Catalyst – Day Two got off to another incredible start.  I had decided I’d get up early and get to the doors about one and a half hours before the official start (wanted to make sure I got a good seat again) and was incredibly surprised to find that about 1000 other people got up earlier than me!  NUTS!  Nevertheless, I still got a good seat (I actually managed to snag the same seat I had the day before).

Among the speakers for Day two was Priscilla Shirer, Dave Ramsey, Chuck Swindoll, Louie Giglio and Andy Stanley.  There were also interviews from other folks including Margaret Feinberg.  The interview with Margaret was kind of neat because it kind of came across as a commercial for her new book – in a way it was but then Reggie Joiner announced that this was not a marketing ploy – they wanted to interview Margaret for the book because every attendee from Catalyst was getting a free copy of “Scouting the Divine“,  even better, the upper section of the stadium (where I was sitting) were to get signed copies.  Kind of neat, I’m looking forward to reading the book!

As I stated in the first post in this series, I’m not going to blog on every speaker at Catalyst but only the ones that made a significant impact on me.  Next up is Dave Ramsey.  Dave introduced a concept called the Momentum Theorem, here’s the notes:  (Oh and by the way, I was thinking about an article I wrote about keeping momentum a while ago while listening to Dave speak – feel free to check it out!)

• When you have momentum, you LOOK – better than you are. When you don’t have momentum you ARE better than you look.
• MOMENTUM is created. It does not randomly occur.

Definition of Momentum: Focused Intensity, over Time, multiplied by God, equals Unstoppable Momentum!

Focus

Focus is lost for two reasons – FEAR and GREED

“A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways – James 1:8

Focus means you don’t look at anything outside of what you’re focused on

Rick Warren calls focus being INTENTIONAL

Stephen Covey calls focus being PROACTIVE

Intensity

Pour intensity into things that really MATTER

Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might – Ecclesiastes 9:10

Intensity causes things to MOVE

Over Time

“If I persist long enough, I will WIN” –Og Mandino

Run the race in such a way as to win the prize – 1 Corinthians 9:24

The TORTOISE wins the race every time.

Multiplied by God

You and I are finite. God is INFINITE

He is in CHARGE, and He carries you in the palm of His hand.

What is impossible with men is possible with God. – Luke 18:27

Get PLUGGED in to Him as a power source, and your momentum will become unstoppable!

Find out what God is doing and get in on it – Henry Blackaby

To wrap up, what impacted me the most with what Dave had to say?  What he said about intensity.  I consider myself a pretty intense guy but sometimes I get intense about the wrong things.  It’s okay to be intense but it’s better to be intense with what really matters.