How to Find Your Calling with 3 Easy Lists

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God has a unique calling on each one of us, our unique contribution to the world. The powers of darkness are terribly afraid of it, because when you walk in your calling, they lose real estate. The enemy’s strategy is to so grievously wound us, as early in life as possible, that we don’t ever step into the calling on our lives. Your calling is that important. If you don’t fulfill it, no one will. Then the world misses out and you live a boring life instead of the adventure you were created for.

So how do you find it? Your calling is the intersection of three things – your passion, your skills, and your livelihood. You need all three, or you don’t have a calling. You have something else. Let’s look at these one at a time.

This is a very practical post today. Have fun with this! Go through this exercise with the Holy Spirit. Ask him to show you the answer to each of these questions. He’s totally into this.

1) Your Passion

What sets your heart on fire? What thing makes your heart leap out of your chest at the thought of doing it? Alternatively, it might terrify you. For those of us still working our way out of our wounding, a calling can be terrifying. It can fly in the face of inner vows we’ve made to protect our heart. It can force us to face our fear.

For example, suppose your calling is public speaking. Suppose God wants to give you words and speeches and messages that will inspire and change a myriad of lives. But in grade school, the enemy set it up so you got severely made fun of for making a mistake during a class presentation, or maybe answering a teacher’s question wrong. You vowed you’d never speak in public again. It wasn’t safe.

Now that vow is holding you back from stepping into your calling, and the thought of public speaking terrifies you. But God wants to heal that. You can renounce those inner vows and the benefit they give you, choosing to trust God for your heart’s safety instead of your own means.

So if you feel either exhilaration or terror at doing a thing, that might be your passion. If your heart didn’t care about it, you’d be indifferent. And if it’s terror, there may an inner vow in the way that you need to work through and remove.

Make a list right now of what you’re passionate about. Use both the positive and negative questions: What exhilarates you? What terrifies you?

Another great question for finding your passion is, What angers you? What problem do you want to see solved? What fight do you want to pick with the world?

2) Your Skills

This is much more straight forward. What are you good at? Make a second list. What skills, talents, and abilities do you naturally have? What were you just always good at? Alternatively, what skills have you developed? What have you learned to do really well? Put all these on your second list.

3) Your Livelihood

Your livelihood is what will people pay you for. God doesn’t want you to starve. He’s a God of provision. He’ll provide for your needs so you can pursue your calling. The easiest way is if people pay you for it.

Honestly, people don’t care about your skills or your passion. They care about themselves. Not dissing anybody here, we all do. But when you solve a problem for people, they will pay you for it.

Make a third list. What will people pay you for? What problems can you solve?

Your Calling

The intersection of all three lists is your calling. Are you surprised? Or did you know it all the time, but were afraid to think about it? What is that thing? Share it in the comments.

What if there’s nothing on all 3 lists?

Oh no, I’m doomed, I have no calling! Now just hold on there, Mr. Melodramatic. You have a calling, we just need to dig a little deeper. The stuff of life has just buried it a little bit. What is on two of the lists?

Skills and Livelihood without Passion is a Job

But what happens if you’ve got skills at something and a livelihood but no passion? That’s a job. Maybe you used to have passion for it, and you’re convinced that job is, in fact, God’s calling on your life. How do you move it from job to calling? You have to rekindle your lost passion.

Ask the Holy Spirit how. One way is to go back to the beginning. Remember when this thing first romanced you and you fell in love with it? How did you approach it then? Can you do the thing the way you did at first and reclaim that lost passion?

Dude, I have never loved my job! Then your job’s not your passion.

Passion and Livelihood without Skills is a Daydream

Without skills, people won’t pay you for long, if at all. If you’re sure this daydream is God’s calling on your life, how can you move it from daydream to calling? What baby steps can you take right now to start acquiring the skills?

Maybe your daydream is to be an author. If that’s your calling, start a blog and start putting your work out there regularly for people to read. Maybe your daydream is to be a missionary. If that’s your calling, enroll in a class at your local community college to start learning your host country’s language.

Passion and Skills without Livelihood is a Hobby

God doesn’t want you or your family to starve. If it’s your calling, God will provide provision for you to pursue it. Usually that’s getting paid for it. How can you take your hobby and solve a problem for people with it? Where does it touch an area that other people care about? It’s ok if it’s a niche thing, as long as somebody will pay you for it. It’s ok if it’s not for everyone, as long as there’s enough people who collectively will pay you enough so you can keep doing it.

Alternatively, God may provide provision through something else. This is especially true in the early days when you’re honing your craft and acquiring the skills.

Think of the 17th century European composers and artists. They had patrons, usually nobility or royalty, who would cover their expenses so they could write their music and make their art. Oftentimes today, your job is your patron. It covers your expenses while you get good enough for people to start paying you.

What if there’s nothing on any two lists?

Then go with your passion list. What on there makes your heart sing? Is there something that equally excites and terrifies you? That could be it.

But, as it stands, you’ve got no skills and you’ve got no livelihood. So start acquiring them. What baby steps can you take now to start getting better at that thing? How can you solve someone’s problem with it? Look at people who get paid for it. What problem do they solve? What’s their business model? How do they do it?

