Pellegrino / Redmond Transformed

The 7 Pillars of a Legacy Minded Man
1. Auflage 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5439-5623-8
Verlag: BookBaby
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 160 Seiten

Transformed leads men to build the strongest foundation possible. Whether building a house or stronger muscles, the effort requires time, energy, and a plan. Transformed provides a 7-step game plan that will help men win in life and build a strong legacy for generations to come. Do not live with without a strategy. Focusing on these pillars will help you become a legacy-minded man and will result in a life of lasting impact. Choose transformation today and discover the victory God has for you.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Pellegrino, Joe

Redmond, Jack

Leseproben

Prologue

FIRST A LITTLE BACKGROUND

My name is Joe Pellegrino, and I am just a regular guy, an average Joe. May 26, 1995, is my reset date. It was on that day, during a Promise Keepers conference in Washington, DC, that God offered me a do-over. And I took it, putting my life in the hands of Jesus Christ. I realized what a shameful excuse of a man I had been for the first thirty-three years of my life—there was so much sin. And I mean so much sin. But that all began to change the day I accepted the gift to walk with Jesus Christ. Since then, my life has been a process of growth, transformation, and, even at times, failing forward.

Before I met Christ, I had been building my life like a man building his house on the sand. My life lacked a solid foundation. That day in 1995, however, I traded the foundation of sand and replaced it with a life foundation of solid rock (Luke 6:46-49). This new start gave me a strong base upon which to build my life, which was only the beginning. I finally had the right foundation, but I still needed the rest of the house.

The internal structure, made up of pillars and beams, comes next and supports everything else. Too many men stop with the foundation of their new life in Christ. But it is important to understand that Jesus Christ didn’t come just to save us from our sin; He came so that we could, through His divine power, build a new and different life in Him (John 10:10).

Just as my life before Christ lacked a solid foundation, it also had faulty pillars. A pillar supports weight, and several of them are required to hold up a structure. Up until that fateful day in DC, my pillars either didn’t exist or they had crumbled under the weight of my life and my sin. My pillars were built with cheap, inferior materials. I was cutting corners and taking the easy way out in order to build my empire quickly, only to find that my handiwork was insufficient amidst the storms of life and beneath the weight of my sin.

Through many painful life experiences, I learned that I would need something stronger and more reliable than myself as a foundation to build upon, and I learned that I would need better pillars to hold things up. On that day in 1995, after thirty-three years of paying dearly for my faulty design, I began working from a better blueprint. I traded my life plans for God’s. It was an awesome moment, and the journey of rebuilding began.

A Life of Lasting Impact

This book will point you toward the foundation of Jesus Christ and help you build a life on Him. It will also point you to the kinds of structures Jesus wants for your life. The foundation and pillars described will result in a life of lasting impact. In fact, they are the keys to becoming a legacy-minded man. To be clear, this is a book written by flawed men. It is not a substitute for the Bible, the book written by the Author of life Himself. Therefore, the Bible is the book to study. The book now before you, Transformed, is designed to help you along the journey with Him.

As the founder of Legacy Minded Men, an organization dedicated to “transforming lives by engaging, encouraging, and equipping men to build a Christ-centered legacy,” I have learned that when I take the time, make the right investment in materials, and have the right builder, it makes all the difference in the world. I’ve discovered seven pillars that can stand the test of life.

These seven pillars are nonnegotiable skills. Men can and should master them and use them to build their life on their newfound, solid foundation. These pillars will hold up, no matter what your life looks like. And they will outlast you. You don’t want to just have a good season or a good run. You want to have a good life. Your life will affect the generations to follow—that is your legacy. If you build well, what you build will stand long after you leave this world. This is the way a legacy-minded man thinks.

What Is a Man’s Legacy?

leg·a·cy [leg-uh-see] noun, plural leg·a·cies.

1. Law. a gift of property, especially personal property, as money, by will; a bequest.

2. anything handed down from the past, as from an ancestor or predecessor.1

A legacy is a gift of property, which is usually given from an ancestor or a predecessor. But the definition could also include the skills and examples we learn from those who have gone before us. This means that a legacy-minded man lives so that he will have something valuable to hand down to his children, the next generation, the church, or to society as a whole. Some of these gifts are material, but many of them are spiritual or character based.

The reality is that we all hand down something. Some people leave treasured gifts, others leave debt. Some men leave great morals and family history, while others leave utter chaos. Some men leave a strong spiritual heritage, and others leave generational sin. The chances are you have certain possessions or character traits you are proud to hand down. And chances are even better that you have things you pray will end with you.

If that is the case, then you’re just like me. Before God began His work in my life, my legacy wasn’t looking good, so I made some changes. And I believe you are man enough to make changes too. If the legacy you are leaving now stinks, don’t give up. Rather, have the courage to change it. Through it all, know this: you are not alone.

Yesterday Is Gone

I’ve failed many times in my life. I’ve also had many successes. Both extremes have been part of my life—the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. The truth is, I have lived through both. While victory and success have driven me forward to do greater things, I’ve probably learned more from failure. That’s because long ago I decided to let failure be my life coach, inviting it to teach me what I really needed to know.

Along the way, I decided I would win in life. Although my definition of winning has definitely changed over the years, I now know that the only victory is in Christ and Christ alone. I also decided to live a life that would make a difference long after I’m gone. I didn’t want to be someone who lived comfortably now, but did nothing to make the world a better place. And I further decided to help other men succeed where I had failed—to teach them to be husbands and fathers in ways I wasn’t.

I want to invite you to choose victory and to choose to help others win too. And I would love to help you do this. But remember, just as when the cabin in an aircraft loses pressure and the air mask drops down, the first thing you need to do is help yourself. It is only then that you can help others.

A legacy-minded man lives so that he wins, day in and day out. He honors God, he loves his wife, he trains his children, and he overcomes failure because he understands that God created him to succeed. All of this is a process, and Transformed: The 7 Pillars of a Legacy Minded Man is a map for the journey. You may swing and miss, but you have to get back to the plate and swing again. If you strike out, then you work, you practice, and you get coached—and then you step up to the plate again. You keep at it. When you’re up in the bottom of the ninth, you hit that walk-off home run. That’s what God has created you to do, and Legacy Minded Men is here to help you get there.

You Can Change

I am living proof that anyone can change. As a child, teen, and young adult, I was a chronic liar. In fact, I lied so much that I actually believed the lies I was telling, so much so that to this day I still cannot decipher some events as the product of my imagination or real events that truly happened. I also accepted the lies that society told me. Eventually, however, I learned from God’s Word that the truth would set me free. So I made the choice to stop the habitual lying, stop accepting the lies of others, and, most importantly, to stop living lies.

My prayer is that through Transformed, God will help you win in life. These seven pillars will focus on God’s Word—what He says about life and how it should be lived. We’ll answer questions like:

• Why are the seven pillars crucial to building my legacy?

• What does this look like in real life?

• How do I walk this out?

• How do I build these pillars in my life?

As you read this book, you will find over seven hundred instances where the word I is used. Stanford University did a study that revealed that only 5 percent of their students were able to remember points made in a lecture when statistics were the foundation of the talk. But over 60 percent of the students were able to recall a lecture when an “I” story was introduced to cement the message. Therefore, we (Jack Redmond, my friend and coauthor, and I) felt led to share stories, primarily from our own lives, to illustrate each pillar presented. Some will make us look bad. We’re okay with that, because we know that we have all done things we are ashamed of. But some of the stories will make us look good. We’re not trying to brag; we only want to help you remember the pillars.

It’s easier to build a great legacy when you are surrounded by other legacy-minded men. Join us. Our...