Jon Acuff's Blog, page 146

Hear me on the radio with Dave Ramsey Today!

Today at 3:30PM Central, I'll be on the radio with Dave Ramsey talking about my new book "Quitter, Closing the Gap Between Your Day Job and Your Dream Job."

To find a radio station near you that carries the show click here.

After the show, at 4:00, we'll be doing a live chat. I'd love for you to sit in and say hey.

Here's the info for that.

Quitter Pre-Orders Start Today!

The day I've been thinking about/praying about/sweating nervously about is finally here! Today, you can pre-order my new book "Quitter, Closing the Gap Between Your Day Job and Your Dream Job." What's it about?

Check out the book trailer the team at Dave Ramsey made:

I lived this book for 12 years and it covers everything from figuring out what your dream is to falling in like with a job you don't love to understanding how to quit your day job in a way that protects your dream. This is the book I wish someone had handed me in college because it could have helped save me more than a decade of job jumping and dream ignoring.

Why should you pre-order it today?

1. It's on sale and it's super cheap.

2. If you buy it on DaveRamsey.com right now you'll get the audio download read by me for FREE!

3. It's hardcover and when it arrives on your doorstep on May 10 you'll be pleasantly surprised.

4. You've ever thought "I can't do this job for the rest of my life" and want to take one ridiculously first step to exploring your dream.

Buy Quitter at DaveRamsey.com

Buy Quitter at Books-A-Million.com

Buy Quitter at Amazon.com

Win some VeggieTales Awesomeness.

I've always heard that you should never partner with advertisers who make a product you and your family wouldn't personally use. That's the #1 reason that I refuse to work with the automatic robot head massager they sell in the Sky Mall catalog.

It's also the # 1 reason I can honestly say, "Ta Da! Here's something I love!"

A few weeks ago, Find It Games gave me and my family one of their new "" games. I've spent the last few weeks going crazy with this thing.

The concept is simple and awesome. Inside a tube of tiny colorful beads are hidden tons of small VeggieTales toys. Everything from the slushy cup and Viking helmet to Bob the Tomato and Madame Blueberry are in there. The object is to go on a scavenger hunt and check off which ones you see. Sounds easy, right? That's what I thought too, until we started passing around this game at our dinner table. It's easy to find Larry, he's a big green cucumber. But the water buffalo? That thing is elusive! And to this day, after weeks of playing, I have still not found the penny.

My family has loved this game and it's provided a fun alternative to video games and iPhones on long road trips. My kids zone out if there's anything electric going on and this game has provided some great family moments.

Find It Games has been an awesome sponsor and their game "!" is a blast too. I don't play a ton of board games but this one is fun. We played it a few nights ago and it was funny to see what it revealed about what each member of our family really thought about certain ideas.

Check out both games at their site. But please know, you will never find that penny. That thing makes the water buffalo look like a cakewalk.

I've got 2 copies of the Find It VeggieTales to give away. Just comment by Monday, April 4 with an answer to this question to enter:

What's your favorite VeggieTales moment?

The Message Disclaimer.

(Curtis Honeycutt is one of the few guest posters on SCL that I've had the chance to hang out with in 3D. He's hilarious, he's got a huge heart for God and recently read an early copy of my new book Quitter. That book didn't come with a disclaimer, but in a great guest post, Curtis talks about one that does sometimes. Enjoy!)

The Message Disclaimer – By Curtis Honeycutt

How many times have you been sitting in a Sunday morning worship service and heard this line: "Now I'm going to re-read that section from The Message, which is a paraphrase written by a guy named Eugene Peterson. It's not the official pew Bible you have in the cool utility slots in front of you, or if you're in the front row, the Bibles that are floating on a magical shelf under your seat. The Message is like Gnomeo and Juliet…you get the idea. So now that I've explained this into oblivion, here goes…"

The Message disclaimer is so prevalent, it has become a staple of the obligatory info slides that shuffle before the service starts. Right after "Please silence your cell phones and children", you see the one that says, "At some point during the next 90 minutes, someone may or may not read from The Message, which was written by The Eugene Peterson. While we don't believe it quite counts as The Bible, reading from it is a lot of fun. For your convenience, we will Auto-Tune any references read from The Message."

Explaining The Message to people is like trying to explain Twitter to your parents—you've told them a thousand times, and the best way they understand it is that Twitter is like having a pager for the internet…except that, with The Message, we get it. It's a lot like The Sixth Sense. Most of us understand it after the second time, and that's just because we had to go to the bathroom during the ending.