Take Action!

You have a unique calling from God. Hopefully this exercise has helped you discover it. So take action! Have you identified your calling, but you’re missing either passion, skills, or a livelihood? Stare down your fear and start your God-given adventure today. Tell us in the comments what steps you’re taking to acquire the parts you’re missing. Let’s do this!

Why You Are Not Defined by Your Actions

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Our neighborhood’s polling place is the local elementary school. When I voted in the last election, I saw a huge banner hanging in the school cafeteria that read, “You Are Defined by Your Actions.” Nothing could be further from the truth.

I get it. The school is trying to instill good behavior. That’s a good, worthy, and noble goal. The banner basically asks the children, “Who do you want to be?” Act like the person you want to be. Sounds great on paper. Many of you are probably thinking, “What’s the problem with that?” I don’t blame you. This is really subtle.

The problem is this. It’s control, not identity. “You Are Defined by Your Actions” implies “We are judging you by your actions. Your value comes from the good things you do. You are only as acceptable as your behavior.” The Kingdom of God has a one-word response to this prettily packaged attempt at worldly control: Not!

Tenth Avenue North has, IMHO, one of the most powerful songs ever written. It’s called You Are More. Here’s the chorus:

            You are more than the choices that you’ve made.

            You are more than the sum of your past mistakes.

            You are more than the problems you create.

            You’ve been remade.

The Kingdom of God is about identity, not control.

“Who do you want to be?” is the wrong question. “Who did God create you to be?” is the right question.

That’s why we can’t really redefine our race or our gender, no matter how hard we try. This is very politically incorrect, but you can’t change your gender. Even if you mutilate yourself with the best surgical techniques modern medical science has to offer, you still have the same XY or XX chromosomes you were born with. Nothing’s really changed. You just look different.

It’s not about acting like the person we want to be. That’s just being posers. Pretenders. It’s not about getting into a role, so we externally play the part. We’re not looking for an Academy Award here.

It’s about acting like the person we are. We are sons and daughters of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. We need to learn what that means and how to act like it. (I recently wrote a post about 4 ways to live as royalty.)

The problem is, either we’ve forgotten who we really are, or we never knew. I love that scene in Lion King where, in the midst of a storm, Simba has a vision of his father, Mufasa, reminding him of who he is:

Mufasa: You have forgotten me, Simba.

Simba: No, father, I could never forget you!

Mufasa: You have forgotten who you are, so you have forgotten me. Remember who you are!

Our enemies’ plan is to get us so wounded that we never learn who we really are. Because they’re terrified of who we really are. When we know our true identity and walk in it, claiming it as our own, the kingdom of darkness falls. We can tear down, in moments, strongholds that took multiple demons generations to build. Sucks to be them.

Jesus said, “I’ll build my Church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.” (Matthew 16:18) The kingdom of darkness doesn’t want their gates kicked in. Bummer. Then they shouldn’t have built them around people that Jesus died to redeem. Bad move. Kicking down their gates and claiming territory for Jesus is our charter mission. I love it.

So the world’s message, like that banner in the school cafeteria, is “You are only as acceptable as your behavior.” But God says, “While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8) We were accepted and loved by God before we did anything good, not after.

So we desire to live a life that honors God, not to be who we want to be, or to earn our way to Heaven, or to be acceptable to God. We desire to live a life that honors God because it’s who we are, it’s who he made us to be. Because we’re already living out of that place called Heaven. Because we’re already accepted.

I’m not saying our actions aren’t important. They are. When aligned with our God-given identity, they are how we walk out who we are. In that case, they are our legacy. But when our actions aren’t aligned with who God says we are, then they are just signs that we’re confused and hurting. Then they are evidence we still have wounding Jesus wants to heal, which will always be the case in this life.

We’re learning who we are. 

How about you? Do you know who you are? Learn how to discover the wonder of who you really are in a fun and engaging story. Download Dave’s free eBook The Runt: A Fable of Giant Inner Healing. And tell us your story in the comments. What are you learning about who you really are? And please share this post if it would bless someone else.

You Have Value – My Journey through Self-Hatred

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The truth is you have tremendous value. I have struggled actually believing this. Well, truth be told, I have no trouble believing you have tremendous value. I have trouble believing I have tremendous value. Can you relate?

I’ve been asked by people I trust to share more of my story. So in the hope that it will help others, this post is about my struggle in this area, and how I got freedom. Don’t worry, it’s not a downer, despite the subject matter. It’s a story of hope and God’s faithfulness. I pray it gives you hope and some tools for hanging onto that hope.

A Little Background

I’ve been tremendously gifted. I have a master’s degree in Mathematics from UCLA. I’ve done software engineering for 30+ years. My specialties are reverse engineering computer/network protocols and developing digital signal processing applications. I’ve worked hard to get where I am, but God has tremendously blessed me with an ability to do with computers what not everyone can. Not patting myself on the back here. Just the facts.

