In 2 Kings chapter 1 we read  a story about a nation that was split in two because part of the nation of Israel had forgot about God. Compounding the problem was that the king of Israel king Ahaziah had fallen and severely injured himself and choose to seek the help of Baal-Zebub an idol to assist him with his injuries. In the end one hundred soldiers and the king were dead because the king had chosen an idol, instead of God.

During this time the nation of Israel is defeated by Assyria and the people of the northern kingdom are exiled, never to return. This is the fate of a nation that is divided and chooses to ignore God and demand their own way.

So that brings us back to Obama, and what path will he take, who will he put his trust in to make decisions? Our nation currently follows false gods in many areas, from technology to materialism and our leaders rarely seek God to make decisions.

Who will Obama choose, our nation is fragile at the moment and Obamas leadership is so important, I am reluctant to put so much of the credit whether it is good or bad on one person, that is why so much of what has happen over the last 8 years I have a hard time blaming Bush for but in Bushes case he did choose God, he decided to consult God when making decisions and made no excuses for what he believed. If Obama rejects God or acts ashamed of God, the overall balance could be jeopardized and the consequences could be catastrophic.

Our Nation, one that was founded on “In God we trust” and has had the favor of God on it for the last 233 years could see that trying to make it in this world without the favor of God is much harder than it thought.  We could see economic disasters, famine, war and yes the beginning of end as we know it.

Yes I know the economy is bad now, we are at war but trust me, going through bad times with God’s favor is a good place to be, without Gods favor looks a lot like the book of Revelation. We should pray that our nation stays a nation that “so help me God” will put God first and that our leader, the so called leader of the free world would put God first in his life and the decisions that he makes.

I started out 2009 spending some time looking back, what I mean is I got together with my assistant managers and some key players on my team and took a long hard look at our successes and our failures in 2009. Why would I do that, well there are two reasons.

1. It is so important to understand why you had success, if you plan to succeed going forward and want to duplicate your previous success you must know what you did to achieve your past goals. So often I talk to sales representatives who have no idea why they achieved a goal, we work to talk about our successes so that we can effectively duplicate our success in the future. In short we try and take the “luck factor” out of the mix and understand why we are successful.

2. As well I analyze my failures, areas where I missed the mark and try and determine what I did or didn’t do to achieve the goal. One thing that I have learned is that goals not attained do not go away and guess what they are rarely ever lowered, so it is so important that we find a way to meet and exceed each goal going forward. Here are a couple of ways that I go about achieving missed goals.

• I look for better ways to meet the goal, the old saying is doing the same thing and expecting a different result is insanity. So I look for better ideas and processes to meet and exceed each goal. This of course means “CHANGE”, I know a nasty 6 letter word but very necessary if you plan to hit that goal going forward.
• As well I don’t complain or say such goal is not achievable, I take the mind set that as long as it is a goal it can be acheived and I must work to set the bar higher. Often I find that the real problem is that I have expected to little of myself or my team, I must set the bar higher and expect higher results or I will be doing a disservice to myself, my employees and the company that I work for.

Once I have looked back and have all the data in front of me, I put together a plan, a specific plan. This is so important because without a plan we plan to fail. Here is one of my favorite quotes….

“Setting a goal is NOT the main thing, it is deciding how you will go about achieving it and staying with that plan.” Tom Landry

Now with all of this information and planning its time to go out and execute.

Well it has been a while since my last post, working in retail around Christmas time doesn’t leave much time for blogging. Mostly you work come home rest and then get up and go at it again. So I thought I would catch everyone up on what’s been going on in my life lately.

Here is my economic review based on my view as a retail manager in the wireless industry, things actually went very well. We were probably up, (just my store) 110% to 120% year over year and considering the public’s confidence in the economy that is not bad at all. Here is why I think we prospered despite the down economy, first of all cell phones are no longer a luxury, they have become a necessity and with that in mind people plan to have a cell phone no matter what happens in the future with the economy. As well people were spending their money on practical gifts, and knowing that they would have a cell phone no matter what meant that buying a new cell phone was a safe purchase.

