hope. He tells their stories, quickly, without commentary, on the run, like those nifty little paragraphs at the front of “Time” that tell us what we really need to know about the week that was.

A man on his way to a golf game gets a message that his daughter was seriously hurt in a car crash. He bolts for the hospital. On his way, he prays with just “a flicker of hope that someone was listening.” There was. The man’s daughter survived and is, besides, now happily married.

A woman whose marriage is on the skids is sailing off Hawaii and sees a double rainbow over the island and reads it as a sign of hope.

A young lady plagued by an ugly skin disease goes to a Billy Graham rally with hope for a cure. She got what she hoped for and is now a professional model, high on the power of high hopes.

Aikman’s own marriage had broken down before he got it into his head to write a book about hope. While he researched and thought about hope, he and his wife were reconciled and now have a new hope for their family.

These are the sort of “fruits” that Aikman offers to show how Christian hope affects — in a “revolutionary” way — how “ordinary people live their lives.”

What can I say? Aikman’s “fruits” baffle me. Does he mean to say that putting our hope in Jesus Christ for the other world gives our hopes for life in this world a better chance of coming true? But where is the connection? Maybe he means that God rewards us for hoping for eternal life by giving us what we hope for in this one. Or maybe he means that Christian hoping emits such a potent psychosomatic energy into our lives that we make our own hopes come true. Then again, it may be that Aikman has no idea of how hope does it and wants only to celebrate the fact that it does.

Geriatric hopers like me will permit themselves some skepticism. We just have too many crushed hopes under our belts to be easily persuaded that our Christian hoping improves — in any predictable sense — the odds that our human hopes will come true. Our hunch is that Aikman’s zeal for a nifty evangelical finish ran ahead of the sounder journalistic instincts he demonstrated along the way.

And yet, I do not wish to discount Aikman’s message. Certainly, when we keep hope alive for a victorious ending to a long struggle, we are encouraged to fight on and on until justice wins. Martin Luther King taught us that. And certainly a vivid hope for God’s kingdom rooted in Christ’s resurrection keeps the hope for victory alive. Bishop Tutu gives a resounding witness.

Certainly there is a therapeutic link between hopefulness and healing — both physical and psychological. It is being celebrated in the best of medical circles these days. And Victor Frankl has moved many of us to awe with his story of how the power of hope for what was obviously impossible — escape from the death camp — made the doomed life of prisoners who hoped to escape it infinitely richer than those who gave up hope.

It must be wonderfully true that nothing is ever accomplished, no poem written, no painting painted, no wall constructed, no enterprise begun, no family kept together, and no life reborn unless somebody hoped it could be done. But these are different sorts of links between hope and life than Aikman hints at with his amazing fruits. And besides, as Rabbi Maurice Lamm’s lovely book “The Power of Hope” (1995) assumes, the energy that links hoping to the getting of what we hope for is as powerful in the lives of people in general who have a hopeful disposition about this present life as it is in the lives of Christians in particular who hope for the promises about life to come. And besides, is there not a wee irony in celebrating the possibility that Christian hope of going to heaven improves our chances of putting off the trip? (”Everybody,” I have heard, “wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.”)

I wonder whether the author’s fantastic “fruits of hope” would have persuaded Christopher Lasch that he had found the “more vigorous form of hope which trusts life without denying its tragic character.” I fear not. They seem instead to hint that Christian hope offers an escape from tragedy. And to that extent, it denies that life need have a tragic character. Perhaps Aikman’s evangelical enthusiasm for immediate and transparent results may have obscured his apologetic purpose. But I do not want to carp. He set out to demonstrate that the gospel offers a well-founded hope for a happy ending to our tragic history, and he succeeded, for which he deserves a good deal of praise for a lot of work well done. His book, in spite of my cautions about the ending, will give any reader a fine overview of all that has been thought and said about the gift of hope, for which nothing is more essential to the life of the human spirit.

~~~~~~~~~~

Copyright (c) 1996 Christianity Today, Inc./BOOKS & CULTURE May/June 1996, – Vol. 2, No. 3, Page 23 – – bcmay96mrj6B30236423

[These appear to have been copied from a magazine article or other publication. I should stress, however, that some or all of the quotes could be inaccurate. -- Chris]

INVENTIONS

==========

“640K ought to be enough for anybody.”

-- Bill Gates, 1981 (possibly apocryphal)

“There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.”

-- Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977 (possibly apocryphal)

“But what … is it good for?”

-- Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM, 1968, commenting on the microchip.

“I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won’t last out the year.”

-- The editor in charge of business books for Prentice Hall, 1957

“Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons.”

-- Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949

“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.”

-- Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943

"A rocket will never be able to leave earth's atmosphere."

-- New York Times, 1936.

“The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?”

-- David Sarnoff’s associates in response to his urgings for investment in the radio in the 1920’s.

"No flying machine will ever fly from New York to Paris."

-- Orville Wright

“Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value.”

-- Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre.

"The horse is here to stay, but the automobile is only a novelty, a fad."

-- President of Michigan Savings Bank advising against investing in Ford Motor Co., 1903.

“Everything that can be invented has been invented.”

-- Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899. (possibly apocryphal)

“Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.”

-- Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895.

“This ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.”

-- Western Union internal memo, 1876.

"Well-informed people know it is impossible to transmit the voice over wires and that were it possible to do so, it would be of no practical value."

-- Boston Post, 1865.

