Will Davis Jr.'s Blog, page 85
June 27, 2012
Five Great Reasons to be a Generous Tipper
Don’t be a tight-fisted tipper. Here are five good reasons to be more generous with your tips.
1. It will increase your gratitude. Tipping keeps your heart soft and will help you be more appreciative of the people who prepared and served your food.
2. You don’t need the money. Most of us really can spare that extra $10-15 that comes with a big tip. Let it go. It will be good for you.
3. The wait-person needs it. Most people waiting tables these days are either students working their way through school or single moms trying to make ends meet. Yes, you occasionally meet a career wait-person in nicer restaurants, but most places hire people who really are struggling to pay their bills. Generous tipping is a simple way to help them out.
4. It’s a form of serving. You can serve your waiter or waitress by just leaving a big tip. It costs you very little and means the world to them. It’s an easy way to serve someone.
5. It humbles you. Too often we approach tipping with a wait-and-see mindset. If we don’t like the service, we punish the wait staff by leaving a small tip. Are we really that arrogant? If you don’t want to tip the staff, eat at home. Leaving a big tip (my typical amount these days is 50% or higher, sometimes 100%) humbles you, reminds you that you’re not a big shot, and teaches you that your money isn’t yours.
Okay, enough said. Let’s go hot the restaurants and bless some folks.
June 26, 2012
Mud Cookies
These are mud cookies. The people in Cite Soleil (pronounced City Soul Lay, it is in Port Au Prince, Haiti and is one of the largest and most dangerous slums in the world) bake them and eat them to help ease their ongoing hunger.
The tragic part of this is that the “cookies” really are made of mud. The locals harvest the dirt that is filled with human waste and every type of bacteria you can imagine and form the little cookies out of the dirt. They bake them in the sun, add a little salt, and then they eat them. They’re especially craved by the pregnant women who live in the area who can’t get enough sustenance to support themselves and their babies.
Can you imagine being that hungry? Can you imagine being do desperate for food that you would literally eat filth and dirt? And yet, that’s how hundreds of millions of people live every day.
Last week I was part of team that had the privilege of distributing food to 150 families in Cite Soliel. For just under $2000 we were able to buy enough rice, beans and oil to sustain these families for 1-2 weeks.
I know it’s hard to get your brain around the kind of suffering and need in Cite Soleil. But you need to know that you really can help these people and the millions like them around the world. There are countless mission organizations doing incredible work in such areas. Pick one and help them in their cause.
But here’s the real nudge I want to give you–just because these people are out of sight does not mean that we can ignore their suffering. Does God really not care that we live with such wealth and excess while our brothers and sisters suffer around the world? Does he not expect us to help them? Think about it.
What to learn more? Click Here.
June 21, 2012
Do You Suffer from VGS? (Vomiting Garage Syndrome)
June 20, 2012
When in Doubt, Don’t Call a Meeting
There is only one appropriate response to the revelation of Jesus Christ—obedience. Anything else is sin. Any revelation of Jesus to you by its very nature requires an action, an adjustment, a response. Any revelation of Jesus to you has a built-in call. We need not discuss Jesus’ revelations; we simply need to obey them. Consider this:
But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. Then the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the Sanhedrin. John 11:46-47
In this text, the Pharisees receive (yet again) firsthand, eye-witness accounts of the miraculous work of Jesus. This time his work had been to raise Lazarus from the dead. The Pharisees should have been humbled by the accounts. God was once again giving them undeniable information about the reality of the Son of God in their midst. But humbled they were not. Instead, they called a meeting to discuss an appropriate plan of action in response to Jesus’ latest revelations.
It’s not wrong to gather with other believers to discuss the awesome work of God or to interpret his messages to the church through his Word. But once clarity has come, once it has become obvious what the Spirit is saying to the churches, obedience must be instantaneous. Never call a meeting to discuss obedience. Obey first; then if need be, you can call a meeting to discuss the implications of the fact that you have already obeyed. The Pharisees did no such thing. They called a meeting so they could plot how to counter the revelation of Jesus. That was their error: You can’t counter a revelation of Jesus; you can only obey it.
