Orrin, I was struck by three specific points. 1. The quality of one's character is not defined by the level of formal education, but by one's willingness to serve. Steve's uneducated adoptive parents clearly understood that you say yes to a child, not to a gender. You say yes to a need, not a want. When you are sold out to serving, God may limit your ability to pick and choose whom you serve. When you serve others, who knows what the outcome may be... serve anyway. 2. Failure allows us to start over with a clean slate. Very often it is the best thing to happen to us because it humbles us. If we can get up... we can go up. I loved how Steve explained that as painful and heart wrenching the fall, it was the best thing to ever happen to him. From his obstacles came his greatest opportunity. 3. "Don't be trapped by Dogma... that is... living with the results of other people's thinking." I am not so sure if I am more impressed with what he said or by the fact of where he was when he said it. I am sure that as he started this commencement speech by challenging the Dogma, some of the "inteligencia" were cringing. All that talk about his inability to see any value in taking required courses that had nothing to do with what he wanted to do with his life. Wasting his parents money on required classes. The point is one you have been making for years. You have repeatedly encouraged us to learn how to think, not what to think. An example would be a personal conversation you and I had on the subject of the sovereignty of God... You never once said... well Steve this is what I believe, you simply handed me a list of verses. It was a list of every verse in the Bible that talked about the sovereignty of God. You encouraged me to study it and form my own conclusion. With all your influence, you very well could have just told me that you had studied these verses and came to this conclusion. Given the level of trust I have for you, it would have been easy to just accept your beliefs based on your study. You would have nothing to do with that. You never attempted to trap me into a doctrine... to base my spiritual beliefs on the results of your thinking. I appreciate that! It never ceases to amaze me how so many successful people operate under successful principles, and so many unsuccessful people are trapped by the results of other people's thinking. On our way to a million, as a TEAM... we will change this by simply challenging the Dogma. Excellent post my friend!