Why I Try to Read the Bible Everyday.

What if the guy who invented atoms pulled you aside and said, "Hey, I want to tell you a secret."  Would you listen?  I'm not talking about the person who DISCOVERED atoms, but the one who CREATED them.  All of them.  What if he said, "I want to explain how things work, why people do what they do."  I don't know about you, but I would be all ears.  

The way I see it, that's just what the Bible is.  It's the mysterious book that explains how things like peace and justice and mercy work, and why people lie and love and sacrifice.  The more I read it, the more questions I have, but the more I learn.  It is a VERY curious work with many crevices that I missed on my first couple readings.  And I'm sure I'll have more questions every time I read it again.  I try to read it every day because it grounds me in the most important reality:  God is the author of my life and the world I live in.  If I can start there, I'm already ahead for the day.  

So, if it's that good, why would I ever miss it?  'Cause I'm human.  I am a mess like everyone else and I get sick and I think I'm too busy and I make mistakes.  When I get away from reading the Word of God on a regular basis, I become acclimatized to living without it, which is dangerous.  But thankfully, He brings something across my path that brings me back and I get in the flow again.  I read, I learn, I live, and I fail. 

Curious about reading the bible?  Try this recipe: 

1. Get a Bible at any book store or from your grandma or from your local church.  Don't worry about what translation it is, just get one that you can read.  
2. Get a bookmark.  
3. Ask God to teach you through his Word.  
4. Start reading.  
5. When you are done reading, insert the bookmark there.  
6. Repeat steps 3 through 5 until you complete the book.  

It's kind of like reading any other book.  

Have you read any of the Bible?  What did you learn?  What did you like about it?  What did you not like?  Do you have questions?  What would you tell someone that is intimidated by the prospect of reading it?  

My Embarrassment of Riches

First, let’s go back in time a little ways.  Many years before college, or even high school, I started my first little business selling holiday cards.  I was the only 12 year old I knew with a checking account which I used to pay for the cards that I later sold.  Over the years since then, I’ve had many entrepreneurial ideas, but for the most part, I’ve been employed by others most of the time.  Now, I’m over 40 and I’ve finally come across what may be my best business idea ever, but I’m too embarrassed to make it a success because I would be ashamed to make money with it.

Am I ashamed of making money?  No!  I actually have a relatively healthy income that puts me in the top 5% of the US, and I’m not embarrassed of that.  I’m proud that I’ve worked hard and I fully appreciate that I’ve had many undeserved blessings that contribute to that financial success.  I’ve had some windfalls and I’m not embarrassed of them either.  I’m actually proud of how my wife and I have learned to manage our money to God’s glory and give money, time and spirit to do good works.  Then what kind of business idea would I be embarrassed of making money?  

Ironically, it is a message that is partially about how badly I managed money before and got myself into a heap of debt.  It’s a message that could help save a lot of people from a lot of pain and suffering from debt to addictions, bad habits to bad relationships.  So far, I’ve captured the story in form of a short novel (buy a copy of Pillows For Your Prison Cell for your friend today), but I’d like to reconfigure the message in all forms of media over time.  Eventually, I believe it would make a powerful play for the stage, a fantastic feature film, an awesome interactive VR experience, and a fun children’s story book.  I want to create weekend retreats to give people the opportunity to take the message and apply it to their own lives.  I went to create sensational events with bands and multimedia to reach young people.  I want to create workbooks for churches and small groups.  I want to create curriculum for use in public schools.  I want to get the message into the hands of college students across the country in campus-wide reading programs.  In short, I want to create a thriving, profitable business that has a positive impact on hundreds or thousands or even millions of people.  So what’s wrong?  
I am so embarrassed of the possibility of making money doing this.  I’m embarrassed to even admit that I’m embarrassed.  The only reason I’m doing it is in the hopes that some of you reading this can help me overcome my ridiculous conclusion.  

Somehow, in my mind, it would be perfectly acceptable to create a new hotel reviews website (another one of my ideas) and build it into a thriving business used by millions of people and sell it for a massive amount of money to Expedia or Priceline.  Making $30 million with a software/app company would be fine.  Not so with a book that aims to help people!  