BUSINESS

========

“If I had thought about it, I wouldn’t have done the experiment. The literature was full of examples that said you can’t do this.”

-- Spencer Silver on the work that led to the unique adhesives for 3-M “Post-It” Notepads.

“So we went to Atari and said, ‘Hey, we’ve got this amazing thing, even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us? Or we’ll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we’ll come work for you.’ And they said, ‘No.’ So then we went to Hewlett-Packard, and they said, ‘Hey, we don’t need you. You haven’t got through college yet.’”

-- Apple Computer Inc. founder Steve Jobs on attempts to get Atari and H-P interested in his and Steve Wozniak’s personal computer.

“The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a ‘C,’ the idea must be feasible.”

-- A Yale University management professor in response to Fred Smith’s paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service. (Smith went on to found Federal Express Corp.)

“A cookie store is a bad idea. Besides, the market research reports say America likes crispy cookies, not soft and chewy cookies like you make.”

-- Response to Debbi Fields’ idea of starting Mrs. Fields’ Cookies.

“Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.”

-- Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University, Oct. 17, 1929.

“Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil? You’re crazy.”

-- Drillers who Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist to his project to drill for oil in 1859.

MEDICINE

========

“The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will forever be shut from the intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon.”

-- Sir John Eric Ericksen, British surgeon, appointed Surgeon-Extraordinary to Queen Victoria 1873.

“Louis Pasteur’s theory of germs is ridiculous fiction.”

-- Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872

"For the majority of people, the use of tobacco has a beneficial effect."

-- Dr. Ian G. MacDonald, Los Angeles surgeon, quoted in Newsweek, Nov. 18, 1963.

“While theoretically and technically television may be feasible, commercially and financially it is an impossibility.”

-- Inventor Lee DeForest

"Television won't be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night."

-- Darryl F. Zanuck, head of 20th Century Fox, 1946.

POPULAR CULTURE

===============

“We don’t like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out.”

-- Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962.

"You ain't going nowhere son. You ought to go back to driving a truck."

-- Grand Ole Opry's Jim Denny to Elvis Presley, 1954.

“I’m just glad it’ll be Clark Gable who’s falling on his face and not Gary Cooper.”

-- Gary Cooper on his decision not to take the leading role in “Gone With The Wind,” 1939.

"I have no political ambitions for myself or my children."

-- Joseph P. Kennedy, 1936.

“Who the in the world wants to hear actors talk?”

-- H.M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927.

*

[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #16466]

Attitudes are contagious ... is yours worth catching?

If it's to be, it's up to me.

Your attitude, not your aptitude is the chief determinant of your success.

You are where you are and what you are because of the thoughts that dominate your mind.

We are either masters or victims of our attitudes. It's a matter of personal choice ... blessing or curse.

The spirit, the will to win, and the will to excel, are the things that endure. These qualities are so much more important than the events that occur.

-- Vincent Lombardi

____________________

Today I shall behave as though this day is the one by which I shall be remembered.

-- R.A. Twerski

____________________

You can change your thinking and thereby change your life. You can do this by deliberately imaging into your subconscious good ideas, positive images, instead of negative ones. You are constantly in a state of becoming. And you become what you think.

-- Mary Crowe

=================================================

From "Quotes from the Masters," September 13, 2001:

"It is our attitude at the beginning of a difficult undertaking which, more than anything else, will determine its successful outcome."

-- William James

"No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit."

-- Helen Keller

"The cynic knows the price of everything and the value of nothing."

-- Oscar Wilde

"Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude."

-- Thomas Jefferson

"The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."

-- Winston Churchill (Quotes from the Masters, 12/11/01)

*

Wouldn't this old world be better

If folks we meet would say,

"I know something good about you."

And then treat you that way?

Wouldn't it be fine and dandy,

If each handclasp warm and true

Carried with it this assurance,

I know something good about you!"

Wouldn't life be lots more happy

If the good that's in us all,

Were the only thing about us,

That folks bothered to recall?

Wouldn't life be lots more happy,

If we praised the good we see?

For there's a lot of goodness

In the worst of you and me.

Wouldn't it be nice to practice

That fine way of thinking too?

You know something good about me!

I know something good about you!"

A woman in a convalescent home was given a party to celebrate her one hundredth birthday. Her pastor came to offer his congratulations. Later, the pastor said, "Her mind was keenly alert. When I arrived, she was completely caught up in the excitement of the birthday party. A reporter had come to interview her. And when he asked that high-spirited, one-hundred-year-old woman, 'Do you have any children?' she replied, without hesitation, 'Not yet!'"

Sunday Sermons, Volume 15, Number 6 Nov/Dec 1985, (Voicings), page 44.

Once upon a time a mighty king condemned one of his lowly subjects to die. The wretch proposed, and the king agreed, to call off the execution if, within a year, the condemned could teach the king's horse to fly.

"Why postpone the inevitable?" a friend asked the wretch. "It's not inevitable," he replied, "the odds are four to one in my favor. Within a year: 1. The king might die. 2. I might die. 3. The horse might die. 4. I might teach the horse to fly.

