The blog title says it all. No strings attached, I just want to bless one of you for being so awesome! Seriously I’m still floored anyone out there cares what I say. Appreciate you guys and all your kind words. You can enter by click on the photo below!

There is nothing cooler than seeing an idea come to fruition. To see something go from a whiteboard to actual production.

This is one of those things!

I remember sitting in Uganda with some friends back in May, just having a great time of fellowship, conversation, and brainstorming. In all honesty, my friends are genius, and so I love when we all get in a room together.

We got talking about the tension of non-profits doing such amazing work but usually struggling deeply with finances. Almost always the only thing holding any non-profit back from doing more is finances. We thought, what if we started a for profit company that worked to not only raise money for non profits but also raise awareness? Not just to one cause either but a ton of causes!

That’s when we hit the white board. It was my buddy Brett’s idea. He is like Yoda for Christian business. He thought of “Claro Candles.” The word Claro means “bringing light to darkness”—exactly what we wanted to do. I’m so excited about this launch and really think it can do some amazing things to further all the amazing ministries fighting social injustice all across the globe.

What Claro does is create quality, scented candles, that represent a different non profit every two weeks (For example, right now we are partnering with Pencils of Promise — an organization that provides education to those in countries where it’s not readily accessible). For that two weeks we pick a scent, color and branding sticker that goes on three types of candles — jar, tin, and naked. Whatever Claro sells in those two weeks, half of all the profit goes straight into the hands of that cause! The next two weeks will highlight a different cause, different scent, and different branding sticker. One week you might buy a candle that helps bring clean water to Uganda. One week you might buy a candle that helps bring education to children in Guatemala. Another week you might buy a candle that helps homelessness in the U.S.

The possibilities are endless. And that’s why we are so excited! The naked candles are super rad too because they have a particular statistic regarding that cause on the candle that week, so when you burn it you are literally burning away a statistic.

The site is below as well as a few pictures that you can click on. If you are a non profit we’d love to hear from you. And if you are an artist of some sort we’d love to partner with you to bring light to the causes we highlight. And if you ever see me on the road speaking or performing poetry I should be having some with me then too! Already going to buy a few and use them as Christmas gifts!

  click on images to check them out

www.clarocandles.com

5 Reasons I Loved College

1). It was where Jesus first drew me unto Himself, so I thought I’d go back to the “scene of the crime” per se. I think this world would look a lot different if Christians went back to where they first started to follow Jesus rather than retreat from that demographic immediately. No one knows the culture or demographic better than the one you just came out of.

2). There is no better place to talk about Jesus than on a college campus. It’s a place where everyone is trying to figure out what they believe, everyone is searching for truth, and everyone is painfully becoming aware of how them as the lord of their life isn’t working (which was me my sophomore year). Also it’s the marketplace of ideas and the front lines of the academic world. One of the biggest things I’ve missed about that is the classroom discussion. It was so fruitful, robust, and educated. Outside of college it seems everyone just resorts to name calling and getting angry.

3). It’s fun and it’s fresh. Everything is new to a lot of the students (the academics, the freedom, and the friends) and so there is this freshness in the air. You never know what you are going to get (in fact I’m sure that’s exactly what some of my peers thought when me and my friend dressed up as a banana and a gorilla and ran through the library during finals week, but we won’t talk about that incident).

4). I still thoroughly enjoy Ramen Noodles and I know I won’t get judged on a college campus.

5). I think it’s the best time for viral discipleship. Life on life happens whether you like it or not. Think about it, when you go to college you are in close quarters with thousands of other people. Most freshman guy dorms are borderline sardine cans. If you are living for Jesus, people WILL see. No better time to show the Christian life than the four years thousands of your peers are right next to you.

These are just some of the reasons I am beyond excited for where God is taking me and Alyssa this fall. She and I (along with a few other close friends) are launching a full-scale college ministry this fall in the Tacoma, Washington (30 minutes outside of Seattle).  We will be right near the heart of downtown and will be drawing on the five surrounding colleges in the city. There will be a Friday night gathering, “fight clubs” (a gospel intentional small group), and various outreaches and service projects. You can read more about it here and we’d be humbled if you would prayerfully consider partnering with us in this endeavor. We are realizing quickly that starting a ministry from the ground up costs a lot of money but we know God will provide. If you’d like to help support us launching you can go here. Also follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and our website to stay up to date on what we are doing. And if you are ever in Tacoma come hang out with us!

