Guy Richards / Ordinary Life with a Brand Strategist

Your heart

God cares about what's in your heart more than your hand.

And in my experience, He will take from my hand to direct my heart.

#13 / Care for your flock

Mark Lutz, UnPoverty and the Bible.

#13 / Care for your flock from Guy Richards on Vimeo.

Everything is IMPOSSIBLE without faith

Faith is believing when we can’t see it.

Faith is persisting when we don’t feel like it.

Faith is trusting God even when we don’t get the answer we want, because as a child of God we understand He has a better purpose for our lives than we do.

Life 1, life 2, drugs and Jesus

Sorry I missed yesterday. I meant to breakaway to write this but I decided I would rather spend the time with my wife. So although Monday is scheduled to be a business insight, this is about drugs, a young man’s death and an on time Jesus.

I live it two totally different worlds. One with family, friends and the people I went to school with, in the same town I grew up in. I’m usually at the skatepark weekly, try to snowboard all winter with my friends, head out on redneck adventures in my brother Stephen’s backyard and maybe pick up an occasional game of horseshoes at the neighborhood BBQs. I see most of all my old bosses (bus boy, painting, mechanic, landscape, ice cream cart seller and once I was a chipper boy for a tree cutting service) in the super market, on the beach and sometimes at the local Boston Market. I may even come across one of my grade school teachers at WaWa (It’s our version of 7-Eleven).

On the other hand being the CEO of Abiah, an avid speaker and now an author, I travel to a lot of nice places where people wear suits, have stylish houses, fancy cars and extra letters after their last name. My two worlds almost never meet. In my closet I have two sets of clothes. The few hoodies and jeans I wear every day and the suites and business dress I only pull out if I’m traveling.

Mainly the people who subscribe to this blog are those who know me from business. Today I want to pull back the curtain of my life for you to see that I’m a regular person that was highly written off growing up. I sold crack all through high school, never placed well in academics, in fact I never have taken the SAT test and still don’t have a bachelors degree. But God…gave me an opportunity when I was 21. By that time I had enough of the drugs, people dieing around me, fake friends and the emptiness that filled my soul. The first book I ever read was the Bible. Which helped me realize I was loved because God made me, not as a condition of the things I do. As my behavior changed it shook my town up…”Guy?...Jesus? Yea, he’ll be back selling dope.”

No, that person was an old person. I was given a new life, not a borrowed, reconditioned or improved life, a new life.

In the last 3 months a saw God do it again. Last week I received a call from a friend who gave his life to Jesus in February. This guy is very rare. He grew up in the professional motocross party scene, has started smoking marijuana with is parents at 13 and like me was labeled with big red letters…FAILURE!

 

But then God…came and changed his life during that huge snowstorm back in February. As he started reading the Bible his world collided with the reality of right and wrong, promise and consequence, but more importantly the security of being loved by the God who paints the sky and keeps air in our lungs. His eyes started smiling and his motives changed.

People around the town are talking as if it was a front-page headline, little to my friend’s knowledge. My friend’s passion and realness to speak Jesus’ name is evident which fuels the critics.

Before my friend ever came to church with me he tracked down one of his old friends who was addicted to heroin, struggling for help and led him to Jesus.

Last week I received a call that my friends, friend died. But not before he gave his life to Jesus.

I know it’s sometimes hard to feel comfortable when you think those around you in “life 2” could not even begin to understand what you have going on in “life 1.” Chances are that we all have something going on, a person we love that is caught on drugs or stuck in some problem or a challenge that seems no one would understand.

I’m not sure this helps, but this morning I received a text that was very timely. “Our faith should not be based on what we know God has done for others, but on who we know He is – The God without limits.” David Jeremiah

I feel this is for someone out there. You know who you are. Don’t give up on that person you were about to write off, God hasn’t.

Wisdom will make you great!

"If you prize wisdom, she will make you great. Embrace her, and she will honor you.” Proverbs 4:8 (NLT)

…and when you become great, it points to God.

Loyalty and Kindness / Individual or brand principle

I’m continually trying new ways to help brands identify, develop and mange there values. These values make up the brands character, dictate employee engagement and become what decisions are based around.

Lately I have been meditating on a verse that can work as the 2 primary values for any organization. ^“Never let loyalty and kindness leave you! Tie them around your neck as a reminder. Write them deep within your heart. Then you will find favor with both God and people, and you will earn a good reputation.” Proverbs 3:3-4 (NLT)

I can’t think of a better principle to live your life or structure a business plan on.

The beautiful butterfly, cheese steak and dirty moth

About 7 years ago I was sitting on the back porch of my home eating a cheese steak when I noticed a beautiful butterfly sitting on the ground. I wanted to see him fly, so I started throwing pieces of my roll at him. But the butterfly just sat there. The more I threw the closer I got. But still nothing, he wouldn’t fly.

I thought to myself, “What good is a butterfly that looks that beautiful but doesn’t fly.” At that moment a brown, dirty looking moth landed on the plate I was holding. I looked at it for a moment and then it was off. It flew straight up and over the roof.

In my heart I heard, “It’s not the ones who have all the talent, resources or look the best, but it’s the ones who trust Me that succeed.”

PATMOS Skatepark, my passion (video)

I want to let you in on one of my passions, PATMOS Park. It is a skatepark behind the church I go to. I spent the last 8 years of my life in this project. It took 5 years to raise the money and get it in the ground and the last 3 trying to keep the wheels on it.

PATMOS is a free, volunteer run, supervised park. It has been a time challenge because of all my other demands. But it’s touching because of the impact it has on kids and families. In a few minutes I’m about to head over a friends who has given his life to Jesus as a result of coming to PATMOS. The park is just the platform for the bigger purpose…Jesus

Tell me about your passion. You can email me back by hitting reply. Or leave it as a comment under this post.

Powerful Video

Good Friday

Today is Good Friday, the bleakest moment in the Gospel story. Reading the story of Jesus’ arrest, trial and crucifixion today, we have the benefit of knowing that it’s all leading up to the triumph of Easter. But to the Jesus-followers present at the scene, it must have seemed that the world as they knew it was falling apart.

One of the challenges of reading the crucifixion story two thousands years after the event took place is that it’s difficult for us to empathize with its participants. From our perspective, the Easter crowds seem insanely fickle; Jesus’ disciples seem utterly clueless; the members of the Sandhedrin contemptibly evil; Pilate laughably corrupt.

Those things are true. Nobody except Jesus behaves well in the Good Friday story. But it’s these very people—fickle, clueless, evil, corrupt—that Jesus died for.

The truth is that we have much in common with the fools and villains of Easter. The wonder is that Jesus loved them, and us, enough to submit to foolishness, injustice, and death. The miracle is that three days later, he rose from the dead to offer us salvation. Hallelujah, what a Savior!

If you haven’t read the complete story of the crucifixion recently, today’s a perfect day to revisit it. Here are the four Gospel accounts of the story:

• Matthew 26:14, 27:66
• Mark 14:12, 15:47
• Luke 22-23
• John 18-19

Courtesy of Q, Antioch Fellowship, West Philly