{"id":607,"date":"2009-03-15T21:26:21","date_gmt":"2009-03-16T02:26:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/192.185.166.32\/~davidfoster\/?p=607"},"modified":"2009-10-14T21:28:19","modified_gmt":"2009-10-15T02:28:19","slug":"today-the-gathering-turning-stress-into-strength","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/today-the-gathering-turning-stress-into-strength\/","title":{"rendered":"Today @ The Gathering: Turning Stress Into Strength"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Icon_small1\"Today at The Gathering<\/a> we continued in our current series, \u201cThe Power To Prevail: Turning Adversities Into Advantages.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Today we talked about taking stress, something we all experience as long as we\u2019re alive, and turning it into strength; something few us seem able to do because we don\u2019t know how.<\/p>\n

There is one odd thing about Christianity that needs to be corrected.\u00a0 And that is the view that, what Christianity is about is salvation and the next life.\u00a0 The truth of the matter is, the redemption that Jesus died to achieve is an eternal redemption of this life and the life to come, no matter what it may be.<\/p>\n

No matter how much we try to focus on heaven, none of us can comprehend what eternity will be, or how it could possibly be better than the best life we have in the here and now, with all of our friends and familiar things around us.\u00a0 But the truth of the matter is, we\u2019re not called to focus on that, or to completely understand something that we have no way of comparing or experiencing in the present.\u00a0 Our calling is to live.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve discovered my job as an agent of change, as someone who fosters hope and inspires action, is to remind people not that they are going to die, but that they are not dead yet.<\/em><\/p>\n

So we looked at the greatest Christian who ever lived, the great missionary Paul, and his analogy of life with God as a race.\u00a0 We learned some specific things: one, that we\u2019re all in a race <\/strong>and that there is a goal.\u00a0 Though there will be rewards at the end of the race (that is, in heaven) not everyone will be treated the same way.\u00a0 Some people in heaven will lose their rewards while other people will gain them.\u00a0 There will be recognition for those rewards.\u00a0 How this all works itself out is a topic for another day.<\/p>\n

We also learned that the race is specific to us<\/strong>.\u00a0 It is a particular race.\u00a0 We have to define what our own win is.\u00a0 My win is being a speaker for God, fostering hope, leading change, and inspiring action. But using my gifts to write, to speak, to motivate, to lead, to organize, to gather, and to move people forward is my win.\u00a0 This may not be and probably isn\u2019t yours.\u00a0 But you need to find one and define what that is.<\/em><\/p>\n

All of us want to live a great life and turn stress into strength but we just don\u2019t know how.\u00a0 So what I did today was gave a learning tool called STP<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

1.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The \u201cS\u201d stands for self-discipline<\/strong>, which means we make ourselves do what we\u2019ll be glad we did in the future; not just what we want to do in the present.
\n2.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The \u201cT\u201d stands for training<\/strong>, which isn\u2019t just showing up and trying, but it\u2019s preparing ahead of time.\u00a0 Remember that the will to win must always be preceded by the will to prepare to win.\u00a0 Preparation is everything.\u00a0 Even though a hundred-yard dash lasts only 9 seconds or so, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours are put into the preparation for that nine seconds.
\n3.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The \u201cP\u201d stands for perseverance<\/strong>.\u00a0 Perseverance is pushing through in the quitting moments when all the odds seem to be going against you.\u00a0 It\u2019s getting up one more day; getting up, suiting up, showing up, doing the next right thing, and doing that thing with everything we have as though its success all depends on us, while at the same time knowing that all the success we achieve will depend upon God.<\/p>\n

Next week we\u2019ll continue with number seven in our series, \u201cTurning Risk Into Reward.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today at The Gathering we continued in our current series, \u201cThe Power To Prevail: Turning Adversities Into Advantages.\u201d Today we talked about taking stress, something we all experience as long as we\u2019re alive, and turning it into strength; something few us seem able to do because we don\u2019t know how. There is one odd thing … Continue reading “Today @ The Gathering: Turning Stress Into Strength”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"series":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=607"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=607"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}