To give to For The King Ministries click here

Books that shaped me while in college

Reason for God by Tim Keller

Prodigal God by Tim Keller

Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis

If God is God… by Randy Alcorn

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To stay updated on service times, news, etc follow For The King on the social media outlets below!

 | Facebook | Twitter | Website |

Hey everyone!

If you are at this page you are most likely here because you saw the Life Today Interview with James Robison. Man, I had such a blast! I think we recorded that interview back in May sometime and it’s crazy to think how much has changed and progressed since then.

James and Betty were so kind and gracious. I felt very welcome and humbled by all their staff. Not to mention it was a full audience which made it more lively!

If you watched it though you noticed towards the end James begin to ask my about my plans and heart for the future. I shared with him my testimony of growing up in a very urban, inner city, context. Because of that I’ve always had a heart for urban ministry. At the time of the interview there were some things in the works but what is awesome is a lot of those things have officially become a reality already!

Me and a few of my buddies have officially launched “For The King” ministries! The best way to describe it would be as an urban based ministry aimed at young adults and college students. We are starting in Tacoma, a city with 3 universities and 2 community colleges. By the end of September we will have launched with a weekly gathering (every Friday), small groups (or as we call them, fight clubs to fight against sin and for our faith), a website (ForTheKing.TV), and outreach events to engage the culture and city around us. As well, we want to equip and encourage young adults to serve and plugin to a Jesus-loving church in our region. As I mentioned on the show my heart has always been to be the hands AND feet ministry without sacrificing one for the other. If you are in the South Puget Sound area, come visit us this fall! We already have a core group of a couple hundred college students and are very excited to see where God will take this! We are working by God’s grace to be faithful stewards while telling as many people as we can about Jesus.

I really believe in this mission and I really think God has called me, my fiancee Alyssa, and a few of my other friends to join God in what He is already doing amongst people in my area. Because of that I will be scaling back from traveling and speaking and will invest more time into For The King (don’t worry though I still will be traveling! Just not a crazy amount as before). Because traveling and speaking is my primary source of income to sustain not only me but also my future marriage I’ve definitely had to trust God on this one.

At the end of the interview, James directed people to my website and asked them to give and help support. Over the last couple months since the interview we have been planning, strategizing, and have just begun fundraising. We realized very quickly an endeavor like this takes a decent amount of kingdom minded people who are willing to give to the mission. If you are willing, we would be extremely humbled for you to consider supporting us and give to our efforts and the movement of God’s grace in Tacoma. (I have marked a few ways to do that below). You can check out the website, come visit us in Tacoma, WA, or watch us through the online portal as we will be updating often. But regardless we would love if you would help support what we are doing.

THINGS WE NEED MONEY FOR:

• Bibles for incoming college students.

• Start up costs for outreach events like neighborhood BBQ’s, quick one day mission trips in our surrounding area, and other similar things.

• Staffing and operational costs (Having the resources and support means that we can invest more in the students and mission around us).

• Funding to help sponsor resource giveaways of gospel centered books, CD’s, etc at our local weekly gathering.

• Sponsorship for camps, retreats, and other trips we will be taking for those students who can’t afford it.

WAYS TO GIVE:

We are in the process of getting our 501c3 status right now (should be approved in the next month or two). Until then you can make donations to Fireproof Ministries (one of our partner and parent ministries) and they will get directed to us as long as you click the “For The King” tab on their site. Here are three ways you can do that.

1. Donate securely online at this link (www.tinyurl.com/bethke). In the drop down,  select ‘For The King’.

2. Mail a check to Fireproof Ministries and in the memo put ‘For The King’.

-Po Box 50048 Pasadena Ca 91115

3. Pray, Pray, Pray. We are going to need it! Pray that grace would abound in the hearts of college students all over the Tacoma area.

To stay updated on service times, news, etc follow For The King on the social media outlets below!

 | Facebook | Twitter | Website |

Finally, I’m beyond humbled and thankful to all of you who follow my blog, email me with encouragement, and constantly let me know you are praying for me. That alone means the world. Overwhelmed at God’s grace that He would let me partake in His mission the way He does. He doesn’t need any of us one bit, but He loves and wants us all a whole lot. Excited to see where this season of grace takes us!

