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If you find yourself asking yourself (and your friends),

“Am I really a writer?

Am I really an artist?”

Chances are, you are.

The counterfeit innovator is wildly self-confident.

The real one is scared to death.

–Steven Pressfield in The War of Art

Reading pushes us to see things differently and expand our knowledge. Hence, I give you the Weekly Reading Roundup for the week ending July 8. There was a bunch of great content I came across this week and I think you’d enjoy these posts too.

• For What It’s Worth… by Kate Fields. Kate gives a review of Gabe Lyons’s book The Next Christians and why she believes there’s hope for the next generation of the church.
• Pixar, Fear, and the Church by Stephen Brewster. Stephen is our genius creative arts pastor at Cross Point and in this post he explains why not being safe in the creative process makes all the difference.
• My Least Favorite Kinds of Tweets by Justin Wise. Twitter is great tool for connecting with people. Except for when it’s not. Justin talks about some of the less desirable tweets you may have seen floating around. Have you ever tweeted something and then instantly wish you hadn’t? Yeah…been there, done that. (By the way, are we connected on Twitter?)
• Becoming a Man of the World: How to Learn Another Language by Benny Lewis on The Art of Manliness blog. I’m a huge advocate for learning a foreign language…I’m a fan of Spanish myself. Learning another language opens you up to so many opportunities and expands your worldview. And if you think about it, in almost every country in the world (well, except here in the states), the citizens are at the very least bilingual, if not trilingual.
• Don’t Forget to Comment by James Brooks on the ChurchMag blog. Confession: I’m a good blog reader, but I’m a terrible blog commenter. James highlights the reasons why commenting on posts is still important in continuing the conversation.
• Your Friends Don’t Really Matter by Donald Miller. I’ve said before that other people’s opinions don’t really matter to me. But, if I’m really honest with you, those opinions matter a lot more than I’d like to admit. Donald talks about that struggle and what it looks like to be free from it.
• God Doesn’t Do Details by Steven Furtick. I’m still recovering from the “I-have-to-find-the-specific-detials-and-dates-and-location-about-God’s-will-for-my-life” syndrome. In the past, I’ve stressed over the Christian guilt trap of “missing God’s will for my life.” Steven argues that there’s a reason God doesn’t always reveal the specifics of His will for our lives…we’re just not ready for those details.
• Don’t Just Create “On Demand,” Create for You by Todd Henry on the 99% Blog. Instead of only creating valuable content between the hours of 9 and 5, Todd suggests that there’s value in creating on your own time, for your own good. (Todd just released his new book The Accidental Creative: How to Be Brilliant at a Moment’s Notice. Looks like a great read!)

What did I miss this week? Tweet me or shoot me an email to let me know what you’ve been reading lately.

And, being that the week ahead looks pretty stressful, I could use a laugh.

So here goes.

And my personal favorite….

And so concludes my earth-shattering thoughts for the day.

Hope your week starts out well!

I think not…

Social media is the new way we communicate. It’s not just a fad…it’s a new way of doing things.