I’ve thought alot about the topic of Abundant Living. It has captivated me for years. Jesus said “I came that you might have life, and have it more abundantly.” I accept that. But in truth, I’ve not felt that I was living abundantly, and didn’t really know much of anyone who was—my vast regiment of Christian friends included.

A couple of years ago we adopted “Living Abundantly” as a core value within our company. We didn’t know what that meant, but somehow thought it worthy of our embrace, if not outright pursuit. Periodically I’ve taught on the topic, usually defining it by what’s its not. I’ve always known that abundance wasn’t measured in bank accounts.

Abundant Living is the ultimate byproduct of right thinking as I teach it in the Enhancing Your WORTH (Wheel Of Right THinking) seminar God gave to me and that I’ve begun teaching our team, will be rolling out to my small group this winter, and will take on my first Latin American teaching road gig in the Spring. When you think rightly about God, Self, Purpose, Future, Relationships & Behaviors you become a well-balanced person and abundant living is the natural product you experience.

Yet what is it? I think I am beginning to understand.

2010 has been a very difficult year. It started (as they all do) with robust plans for “world domination” (or maybe partial control of my life), and then began to come loose in a few areas. Confusion in the capital markets has provided for challenges in both the financial and real estate sectors—the exact intersection at which I live my economic life. An executive with our company who I trusted so much that I gave him signature authority over every aspect of our business surprised me by proving to lack character which ultimately leaked into his poor performance and the imbedding of critical problems within our company that would have sunk it if I hadn’t pulled the plug on him when I did. Months later our trust is severely damaged and we’re still cleaning up his messes. Meanwhile another big-talking, executive-level, employee similarly proved himself to be “all hat and no cattle” in execution of his responsibilities; another mess the more competent and under-rewarded few had to resolve. Amidst it all: my wife’s father continued his slow descent and died just last month.

2010 has been a hard year. It seems like we’ve been “inside of the ten yard line” for months, but can’t manage to put the ball across the goal line; lots of activity on the drawing board but very little production actually being “shipped” by the factory. Argh! That gets old.

That said, it has also been a great year. In many ways I have never felt better. I told my business partner last week that “I’ve never felt stronger.” My health is good. I haven’t lost all the weight I wanted to by this point, but my level of fitness has increased tremendously. I can kick butt. This morning I spent two hours working out HARD including running significantly UPHILL between the front gate and my house (about 1/3 of a mile down and back) six times. That’s nothing by Chris Ballard standards, but two miles with half uphill is big for a fat guy staring down the barrel of 50. Sitting here in my sweat as I write this, I smell bad, but I feel good.

In the midst of everything I’ve found myself marveling at how good I am doing. I’m kind of amazed really. I’m well. In some ways a lot of Hell has broken loose around me, and I smell a bit like smoke and my hair is singed, but I am well.

As I sat on the porch this morning drinking my coffee, petting my attention starved Border Collie (who thinks I am God) and praying, I told God how thankful I was for how He had helped me and stood with me during difficulty. It occurred to me that this contentment, peace, confidence—call it what you will—in the midst of the storm is living abundantly! Life happens. People get sick and die. People let you down. People hurt you. Economies change. People wrongly accuse and attack you. Sciatica sets in. Business models shift. And in the midst of the chaos, there is peace. It passes all understanding.

I still don’t know much about Abundant Living. But I’ve had a glimpse of it. And I like it.

May you have some, too!

We’re all going to screw up from time to time and not be able to deliver on commitments we’ve made. It’s inevitable. But our failure doesn’t have to be fatal. Here are some tips on how to screw up with integrity.

#1. Be the first to deliver the news. Don’t hide and hope that the people who are depending on you won’t notice and that you’ll slip by under the radar. Trust me, they’ll notice. So, when you’ve made a commitment on which you can’t deliver, don’t let them make a surprising discovery. You tell them first, face-to-face if possible.