-Jefferson

A few months ago I was beyond blessed to sit down and chat with James Robison of Life Today TV. We talked about the Jesus>Religion video, my testimony, and what I’ll be doing in the future. It was a fun time. I’d love to have you all tune in Tuesday, August 28th when it airs!

The show airs on a myriad of different stations like ABC Family, TBN, and a few others. To see what channel and time yours will air you can click here. You can look it up by location or my what cable provider you have in the drop down box at the top. Below is a preview segment of the interview they posted on their YouTube account this week.

Here is an additional video where I was interviewed backstage after the taping. In this video I talk about parts of the bible I struggle with, the importance of reading the bible for ourselves, and a few other topics. Both this and the taping were such a blast! Aug 28th make sure to set the DVR

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If I could transport myself to one Old Testament event it’d probably be the parting of the red sea. The whole ordeal is such a beautiful and raw story of fear, faith, grace, and salvation. My favorite part comes right before God actually parts the sea.

Take yourself back and try to put yourself in their shoes. The Israelites had just been in captivity for generations. God miraculously saves them, brings them out of the desert, and they come to the red sea.

This is where it starts to get interesting.

They are just coming down from the high of coming out of captivity when they run into their first roadblock.

The Red Sea.

An ominous obstruction that they know they can’t cross.

Then it gets even worse. They turn around and see the Egyptians actually chasing them! The Egyptians realized they missed the Israelites and their cheap (free actually) labor. So Pharaoh got His armies and chased them.

What did the Israelites do?

With a vast ocean in front of them, and a violent chasing army behind them, they freak out. It says they “feared greatly.” I’m sure there wasn’t a shortage of men wetting their pants at this moment.

And they look to Moses and say in Exodus 14:11-12:

“Is it because there are no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us in bringing us out of Egypt? Is not this what we said to you in Egypt: ‘Leave us alone that we may serve the Egyptians’? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.”

Immediately they doubt God.

Immediately they react in bitterness and fear towards the one that just saved them.

Side note: They never actually said “Leave us alone that we may serve the Egyptians” while in slavery. Isn’t that interesting? They actually said the opposite. They wanted to be saved. But we all do the same with God when times get hard don’t we? We want Him to save us but when it gets tough He must have done something wrong and He should’ve just left us where we were.

Too many times in our lives we are just like this moment with the Israelites. We approach a difficulty and we think God isn’t there. On top of that, we turn around and see our sin chasing us. We thought it left us. We thought we were free. But it seems like it’s coming back for more.

And so we freak out.

We get terrified.

But God’s answer through Moses to the Israelites that day is my favorite part.After they lament that they were even saved, he responds by saying:

“Fear not, stand firm, and see the salvation of the LORD, which he will work for you today. For the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall never see again. The LORD will fight for you, and you have only to be silent.”

Does that last verse strike anyone as peculiar? God says He will fight for us, and the only thing we are required to do is be silent. He doesn’t say work harder. He doesn’t say pray harder. He doesn’t say try harder. He says be silent. Just sit in silence. Rest. Quietness. Trust.

And immediately upon doing that God does the impossible and the sea is then parted.

He fought for them.

He did it for them.

He won the battle for them.

They pass through by faith (which by the way think how much faith it must have taken to walk on dry ground with hundreds of feet of water walls on your left and on your right) while the Egyptians get drowned and destroyed when they try to pass.

There is so much truth in the fact that God actually fights for us. We are weak. We are feeble. And we see our sin chasing us, but He fights for us. He does the impossible.

What in your life are you trying so hard to gain or accomplish rather than just letting God fight for you?

Ladies, instead of always nagging your man about his imperfections, what would it look like if you simply prayed for him night and day and watch God do a miracle in his heart?

Fellas, how often do you try to combat your own sin with your own will power rather than just trusting that God has fought the battle for you?

What would it look like if we did less fighting and more trusting?

Less working and more resting?

Because from the passage above it seems God only wants us to do one thing and that’s be quiet.

Freedom is in the silence.

He will fight for you.

What in your life are you not letting God fight for you?

Additional Resources

Transforming Grace by Jerry Bridges

Grace: God’s Unmerited Favor by Charles Spurgeon

Absolute Surrender by Andrew Murray

“Getting Out” sermon by Tim Keller

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It was until I actually opened the scriptures for myself I saw something quite different.

Peter was a fisherman.

Paul was a tentmaker.