Often difficult and seemingly impossible obstacles stand in our way. Let us offer some suggestions in dealing with these problems:

1. PRAY FOR GOD'S HELP AND WISDOM. "If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him." (James 1:5).

2. LIST ALL POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS.

3. ASK OTHER PEOPLE - not to solve your problems, but to give their thoughts and ideas for your consideration. "Counsel in the heart of man is like deep water, but a man of understanding will draw it out." (Prov. 20:5).

4. FIND SOMETHING IN YOUR SITUATION FOR WHICH TO BE THANKFUL. "In everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you." (1 Thess. 5:18).

5. ONCE YOU DECIDE ON A DIRECTION, GIVE IT YOUR BEST EFFORT.

"Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might; for there is no work or device or knowledge or wisdom in the grave where you are going." (Eccles. 9:10). They used to say that a man could never fly. "If God had meant for man to fly, He would have given him wings," people would comment. YOU NEVER KNOW, THE HORSE MIGHT FLY! --Jerrie Barber

Ben Franklin is the one we need to thank for street lights. He came up with the idea of street lights and had the wisdom to get his idea implemented. How did he do it? Did he go to the city fathers and demand installation of street lights throughout the city? No. Did he organize a citizen's group to petition for street lights? No. Then how did he do it? Quite simply really. Each night Ben would light a brightly polished brass lantern and hang it form the tree in front of his house. Night after night he continued to illuminate his little corner of the world and before long his neighbors followed his example until the entire city enjoyed the benefits of street lights. (Ron Roberson, Montgomery, AL)

[Holwick - Franklin may have started it in America but the lighting of streets is an ancient practice; see ]

Did you hear about the optimist that fell off the top of a 40-story building? As he passed the 13th floor he was heard to say, "So far so good!"

A bald knight, who wore a wig, went out to hunt. A sudden puff of wind blew off his hat and wig, at which a loud laugh rang forth from his companions. He pulled up his horse, and with great glee joined in the joke by saying, “What a marvel it is that hairs which are not mine should fly from me, when they have forsaken even the man on whose head they grew.”

Like the knight in this fable, Christians always need to keep an optimistic view of life. Indeed, there’s always a bright side in any given situation; we just have to look for it (and keeping a little sense of humor wouldn’t hurt either).

During the Battle of Britain, someone said to a man on the street in London, "Things look pretty dark, don't they?" The man replied, "But the King says there's 'ope Sir!"

Charles Goodyear inspired the tire company and hundreds of other businesses, but he won no riches from his great invention. The American inventor (1800-1860), had devotion and perseverance that resulted in one of the great discoveries of the 19th century: the industrial use of rubber. In 1834, this New England merchant set out to solve the "the Holy Grail" of the rubber industry: how to make it useful. Rubber's bouncy promise for the industrial age was slight. The reason? It couldn't take heat or cold. Raincoats turned to goo in heat and shoe soles froze in cold. Goodyear made a five-year effort to discover a solution.

While other men in the industry had given up trying, Goodyear experimented in his home laboratory. His wife and children made their way around the foul stench of turpentine and sulfur. In the kitchen, every cup and saucer was covered with rubber. With his friends telling him to give it up, bills piling high, and his family nearing starvation, Goodyear found himself sentenced to debtor's prison.

But this man was on what he felt to be a God-ordained mission. With his Bible for support and with tanks of optimism, he pushed forward with experiments in jail. "In his mind," writes Charles Slack, "Goodyear stood forever on the precipice of success."

A man, Goodyear wrote, may "derive lasting advantage by having proved to himself, that, with a clear conscience and a high purpose, a man may be happy within prison walls, as well as in any other (even the most fortunate) circumstances in life."

Persistence and self-sacrifice were rewarded in 1839 when a batch of rubber that Goodyear had mixed with sulfur and white lead fell onto a hot stove. To his amazement, it didn't melt. Indeed, it had hardened! Here at last was the solution - later named "vulcanization" - to rubber holding its shape. Waterproof and airtight, it stretched and could be reshaped. Forty years later came the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co., which had no connection to Charles other than that they had borrowed the name of the man who had solved the great mystery of rubber.

Speaking of the discipline the inventor must bring to the process of wrangling an idea from conception to fruition, Goodyear wrote: "Between the bare conception of an idea, and the demonstration of the practicability and utility of the thing conceived, there is almost always a vast amount of labor to be performed, time and money to be spent, and innumerable difficulties and prejudices to be encountered, before the work is accomplished."

"Noble Obsession" offers the reader enough rubber trivia to dazzle at least one dinner party. For instance, you'll learn that a molecule of rubber contains some 20,000 units of eight hydrogen and five carbon atoms. The reason it stretches - think rubber band here - is because a single molecule is a virtual line dance of 20,000 of these C5H8 combinations. "Noble Obsession" also reminds us what a determined individual is capable of achieving. It shows how successful enterprises need the right mix of qualities. Goodyear had persistence in spades but lacked business acumen - "money simply annoyed him," writes Slack.

That sets the stage for scoundrels who licked their chops for Goodyear's hard-won secret and crawled out from under various rocks. A host of patent disputes ensued. Goodyear naively sent samples of his successfully vulcanized rubber to an English competitor, Thomas Hancock, who later would claim to be the inventor and would beat Goodyear to the British patent rights.

Giving us a final impression of what motivated the man, Slacks notes that when Goodyear died in 1860, deeply in debt, his last words to his wife were that he "bore no ill will" toward those who had stolen from him.