But I get why we have to explain it: The Bible's a tricky book. It doesn't have an author listed on the front cover, but if it did, it would say "Various Artists Under The Influence of The Spirit" (which sounds like a crazy party where the cops show up at the end and say "Everybody out! Party's over!"). With The Message, it's right there on the spine. Boom: Eugene Peterson wrote this. Wait, he did? I'm confused. Can you explain that to me again?

What I would like pastors to explain instead of what the Message is, is a question I've struggled with since childhood,  "what color are pew cushions?" I had the 96-pack caboodle of Crayolas in school, and I can't match your pew hue to any of them. Are the pews light blurple with flecks of seared salmon? Are they magentreuse (a majestic offspring of magenta+chartreuse)? Do I sense a subtle paisleyflage (paisley camouflage) pattern? If I squint just right, will I see a Magic Eye picture of dinosaurs missing The Ark?

If you are like me and wish pastors would spend less time explaining The Message and more time interpreting pew cushions, leave your comment.

(For more great stuff from Curtis, check out www.getcompelled.com.)

The hardest part of writing Stuff Christians Like.

Last week, the Stuff Christians Like blog turned 3. (I got it something made of tin which I think is what you give a blog on its 3rd anniversary.) In a couple of weeks we'll hit idea #1,000 on this site. One thing I've learned in the last few years is that the hardest part of writing Stuff Christians Like is writing Stuff Christians Like. Creating new content day after day is the biggest challenge. That's also the number 1 reason most blogs die.

I recently recorded a 3 minute video explaining one of the tricks I use to push through writer's block when it comes to blogging.

Check out the video!

The friend who brags about not owning a TV, but watches Hulu.

Dear Hulu, YouTube, Netflix, etc.,

Life used to be easy before you came along.

I know you've set us free from the constraints of "must see TV." When I was in college you had to be in front of a television on Thursday night to watch the Hamptons episode of Seinfeld (best episode ever) or you missed it.

It was gone. Your window was 30 minutes long and then it closed, forever leaving you hoping to catch an episode you missed on reruns. That's why NBC could use the tag line, "Must See TV!" Because it was, oh it was.

But now, you offer episodes online. I'm no longer a slave to the television or their schedule. I can catch full episodes on Hulu, clips on YouTube or whole series online on Netflix. Freedom!

Ahh, but there's a catch. Now, if I want to be that guy who gets rid of his television and then finds a way to work that into every conversation he has at dinner parties, do I have to break up with you too? Does the H in Hulu stand for "Hypocrite," because I fear I'm about to become one.

Can I still smugly say, "Oh your son plays soccer, that reminds me, I don't watch television," or "Pass the chili, and by the way, I got rid of cable," if I'm watching all my shows online?

If I can, then what was I railing against all those years, the actual television? The physical box that was delivering the content or the content itself? Do I hate plasma screens or the things that are on them? Surely I can't call the TV, the "boobtube" and then act like the Internet is devoid of that issue?

We're moving to a new house in two weeks and I caught myself recently saying to my wife, "Let's not even get cable at the new house. Television is not important to us!" And then inside I thought, "Plus we can watch all the stuff we want online anyway!" That can't be right. I love my friends who deliberately don't watch any television, but my version of that is what Chris Isaak warned about all those years ago, "A wicked game."

Oh Hulu, YouTube and Netflix, you've made life easier, but in some ways, you've made being judgmental so much more difficult.

Sincerely,

Jon Acuff

Trying to figure out who we are.

I used to think I could quickly grow a mustache.

My beard is always patchy and hole laden and bad. (Not bad meaning good like Run DMC intoned but bad meaning bad.)

But mustaches? The Acuff family mustache is too fast and too furious. I always thought that was the one bit of facial hair I could hang my hat on or at least a mustache comb. Until I met my friend Daniel.

He sits next to me at work and over a weekend is able to grow the thickest, most committed mustache I've ever seen. It is so impressive that when you see his mustache on a Monday, it confuses your sense of time. In your head you think, "Have I fallen asleep for a few weeks or stepped into a parallel universe? I swear I saw him last Friday but the robustness of that mustache would argue otherwise. What year is it? When am I?"

He can grow a quick mustache.

The other thing he's good at is dropping some wisdom, which is exactly what he did a few weeks ago in a conversation we were having about fear.

With my new book Quitter coming out on May 10, one of the questions I have bouncing around in my head is, "What if it fails?" The Stuff Christians Like book did well and there's a part of me that fears that Quitter won't do as well. I know that's a negative thought, but I want to be honest about what's bouncing around in my head right now.