In fact, there is almost little to no record the first two hundred years of Christianity that someone switched vocations (unless their vocation directly violated scripture like prostitution, sorcery, etc) after they began to follow Jesus. Since Christians were persecuted they simply stayed in whatever vocation they were in order to provide for the family, and then maybe led or pursued other titles in the underground church. But for the most part if a blacksmith became a Christian, he stayed a blacksmith (For more on this, check out this book). The only difference is instead of being a blacksmith to the glory of himself, he began to be a blacksmith to the glory of God.

1st Corinthians 10:31 couldn’t be more clear.

“So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.”

There’s no asterisk after that verse that says, “only if that eating or drinking is done in an overtly Christian way like communion or a church potluck.”

It says, whatever you do.

No qualifications.

No exceptions.

If the bible calls it a sin, or if you know you are blatantly doing it to the glory of yourself rather than God, then don’t do it.

But…

Also realize, you can bring God glory in exactly whatever domain He has placed you already. Sometimes we think that God wants us to only do super “holy” things. The truth is holiness is more defined by the stature of your heart than the “job” section you fill out on your Facebook. You don’t need to feel guilty that you’re a chef. You don’t need to feel guilty that you only paint, but your dad wants you to be a pastor. Too many times some Christians want to go into “ministry” because of outside pressures by their parents or pastor, not realizing where they already are at that moment is their ministry. The way Christianity will spread the most is when there are disciples of Jesus living in every domain of society (food, politics, music, art, etc), showing Him as Lord of all, and the greatest pursuit of joy possible.

Do you like to cook? Do it to the glory of God.

Do you like to work on cars? Do it to the glory of God.

Do you like to write stories? Do it to the glory of God.

If you have a thankful heart and if you are using that domain to reflect His beauty as Creator then that is worship. Listening to Hillsong United isn’t worship, it’s a form of worship. I found a deeper level of joy and connection with Jesus when I realized that me eating a good meal with thankfulness was just as “holy” as my prayer time. The truth is God doesn’t just want your “Christian” things. He wants it all. When we realize the beauty of God’s grace in the mundane, not just the religious, that’s when we will begin to see Him correctly.

What’s something you do to the glory of God that might seem mundane?

Additional Resources:

Imagine (book by Steve Turner)

The God Who Is There (book by Francis Schaeffer)

Do All To The Glory Of God (book by Watchman Nee)

Church Clothes: Purpose, Passion, & Progression (Blog by Lecrae)

How To Drink Orange Juice To The Glory of God (Blog by John Piper)

I get a frequent amount of emails about “where to start” when reading the bible. Let’s be honest, it’s a daunting book. Most people want to be really proactive and they start reading it front-to-back but usually fall asleep by Leviticus. I thought I’d take sometime to offer some practical things I use to study the bible in hopes that it’ll push us all deeper into intimacy with our creator.

1. Take time to pause and ask God to speak before you open the bible.

One of the worst things someone can do is start reading the bible without ever acknowledge the One who speaks in it. The bible is such a big book we can make it say whatever we want. Want to be really rich and greedy with your money? There’s a verse for that. Wan’t to get an unbiblical divorce? There’s a verse for that. Before we ever open the scriptures we need to acknowledge God as God and us as not. We need to place the scriptures above us, letting them inform us, rather than putting them below us, letting us inform them. Also I dare you to ask God to reveal Himself to you before you open it. He is there and He will. This little nugget transformed my bible reading. Every morning it’s a simple prayer, but I usually just say, “God, reveal yourself to me in these pages. Show me what you want to show me, teach me what you want to teach me, and let me close it having heard from you.”

2. Get a plan

Really early on in my Christian walk I loved to read the Scriptures but had no idea how. It intimidated me. Sometimes I would just open it to wherever and start reading with little to no context of the passage at all. It’s the Christian version of a wigi board. One of the most helpful things is I got myself a reading plan that walked me through certain passages of the scripture everyday. The one I usually do now has me reading a section from the Psalms, OT, & NT everyday. I included a link below to an amazing article that highlights a ton of reading plans. Take a look and find one that works best for you. The biggest thing with a reading plan, is don’t use it as a morality check but use it as a structure to push you closer to God. If you miss a day(s), which you will, keep it moving. It’s not about finishing the bible in a year, it’s about having a structure that frees you up to dig into God more. For the reading plans click here.