Criticism

Excerpts from actual performance reviews for British Navy and Marine officers:

"His men would follow him anywhere, but only out of curiosity."

"This officer is really not so much of a has-been, but more of a definitely won't-be."

"Works well under constant supervision and when cornered like a rat in a trap."

"This young lady has delusions of adequacy."

"She sets low personal standards and then consistently fails to achieve them."

"This officer should go far-and the sooner he starts, the better."

"This man is depriving a village somewhere of an idiot."

-from Jackspeak: The Purser's Rum Guide to Royal Navy Slanguage

Forgetfulness

The visiting city dweller was amazed when the farmer gave a whistle and his dog herded the cattle into the corral, then latched the gate with her paw.

"Wow. That's some dog. What's her name?"

The forgetful farmer thought a minute, then asked, "What do you call that red flower that smells good and has thorns on the stem?"

"A rose."

"That's it!" The farmer turned to his wife. "Hey Rose, what do we call this dog?"

-Mark Ramsey

Medford, Oklahoma

Optimism

In Larry Olsen's Outdoor Survival Skills, he tells of a guy who has been lost in the desert for days. He's out of food and water. His lips are parched, his tongue swollen. His legs are bruised and bleeding from crawling, his skin is scorched by the sun, bitten by insects, and pricked by cactus thorns. As he pulls himself over the next sand dune, he sees nothing but more wasteland through his bloodshot, sand-peppered eyes. He sighs, "You know, a few more days of this, and I might get discouraged."

-Raymond McHenry

The Best of In Other Words

A girl's parents were appalled by her new boyfriend. The young man was dirty and had tattoos; various body parts were pierced.

The mother took the daughter aside and whispered, "We're concerned about your date, Dear. He doesn't seem very nice."

The daughter replied, "If he wasn't nice, would he be doing 5,000 hours of community service?"

Pessimism

Actual bumper stickers:

We're born naked, wet, & hungry. Then things get worse.

Remember, you're unique. Just like everyone else.

It's as bad as you think, and they are out to get you.

Progress

After a week of candidating, the prospective preacher spoke to the church one final time. "Remember, if you call me as your pastor, I intend to do everything within my power to bring this church into the nineteenth century!"

After a thoughtful pause, one member timidly raised a hand. "Don't you mean the twentieth century, Pastor?"

"No, let's just take it one century at a time."

Copyright(c) 1997 by Christianity Today, Inc/Leadership Journal.

Spring 1997, Vol. XVIII, No. 2, Page 77

Where we used to live, we had so many leaves to rake and bag - and so few free days to work on it - that one massive Saturday effort was what we depended on. And, of course, dark always came too soon. We'd race to get it all done before the sun went down, but sometimes, well, we lost the race. Every farmer who's ever harvested a crop knows the feeling of racing the dark, but there's no way to postpone the sunset. In fact, today's almanac will tell you exactly when it's going down. And the later it gets in the year, well, of course, the sooner you're out of light. When you really need the sun to get things done, sunset always seems to come too soon. But if you check that almanac, you will notice there's another time given next to the time for sunset - it's the time for sunrise. Now here's a scientific fact that will amaze and astound you. Have your pencil ready to write this down. The number of sunrises in history is exactly equal to the number of sunsets! Hmm.

Well, I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about “Never a Sunset Without a Sunrise.”

And that is a fact. The sun never sets without it rising again. That's not just meteorology. It's theology. It's a spiritual fact of life, and an emotional fact, that it's real easy to forget when it's been dark for a while. But the sunrise principle is the basis for hope when things around you seem hopeless. Key word: “seem.”

In fact, God has a hope-filled promise for us today in our word for today from the Word of God in Jeremiah 31:3-4. He says, “I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with loving-kindness. I will build you again and you will be rebuilt ... again you will take up your tambourines and go out and dance with the joyful.” God's people had been plundered, relocated, wounded, with most of what they cared about destroyed. They hadn't seen the sun for a long time. But God says, “It's not over, kids. The sun's going to come up again, no matter how dark it looks. Yes, things are in ruins - but I am going to build you again - and when I get to restoring what you've lost, you will be rebuilt!”

That may well be what He's trying to say to you right now. Yes, the sun went down, and it's been a long night. But it's not a permanent night - there's no such thing! There's no such thing as a sunset without a sunrise. And God promises one! He's the great Restorer, who promises in Joel 2:25: “I will restore to you the years that the locusts have eaten” (KJV). Yes, that relationship has ended. Yes, you are financially broke. Yes, there has been a major setback or failure or loss. But it isn't the whole book, my friend - this is a chapter in the book. And the author has much more to write.

My friend, Audrey, has pretty much defined her past year by unresolved grief over the death of her closest friend. But last week we walked through Isaiah 61, which promises the Lord will “bind up the brokenhearted, and proclaim ... release from darkness for the prisoners ... He bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.” And with a cleansing flood of tears, she let it all go and traded her despair for praise, her ashes for beauty, and the sun has come up again.

It won't always be like this - unless you decide to make it always be like this. My prayer for you is Paul's prayer for his friend in Romans 15:13 - “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” He's going to rebuild you, and you will be rebuilt! You will dance again! There's no denying that your sun went down and it got dark. But, remember, there's never a sunset without a sunrise!

