Tag Archives: Personal Growth

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How to Take a Digital Sabbath

Do You Control Technology or Does It Control You?

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How often do you check your email? Social media? The news feed on your smartphone? Can you even remember the last time you went one full day without your digital device?

Maybe you need to give it a rest. A sabbath rest.

God started the whole sabbath thing when he rested after creating everything.

Although he didn’t need a day off, he took one to convey the importance of rest in how His universe functions. Rest is part of the divine design. And yet we often ignore it in our” always on” digital culture.

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What to Do When Your Spouse Disagrees about Your Calling

7 Reminders to Help Get on the Same Page with Your Spouse

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You think you know the direction God would have you to go. You believe you have clarity about your next steps to do what God designed you to do. You may even want to leave your current job and step out in a new direction. But your spouse doesn’t see it. What do you do?

A reader actually sent me this question recently. It’s one I receive fairly frequently from Christians trying to figure out God’s best for their lives. And it is an important one.

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One Thing You Can Always Expect When Stepping Out

Why the "Open Door" Method of Determining God's Will Doesn't Work

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Stepping out before you know how it all turns out—that’s what faith is all about. But many Christians embrace the false notion that it should be easy, or at least simple. And if it’s not, God isn’t in it.

But when we look at Scripture, nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, there is one thing we know we will encounter every time we change direction in life—resistance.

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3 Things to Do When You Feel Alone

Discover How Jesus Beat Loneliness—and You Can Too!

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Ever feel alone? Jesus did, too. That’s right. Messiah. Creator. Savior of the world. Even he dealt with loneliness. After all, one of the reasons he became one of us was to understand what we go through each day on this terrestrial ball. But unlike us, Jesus refused to give in to the temptation to fixate on that feeling.

How did he beat it? Jesus beat loneliness by speaking the truth to himself.

It matters greatly how we talk to ourselves. Let’s face it, we are the one person we can never get away form—no matter how hard we might try at times. So what we say to ourselves is critical when we are tempted to feel alone.

It happened at least once to Jesus, most noticeably as he gave his disciples a final briefing just prior to his crucifixion.

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How to Stop Being Afraid and Obey God

7 Biblical Steps for Overcoming Fear

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Smack dab in the middle between real life and real faith is—real fear.  Fear of failure. Fear that we’ll look foolish. Fear that everyone will laugh when we do fail. Fear that __________ —fill in the blank with your own fear. There’s no shortage of reasons to be afraid. But how can we stop being afraid?

I believe that for those who have trusted in Christ as their only hope, God has not left us to be paralyzed by the unknown.

Instead, His Word gives us 7 steps for overcoming fear and rising victoriously above the challenges that come our way.

That’s not to say it will be easy.

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How to Pursue Your Authentic Life Adventure

7 Steps to Take When Stepping Out in a New Life Direction

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So you want to step out in a new life direction. But you’re afraid. That’s normal. Fear often keeps us from moving forward. What if I showed you the steps needed to move forward with clarity, confidence, and abundant faith to live an authentic life adventure?

First let me acknowledge that I did not follow all of the steps I am about to share with you—not intentionally anyway. Some I had to learn the hard way.

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How to Find Your Authentic Life Direction

5 Suggestions For Clarity & Confidence in a New Life Direction

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Do you know where you are headed next in life? Do you know where you should be headed next? If you’re like a lot of us, you may have accidentally fallen into a life direction instead of intentionally choosing your best path.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. In fact, it shouldn’t be that way.

God created each one of us with unique strengths, passions, and skills sets. He gave us each unique relationship connections that open doors of opportunity unavailable to others.

And He expects us to use it all to more fully reveal His majesty on earth as it is in heaven.

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What You Need to Know When Your Life Direction Gets Tough

You Can Choose Your Response to Resistance

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When you’re thinking about stepping out in a new life direction, you should get advice. But be careful whom you ask for input.  Not everyone is qualified to give you guidance about stepping out by faith.

I mention the need to get wise and experienced counsel in Episode 10 of  The FaithWalker’s Podcast.

There may be voices in our life that we respect, but if they have never attempted to do what we are contemplating, we should take their input with a grain of salt.

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What to Expect When You Step Out in a New Life Direction

The Easy Path Isn’t Always the Right Path

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When you’re considering stepping out in a new life direction, you should not expect it to always be easy. There is a learning curve that each of us must experience at the start of anything new.

The curve can be scary when you’re in it, even bewildering and disorienting. That is normal.

Let me repeat that: it is normal to find the curve to be challenging.

Following your new life direction will be scary at times. You will experience turbulence.

When you step out in a new life direction it is almost always going to be harder than you thought it would be.

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Why Knowing Your Strengths Isn’t Enough

Finding Life Direction Requires a Kingdom Awareness

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Finding your life direction requires figuring out your strengths. I shared about how I discovered my strengths in this post. But for the Christian seeking to live an authentic life, it will take more than an awareness of strengths to find God’s best for your life.

It will take a Kingdom awareness.

Our strengths reside where our passions and talents unite. So if we devote the bulk of our time to doing things where those two intersect, we will be more productive and more fulfilled.

Why? Because we are doing the kinds of things God wired us to do.

You do not need to be a Christ-follower for this to be true.

But the disciples of Jesus should desire more. Jesus calls us to follow him ahead of career ambitions, the love of money, or even family ties. Our life direction priorities must align with His Kingdom priorities.