Today my dad took me to the "Get Motivated" seminar organized by success guru Peter Lowe. The line-up of speakers was like a Who's Who of the rich, famous, and influential. Speakers included George Foreman, Suze Orman, Zig Ziglar, and Colin Powell.
One of the interesting points was how both Zig Ziglar (probably the most famous motivational speaker of our generation) and Peter Lowe, both outspoken Christians, continually used scripture in their presentations.
Growing up in the faith movement I heard some very familiar phrases. Here is a brief list.
1. Our minds are controlled by the words we speak.
2. Our words determine our experience.
3. If you want to change your future, change your words.
4. When you speak, you must believe that what you desire has already happened (Mark 11:24 anyone?)
5. A winning belief is when you know you've won.
Amazingly, Peter Lowe then went into a very standard evangelical gospel presentation complete with references from the Book of Romans to explain how sin has separated us from God. He even used the famous courtroom analogy of a father, who happens to be the judge, paying the traffic fine for his son. For a while, I wasn't sure if I was at a success seminar or a Billy Graham crusade.
Although I have a few mixed feelings about presenting Jesus as the ticket to the American dream, all in all I was pleased that the effort was made to minister the gospel to the hundreds, perhaps thousands of those who would otherwise not step foot inside a church. Talk about creative evangelism.
Please pray that God will give me wisdom to address felt needs with the power of the gospel.
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1 comment:
Aaron,
I've heard many of those same points from time to time and must admit that those kind of speeches drive me up the wall, but I can see the usefulness for some. Does it make me a bad person to freely admit that I wouldn't have cared at all what the Christian speakers said because I would've been anxiously awaiting Colin Powell's speech?
Pete
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