________________

Copyright © Ron Hutchcraft Ministries, Inc., PO Box 400, Harrison, AR 72602. Used by permission. Written by Ron Hutchcraft. "Practical Answers to Real Life Issues"

*

Apparently, the month of March has been officially deemed, “Optimism month.” It is unclear though, whether it has been named by the optimists who want the world to practice greater optimism, or the pessimists who would rather only put up with optimists one month out of the year. Author James Branch Cabell distinguishes between the two outlooks, “The optimist thinks that this is the best of all possible worlds; the pessimist knows it.” On that definition, I should like to be neither.

Filmmaker Woody Allen once disclosed in an interview, “It's hard for me to enjoy anything because I'm aware how transient things are. Yes, there are strategies of surviving... There are times when you think, 'My God, life is sweet, it's nice,' and thoughts of mortality are in abeyance. You know, watching the Marx Brothers or a Knicks game or listening to great jazz, you get a great feeling of ecstasy... But then it passes, and the dark reality of life starts to creep back in.” These are hard words from a person whose films have been described as “nihilism with a happy ending.”(1) But is there such a thing? By his own admission, it seems there is not.

Many have identified in their lives a plaguing sense of meaninglessness. If this life is all there is, Allen is right to be disillusioned with the novelty of it. Stirring music, meaningful relationships, and sublime moments are overshadowed by the futility of it all. Pessimism becomes inescapable.

But perhaps a greater tragedy than this sense of hopelessness is that as Christians it sometimes seems as if we agree. It is becoming more and more easy to gather around pessimistic messages and dire forecasts, as if our criticism of the world is its only remaining hope. Are we not entrusted with a greater message than this? We are right to cling to a sense of urgency. Yet should we not do so with the burning words of hope for even the darkest of places?

Is there reason for pessimism? There is reason to be sobered by a world of injustice, pain, and death. Is there reason for optimism? The Christian's answer is mixed with tension. We are not optimistic in the sense that our hope is in this world. As with our own lives, we know that this world too will fall away. We are not quite at home, but we are surely not without hope. For the Christian, Christ has won and man shall win. There is reason for hope as strong as death, love as unyielding as the grave. For he is both near and returning.

Theories of where and how the world is awry are ever-present. While it is helpful to hear a doctor's diagnosis when you're sick, the diagnosis is given with the hope of stopping the disease, not shocking the patient with realism. Even if the cure is costly, good physicians know the patient who wallows only in what's wrong stands the smallest chance for recovery. But the doctor who speaks regularly of the horror of disease and little of the available cure is not a good doctor. Jesus came for the sick; he told them they were ailing, but he came to offer a cure.

Responding to the printed question of a newspaper seeking opinions, G.K. Chesterton answered the question “What's wrong with the world?” in one sentence. “Dear Sirs,” he replied, “I am.” In our declarations of dark realities, may our own hearts not be excluded. With visions of war and brokenness around him, David prayed, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me” (Psalm 51:10-12).

God confronts the pains of the world with a stark diagnosis but with a shining cure. He confronts our infectious despair, calling us onward, calling us home. There is reason to hope.

________

1. Allen Bloom as quoted in Ken Myer's All God's Children and Blue Suede Shoes (Wheaton: Crossway, 1989), 63.

________

Copyright © 2005 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). Reprinted with permission. "A Slice of Infinity" is a radio ministry of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

*

Recently, a rash of fundamentalist atheists has become a publishing phenomenon. Touting that God is a delusion, destructive to human life and civilization, and heralding the end of faith, these authors see only positive results at the end of atheism. Reason and rationality will conquer any “zealous” adherence or devotion to a transcendent God.

It’s fairly easy to identify with the concerns that motivate these authors towards atheism. Like them, I grieve over the violence perpetrated in the world in the name of God and religion. I can understand how Mother Teresa would poignantly wonder about God’s presence with her in the suffering wasteland of Calcutta. And certainly, I, like many others, have had life experiences that raise questions concerning God’s involvement in my life, and God’s love toward me. I can understand the despair-filled temptation towards agnosticism, or atheism.

Yet, the world many atheists envision without God or faith is overly optimistic, and ultimately unrealistic. Their beautiful portraits of what the world could look like if we only jettison our faith are painted with glowing brushstrokes of romantic imagery and language:

“This universe is shot through with mystery. The very fact of

its being, and of our own, is a mystery absolute, and the only

miracle worthy of the name. The consciousness that animates us

is itself central to this mystery and the ground for any

experience we might wish to call ‘spiritual....’ No personal God

need be worshiped for us to live in awe at the beauty and

immensity of creation....love our neighbors, and [know that] our

interdependence demands that people everywhere be given the

opportunity to flourish.”(1)

I find this vision completely out of step with a world in which innocent civilians, even as I write this essay today, are being silenced and slaughtered by the thousands in Myanmar/Burma by an atheistic, military junta. Indeed, in light of the state of our world, an optimistic ending for atheism is as out-of-touch with reality as belief that the world is flat.