3. Switch it up

One of my favorite things to do is listen to the bible on audio. My favorite audio bible is the Bible Experience. It is a dramatized version of the bible that doesn’t just read the verses but includes sounds and dramatization to fit the context. So when Jesus is entering Jeruslem you can hear donkeys, people walking on dirt, etc. It really brings it to life (Check it out here). For me it really helps to switch up my plan also. When I read at the exact same time the exact same way everyday it seems to make it a little stale. Read it sometimes in your head. Read it outloud. Read it inside. Read it outside. Listen to it while working out, driving, etc. A really interesting thing to do is copy and paste books of the bible into Microsoft Word and take out all the chapter and verse numbers. Not knowing exactly what verse you are in makes your mind read it much more like a letter or story. It’s fun and refreshing.

4. Journal about what you’ve learned

For me I have a moleskin that I write everything in (They seriously are the best. See for yourself here). Write what God just taught you. Write things that stuck out. Write questions you have for God. Write prayers. Write anything. It not only helps you retain more, but for a lot of us writing is a way of actually processing what we just read.

By no means is this complete, exhaustive, or exclusive. This are just some things I’ve used in my personal reading. Do whatever connects you to God the closest and fits your personality.

Other Resources I’ve Found Helpful When Studying The Bible:

How To Study The Bible (a Sermon By Matt Chandler)

Net Bible (A great bible study website)

How to Study The Bible (a Book by Watchman Nee)

What would you add? What do you do for your bible time?

Dry. Tired. Lost.

You think God doesn’t love you. You haven’t felt His presence or joy in days or months. You keep asking yourself, “what am I doing wrong? Am I being punished?”

Everyone goes through the desert. In fact I’d be hard pressed to find a Christian who hasn’t gone through that season of spiritual emptiness.

Too many times we want to zip through the valleys and only dwell in the mountaintops. The truth is without the valleys there’d be no such thing as mountaintops. Also we shouldn’t blame God when it rains in our life. Without rain, nothing grows. He knows, He is near, and we can trust that He is good and He is our Father. Instead of praying that God would take us out of the desert, we should pray that God would teach us while in the desert.

Whenever we have those dry spells though the enemy likes to creep in and spread a few lies in order to isolate us from our faith family and make us run from the open arms of God. Below are three things I’ve learned and have to remind myself of every time I’m in one of those seasons.

1. Stay in church community. Don’t go lone ranger.

Whenever we feel unloved by God, or like we have no “power or strength” from him our first inclination is to run. We feel dirty. We feel unwelcome. We feel unloved. We isolate and hide. The best thing we can do when that is happening is to intentionally surround ourselves with our brothers and sisters of the faith. They can pray for us. They can encourage us. They can share their similar stories. We are all in this together. Trying to weather a storm as a single tree will leave us completely shredded and uprooted. But if an entire forest is weathering the storm they all bend together and come back up together.

2. When you feel like praying the least, is when you should pray the most.

D.A. Carson said sometimes when we don’t feel like praying we have to “pray ourselves into prayer.” I’m terrible at this one. Whenever I feel dry I have not one molecule in me that wants to pray. That should be the first indication that is when I need it most. Set a time and keep it. Be silent. Be still. Ask God to speak to you through His word. Sometimes it hurts. Sometimes it feels like He isn’t there. But sometimes He shows up when you least expect it.

3. Be honest, transparent, and real with God and others.

I remember when I first became a Christian I thought I couldn’t be honest with God. I thought I couldn’t be mad at Him. I thought I couldn’t scream at Him. One day though after a set of events where it felt like God had “failed” me, I couldn’t take it anymore. I lost it. I threw my bible across the room and said, “this doesn’t even work anymore!” And it was in that moment I heard a quiet whisper saying, “now that you’ve dropped the charade, we can get somewhere.” It wasn’t until I was completely transparent with God that I started to see just how beautiful He truly is. We don’t need to always have a smile. We can cry. We can yell. We can be frustrated. And the best part of that is God actually wants us to cast all that stuff on Him (1^st Peter 5:7). Has it ever shocked you how explicit and raw the Psalms are? Somewhere around 80 percent of them are laments. They aren’t all “worship” songs. Until we are fully transparent with our loving Father, we’ll never feel the weight of burden and anxiety off our shoulders.

What about you? What do you do during the dry seasons? What has God taught you in those times?