Here's what Daniel told me:

"The problem is that we all start off with an identity. It's who we are and who God made us to be. Then we have some small degree of success and we add that to our identity. That success becomes our identity. So now, when we try something new, we're not just afraid to fail, we're afraid to lose our identity. That's what's terrifying. That's why people are afraid to take risks or try new things. It's not just failure at stake, we think we're going to lose our identity and that's overwhelming."

That mentality is easy to see in a city like Nashville. I have musician friends who released successful first albums and are now afraid to release a second album. Because if success is their identity, if they fail, they've lost their entire identity. But I don't think that's just something artists struggle with. The truth is, I think on some level must of us wrestle with the temptation to let other things become our identity.

You see this in parents who turn the performance of their kids into their identity. Sometimes parents get crazy with pushing kids in sports or school because more than a soccer goal or a spelling test is at stake. Their identity is up for grabs.

You see this in dating relationships. Sometimes we're desperate for them not to end for the wrong reasons. With popular song lyrics telling us, "What am I supposed to do, when the best part of me was always you?" it's so easy to think, "If I lose this boyfriend, I'll lose my whole identity."

You see this at work, when someone scraps and fights for a surprisingly small amount of power and politics inside a cubicle. It's not a bonus at stake or a plaque or a recognition, it's their identity they're fighting for.

Over and over again, whether you're writing a new book, or dating a new girl or applying for a new job, it's so easy to fall into the trap of "identity addition."

But that debate is over. You're identity has been decided. How you perform in a new opportunity will not finalize that.

You are a son or daughter of Christ.

You are an heir to the throne.

No success or failure should become your identity.

No rise or fall can determine who you are.

And though that feels simple and sometimes even impossible to believe, that is what I remind myself of every day. We are God's children.

And you and I can rest in the truth of that and be bold in the risks we take and the hope we have. Because our identity is not at stake.

Blog Reviews

I'm still working through the blog reviews I offered people who purchased my second book on a certain day. To be honest with you, I grossly underestimated the number of people who would respond and grossly overestimated how fast I could review each blog. (This is a running theme in my life, often exhibited in the amount of time I leave myself to drive somewhere. Based on my late arrivals I tend to estimate that my car can travel 180MPH on the way to someone's house for dinner and that it should only take me 10 minutes to travel a 30 minute distance.) I've worked through a bunch of them but have a bunch left and just wanted to apologize and say, I'm sorry it's taken so long. That's not cool. It's not you, it's me. Hopefully you will get an email from me with delightful feedback as I continue to work through the list.

Not knowing whether to add an S to "Psalm."

Is there an S?

Is there not an S?

When you say "I love Psalms 103:5" is that wrong? There's no S? OK, so then what about "The book of Psalm." No S there? Is it "Psalmi?" Is that the plural of Psalm? Or is it "Psalmses?"

I think my confusion started as a child when I got baffled by Psalty, the singing blue Christian superhero. Was he a book of songs or Psalms or a hymnal full of a lot of Psalm? That perplexed me as a young lad and now as an adult, I still never know when to put an S on Psalms.

Honestly, I get that wrong and I'm worried that if I get it wrong in front of other Christians, they'll make me turn in my Christian card. Like the time I dropped my circular hair gel and it rolled under three cars and I had to yell in the rain to my friend Chris while crawling on my hands and knees in the parking lot, "I can't find my hair gel" and he asked for my man card.

I think the problem I have is that Proverbs is just Proverbs. There's no singular or plural. It's the "book of Proverbs" and Proverbs 4:10. All S, all the time. Plus, you don't pluralize other books. It's not the "book of Joels," although that would be awesome. Just a bunch of Joels kicking it, loving on people, solving crimes maybe or jumping through time trying to get back home like Scott Bakula.

Whenever I have to write words on a whiteboard in a meeting in front of people, I have a "spelling trick" I like to do. If I don't know how to spell the word, I'll just abbreviate it right in the middle. Say I was writing the word "occasionally" and panicked that there might be a double s in the middle. On the board I'd just write, "Occ." as in "I'm so busy right now I don't have time to write the whole word. BTW we need to get things done ASAP, by EOD, so I abbreviated the word as a time saving technique not because I have 'speller's nerves' while writing in front of other people."

Should I do that? When I mention Psalms should I just say, "I love PS103:5?" That kind of sounds like I'm talking about my favorite element from the periodic table of elements though. (And everyone knows Selenium is actually my favorite.)

Please tell me I'm not the only who has ever had an "S" issue when it comes to Psalms.

Or maybe you use the table of contents to look up books of the Bible and you need to confess the shame of that?

Is there a really obvious Biblical twist you're afraid to admit you get backwards sometimes?

Running into famous Christians. (AKA, the "Michael W. Smith Incident.")