#2. Own it. I received a call yesterday from a corporate executive—the leader of the largest corporation of its type in America. She had failed to deliver. She was calling ostensibly to apologize after word had gotten back to her that I was displeased with her unresponsiveness. However the “if” embodied in her “if I failed” statement coupled with the slight disowning of the problem, all after she’d told me “I will get on this” sort of bent the credibility of the apology and didn’t garner her any trust from me. When you’ve screwed up, just own it. Say “I have made a mistake. I am very sorry. And I am asking for your forgiveness as I do the best I can to make the situation right.”

#3. Overtly apologize. Say “I am genuinely sorry. This is my fault (I like to say “my bad”).” Also ask their forgiveness “Will you please forgive me?” (And wait for their response.)

#4. Do everything possible to fix the problem you have created. In some cases, late delivery accompanied by humble ownership of your tardiness is all it takes. In other cases, you’ve created a big—maybe enormous—problem for the other person. You may not even know the extent. If that’s possible you need to say “I think my failure has caused……but is there anything else that is messed up because I <insert what you didn’t do> that I need to get fixed for you?” Then proceed to resolve every matter that they were depending on you to resolve and the new issue that have cropped up because you failed to deliver.

#5. Ask for their help. Sometimes we’ve messed something up and we can’t fix it unless someone else will help us. So, put your hat in your hand, bow your head, humbly confess your problem, and ask them to help you fix it. You’ll be amazed at how generous and charitable people can be. They’ll usually run to your aid.

#6. Ask if you can move forward together, AFTER you’ve done the above steps. Once everything is fixed, I’d offer a final “apologize again” and say something like “I want to assure you I’m going to do my dead level best to never let you down again. Can we move forward and let me prove to you that I’ll deliver next time?”

#7. Deliver. Many people blubber and jabber and shuck and jive about what they are gonna do. Just shut up and do it. Less talk. More action. Deliver.

Wrong thinkers would have us to believe—incorrectly—that the world is a soft, squishy, fuzzy, place of peace, platitudes……..sort of nirvana-esque. ‘Taint necessarily so. The real world is a place of “against.” People against people; systems opposing people; philosophies in conflict with philosophies; ideas at odds with one another……it’s a messy, chaotic, and somewhat dangerous place. Always has been, and always will be.

I go squishy soft when I’m in the presence of a baby, don’t you? Fat babies, sleeping babies, crying babies, laughing babies, slobbery poopy babies……..wow! Who wouldn’t love a baby?

I was reading in the Gospel of Mathew this morning and noticed that the very first thing that happened to baby Jesus was someone tried to kill him—when he was a baby! He hadn’t preached an offensive sermon, violated any religious code of conduct, or challenged authority. The most offensive thing he could have produced up to that moment was a really malodorous diaper. Yet right after his birth, the government marked him for death.

Hmmm.

Soft? Fuzzy? Squishy? Peaceful? NO!

Against.

What I take from that lesson is this: in this world you will have much trouble (Jesus said that). It is a place that is “against” occupied by people who are “against” and any notion of permanent ease and peacefulness this side of Heaven is folly. But I also know that Jesus said “I have overcome the world.” Even in this dangerous place we can live in joy, with happiness and confidence.

I’m going to have a great day. It may or may not  be an easy one, we’ll see. But it’s going to be a good one and I will rest my head on my pillow tonight and sleep soundly knowing that I have done my best to make it better, to make a difference for others, and maximally use the life He’s given to me.

Even in the darkness you can choose to walk in the light.

It’s part of being human, or Christian, at least American. When our neighbor has a fire we run to help.

Fires happen all the time. Sometimes there are smoke and flames. Heart attacks and sickness, death, storms, job loss, wayward kids (or spouses), marital pain, financial reversal; those are just some of the fires happening in the lives of people around us.

We had two fires in our company this week. The first was a formal-eviction-set-your-stuff-out-on-the-curb-while-the-sheriff-stands-by kind of fire where a lady refused to pay her rent and refused to move out. Glyn, who runs our property management division, told me of how he called Phil and Justin from our construction team, and they brought some of their subcontractors (who didn’t get paid to come do this), and then Goeff and Elijah from our office stepped in, and Joe, and Mark from the field, and in less than 30 minutes they had an entire house totally emptied out and set on the street corner. 30 minutes! Our guys ran toward the fire, not away from it.

