My parents taught me to go for gold. They weren’t necessarily thinking of an Olympic gold medal, but they encouraged me to always try my best in everything that I did. For them, and for me today, going for gold means trying my very best.

The concept of going for gold is one reason why I love watching the Olympics. I get excited when athletes from my country do well, but I’m also impressed by the incredible dedication of all Olympic athletes. They have made many sacrifices to get to the level necessary to compete at the Olympic level. They are committed to going for gold. 

I tried my best as a young hockey player. Some seasons were better than others, but one year I received my team’s “Most Valuable Player” award.

I tried my best as a seminary student and ended up winning my one and only gold medal – the Governor General’s Gold Medal for academic excellence.

Of course, doing my best sometimes resulted in failure, or at least not meeting the expectations I had for myself.

Those of us with perfectionistic tendencies sometimes think that we need to be perfect or almost perfect in all that we do. That’s impossible and places an unbearable burden on us that will often lead to discouragement and a sense of defeat. What I have found more helpful is to think about achieving excellence, which I define as doing our best with the resources at our disposal. When I pursue excellence, I’m going for gold.

Several years ago, our family visited Barkerville, BC, the main town in the Cariboo Gold Rush during the 1860s. We even did some gold panning at the restored historic site and picked up some souvenir gold flakes. Just like other gold rushes, some people gave up everything they had to try to find gold. Their obsession was known as gold fever.

I would suggest that going for gold in life is ultimately not about gold fever; it’s about God fever. It’s giving up everything to follow God and His purposes for our lives.

The Apostle Paul had God fever. He chose to focus all his energies on running the race of life well, so that he would receive the prize, the gold medal if you will, that God awards to those who are faithful to Him (Philippians 3:13-14; 2 Timothy 4:6-8). He summed up his desire to please His Lord in 1 Corinthians 9:24-26:

How’s your prayer life?

If you’re like me, there’s room for improvement. I want to develop a lifestyle of prayer where I naturally worship, give thanks, and petition God throughout the day. How can we ignite our prayer life and move in a stronger direction? Here are four suggestions:

Try Some Different Approaches to Prayer

We sometimes need to shake up our usual approach to prayer to revitalize it. In her book Spiritual Disciplines Handbook: Practices that Can Transform Us, Adele Calhoun describes several approaches to prayer that you might find helpful for reinvigorating your prayer life (I have included some of her ideas in my list below).

How can parents and pastors help kids develop hearts that want to live and share the gospel across cultures? My wife Lore and I have tried to do this as we raise our four children. Many of the ideas I share below are responses from my children to this very question. I’ve also added other suggestions based on my experience as a children’s pastor, church leader, and cross-cultural traveler.

Model and Celebrate Values That Support Cross-Cultural Outreach

Values give rise to consistent actions. As parents and those who have influence in the lives of children, it’s important that we model appropriate values and facilitate experiences that help children embrace these values. Global kids need to have values like compassion, curiosity, adventure, humility, patience, and self-sacrifice. When children embrace and grow these kinds of values, they are much more likely to: 

• Build bridges with people from other cultures anywhere
• Lovingly share the gospel with them
• Be willing to go wherever God leads them (whether it’s across the street or around the world) 

Immerse Them in Scripture

The entire Bible is a story of God’s redemptive heart for people. We cannot engage in Scripture without acquiring something of God’s heart for the nations. With our younger children, we have typically read Bible stories to them every day from Bible story books like the Beginner’s Bible. With our youngest, who is currently five, we are using Your Every Day Read and Pray Bible for Kids and The Jesus Storybook Bible (this one in particular carefully connects every story with the gospel message). 

Pray Scripture Over Them