Are you doing today the last thing that God told you to do? Have you obeyed it? If not, act on it today. What are you waiting for? Obey the most recent revelation of Jesus in your life; then, if you still must call a meeting, do so only to broadcast what an awesome Savior you have.
What to read more about instant obedience? Click Here
June 19, 2012
Are You Ready for Less Stress and More Joy?
Do you want more peace? Do you want to be less stressed? Do you want more money at the end of the month and more joy every day?
Then it’s time to move toward enough! And you can start today.
Order Enough today and have it by July 1 and save a little money in the process.
Try the 30 day enough experiment
Learn what the Bible considers to be enough
Learn what it means to have less than enough and more than enough and discover which describes you
Learn how to live with less and enjoy it
June 15, 2012
Special Friday Blog
Greetings Friends, I’m stepping back into the blog world today to introduce you to a friend of mine. If you’re serious about prayer and specifically, intercession, then you’ll want to know her.
Meet Angela Sansone. Angela lives in Omaha with her husband Mike. She is the founder of 1019 Ministries and the author of the new book Precious Stones of Intercession. Angela is a called and gifted intercessor, and if you’re not sure what that means you need to learn about.
Angela was kind enough to reach out to me several months ago simply to let me know that the Holy Spirit wanted her to begin interceding for Susie and me. I can’t tell you how humbling and encouraging it is to hear from Angela and know that she has been praying Scripture, sometimes through the early morning hours, for us.
In Precious Stones, Angela tells her powerful story of God’s healing in her life and shares many of her insights in prayer and spiritual warfare. I gladly recommend it as it has truths in it only gleaned from long, quiet hours sitting at Jesus’ feet.
I wanted to take the opportunity today just to introduce you to Angela and promote God’s work through her. You’ll be glad you got to know her.
Links to Angela’s FB pages and book pages are below.
Buy Precious Stones of Intercession @:
Amazon.com
WestBow Press
Barnes & Noble
Books-A-Million
Next Blog Entry, Tuesday June 19.
June 14, 2012
Does Your Marriage Feel Like Abundant Life?
In John 10:10, Jesus set a high bar for the kind of life he wants his followers to know: I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly, (NASB-U). The abundant life that Jesus spoke of is inseparably linked to his coming to earth and dying. He wasn’t just speaking of life in heaven; he meant for us to enjoy his full and blessing-rich life right now, today.
Abundant life doesn’t mean that you’re free from pain or that you suddenly become financially well-off. It means that you know and enjoy Christ’s presence, power and peace in your life, regardless of your circumstances.
Start praying that for your marriage. Pray that God will give you a full and abundant marriage relationship. Ask God to grant you all the favor, anointing and provision that Jesus died to make available to you. Pray that your marriage will know Jesus’ presence, power and peace. That’s a biblical and specific pinpoint prayer that God will answer.
June 13, 2012
The Problem with Pursuing Happiness
According to our founding fathers, every human has the God-given right to pursue his or her own happiness. As a governing principle, such wisdom is very beneficial. Government needs to get out of the way and let its citizenry pursue their lives as their consciences dictate. But as a governing principle for life, pursuing happiness is a bankrupt strategy. Why? Because the abiding condition know as happiness doesn’t exist.
Grasping the concept of happiness is very much like trying to nail the proverbial piece of jello to the wall. It’s impossible. Happiness by definition is a condition that results from positive or happy circumstances. I’m happy if the weather is nice; I’m happy if my golf scores are low and the stock market is high. I’m happy when my spouse wants to have sex. I’m happy when the scales hit the right number and I like what I see in the mirror. I’m happy when I can pay all my bills and still have ample play money left over. I’m happy when I’m not in conflict with someone else.
But with the simple flit of a butterfly’s wing any one of those conditions for happiness can become a storm of chaos and thus, unhappiness–my spouse has a headache, again; the market is down 300 points; my health is declining; I’m unemployed, etc. Add to the tenuousness of my circumstances the cultural mantra that we can never have enough, that we can never be truly fulfilled until we have the next thing, and that there is always someone who is just a little happier than we are because they have just a little more than we do, then my happiness is doomed from the get-go. And thus we’re back to the jello: I might be able to pursue happiness, but I will never achieve it. It simply can’t be nailed down.