For further study below are a few books written to those in the valley:

• When The Darkness Will Not Lift

• When I Don’t Desire God

• The Cure

Five-or-so years ago I was locked in what felt like an all-out war over a dream that was in danger of dying, because a man who was much shrewder than me was bent on stopping it. One day, in my grief and fear and anger over what was about to happen, I felt God sort of “sit me down” and challenge me—it was clear that my “frontal” way of dealing with this situation was not going to work, and He was asking me if I was going to have the courage to move more shrewdly. In the nicey-nice Christian culture that is promoted and perpetuated in most churches, shrewdness is anathema—worse, it’s entirely off the radar as a spiritual practice.

So, in an uncharacteristic spirit of desperation, I asked God to teach me what I needed to know about shrewdness—and He (of course) brought me to Jesus, the source of all good things. The point of Jesus’ “Parable of the Shrewd Manager” (Luke 16:1-8) is specifically to highlight the behavior of a lazy, lying, good-for-nothing servant who has no qualities we’d want to emulate except for one: his shrewd way of saving himself from the consequences of his terrible behavior. Jesus highlights this anti-role-model for one purpose: “The people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light.” Later, in preparation for sending out His disciples on their first ministry journey without Him, He tells them to take nothing with them (no clothing, money, or “insurance” of any kind)—instead, He tells them they need just two things:

1. Be as shrewd as a serpent, and

2. Be as innocent as a dove.

The word He uses here for “serpent” is the same one He uses for Satan. And the word He uses here for “dove” is the same the Bible uses to describe the Holy Spirit. Jesus is telling His disciples to be as shrewd as Satan is, but as innocent as the Holy Spirit is. Shrewdness, then, is a way of living and relating that Jesus first modeled for us, then commanded us to do likewise.

In Shrewd: Daring to Obey the Startling Command of Jesus, I describe “shrewd” as a way of thinking and acting that Jesus long ago urged His followers to use in their uprising against the powers and ‘spiritual forces of wickedness’ of this world. Shrewd people—and Jesus is the Exemplar—first study how things work, and then leverage that knowledge to tip the balance in a favored direction. Shrewdness is the expert application of leverage—“the right force at the right time in the right place”—as The Way Things Work author David Macaulay observes. Jesus is perpetually taking what His enemies intend for evil and morphing it into good—He uses their destructive momentum against them, like a martial artist. Most Christians have a negative reaction to the word “shrewd,” but Jesus not only exemplified this way of relating to others in His redemptive mission on earth, He gave us a mandate to grow much, much more adept in our practice of it.

Because I’ve had scores of conversations with people, both young and old, about the mechanics of “innocent shrewdness,” I know people of all ages have experienced repeated failure in their frontal, conventional approaches to problems and challenges in their life. They’re frustrated and lost. And when I simply walk them through a Jesus-centered process of thinking and acting more shrewdly, it’s like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz moving from her flat, black-and-white world into the 3-D colors of Oz. The process, simply, looks like this:

• Answer the question: “What do I really want?” Jesus habitually asked an irritating question of people with obvious needs who approached Him for help: “What do you want?” (e.g., Matt. 20:32; Mark 6:22; Mark 10:36; Mark 10:51; Luke 18:41). We must know what we really want before we can truly ask in faith.

• Answer the question: “Is my ‘want’ born out of innocence? Would I feel just fine asking Jesus for this ‘want’ if I was face-to-face with Him?”

• Answer the question: “How does this (person, organization, or process) work?” Shrewd living always starts with understanding how things work—so spend five minutes brainstorming (either alone or with someone you trust) an answer to this question.

• Based on your understanding of how things work, spend five minutes brainstorming a point of leverage to go after with a “sideways” approach. Sideways means the leverage comes from an unexpected direction—you find “sideways” by experimenting with approaches that carry the force to move the situation.

• Now, try one of your options and debrief the results with someone you trust. Decide whether to continue with that option or whether to try a new approach.

• Repeat steps #3, #4, and #5 in a continuous loop—until you’ve landed on “the right force at the right time in the right place.”

Rick Lawrence is the author of dozens of books, including Shrewd: Daring to Obey the Startling Command of Jesus and Sifted: God’s Scandalous Response to Satan’s Outrageous Demand (shrewdbook.com and siftedbook.com). He’s has been editor of Group Magazine for 25 years and is the co-leader of the Simply Youth Ministry Conference. Rick is a church leader, consultant to national research organizations and a frequent conference and workshop speaker. He and his family live in Colorado.