Did love wake you up this morning?
When did love wake you up?
Does love wake me up every morning, but I am not aware of it?
How can we keep that love alive throughout our days?
What if love is the fabric of our everything, but we miss seeing it?

What if love was resurrected 2011 years ago?
What if love is resurrected every day?
What would it look like for us to experience this love every moment of every day?

Happy Easter!

The post Love Woke Me Up This Morning appeared first on LAWSON COACHING & CONSULTING.

The post God is… appeared first on LAWSON COACHING & CONSULTING.

My friend in the Middle East visited again this summer to super charge and challenge my thoughts on signs and wonders.  The Bible is filled with supernatural signs and wonders.  The western world teaches that these were only for the time ‘back then’ or explains these events away by claiming that people ‘back then’ were very naive.  These miracles never actually happened, were fancy analogies/examples of key teaching principles, or misunderstood by superstitious people back in the past.

What if these signs and wonders could be seen today?

This is the 1st of 3 sermons given by my friend from the Middle East.  I would love to know what you think….

The post Part 1: Signs and Wonders in the Digital Age appeared first on LAWSON COACHING & CONSULTING.

The post Do Miracles Happen? appeared first on LAWSON COACHING & CONSULTING.

“The importance of dopamine was discovered by accident. In 1954, James Olds and Peter Milner, two neuroscientists at McGill University, decided to implant an electrode deep into the center of a rat’s brain. The precise placement of the electrode was largely happenstance; at the time, the geography of the mind remained a mystery. But Olds and Milner got lucky. They inserted the needle right next to the nucleus accumbens (NAcc), a part of the brain that generates pleasurable feelings. Whenever you eat a piece of chocolate cake, or listen to a favorite pop song, or watch your favorite team win the World Series, it is your NAcc that helps you feel so happy.

“But Olds and Milner quickly discovered that too much pleasure can be fatal. They placed the electrodes in several rodents’ brains and then ran a small current into each wire, making the NAccs continually excited. The scientists noticed that the rodents lost interest in everything. They stopped eating and drinking. All courtship behavior ceased. The rats would just huddle in the corners of their cages, transfixed by their bliss. Within days, all of the animals had perished. They died of thirst.

“It took several decades of painstaking research, but neuroscientists eventually discovered that the rats had been suffering from an excess of dopamine. The stimulation of the NAcc triggered a massive release of the neurotransmitter, which overwhelmed the rodents with ecstasy. In humans, addictive drugs work the same way: a crack addict who has just gotten a fix is no different than a rat in an electrical rapture. The brains of both creatures have been blinded by pleasure. This, then, became the dopaminergic cliche; it was the chemical explanation for sex, drugs, and rock and roll.

“But happiness isn’t the only feeling that dopamine produces. Scientists now know that this neurotransmitter helps to regulate all of our emotions, from the first stirrings of love to the most visceral forms of disgust. It is the common neural currency of the mind, the molecule that helps us decide among alternatives. By looking at how dopamine works inside the brain, we can see why feelings are capable of providing deep insights. While Plato disparaged emotions as irrational and untrustworthy – the wild horses of the soul – they actually reflect an enormous amount of invisible analysis.”

Author: Jonah Lehrer
Title: How We Decide
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Date: Copyright 2009 by Jonah Lehrer
Pages: Kindle Loc. 463-538.

The post Too Much of a Good Thing WILL Kill You appeared first on LAWSON COACHING & CONSULTING.

I was asked to give her Euology:

believe, love, live

believe.

My Mom was proud of her English degree from Berkley. She would always tell me of the time that she got spit on while she was riding on the San Francisco trolly with her African American girlfriend, and the special privileges she got as an English major. Only the English majors were allowed to read the books in the locked cabinet in the library–catcher In the Rye and Chaucer books.

When it came time for me to decide between Berkley and Stanford the decision was made easy by Mom. “You are going to Stanford!” much to her surprise I came back a changeling as she sometimes would call me.

I believe-I remember exactly where I was standing in our house when I first broached the subject of faith with Mom. She said, “You didn’t become born again did you!” I simply told her that I discovered that there is a God who loves us and is all perfect and all loving who wants to be in relationship with us. It is like taking a test and I have taken a lot of tests. If God is perfect, then He gets 100% on the moral test of life, mother theresa gets on her best day 90%, and well I might get to 50%. The only way to be in an intimate relationship with a perfect, all Holy Being is to ace the moral test which no one can accept God. Solution: God came down in human form as Jesus to take the test for us. All we have to do is accept His gift and say I believe. The following day Mom said, “well, I prayed to accept Jesus into my heart, but nothing happened.” She didn’t like to talk about her faith much or mine for that matter. It was 15 years later when she showed up and sat in the back of the auditorium while I was teaching about the evidence of God from science and philosophy that we spoke again of faith. She said afterwards, “of course I have always known Christianity to be true and I wish that all the kids were here.” she ended a lot of her sentences that way.

She believed in Christ and she believed in all of us. When we were discouraged she would always be there to lift us up. When I had no friends and felt like the world was ending in 7th grade she said, “you have always been a good swimmer. Why don’t you join a swim team.” her belief in me and many of us changed the course of our lives.

She was an avid reader and she loved Langston Hughes poetry. She shared her favorite one with each of her kids….a poem of inspiration and of believing in us…

Well…I’ll tell you:
Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
It’s had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor—
Bare.
But all the time
I’se been a-climbin’ on,
And reachin’ landin’s,
And turnin’ corners,
And sometimes goin’ in the dark
Where there ain’t been no light.
So…don’t you turn back.
Don’t you set down on the steps.
‘Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.
Don’t you fall now—
For I’se still goin’, honey,
I’se still climbin’,
And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

love.

Prodigal son-there is an ancient story modernized by Brennan Manning…there was a bright young man….this is the love of God…unconditional, outrageous, crazy

Mom didn’t speak of her faith but she showed it through her unconditional love of me and my kids…an amazing and rare gift to give to all of our kids and those around us…

live on.

Grandma is so lucky! The night mom died I was trying to think of something to say when I tucked my oldest son in for bed…but before I could say anything..he said, “Grandma is SO lucky!”   We have been so lucky, so blessed to love her. But we must remember that she is the lucky one.

We think we live in disneyland let me tell u this is not disneyland…a friend of mine has told me the story of his sons first trip to Disneyland. They went through the gate and he saw all the flowers and just knew that he had made it into Disneyland, and when his dad tried to tell him that this wasn’t Disneyland he refused to budge. We think we r in Disneyland when in reality we r only at the entrance.

“follow the balloons”-when my sister was visiting with Mom in the hospital, and she told Mom that she was going to go down stairs to the cafeteria to get something to drink. Mom said, “just follow the balloons..” This is a time to celebrate because Grandma, Mom has followed the balloons pass the entrance and through the gates to the real Disneyland and she lives on…and she is SO lucky…and we will see her again…it is not good bye but see u later…release the balloon to know that mom is now finally at Disneyland…

Let us release these balloons, and remember the lessons she taught all of us…to believe and to love….

The post Mom’s Euology appeared first on LAWSON COACHING & CONSULTING.

The post Is God angry? appeared first on LAWSON COACHING & CONSULTING.

The post Where is God? Part 5: Conclusion-Heaven appeared first on LAWSON COACHING & CONSULTING.

The post Where is God? Part 3: Overcoming Our Evil With His Good (Choice) appeared first on LAWSON COACHING & CONSULTING.