In fact, this vision of a godless world being a better world is shattered by the writings of the prescient prophet and atheist, Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche, the German philosopher who wrote in the nineteenth century, predicted what an atheistic society would look like. And unlike the pseudo-optimism of our popular atheists today, Nietzsche’s vision is harrowing and disturbing. “The story I have to tell,” he wrote, “is the history of the next two centuries.... For a long time now our whole civilization has been driving, with a tortured intensity growing from decade to decade, as if towards a catastrophe: restlessly, violently, tempestuously, like a mighty river desiring the end of its journey, without pausing to reflect, indeed fearful of reflection.” He claimed that the world was entering an “era of monstrous wars, upheavals, explosions and that there will be wars such as have never been waged on the earth.”(2)

Why such pessimism about the future of the world? Nietzsche argued that the actions of human beings had rendered God superfluous. In THE GAY SCIENCE his madman yells, “‘Where is God?’ Well, I will tell you. We have killed him, you and I.” He goes on to doubt if even reason and the advance of theoretical knowledge, as our modern-day atheists posit, could heal the “wound of our existence.” Indeed, science, reason, and history could not overcome the reality that human beings “can rise or sink to no other reality than the reality of our drives.” One of those drives, Nietzsche argued, is the will to power, ultimately fulfilled by rogue regimes in World War I, and in World War 2 by the Nazi regime and the Communist regime led by Joseph Stalin.

Thus, Nietzsche’s utter suspicion of reason calls the entire optimistic program advocated by popular atheists into question. God’s absence would not make for a better world, according to Nietzsche. Indeed, his picture of a world without God, without a divine Creator intimately involved in re-creation, is a very grim place filled with darkness, amorality, and despair.

In contrast to the godless future predicted by Nietzsche or our current atheistic prophets, the prophet Isaiah, even in the midst of warnings of exile, destruction, and suffering had a hope-filled vision of a world permeated with the presence of God: “The wolf will dwell with the lamb, and the leopard will lie down with the kid, the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child will lead them... they will not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea” (Isaiah 11:6, 9). This vision of a God-filled future is what Christians should hope for and work towards, even as we wrestle with the challenges and the difficulties of a God-famished world.

________

1. Sam Harris, THE END OF FAITH (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2004), 227.

2. Quoted in Erich Heller, THE IMPORTANCE OF NIETZSCHE (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 5.

________

Copyright © 2007 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). Reprinted with permission. "A Slice of Infinity" is a radio ministry of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

*

[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #20860]

Does it seem like the world is going to heck in a handbasket? Then it may be time for a reality check.

It’s been a summer of rough news for America. Racism, riots, and political violence. Communities on the Gulf Coast continue wading through the devastation of hurricane Harvey, and now another storm is bearing down on Florida. We have plenty of reasons to be praying and doing all we can to alleviate suffering. There’s cause for grief about the news — but not for pessimism.

Writing at The Guardian, Oliver Burkeman suggests that despite a dragging civil war in Syria, heart-rending photos of drowned refugees, North Korea’s nuclear saber-rattling, disasters, terrorist attacks, and racial violence, the world is objectively better now than it’s ever been.

Hard to believe? Well, here are the facts: Swedish historian Mark Norberg breaks down global indicators of human flourishing into nine categories: food, sanitation, life expectancy, poverty, violence, the state of the environment, literacy, freedom, equality, and the conditions of childhood. And in nearly all of these categories, we’ve seen vast improvement in my lifetime.

Despite the fact that nine out of ten Americans say worldwide poverty is holding steady or worsening, the percentage of people on this planet who live on less than two dollars a day — what the United Nation’s defines as “extreme poverty” — has fallen below ten percent, which is the lowest it’s ever been.

The scourge of child mortality is also at a record low. Fifty percent fewer children under five die today than did thirty years ago.

Worldwide, 300,000 more people gain access to electricity every day. In 1900, global life expectancy was just 31 years. Today, it’s an impressive 71 years. And violent crime rates in the United States are the lowest they’ve been in half a century.

Nicholas Kristof wasn’t too far afield when he called 2016 “the best year in the history of humanity.” This year may see even more progress.

So why do these cheery pronouncements strike us as inaccurate — even outrageous? Why — according to a recent poll by YouGov — do a vanishingly small six percent of Americans think the world as a whole is becoming a better place?

Burkeman lays much of the blame on the press. Thanks to a 24-hour news cycle that actively seeks out and overplays the worst stories, our perception of the world is skewed. “We are not merely ignorant of the facts,” he writes. “We are actively convinced of depressing ‘facts’ that aren’t true.” And no wonder! It’s hard to sell papers and get Web traffic with good news. No one reports when a plane takes off. They only report when they crash.

But a great deal of the blame for our unjustifiably gloomy view of the world also falls on our shoulders. Quite simply, we often enjoy being angry about the state of the world, especially when it allows us to blame someone else. We are addicted to news-induced anger.

That’s why it’s so important — while acknowledging the desperate evil and suffering around us — to appreciate the good news, the progress, and the things we have to celebrate. After all, how can we truly comprehend what’s wrong with the world if we don’t recognize when something is going right?

War, famine, disease, and hatred should all remind us that God’s world, which He created and pronounced “very good,” is broken, and it’s our fault. But here’s the real comfort: It’s still — as the hymn says — our Father’s world. Let us therefore never forget that “though the wrong seems oft so strong God is the ruler yet.”

As Christians, we know where history is headed, and we know how the story ends — with the redemption and restoration of all things. We who have the good news should be the first to recognize all good news, not in spite of, but in the midst of the bad.

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable — if anything is excellent or praiseworthy — think about such things. Philippians 4:8

________

Resources

Is the world really better than ever? Oliver Burkeman, The Guardian, July 28, 2017

American Pessimism: Only 6 Percent Think the World Is Getting Better, Ronald Bailey, Reason.com, July. 7, 2016

________

Copyright (c) 2017 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

One of the best-loved songs of World War I was "Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit Bag and Smile, Smile, Smile." Most people are familiar with its refrain:

What's the use of worrying? It never was worthwhile;

So, pack up your troubles in your old kit-bag and smile, smile, smile.