The second fire came when our #1 key, professional, credentialed, outside team member  (and a person for whom we’d had the utmost and deepest respect  and who we trusted so much that we’d given him control of our bank accounts) quit via email at 3:30 p.m. on April 15 and left us with no tax returns, about $200,000 of written checks unfunded, a payroll check and distribution checks missing, but kept our files, computer, coupon books, etc. How internal people from our team and external people rushed to the fire was inspiring. Jane Knudson—whom I’ve never met but who operates www.CFOJANE.com from her DesMoines base where she does work for a friend of mine—immediately contacted us, said she’d already talked with her partner’s husband (a tax attorney) who’d said he could help us file extensions that afternoon, and said “Keep me posted. We’re here for you.” And………I’ve never met her before. THAT’S RUNNING TO THE FIRE!

We didn’t need Jane’s help at that moment, the internal team already had the fire under control. But it gave great confidence to know there was someone we could call if we needed to.

That’s the best of our American / human / Christian / whatever-it-is tradition: the way we help each other during crisis. When two of the guys in our small group were threatened with losing their jobs in the recent Sisters of Mercy / St. John’s layoff, other people in the group had already talked about what we would do to spring into action to help them. That’s running to the fire!

Many years ago, as a pastor with great responsibility, I fell into a pit of great emotional / personal trouble. The majority of the leaders in my church and virtually every pastor I knew looked the other way. But there was one guy, Pastor Gary Denbow of Christian Chapel in Columbia, Missouri who reached out to me. Gary is now the president of Central Bible College here in Springfield, Missouri. I’ve always remembered his doing that and greatly appreciated him for it. He ran toward the fire.

Fires happen. If you haven’t had one yet, you will. It’s just a matter of time.

The question for all of us to consider is: are you the kind of person who runs to the fire?

I want to be. I’m grateful to be surrounded by people who are.

The phone isn’t ringing.

Nobody is calling to say “Please come buy my house.” Nobody is calling saying “Can I please rent this house?” Nobody is calling saying “Can I please invest some money?”

The phone isn’t ringing.

When the phone isn’t ringing I look for reasons. It’s Spring Break. It’s too rainy and nobody wants to get out. The sun is shining and everybody is gone to the park (lake, river, whatever). It’s the holiday weekend. Yada yada yada.

For those of us in the sales business it is demoralizing—emotionally debilitating and a waste of energy—to focus on why the phone isn’t ringing. We can’t stare at the phone and cause it to ring.

We’re very much like farmers. A farmer’s job is to prepare the soil, plant the seed, and wait. The rain may or may not come on schedule. The season may be too cool, too hot, or just right. But for centuries farmers who have planted seeds have consistently gotten a crop. Some years better than others, but a consistently over the years we get more crops than we don’t. Sometimes bountiful. Sometimes skinny. But harvests are consistent events for people who sow seeds.

Our job is to prepare ground and plant seeds. We try to avoid stupid things like planting seeds right before Winter or at the beginning of Summer, or failing to plant seeds at the beginning of Springtime. But we don’t focus too much on wishing for rain, or that it would quit raining. We don’t control rain and sun. We control preparing ground and planting seeds.

Much of life’s pain would be relieved if we’d let go of what we cannot control, and focus on the things that we can control.

An ancient book of wisdom written by one of the world’s greatest salesmen says “In due time we shall reap if we do not grow weary.” It’s interesting that he didn’t say “In due time we shall reap.” Why did he ad the “weary” part? Because this business if sowing and reaping has just enough uncertainty to it to keep us off balance and to cause us to lose our focus—to grow weary of the things we can’t control and to give up our sowing enterprise.

When you are weary like I am, don’t lose heart. Surround yourself with people who refuse to lose heart. Don’t focus on the weariness of sowing, or the “worry-ness” of why the rain and sun aren’t coming in perfect proportions exactly on schedule. Instead, focus on the faithful truth that today’s reapers are yesterday’s sowers, and those who grow too weary to sow, experience 100% crop failure.

Now I think I’ll go down to Nixa Hardware and buy some seeds……….