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More to Be Podcast

Lead Like it Matters to God

Season 7, Ep. 712
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How often do we make our plans only to have them suddenly come crumbling down. But what if our crashing plans is part of God's purposes to direct us onto the path He has for us? Certainly that is one perspective if we look at our life through the lens of Proverbs 16:9, which states that "We can make our plans,  but the Lord determines our steps."


Nothing could ring truer of this verse than Richard Stearns' life, which is truly a classic story of man's big plans being rerouted by God's bigger blessings.


On this episode of the More to Be Podcast, I chat with Richard Stearns, President Emeritus of World Vision USA about the way God took him as young man determined to get into an Ivy League college and corporate success story to a man committed to Jesus, his wife, and twenty years of advocating for the orphaned, the widowed, the sick, and the hungry. His story will renew your hope in God's transforming work and fill you afresh with a sense of awe at how He works. Yes, my friend, God isn't done in our stories and has not quit working in the lives of those we deeply love.



Richard Stearns currently serves as President Emeritus for World Vision U.S. after retiring at the end of 2018. He was the longest-serving president of World Vision. Stearns is the second of two children of working-class parents in Syracuse, New York. He worked his way through Cornell University, earning a bachelor’s degree in neurobiology in 1973. After receiving a master’s degree in business administration from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, Stearns began a career in marketing for several Fortune 500 companies. In 1998, Stearns accepted the role of President at World Vision US. He has traveled to more than 40 of the nearly 100 countries where World Vision works. His wife Renee, a lawyer by training, also travels and speaks on behalf of World Vision. The couple has five children. In 2021 he published his latest book, Lead Like it Matters to God: Values-Driven Leadership in a Success-Driven World.


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