What Fills You Up?

What fills you with joy or gratitude or spurs you on to higher ideals?  What energizes or encourages you?

Is it particular relationships with people who pour wisdom and hope into you?  Or a particular place or tradition that makes your heart sing?

In what environments does God’s Word come to life for you?

We need weekly rhythms of filling so that we serve out of overflow but I believe we also need seasonal and yearly rhythms of filling too.

The first two weeks in August are always the most “filling” of my entire year.  We have a week in the Chicago area with family and friends at the Willow Creek Leadership Summit, and then we drive straight up to Northern Minnesota and one of our favorite lake homes lent to us each year, first for a little time for just John and me and then for staff families to join us.

Nature is my primary Spiritual Pathway and relationships are a close second (if you’re not familiar with pathways, click on the word).

I’d embrace silence and solitude with a lot more gusto if it could always be on a jet-ski with a blue sky overhead!  Add to that the amazing content from great speakers at the Summit to process and try to apply and it’s a huge win!

So while there have been a lot of relationships and experiences that God has used to fill me over the past couple weeks, I thought I’d share some of my favorite quotes from the Summit.  It’s so hard, but I’m going to try to limit it to 10.

1.  You are the most difficult person you will ever lead. –Bill Hybels (How self-aware and how disciplined are you?)

2.  6X6 – What are six goals you can set that are your highest priority over the next 6 weeks? – Bill Hybels (focus, priorities)

3.  Leaders lead out of who they are on the inside.  God does His miracles of transformation through miraculously transformed people. – Gary Haugen

4.  Honor publicly results in influence privately. – Craig Groeschel (every leader needs truth-tellers, but in private)

5.  Genius of the “and”.  Need to marry CREATIVITY + DISCIPLINE.  Creativity is natural, discipline is not. – Jim Collins (ouch! yep, you’re talkin’ to me!)

6.  An organization is not truly great if it cannot be great without you. –Jim Collins (Who are  you empowering? See #7)

7.  If you delegate tasks, you create followers. If you delegate authority, you create leaders. –Craig Groeschel

8.  If you’re not dead, you’re not done. –Craig Groeschel

9.   When angry you will make the best speech you will ever regret. –Bill Ury (Makes me think of one of my life verses “Where words are many, sin is not absent.” Prov. 10:19)

10.  “Lord rescue us from being small.  Rescue us from fear.  Rescue us from all that is unworthy.” – Gary Haugen in closing prayer

Do you have regular daily, seasonal, and yearly rhythms of filling?  Share your thoughts!

Which is your favorite quote?  Or if you were at the Summit, what quote would you add that spoke to you?

And for an awesome post by Jon Acuff on “filling” look here!