Anyhow, I was extremely taken with Osteen’s honest, direct, and life-affirming presentation. I am not myself an evangelical Christian. I grew up in a wonderful “United Nations of religions.” My father was a somewhat lapsed—although he’d never admit it—Roman Catholic whose medical office was in an ethnically and religiously diverse part of Kansas City. I thought nothing of going to a bar mitzvah, a Greek Orthodox wedding, and an African Methodist Episcopal funeral in a single week. My mother was a garden-variety, mainstream Protestant but took religious instruction before marrying my dad and famously (in our house) told the priest at the end of the course: “Thank you, Father, I learned a lot, but I’ll be damned if I don’t use birth control.” Then there was Dede, the grandmotherly woman who lived with us to keep house and take care of me. Dede was my first guru. We’d sneak into her Unity church after Mass on Sunday, and during the week she would regale me with tales of Emerson and the Rosicrucians and  reincarnation and Mary Baker Eddy. 

With this heritage, I can no more imagine there being just one way to God than I can imagine there being just one nourishing food or one worthwhile friend. And yet I’m so drawn to the message of anyone and everyone who has found God some way or another, that whenever I can listen to them share — as with this gentle soul from Houston the other night — I feel peaceful and renewed and happy. I hope these notes do the same for you.

So, quotations from part 2 of Joel Osteen’s presentation — 

“The 17 years I worked with my father,
editing his sermons, God was working behind the scenes in my life. He’s working
behind the scenes in your life now…You don’t know where God is going to take
you…You’re not working under people, you’re working under God…God is
working the most when we see it and feel it the least…You go through a loss
but sometimes God uses the adversity to push us into our divine destiny.

“God did not create any of us as ordinary. If you don’t
step into your destiny, the world won’t be as bright as it should be…God
equipped you with exactly what you need. If you needed to be different, God
would have made you that way. You are fully loaded and totally equipped. When
we try to be something we’re not, life gets frustrating. You are anointed to be
you. If someone else has something and you don’t, you don’t need it. Instead of
looking at others to see what you don’t have, look into yourself and see what
you do have. 

“Supernatural doors are going to open for you. God is
breathing into you confidence and ideas. You can overcome every obstacle. You
can become all God has created you to be…God expects us to do what we can. If
you the natural, Gof will do the supernatural…You have the fingerprints of
God all over you…Faith is about stretching…A lot of people are living in
the safe zone. I want to get you to the faith zone. We cannot go around with
low self-esteem. We have to know we’re fully equipped and fully loaded…God
had the solution before you had the problem…you may not think you have what
it takes. Use what you have and let the Master step in. He’ll put his super
into your natural…

“As you take steps toward your destiny, God will show
up. You have to put a demand on your faith. Expect to have courage you didn’t
have before. God will bring in the right people and the right opportunity.
That’s God taking your ordinary and making it extraordinary. ‘No good thing
will God withhold when you walk uprightly.’…you may not have the resources
right now. That’s okay. God does…Don’t die with the music still inside you.
My prayer for each of you is that before you leave this earth, all your
potential will be called forth…