If you follow me on Twitter @jonacuff, and really should because it's a pretty delightful experience, you know that last Friday, Christian recording legend Michael W. Smith was on my flight to Denver. I was literally "going west young man" with Michael W. Smith.

He lives probably 6 minutes from me in Franklin, but I've never actually met him. I like to pretend I'm cool and not impressed by famous people, but I got really nervous when I saw him.

Because we were both on Southwest, I had a chance to sit in the row next to him. I actually asked an elderly woman on the aisle to stand up so that I could sit in the middle of the row across from him. She struggled to her feet, at which point I wussed out, told her to sit back down and took a seat two rows behind Michael W. Smith.

I had a copy of the Stuff Christian Like book in my bag and started to debate whether I should give it to him. I told the mom next to me what was going on and she started plotting too. Here are a few things that went through my head:

1. Is he asleep? I can't tell if he's asleep. His seat is reclined, am I about to be the guy who wakes someone up on the plane?

2. Oh no, he's wearing sunglasses, even if I walk to the front of the plane, for a fake bathroom run just to do reconnaissance, I won't be able to tell if he's awake.

3. The lady next to me just offered that her 10 year old could walk by him, bump him and wake him up for me. Would it be weird if I took her up on that offer? That's probably weird.

4. What if I hand him the Stuff Christian Like and he thinks it's a mockery of Christianity, not a celebration of it? Do I have to craft the perfect sentence to explain the entire heart of the book and then deliver that sentence crouched in the aisle of an airplane at 30,000 feet?

5. I need to make sure to mention that "Zondervan" published the book. They also publish the Bible, he'll definitely have heard of them and will be less likely to refuse the book.

6. Should I hand it to the lady in front of me and ask her to pass it up to him? Is that crazy?

7. The lady next to me's son is crying because he's afraid of flying. Should I send the crying kid to deliver the book? Nobody would refuse a book from a crying kid.

8. Am I the worst person on the planet for thinking about having a crying kid deliver my book? Definitely.

9. If this experience becomes a blog post, should I edit out that last part so that people think I'm a better person than I really am? Nope.

10. The lady next to me just offered to go up to him and say, "Are you Michael W. Smith? What are the chances, I just met the author Jon Acuff two rows behind you. He wrote a great book." Would that work?

11. How great is this lady next to me?

12. Speaking of great, how great is it that Michael W. Smith is flying Southwest? Legit.

13. What if I hand him the book and he leg sweeps me or punches me right in the breadbox. If he's seated and I'm standing, would he have access to the breadbox?

14. Did the idea about "Always singing friends are friends forever on the last night of camp" make it into the Stuff Christians Like book? (Flip, flip, flip.) Nope.

15. What if I just started singing that instead? Would other people on the plane join in? Would that be awkward or would I "find my place in this world?"

16. It would be better if I had a synthesizer with me. I wish I had a travel synthesizer with me. I bet I can get one in Sky Mall.

17. Why did I think of the breadbox? Isn't that an old timey, vaudeville term for gut? Why is that word in my head?

18. Would it be better to give the book to the lady next to me? She asked where she could buy it. Should I give it to her? Celebrities are just people too, this lady is every bit as special as Michael W. Smith in God's eyes.

19. Did I just Jesus Juke myself?

So what did I do?

After the stewardess took his drink order I sprang from my seat like a slightly awkward panther.

I said something like "I just wanted to thank you for using the gifts God gave you so faithfully and so consistently. I wrote a book with Zondervan. It's a satire of all the funny things we do within the context of Christianity and faith. I'd love to give you a copy. Thanks!"

And then I retreated to my seat. 3 feet away. He was super kind, incredibly gracious and the whole thing took about 14 seconds.

Here is what I thought next:

1. The lady next to me just said that he's reading the book. Is he?

2. In a few minutes he's going to start laughing so loud that the pilot is probably going to need to make an announcement asking him to quiet down.

3. We'll probably become best friends by the end of this flight.

4. I wonder if he owns horses? I bet he owns horses. Man, it's going to be so fun to ride horses with Michael W. Smith when we're best friends.

5. He's standing up and getting something out of the overhead compartment. Is he putting the book away cause he hated it? Or is he getting out some highlighters and a notebook so that he can really soak in the deep wisdom I've written? It's definitely one of those two options.

6. I should write this down right now because it's a great example of how crazy I am.

That's the internal dialogue I experienced in approximately 11 minutes. And I wrote this post on the plane right after I gave him the book. When I share these kind of thoughts with my wife she often says, "It must be exhausting to be you" and it is.

But is that weird?

Have you ever bumped into a Christian celebrity?

If so, who?

If not, whom would you like to meet?