Is my hang-up tied to the notion that doing good should not, pay well?  Look at what our society says.  Consider teachers, very high on the doing good scale, very low on the pay scale.  Counselors and therapists, same thing.  Pastors, mostly same.  Heck, the highest paid public employee in most states is a Football or Basketball coach!!!  It’s ok to earn $1 million per year as the Football coach at the University of [any state] but it’s not reasonable to pay teachers a living wage.  

At this point, I have to thank Ben & Jerry’s, Patagonia, Tom’s Shoes and others that have paved the way showing that it’s perfectly fine to do something well and make money and be a blessing to others in the process.  Earlier this year I decided that 2016 would be the year that I start seriously investing energy into this venture.  I am taking a crack at this.  I still have a day job, so this is a weekends and evenings kind of thing, but I’ve hired others to help me.  If you are interested in helping me succeed in any way down this path, I’d love to hear about it.  I’m looking for script writers, translators, artists, musicians, photographers, film makers, VR designers, and anybody that has a passion for helping people live the full, rich, and meaningful life that God designed us to live.  If that’s you, drop me a line at mark@pfypc.com.  Oh, and if you’d like to invest in this venture, I’ll need that too.  

Upward and Onward, Mark

What kind of King do you serve?

I suppose there are three kinds of people. Those who serve a good king, those who serve a bad king, and those who are trying to be king. But is it possible that there is really just one kind of person? Wouldn't it make sense that everyone deep down in their core wants to serve a good king rather than the other two options? Then why don't they?

Consider the one who is serving a bad king. Why do they do it? In the Chronicles of Narnia, there were beasts who served the White Witch, and of course, in the recent making of the film those beasts were as ugly as could be, making it all the easier to hate them. But why did they serve the White Witch? I suspect it was fear and historical momentum. Fear is how it started and historical momentum is how it was maintained. We are by nature creatures of fear. Fear is an incredibly powerful force and we submit ourselves to it daily.

When the White Witch took over initially, she did it through an exertion of power, by using her magic to turn creatures into stone. This would no doubt elicit a large amount of fear which allowed her to manipulate a larger and larger population. Once those creatures who were so afraid of her began to do her bidding, they formed habits and established a pattern of behavior that would have been passed to their families and communities. Before long there was a whole army of creatures serving an evil monarch. I don't believe anyone really wanted to serve her, especially once they got to know her. But once inside her circle fear and momentum ruled the mind and therefore the actions of her servants.

Now consider the one who wants to be king. Why be king? What does a king get that a subject does not? Power is the first thing that comes to my mind, but power, like money, is by itself is useless. It is only a means to an end. So, what end? If you boil it down, all the things one can get with power or money serve to make a person either comfortable or excited, or both. Think about it. Sex, food, toys, adventures. They all comfort and excite. So what if there were a good king who would provide everything necessary to be comforted and excited without all the stress of being in control of an empire? This brings us back to fear, because if I fear that such a king doesn't exist or won't provide those things for me, and I don't want to serve another king, then my only choice is to become a king myself.

I believe the White Witch wants to serve Aslan, but she is paralyzed by fear that he won't love and provide for her. And the wolves want to serve Aslan, but they live in fear of the White Witch who is here and now, and don't know Aslan who was not present for so long. Aslan, the true ruler could force both of them to serve him, but he chooses not to. He allows them to make their own choice. And some, like Edward and Eustace, he chooses to love in such an overwhelmingly present way that they could choose no other path than to serve him.

It all comes down to fear. Think about that the next time you see a "bad" person, whether it's at work, on the road, in the news, or in the mirror. What does he or she fear? Might you be the one to introduce them to Aslan?

On my best days, I'm trying to serve the one true good king.  But when I'm weak, I'm prone to try to be king.  What about you?  Do you find yourself more likely to serve the wrong king or to try to be king?

