'Sometimes what seems like surrender isn't surrender at all. It's about what's going on in our hearts. About seeing clearly the way life is and accepting it and being true to it, whatever the pain, because the pain of not being true to it is far, far greater.'  Robert Redford as Tom Booker in The Horse Whisperer, 1998

You may know Robert Redford as the gifted actor responsible for classics like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, All The President's Men and A River Runs Through It.  Redford is also the founder of the Sundance Film Festival, the largest annual independent cinema festival in the United States.  Sundance was created as a refuge from the big movie money making juggernaut that Redford felt often crushed and misjudged the best film making talent of the day.   In 2008, Sundance exhibited 125 feature-length films from 34 countries, with more than 50,000 attendees.

Redford himself nearly never made it into film making, he came from a suburban family to which he felt little connection and left home in his troubled early teens.  He was desperate to get away from a place where people's greatest dream was to own a bigger and better Barbeque.  All he knew was that he loved story telling and wanted to be an artist.  So how did he make it?  After bouncing around several art and acting communities, he signed up to study set design at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York, somehow he ended up in an acting class that changed his life.

As Redford tells it, he had hidden away at the back of the compulsory acting class until, when he finally had to act out a scene, he got so angry with a fellow actor who was mouthing his lines that he threw him across the stage.  After class, Redford's tutor approached him and told him in no uncertain terms that Redford was going to be a great actor and that he was going to do everything he could to help.  The rest is history.

Robert Redford believed in his art and that he was destined for a life outside the suburbs.  His tutor believed in the raw talent that Redford displayed, even though this talent was unleashed in unusual circumstances. Throughout his acting career, Redford has made films that he believed in often at great personal expense.  Today, Robert Redford is able to help actors and film makers, like himself, who need someone to believe in them.

Never underestimate the power of belief.  You have the God given power to affect other people's lives as well as your own.  Believe in yourself because God has made you unique, you have gifts that can make a difference in your home, in your workplace, in prayer.  Believe in those around you however you can.  Encourage them, support them and pray for them.   You never know where it may lead...

He believes in you!