And so for all of us unhappy capitalists who have pursued till the cows came home and still aren’t happy, the Bible offers a simple alternative–joy.
Joy is a state of being that has nothing to do with conditions. Joy exists when our hearts are set on things that don’t ebb and flow. We’re joyful whether the market is up or down. We are joyful when we’re healthy or sick. We’re joyful in riches and in extreme poverty.
See the difference? Joy comes in knowing you’re loved for free, forgiven for everything and secure before God. Joy comes from knowing that no matter how much we suffer here, heaven awaits us. And, joy comes from the curious process of putting others’ needs before our own. That’s how a Chinese pastor can write from a prison camp and speak of his joy. That’s how grieving parents can talk of their great joy in the wake of burying a child. That’s how a person living with less than enough can still lift his or her hands and weep before God in worship. It has nothing to do with circumstances.
So, what about you? Friends, let’s aim higher. Don’t be a slave to your circumstances. Don’t be fickle and fleeting in your happiness. Bask in the love of God and get past what’s going on around you. Never let how some other person sees or treats you steal your peace and joy. And never let some material thing you have or don’t have dictate your feelings. Rise above the need for stuff. If you don’t, you’ll never be happy.
Want to more about real joy? Read my new book Enough: Finding More by Living with Less.
June 12, 2012
The Failure of Tolerance
Tolerance is the current battle cry for any person or group seeking acceptance from others who might be considered mainstream. It simply argues that we need to welcome each others’ differences and not cast off those who are different from us. And on that initial level, tolerance is certainly a great social attribute. We indeed should welcome those who are different.
But healthy tolerance has its limits, and those limits are being pushed today in our society. The cry for tolerance has shifted from protecting those with God-given differences (say, ethnicity) to those with made-made choices (say, morality). That is a horse of a different color. Moral absolutes still exist, and tolerance should not be extended to cover those who would choose to redefine what morality is.
Morality cannot be negotiable. Even a cursory study of history shows that when a culture starts tweaking what is and isn’t considered immoral, that society has set its own course for decline and even extinction. And we are only harming ourselves if we think that our culture is any different.
Look at our staggering numbers of murder, rape, incest, teen violence, child abuse, teen pregnancy, drug and alcohol abuse, children born out wedlock, abortion and divorce, and show me how we have benefited from our own experimenting with historical and biblical mores.
Consider the debate today about the acceptance of same-sex orientations and gay marriage. I concede that those who genuinely struggle with same-sex attractions have a very difficult path to walk in society. In many ways they have been failed by the one institution that is best suited to love and serve them–the Church. I’ve talked to way too many gay men and women who have written off God simply because of how they have been treated by his Church. That is indeed the Church’s sin and we will be held accountable for it.
But just because a group suffers at the hands of culture and even the Church does not mean that their own definition of morality needs to be accepted. Persecution is not always proof that one’s cause is noble. And in the case of sexuality, there is no historical precedent for cultural success, cultural improvement or even beneficial cultural “evolution” when biblical standards are redefined.
Thus, as harsh as it may sound, to be tolerant in such cases is to be irresponsible.
And so, in response to the failing option of tolerance, I’d like to offer another alternative. It’s what the Bible simply calls Grace. Biblical Grace makes no effort to accept errant behaviors or to explain and justify them. Grace simply teaches that all humans are morally bankrupt–we lie, murder, hate, judge, lust, exalt ourselves over others and we call what is right “wrong” and what is wrong “right.” Grace makes no case or allowance for such sin. It simply offers forgiveness.
Grace does what tolerance cannot. Grace calls failed morality what it is without throwing any person under the bus. It offers not only forgiveness for moral failings, but also the hope of redemption, healing and freedom of addictive behaviors through Christ. Instead of accepting a person’s behavior as his or her God-given right and entitlement, it offers to transform that person entirely and to make him or her a new creation.
That’s a far better plan and one that the Church needs to get back to joyfully sharing.
The failure of tolerance is that it will inevitability lead to an “anything goes” mindset in society. The power of Grace is that it does for people and cultures what mere tolerance can never do. It changes them.
Want to know more about biblical Grace? Check out Ten Things Jesus Never Said.
