On Life and Leadership, August 2026
Volume 1. No. 3.
August 2026
I hope you are enjoying your Summer!
Here is this month’s collection of thoughts, quotes, ideas, articles, and a final prayer. I hope you find one or two things here that are encouraging, inspiring, motivating, and/or growth-producing.
Worth Dwelling On:
The Hedonic Treadmill
"Two hundred years ago, a hot shower was a luxury few could imagine. Today I expect one every morning and complain if the water isn't hot enough or if the pressure is a bit low. Such is the human heart. What amazes on Monday and delights on Tuesday is assumed on Wednesday, demanded on Thursday, and "not good enough" on Friday. We quickly adapt to better and start expecting, needing, and demanding more. Psychologists call this the hedonic treadmill. The fix is GRATITUDE. Our lives improve the moment we remember to be thankful for the hot showers."
Mike Woodruff
The Clay Pot Conspiracy
"But God's strategy is different. God stores his treasure in something common and breakable. We think our battle with anxiety makes us less effective to lead. We assume our physical illness or prodigal child means the end of usefulness for God. We look in the mirror and walk away with a catalog of defects. To us, our weaknesses mean that we are less-than — less than worthy, less than useful, less than acceptable. But beneath our pain there is a plan — it's the first wonder in the clay pot conspiracy. God is working to make your life shine in ways you never imagined. How? God stores his treasure in clay to show that the surpassing power belongs to him and not to us (2 Corinthians 4:7). Your weaknesses and struggles — the very places your mind is going as you read this — are the places God makes his power known most clearly. We come into leadership thinking the kingdom advances through strong people using their amazing gifts to bear epic fruit. But God says, "When I want to shape a soul to lead, I bid him come and die. When I want my gospel to ring forth, I shatter the jar." God breaks the pot to free the power."
Dave Harvey, The Clay Pot Conspiracy: God's Plan to Use Weakness in Leaders
A New Heart
"You look at me in this wheelchair, paralyzed for 52 years, and most people would think, Oh, you're looking forward to your new body. And yeah, that's one of those fringe benefits. But I'm looking forward to the new heart; a heart free of manipulating others with precisely timed phrases; a heart free of fudging the truth; a heart free from hogging the spotlight, believing my own press releases... a heart free of not believing the best of others; a heart free of caving into fear or anxiety about the future. I can't wait to have a heart free of sin."
Joni Eareckson Tada
Overheard:
• Every age group in the US is spending less time socializing with peers, with most spending up to an hour less per day with friends than they did in 2005. (Thinq Media)
• Ten of the most underrated words: I don't know enough to have an opinion on that.
• There is no better value than reading a good book — something that is becoming increasingly rare. Schedule time to read. Read on planes. Read on the beach. Read on trains. Be the counterculture.
• There is no such thing as an overnight breakthrough. We see the finished product but overlook the months, years, and at times decades of work that went into it. Don't compare your first draft to someone else's final draft.
"Be suspicious of churches that proudly flaunt how different they are from what has gone before."
D.A. Carson
"Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
• If you sit near a high performer at work, your performance is likely to rise by 15%. If you sit next to a low performer, it's likely to drop by 30%. (Kellogg School of Management)
Worth Sitting With:
The following medley of quotes comes directly from Mike Woodruff's Friday Update — one of the best short reads on the internet for leaders. If you're not already subscribed, you should be.
It's impossible to grow in your love for God and your contempt for others at the same time.
We're secure, not because we hold tightly to Jesus, but because he holds tightly to us.
We get to choose our hard — "hard choices, easy life" or "easy choices, hard life."
Comparison is the thief of joy; envy is the assassin of gratitude.
You can accomplish a lot if you're willing to endure the shame of rejection, the boredom of repetition, and the pain of feedback.
Adulthood: Given the histrionics surrounding definitions of woman, masculinity, etc., I'm not keen to attempt a definition of adult. But given how many 40-something non-adults are milling about (especially males) — i.e., given that biological maturity is not enough — I'm passing along some thoughts:
1) An adult is one who realizes that many things not their fault are still their responsibility;
2) An adult is one who realizes that freedom is found in keeping commitments, not avoiding them;
3) An adult is someone who can delay gratification in pursuit of a greater good; and
4) An adult is someone who can absorb disappointment without passing it on to everyone else.
Mike Woodruff, thefridayupdate.org
"Faith, hope, and love are the three cardinal virtues. All require uncertainty. Faith is a trust despite uncertainty; if you remove the uncertainty, you can't possibly have faith. Hope is optimism despite uncertainty; if you remove uncertainty, you can't have hope. And then love — who can love a robot? So love is necessarily uncertain in order to put yourself out there and have devotion despite uncertainty."
David Lahti, Queens College, Veritas Forum at Penn
Worth Knowing:
Dignity or Contempt
The creators of The Dignity Index — an eight-point scale measuring whether our words communicate dignity or contempt — note that contempt rarely changes minds. It simply hardens hearts. In a culture that has made an art form of contempt, this is worth sitting with for anyone who leads, teaches, or communicates publicly.
Those apprenticing with Jesus must learn to disagree without demeaning, contend without condemning, and defend truth without surrendering love. That's a high bar. It's also the only one that works.
Worth Reading:
Ben Sasse Doesn't Doubt God's Goodness
Former Nebraska senator Ben Sasse was diagnosed with stage-four pancreatic cancer in December 2025 and told he had months to live. Rather than retreating, he has given a series of remarkable public interviews — on 60 Minutes, with Christianity Today, and elsewhere — reflecting with disarming honesty on faith, mortality, and what it means to depend on God. He has called his diagnosis a touch of grace, because it stripped away the illusion that he could atone for his own brokenness through hard work and competence. This Christianity Today piece is one of the best of those conversations. It connects powerfully with this month's broader theme: God's power made perfect in weakness.
Worth Buying:
by Rich Johnson
We live in a cultural moment that many are describing as post-Christian and post-secular — and Rich Johnson, National Leader of New Wine, argues that this moment calls not for more savvy strategy but for a return to an older, deeper way of leading. One that puts character before platform and follows the example of Christ rather than the playbook of the age.
Drawing on the biblical stories of Ruth, Peter, and Daniel, Johnson maps out what it looks like to lead with holiness, health, and humility — three qualities that are countercultural precisely because they are so rare. If you're a pastor, ministry leader, or anyone navigating leadership in a changing world, this is a book worth your time.
(Regular readers will recognize the title: it's the source of the Ayaan Hirsi Ali quote that appeared in our July issue.)
Worth Remembering:
Most people don't change until the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain that is needed to change.
Worth Memorizing:
"But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the
surpassing power belongs to God and not to us."
2 Corinthians 4:7 (ESV)
And finally,
Worth Praying:
"O God, make yourself always present to my mind, and let your love fill and rule my soul, in all those places, and companies, and employments to which you call me this day. O you who are good and do good, who extend your loving-kindness to all mankind, the work of your hands, your image, capable of knowing and loving you eternally: suffer me to exclude none, O Lord, from my charity, who are the objects of your mercy; but let me treat all my neighbors with that tender love which is due to your servants and to your children. Let your love to me, O blessed Savior, be the pattern of my love to them. Amen."
John Wesley (1703–1791)
Grace & Peace,