At home, we had a wonderful Christmas, Hannah was home from school for about three weeks and despite working a lot of hours we were able to spend a lot of quality family time. Some of the hi-lites were, going to a Thrashers hockey game and sitting in the suite, we didn’t even know until we got there that the tickets were in the suite, you just can’t beat free tickets, food and a sporting event. By the way the hockey game was a blast, we had so much fun. We also spent a day at Stone Mountain park, very crowded but fun as well. Hannah has headed back to school tonight, so I am sad but it was great having her home for a few weeks. As well we had our 22nd year tradition of having friends over to bring in the new year, our friends Joey and Cindy Cofer have been coming over every year and even the year before we were married we spent it together. The last few the Womack’s have been coming and we have so much fun, lot’s of food, games and then fireworks. We added a new tradition this year, thanks to Rick, we had communion. What a great idea, awesome way to start the new year out by putting God first, I think it will become a new year’s tradition as well.

I am so excited about what 2009 will bring, this is going to be a break through year and I can’t wait to see what God has in store for my church, family and my friends.

Halloween good or bad or does it matter is the question that I was forced to deal with this year. First of all let me say that I do not celebrate Halloween, when I married Rhonda we made a decision that it was not a holiday that honored God and therefore and solely based on this we never allowed our children to participate in Halloween rituals, you know like trick or treating.

Now when I was little I did celebrate Halloween and for the record I went out into neighborhoods and collected tons of candy but never, not once did I worship the devil.

So back to the future, I do believe that by keeping such holidays we indoctrinate our children with a mixed message that is not in line with the word of God. Now hold on, I know someone out there is saying this guy is a crazy Bible reading freak, well that is only partly true, I do read the Bible and while I am crazy for Jesus, I am not a teetotaler.

So this all brings us to this year when one of my employees, who by the way is a Christian, is so excited about taking their little one trick or treating. I open my big mouth and say, why would you want to do that because it’s a pagan holiday. At this point several people stop and look at me like I just said television was the devil. This was very foreign to this person and they could not believe that in the 2000’s someone would think that way. I was told that I should be sorry for having that opinion and making her feel like she is doing something wrong. Well guess what, I told her I wasn’t sorry, very nicely I told her this but the bottom line is wrong is wrong.

You are either doing things that are intended to honor God or you are not, there isn’t any in between. The problem is we the dumb masses, just do whatever the world tells us is the right thing to do, even if it is against God. Even if it could negatively effect our children.

So I am attacked and thought of as a crazy evangelical, but that is what I know is right. Is it wrong to stand up for what is right, should we as Christians continue to just stand by while the world goes to Hell in a hand basket.

I would be interested in hearing others thoughts about this subject, is Halloween good or bad and does it really matter???

This is one of those which came first the chicken or the egg questions. The question is which do you build first your values or your culture? First things first, let me define each word for you.

Values-Involves ones principles or standards or judgments about what is valuable or important in life.

Let me put it a different way, if I came into your house how would I know what you value most? What things would I look at and say that is important to you?

Culture-The set of learned beliefs, attitudes, values and behaviour that are characteristic of a particular social group or organisation.

Again let me give you another example, when people think about your organization, team or church do they think about a certain set of attitudes, do they say they have a winning culture. Do they say they have a sales culture, or a culture of hospitality.  I guess the question is can they even tell that there is some kind of culture in place.

So do you build values first or do you build a culture and values come along for the ride? I say you can’t have one with out the other, if you have good values, values to appreciate customers/visitors (for churches) you will begin to develop a culture of hospitality. Where you spend your time to prepare and plan, will determine what kind of culture you will display.

I love a quote I read this week from the head coach of the Atlanta Falcons, Mike Smith.

“I think if you want to change the culture, you have to first change people’s behavior,” Smith said. “And when you change their behaviors, then you change their habits. All human beings are creatures of habit, and we’re trying to create and instill what we call winning habits here in our locker room and here in the building.”

What behaviors need to be changed in your organization, I challenge you to do a check up from the neck up and make sure that you personally have the right attitude, then you can look at the rest of your team and begin to asses what behaviors need improvement.

Let me end with this thought, if someone walked into your store/church would they be able to tell what your culture is? If they can’t then you have some work to do.

It may get worse and I am not talking about the economy, I am talking about UGA’s season. We were exposed in a bad way on Saturday night and you say well we just played a bad game, not so. We played the best we could but we were man handled in both the offensive and defensive lines. Our second half come back of sorts may actually make some people think that we just played poorly in the 1st half but sorry let me wake you up, we have a long ways to go and any thought of winning the national title are long gone.