The melody was composed by Felix Powell and the words were written by his brother George (who used the pseudonym George Asaf). The song was entered into a World War I competition for "best morale-building song". It won first prize and was noted as "perhaps the most optimistic song ever written".

Ironically, George was a pacifist and became a conscientious objector when Britain imposed a draft in 1916. Felix was an enthusiastic staff sergeant in the army but he apparently had trouble the optimism of their creation - in 1942 he put on his uniform and shot himself in the heart using a rifle. His words encouraged the world to "smile, smile, smile." But his words had no power to satisfy the deepest longings of his own heart.

________

Material adapted from Wikipedia.org

In his essay called “Politics and the English Language,” George Orwell shared a crucial insight about the decline of language: “A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.”

Or, as my friend Mike Bauman often says, “Sloppy language makes sloppy thought possible.” In Orwell’s “1984,” the masses are fed redefining slogans like “War Is Peace,” “Freedom Is Slavery,” and “Ignorance Is Strength.”

The battle over cultures is often in the defining and redefining of words. Language has often been used to lower horizons and keep people from really thinking. Today, as we discuss hope, we must confront bad definitions.

We hear a lot about hope these days, from “the audacity of hope” to “hoping against hope.” Unfortunately, the word has been redefined — and, I must say, shrunken — by bad definitions.

Hope has been reduced to a kind of naïve optimism that things will get better. We hope for a changed situation, a new job, a better love, hitting the lottery, or LeBron James winning his first championship.

But real hope — biblical hope — isn’t hope for; it’s hope in: Hope in Christ — what He did for us on the Cross; and what He will do for us when He comes again and sets up His kingdom. A hope for is never better than wishful thinking. Hope in Christ is an expectation based on the certainty of who Jesus is and what He accomplished.

When hope is defined down to a limp, pallid, and ultimately useless imitation of the real thing, people and cultures are unable to live above naïve optimism or heartless despair.

But real hope is neither optimistic or despairing, and one of Chuck Colson’s closest colleagues, the late Richard John Neuhaus, described why: “Optimism,” Neuhaus said, “is not a Christian virtue. Optimism is simply a matter of optics, of seeing what you want to see and opting not to see what you don’t want to see.”

Hope is different than optimism. But we also can’t despair. As Neuhaus added, “We have not the right to despair, for despair is a sin. And we have not the reason to despair, quite simply because Christ has risen.” And that’s where biblical hope squarely rests.

This is no “pie in the sky when you die” kind of hope, but a hope that empowers us for effective service in this world right now.

For Neuhaus, hope involved calling the church to embrace the truth and power of the Gospel even in a culture he called “American Babylon.” For Chuck Colson, it meant proclaiming the sanctity of human life, marriage, and religious liberty.

And for us, true, biblical hope — hope in Christ rather than a hope for an improved situation — empowers us to keep on keeping on in the myriad battles to which the Lord calls us.

________

Copyright (c) 2012 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

Here’s a bit of good news for people who like bad news: A German study suggests that people who are overly optimistic about their future actually faced greater risk of disability or death within 10 years than did those pessimists who expected their future to be worse.

The paper, which appears in the March 2013 edition of Psychology and Aging, examined health and welfare surveys from roughly 40,000 Germans between ages 18 and 96. The surveys were conducted every year from 1993 to 2003.

Survey respondents were asked to estimate their present and future life satisfaction on a scale of 0 to 10, among other questions.

Researchers found that young adults (age 18 to 39) routinely overestimated their future life satisfaction, while middle-aged adults (age 40 to 64) more accurately predicted how they would feel in the future.

Adults 65 and older however were far more prone to underestimate their future life satisfaction. Not only did they feel more satisfied than they thought they would, the older pessimists seemed to suffer a lower ratio of disability and death for the study period.

“We observed that being overly optimistic in predicting a better future than actually observed was associated with a greater risk of disability and a greater risk of mortality within the following decade,” wrote lead author Frieder R. Lang, a psychology professor at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg.

Lang and colleagues hypothesized that people who were gloomy about their future may be more careful about their actions than people who anticipated a rosy future.

“Perceiving a dark future may foster positive evaluations of the actual self and may contribute to taking improved precautions,” authors wrote.

Surprisingly, respondents who enjoyed good health or income were associated with expecting a greater decline compared with those in poor health or who had low incomes.

Also, researchers said that higher income was related to a greater risk of disability.

Study authors noted that there were limitations to their conclusions. Illness, medical treatment and personal loss could also have driven health outcomes.

However, the researchers said a pattern was clear. “We found that from early to late adulthood, individuals adapt their anticipations of future life satisfaction from optimistic, to accurate to pessimistic,” the authors concluded. “Pessimistic accuracy appears to be linked with preserved functional health and better chances to survive.”

On Wednesday, Feb. 8, 2023, Asbury College had a chapel service. Chapel is a pretty ordinary experience at a Christian university. What is extraordinary is that the worship time that began on Feb. 8 is still going on as I write this on Feb. 13.

Participants soon described testimonies of what was going on at Asbury as revival. However, these descriptions of experiencing revival were not academic or scholarly descriptions of revival as historically understood. Instead, they were on-the-ground, in-the-moment expressions of experiencing being spiritually revived.

