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Faith – noun – complete trust or confidence in someone or something.

In our work-ethic-centric, do-it-yourself, self-sufficient American culture, we tend to place a lot of value on working hard at things and seeing results. If you’re down on your luck, then pull yourself up by your bootstraps, try hard, and you’ll succeed. We live in the land of opportunity after all.

And really, there is much to be said about hard work and strategic planning. The reason I do KRAs is because I want to be intentional about life – to approach it with a strong work ethic.

But all of this must be taken with a grain of salt. Because the reality is that no matter how hard we try at things, and no matter how much we plan, there are always going to be things that are out of our hands – things that we simply have no control over no matter what we do.

And so I am thankful that there is this notion of faith – having “complete trust or confidence” in God – remembering that no matter how many situations we come up against that are out of our hands, they are not out of God’s hands, and we can have complete trust and confidence in Him to work the situations out to His desired outcomes. He’s got a stronger work ethic than we ever will, and he’s got a nice dose of omnipotence too, so he’s more than capable to deal with the things that we cannot.

My prayer is that I could live my life always handing over the wheel to He who is more than able – planning and strategizing, but always under the umbrella of God’s ultimate control, and always freely trusting Him to intervene whenever He wants – trusting Him even more than I trust myself.

I was just reflecting and journaling on the notion of faith this afternoon, and right after I had the revelation of what faith was and how it applied to me in my life right now, I got a phone call about a situation that had been completely out of my control – getting permission to use a song in a movie I’m making. I had been waiting for weeks on getting the permission, and eventually just had to turn to faith and prayer that the permission would come through, because there was nothing more I could do in my own power to make it happen. And it is so fitting that God came through and brought the permission right as I was coming to this realization. And I’m not even exaggerating. The phone literally rang within seconds of me writing out my revelation about faith.

In any case, faith has been a big theme of these past couple weeks, because there have been a number of situations that are completely out of my hands. I am a strategic planner, but with some of these situations, it has just come to a point where there is absolutely nothing I can do in my own power to make things happen. And so I just need to have faith. It’s not always easy, and I may well get impatient, but I must never loose heart.

I can have complete trust in God, because God is completely trustworthy.

Just wanted to let you know about an exciting new program that I’ve been involved in developing a video for. It’s called LIVEº (Pronounced “Live to the Power of Nothing”), and it is basically a Christian faith-based Peace Corps. Teams of 10-12 people will head out for two years to some of the most underserved areas of the world, they will live among the poor, help meet their physical needs, and assist local churches in reaching people with the gospel.

In 2007, LIVEº will launch two teams – one to serve people affected by 1994’s genocide in Rwanda, and one to serve the poor in India. 2007 will be LIVEº’s first year, and so you can get in on the ground floor right now. Over the next couple years, the plans are to expand this to many more teams serving all over the world. Exciting stuff.

Check out www.powerofnothing.org for more information, and feel free to contact me with questions about it.

I just spent the day today putting together my KRAs (Key Result Areas) for 2007, and it was a very good time to prioritize my year.

As I look back over 2006, I am very encouraged to see that I met all of my main KRAs for the year. My biggest KRAs were to get involved in a local church and stay involved there, to get competent enough at Logic Pro (music composition computer program) to begin writing the music scores for my movies, and to develop more of a balanced relational life outside of work, rather than just being a workaholic camped up in my office 24/7. There were many other KRAs I had for the year, but these were the big three, and I’m proud to say that I accomplished all of them. It might not sound like a big deal, but if you saw where I was at on these issues at the beginning of this year, you’d be amazed I came this far too.

End of 2005, I was stressed, weary, depressed, lonely, and I spent almost every night and weekend at the office. It wasn’t all bad – I was totally in awe at all the experiences I had had that year with traveling to Sudan, the Tsunami impact zones, all over East Africa, and New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. But all the same, I was a first class workaholic, and I didn’t know any other way to live. And though I knew that kind of lifestyle wasn’t sustainable over the long haul, I didn’t know how to break out of it either.

Well, there have been ups and downs this year, but I can truly say that I feel like a different person now. So much more balanced, and really, so much more human. There is more to life than work, and I’m so glad to be partaking in the rest of life now too.

Now, my 2007 KRAs are largely geared around preparing me for where I see myself headed in the next couple years. This involves preparations to make another piano CD next year, preparations for grad school in 2008, and preparations for my ultimate life ambition of directing feature films. And then my biggest KRA for the year is to make my relationship with God my chief grounding in life, and what I turn to for everything.

There are many other KRAs, but along with continued focus on relationships with others, I’d say these are the big five.

Happy New Year to all, and to all a good night!