Donald Miller's Blog, page 142

Your Most Important Business Partner May Surprise You

This past week I visited a friends ranch where he'd invited some guys to go fishing. It's a sprawling, 65-thousand acre ranch in Central Oregon with several lakes stocked with trout and one lake stocked with Bass. There are elk, deer, and we even saw a couple black bear.

My friend is very successful, and attributes his success to the consistent reading of the book of Proverbs. He says the wisdom he's gleaned from the book has helped him decide who to invest with, who to hire, and how to make g...

The Most Important Business Partner You Can Have

This past week I visited a friends ranch where he'd invited some guys to go fishing. It's a sprawling, 65-thousand acre ranch in Central Oregon with several lakes stocked with Trout and one lake stocked with Bass. There are Elk, Deer, and we even saw a couple Black Bear.

My friend is very successful, and attributes his success to the consistent reading of the book of Proverbs. He says the wisdom he's gleaned from the book has helped him decide who to invest with, who to hire, and how to make g...

On God as Father

Last week I got to appear on Fox News, just before Fathers Day. I had a great visit with the folks at The Strategy Room and I'm thankful for them being willing to talk openly about both God and the Fatherless Crisis. They put a clip online, but it's just a short sample of the hour. We ended up having a great conversation. I'll be out of commission today and most of tomorrow, so I won't be able to moderate comments. Here's a clip of the Fox program for now. I'll be back soon!

Watch the latest...

One of the Marks of God's Creation is Infinite Complexity

When we begin believing there are simple explanations for the happenings of the universe, we are in dangerous territory. Physics is not simple. The complex nature and enormity of the universe is not simple, the ecosystem is not simple and so forth. So when I hear a theologian or philosopher talk about how simple reality is, I know He's not talking about anything God made. When you analyze God's art, it is not simple, it is extremely complex. In fact, the more we know about our reality, the...

A Message for Fathers Day

This past week I stopped by the White House to hear about the initiatives the President will be rolling out during a White House celebration of Fathers Day on Monday and I left encouraged and excited. I remember when I first started talking about mentoring and fatherhood a few short years ago how little discussion there was about the issue of fatherlessness. It was a dark subject that brought up thoughts of weakness. Now, it seems, a positive spotlight is being shone on the power and...

A Perspective on the World Cup

If you're like me, you're kind of loving the world cup. The drama of nation pitted against nation and the modern-day gladiator feel of each match is too much to ignore. And it's also hard to argue that the players competing this month in South Africa aren't the greatest all-around athletes in the world. Anybody who has kicked a ball around for a few minutes knows how fit you have to be to even play, much less compete.

That said, many here in America (read white-twenty-somethings who once...

Were We Designed to be Mastered?

This past weekend I read a sermon by Ray Stedman regarding Romans 6. Ray focussed, in part, on the idea we can either be enslaved by sin or enslaved by righteousness. It's a passage I am familiar with but he talked about it in a way that was new to me, new and helpful.

The paradigm shift involved Stedman's argument that human beings are designed to be mastered. He says God designed us to live in relationship with Him as our King, and we work best, most healthily and emotionally stable when we ...

The Stuff of Good Friendships

Last week I opened a discussion about being judgmental, and how a good listener can listen without judging the person he is listening to. I asked us to pay attention to when we think less of people and asked us to ponder our motives…

Now to clarify, I am not talking about judging actions, I am talking about judging people, that is, thinking less of them, that they are less valuable, somehow, because of what they are doing or saying or even wearing.

In that same experiment, I found I judge...

The Power of Listening without Judging

I've a friend who happens to be a rock star, which can be a strange and confusing world. And yet my friend is one of the more stable people I know. He doesn't get down too much when things don't go his way, and he doesn't get all that excited when they do. He's a terrific listener, too, and wants to know more about you than he wants you to know about himself. In a culture that praises fame, my friend hardly notices. He seems to see music as a service he offers, no different than a waiter...

How bad Habits Create Boring Stories

I've a friend who helps people plan and organize their lives so they can get greater impact, and he said to me recently that he's encountering more and more clients who smoke pot recreationally. My friend isn't a judgmental guy, so he doesn't brow beat them or anything, but he's asking his clients to consider the consequences of the drug. Now when my friend said this, I thought he'd start talking about how it's a gateway drug and so forth, but that isn't the warning he's giving his clients...