rebelling against low expectations
You’ve probably noticed that most Christians have a reputation for doing things at a less-than-great level of quality. Their intentions are good, but the execution is lacking. It could be a film with a good message, but a lousy script (and worse acting), or a website with good content, but poor layout and graphic design. Whatever it is, the quality is often embarrassing at best, disastrous...
Picture in your minds a four-year-old boy. Curious, slightly mischievous, and with his limited four-year-old abilities, easily impressed by the strength and talent of adults. So when a repair man comes to fix his family’s furnace, the four-year-old is standing right outside the furnace closet, watching and admiring. While he is watching and admiring he notices something he has never noticed...
One of the clear themes of the Rebelution from the beginning has been what we call the Three Pillars of Character, Competence, and Collaboration. All three are necessary for the Rebelution movement — and any rebelutionary endeavor — to be successful in impacting the world for the glory of God. Looking back, however, Brett and I have realized that while we’ve talked a lot about the pillars...
It is not extremely difficult for us to convince ourselves that the faithful practice of doing small, hard things should be valued as vital preparation for future achievements. It is, however, much harder to view them as significant in and of themselves. Can we assign meaning to these simplest and humblest of acts? Martin Luther King Jr. says we can. He wrote: “If a man is called a street...
Our recent post on the balance between what we call “big” hard things and “small” hard things reminded us that we haven’t really spent much time explaining the distinction between these two categories — a distinction we ourselves wrestled with while writing our book. This post (which will probably turn into a series of posts) will try to address some common...
One of the key principles behind the Rebelution is the balance between “big hard things” and “small hard things.” Big hard things are hard things that are often too big for us to do alone. Small hard things are hard things that don’t pay off immediately — and that are often repetitive and seemingly insignificant. This principle of “small” and...
Now it might seem confusing that we are telling you to not despise the day of small things, but also to avoid getting stuck there, and to keep going. We quote Jim Elliott saying, “Wherever you are — be there 100%” while also instructing you to pursue every open door. It could seem like we want everyone to “stay where they are” and “move” at the same time. In reality our hope is that you would...
When we are faithful where we are God is faithful to open doors to bigger things. But we still have to move to get through them. So many young people say they are waiting on God’s leading, yet they are not moving to explore the opportunities right in front of them. Some of this stems from laziness, some from fear of failure, and the rest from simply misunderstanding how the leading of God works...
So how do we avoid getting stuck? How do we continue to make progress towards the big things God has called us to do — especially when we aren’t even sure of what those big things are yet? The first answer to that question is provided by Jim Elliott, one of the five young missionaries martyred by the Auca Indians in South America. He wrote, “Wherever you are — be there 100%.” This answer may...
Thomas Huxley was wrong about a lot of things, but he was right when he wrote, “The rung of a ladder was never meant to rest upon, but only to hold a man’s foot long enough to enable him to put the other somewhat higher.” Theodore Roosevelt’s life is an amazing example of a man who lived every day as if it were his last, worked every job as if he’d never have another, and in the end found himself...
rebelling against low expectations