First things first, we must beat a very good Vanderbilt team, for the record I think we will but with Florida, LSU and Auburn still on the horizon, we could easily lose 2 out of 3 of those games. Ok I know some of you are starting to hate but let me just say that I have thought from the beginning that we were a year away. (that is if Stafford and Knowshon come back)

So with all that said being ranked 11th seems right, if we correct some of our short comings, which translated means our lines grow up, we might slip back into the SEC title race and that would not be a bad thing.

Go Dawgs!!!

It’s been a while since I have reviewed any books that I have read but I want to share one particular book that I am currently reading, So You Don’t Want To Go To Church Anymore. For starters and this will mean a lot to COTN members, I was given the book by Helen Gunter, she asked me to read it. She called me on a Saturday morning so excited about this book, she told me that it was one of the books recommended in the back of the The Shack.  Which by the way is an awesome book and one that I read in about 5 days after purchasing. I also just heard from my good friend Rick Womack, that there is some controversy about the doctrine within The Shack but I must say it really had an interesting twist on the trinity and one that aligned with my spirit.

So back to, So you don’t want to go to church anymore, another fiction that makes you look at things from another angle. It takes you out of your comfort zone of church as usual, (which by the way is a good thing) and makes you think about why do we have the programs we have at church. What really is the church/building for and who is the church.

Here are some of the titles of the chapters in the book,

This is Christian education?

Loving Father or Fairy Godmother?

A Box by any other name

And my favorite, When you dig a hole for yourself, you have to throw the dirt on someone

Now if that isn’t the truth!!! At any rate this is another great read that will surely strecth your thoughts about God, Jesus and hopefully challenge you to take God out of the box and realize that God lives in us, not the church building?!?!?

We keep building houses to keep God in but Stephen said…

48“However, the Most High does not live in houses made by men. As the prophet says:
 49” ‘Heaven is my throne,
      and the earth is my footstool.
   What kind of house will you build for me? says the Lord.
      Or where will my resting place be?
 50Has not my hand made all these things?’

So go out and buy the book and let me know what you think.

Mark Richt was asked what sites his players would get to see while in Arizona and here is what he said..

“In some ways you wish you’d spend more time kind of site-seeing and doing some things that might be memorable to them,” Mark Richt said. “But they’re going to see the airport, the hotel, the stadium, and the airport and whatever they can see out the window of the bus on the way. I probably should do a better job of letting them go to some type of tourist attraction. But we’re not going to do that.”

Now you got to love how he manages their time, if you don’t have idol time there is very little chance that you can find trouble. That is the same philosophy that Pastor Mark Preston uses when he leads missions trips to Mexico with about 20 teenagers. You get up at the crack of dawn eat breakfast fast and then drive 1 to 2 hours to the area you will be working, you work about 10 to 12 hours or until the sun sets and then drive the 1 to 2 hours back to the hotel to eat. By that time you are way to tired to do anything else, thus you go straight to bed.

At any rate you gotta love Mark Richt, he is gem when it comes to college football coaches.

Ok Georgia won again and that is a good thing, they could have scored more points. They dominated the game, offensively and defensively but that doesn’t seem to matter in the polls, they want style points.

The good news is we are 4 and 0 and we have not played our best game yet. Way too many penalties and we must execute in short yardage situations but again we are 4 and 0 and we have not played any where near our best game yet.

Ok here is my prediction for next week against Alabama, Georgia wins, 28 to 17, now that will move us up in the polls. Hope I am right!!!

Well that’s the question I am asking and for that matter all of my co workers and friends are asking what are we going to do with our 401K’s? I have no idea, I keep hearing over and over that we have not hit the bottom yet and that this is not a buyers market. For about the last 3 months I have actually raised how much I was paying into my 401K, because I believed that I was buying stocks at a bargain price but with the price continuing to drop you have to wonder what you should do going forward.

People say well the stock market can’t collaspe but that is not true it has already happened before, so it can surely happen again. I am fortunate that the company I work for has a pension as well but to retire and not work until I am 70 I will be very dependent on my 401K. I know that a lot of people out there work for companies that only have 401k’s and their retirement is dependent on the success of the stock market. So what do you do???

I know, I know God is in control of things, I know that but God would want us to be good stewards of our money. I am not worried but I do want to be informed and make good decisions with my family’s future. No matter what you must admit these are very complex and trying times, thank God he is the Lord of my life!!!