NOTE: This essay was originally posted on Facebook on my Mark D. Bullard Author page on Sept 9, 2014.  

What's your Faith Quotient?

You hear a lot of talk about IQ (Intelligence Quotient), and since it's so clearly measured (at least according to some) it's fun to figure out who has the biggest score and then be jealous of them or assume that their IQ explains their success.  In recent decades there's been a lot of emphasis on EIQ (Emotional Intelligence Quotient) and recognizing that it's as important and possibly more important to attaining "success".  Now I put quotes around success because most of the time in business or personal fulfillment literature, success is closely correlated to money.  But you and I both know how untrue that is.  Of course, now I have to admit that while I know in my head that money won't make me happy, I still want more of it, and still measure success in terms of money constantly.  OK, but what is success?  What if success were tied to something more like satisfaction with life?  Or maybe even better would be satisfaction multiplied by positive impact?  What if I had very little mullah, but felt very satiated AND had a significant impact on the world around me?  For instance, what if I were a kindergarten teacher at a private school that couldn't afford to pay me well because the state didn't support independent educational options?  I might impact hundreds of kids over the course of my life and each of them in a deeply powerful and personal way, but I wouldn't likely make much money or find myself on the front of any magazine's 40 under 40 list.    

So, what about FQ?  I know, it looks a little bit like a four letter word, but it stands for Faith Quotient.  How successful could you be if you had only average IQ and average EQ but high FQ?  When I think of high FQ, I think of people like David Wilkerson.  I don't know how much of the other two he had, but he had heaps of grace mixed with mounds of faith and he leveraged them both to awesome effect.  All three of these quotients are gifts from God and to him who has been given much, much is expected.  Whether you're smart, or good with people, or have deep pockets of faith, you have what you have to bring glory to God.  And when you use your gifts to bless the world around you, you bring glory to your maker.  We have both the duty and the joy of taking whatever quotients we've been given to impact the world and that is my definition of "success".  

"Until now you've not asked for anything in my name.  Ask and you will receive and your joy will be made complete." - John 16:24

So, how about you?  What's your quotient?  Which one is your strength?  Or do you have an even different quotient?  

PS.  I made up Faith Quotient (FQ), but of course I wasn't the first to do so.  Here's an interesting article from 1955 by a game show host on the topic:  http://www.unz.org/Pub/AmMercury-1955feb-00129

The Nightmare of Living the Dream

     I used to dream of something going wrong that would force me to "live the dream", but now I'm living it and the pressure is on.

A few years ago I just worked for a boss.  I just had a job.  I flew around the country and occasionally overseas to sell expensive enterprise software to massive corporations.  I had 5 people that worked directly for me and a boss above me.  It was great, and I loved a lot of things about it, but I constantly dreamed of breaking free.  I would be riding my motorcycle home from my office, and think to myself, What if I got in a terrible accident and got paralyzed?

I reasoned that then I would have to quit my job and be "forced" to work on writing and marketing my book.  Plus, I'd have the added benefit of people feeling bad for me, which would give my book a nice PR boost.  I imagined the newspaper article about the guy who got in the motorcycle accident who was fighting for his family and pressing forward on his book despite circumstances stacked against him.  Sounds good doesn't it?

Well, then my company sold, and I earned a nice bonus equivalent to about one year's salary.  Not a huge cushion, not the big IPO payout you hear about, but it was enough to open the door for an opportunity.  I quit my job so that I could "live the dream" and focus on my book full time.

Wahoo!  Freedom!  Oh, snap....  Now what do I do?

The fact is that I knew exactly what to do.  I'd been working on my book for 5 years, and I had a very complete marketing plan and long lists of ToDos.  But there was soooo much to do that it was overwhelming, and I didn't have a boss to prioritize it for me or even a peer with whom I could share challenges and opportunities.  It was all me.  Turns out there's a lot of responsibility in living the dream (which makes me think about all the "Freedom Ain't Free" bumper stickers, but that's another topic....).  The good news was that I didn't have to get paralyzed to "live the dream", but the reality news was, there was a lot of hard work ahead!