Sadly, it wasn’t long before many Christians took to social media to question the validity of what was happening at Asbury being described as revival.

“On what basis are we calling this a revival?”

“Emotionalism, singing and flag waving are not revival!”

“No one will know whether this is a revival or not until the fruit of it is examined years from now in the lives of people who are not there on campus.”

These are just a few of the types of comments I have seen from Christians in response to the Asbury revival. It seems that any claim of revival should be considered guilty until proven innocent.

Jonathan Edwards, in The Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God, lays out the marks of a genuine revival (based on 1 John 4):

Jesus is exalted.

The Holy Spirit acts against the influence of Satan’s kingdom by preaching sin and repentance.

The Bible is exalted and held in high regard.

The Spirit of understanding and truth opposes spirits of falsehood.

Love to God and man is promoted.

The list Edwards provides lines up well with the reports I have heard from the college students at our church who attend Asbury and what I have seen from others about what has been and is going on at Asbury.

Time will indeed tell, but I am confident our appropriate disposition from the outside looking in at the present should be hopefulness and not cynicism.

We live in a cynical age. Cynicism is in the air we breathe, a cultural norm, our default setting. Being a cynic is easy. Cynics do not do; they critique (from a safe distance) those who do. I remember hearing cynicism once described as over-confident self-referential suspicion. I think that sounds about right.

Cynicism has roots in hopelessness. What is more antithetical to a Christian worldview than hopelessness? Paul tells us, “So now faith, hope, and love abide” (1 Corinthians 13:13). Cynicism is contagious, but so are faith, hope, and love.

I am hopeful about what is taking place at Asbury, and I am also confident that any genuine revival destroys a worldly cynicism from among God’s people. Lord, revive us again.

About 35 years ago a musical about King Arthur in Medieval England was a huge Broadway hit. There's a climactic scene near the end. Arthur is about to go off and fight the army of his best friend. Right before he leaves a young man appears and begs Arthur to make him a "Knight of the Round Table." Arthur knights him and tells him to return home ... with a message--a message about the glory that once was--glory of CAMELOT. Arthur had reached a point where he felt nothing had ever been that good before, and it seemed nothing would ever be that good again! The song breaks out ...

If you be from December to December, before you drift asleep upon your cot;

Think back on all the tales that you remember .... of Camelot.

Ask every person if he heard the story, and tell it strong and clear if he has not;

That once there was a fleeting wisp of glory ... called Camelot.

There, once, it never rained `til after sundown;

By 8:00 A.M. the morning fog had flown.

Don't let it be forgot that once there was a spot;

For one, brief, shining moment ... known as Camelot.

Character Traits of Extraordinary Leaders

=========================================

When people make a decision (either consciously or unconsciously) to follow your leadership, they do it primarily because of one of two things: Your character or your skills. They want to know if you are the kind of person they want to follow and if you have the skills to take them further. Yes, there are other variables but these are the bulk of the matter. This week we will focus on the kind of character that causes people to follow your leadership.

1. Integrity. Integrity is doing what you say you will. You are trustworthy. People can rely on you. You keep your promises. The one thing that will keep most people from following you is if they are unsure of whether you will actually take them where you say you will. Are you known as a person of integrity? If so, you will become an Extraordinary Leader!

2. Optimism. People don't want to follow someone who thinks the future is bad! They want to follow those who can see the future and let them know that there is a better place and that they can get them there! Do you see the cup as half empty? Then you are a pessimist. Do you see it as half full? Then you are an optimist. Do you see it as totally full - half air and half water? Then you are a Super Optimist! Are you known as an optimist? If so, you will become an Extraordinary Leader!

3. Embraces Change. Leaders are the ones who will see the need for change and willingly embrace it. Followers will at first desire to stay where they are. Leaders need to see the benefits of change and communicate that to their followers. If you don't change, you won't grow! Are you known as a person who embraces change? If so, you will become an Extraordinary Leader!

4. Risk Taker. Whenever we try something new, we are taking a risk. That is part of growing though, and it is imperative. Most people are risk averse. Not the leader! They calculate the risk and what is to be gained from taking the risk. Then they communicate that to the followers and away they go to a better tomorrow! Are you known as a person who is willing to takerisks? If so, you will become an Extraordinary Leader!

5. Tenacious. The tendency of the follower is to quit when the going gets tough. Two or three tries and their motto becomes "If at first you don't succeed, give up and try something else." Not the leader! They know what good lies beyond this brick wall and they will go and get it. Then they will take others with them! Are you known as a person who is tenacious? If so, you will become an Extraordinary Leader!

6. Catalytic. A leader is ultimately one who gets people going. They are able to move others out of their comfort zone and on toward the goal! They can raise the passion, enthusiasm and the ACTION of those who would follow. Are you known as a catalyst? If so, you will become an Extraordinary Leader!

7. Dedicated/Committed. Followers want people who are more devoted and committed than themselves. At the first sign of lack of commitment, followers scatter for the doors. If the leader sees the end and is bailing out, they better get out first. Followers follow those who will stick it out because they see the importance of the task and the goal. Are you known as a person who is committed and devoted to the goal? If so, you will become an Extraordinary Leader!

===========================================================

Chris Widener is a popular speaker and author as well as the President of Made for Success.

*