I’m also a musician. Keyboards are my primary instrument (I’ve been playing since I was 8), but I also can fake playing bass, drums, and congas. My main keyboard influence is Rick Wakeman from Yes. (Remember that band? I’m totally dating myself here!) Nowadays I play keys in the worship band at church. I play Manheim Steamroller and Trans-Siberian Orchestra on my own for fun. I’ve worked hard to develop it, but God’s gifted me with some talent.

I’m smart and I’m talented. So why do I hate myself?

I grew up loving Jesus from a young age in a solid Christian home. My two older brothers treated me well. My parents loved me and were good, solid, godly parents. I’ve lived a moral life and not experienced any trauma. So where does this self-hatred come from?

Judgments and Inner Vows

Somewhere, deep in my heart, before I had language, maybe even in utero before I was born, for whatever reason, I judged myself as unlovable. We call that a bitter-root judgement.

(Aside: Judgements we make before we have language can be really hard to articulate. But you can discover them by asking the Holy Spirit to help you talk to your heart. I wrote a post on learning this skill, and how I made this discovery here.)

Anyway, I have a sense, deep in my heart, that you won’t love me. No matter what I do, you just won’t. We call that a bitter-root expectation. So in my heart I resolved that with an inner vow to always be good. You won’t love me anyway, but I’m not going to give you a reason. So when you don’t love me, which you certainly won’t, that’s on you. It’s a passive-aggressive way to get back, in advance, at the person (namely, everyone else in the world) who doesn’t love me. I make it your fault, not mine. So there.

It’s a crappy way to live. I’ve paid the consequences in my life. It set me up for a failed first marriage. It set me up with a scarcity mindset, biased against success, believing this lie: “Not everyone in the world will be successful, so it’s not fair for me to be.” I remember thinking this as early as 7 or 8 years old.

I Get It

I get the whole self-harm thing. Although I’m learning and healing, I have a very hard time being in the same room with people who are angry. It causes me a lot of emotional pain. Physical pain hurts less, so it’s tempting to inflict it on myself. It distracts from the emotional pain, and it’s easier to deal with.

I have never struggled with depression, although I’ve flirted with it. I know what it is to want to self-medicate the pain away by not getting out of bed and sleeping all day. I know what it is to go to sleep early as an escape. I know what it is to have gray days that have no color in them.

I know what it is to have suicidal thoughts. As a teen, I lived in a canyon-filled area, actually called Canyon Country, in an upper-desert suburb of Los Angeles. While driving those one-lane, windy roads, I’d think, “One quick, flip of the wheel, crash into the mountain side, or down the gorge, and it’s all over. Finally.” Or even as an adult driving on I-95 at 80 mph here on the east coast, “Undo your seat belt and spin the wheel. Do it.” Fortunately, I didn’t listen to those lying demons. Here’s why.

Psalm 139 – How to Love Yourself in a Healthy Way

Personally, I found healing in Psalm 139, the anti-self-hatred psalm. God himself taught me the stuff I’m about to share with you, when I read nothing but Psalm 139 for a year or so.

The first blow against self-hatred is realizing God wants you to love yourself. Jesus himself quotes Leviticus 19:18 when he says, “Love your neighbor as you love yourself” (Matthew 22:39, Mark 12:31). And Jesus agreed when it was quoted at him in Luke 10:27, before he told the parable of the Good Samaritan. The implicit assumption here is that you love yourself. You can’t love your neighbor as yourself if you don’t love yourself.

Ok, but how? It’s a mindset. Let’s go through Psalm 139. There’s revelation in here I never saw before, that helped me establish a mindset of loving myself. And I repeat it, out loud if I have privacy, but to myself if I don’t, whenever self-hatred comes at me. Here we go.

In reading the Bible, you have to think Hebrew. The word translated “know” in Psalm 139 and elsewhere in the Bible, really means “experience.” (Where do you think the phrase, “he knew her in the Biblical sense,” meaning they had sex, came from? It means he experienced her, fully!) In Hebrew, to know something means to experience it.

So whenever you read “know”, substitute “experience.” I read verses 1-4 and verse 23 like this:

O Lord, you have searched me and you’ve experienced me. You experience when I sit and when I rise; you experience my thoughts from afar. You experience my going out and my lying down; you experience all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue, you’ve experienced it, O Lord. … Search me, O God, and experience my heart; test me and experience my anxious thoughts. (Psalm 139:1-4,23)

Wow, that’s intimacy with Jesus, right there! That can be really scary. Some people tragically run and never go there. But I encourage you to go there. Going there saved my life. It’s what kept me from driving my car over a cliff. And it continues to defeat self-hatred in my life and keep me alive. His intimacy with me keeps those thoughts from sticking. That’s the deep level of intimacy Jesus wants with you. That’s what he went to the cross to win—relationship with you.

Keep reading. Verse 5 talks about laying his hand on me. That’s not a smack down! He’s stretching out his hand to bless me and commission me. So you could read verse 5 like this, and I read verse 16 along with it:

You hem me in—behind and before; you have laid your hand of anointing and purpose on me. … All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. (Psalm 139:5,16)

And verse 6:

Such experience is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain. (Psalm 139:6)

Translation: Mind blow!

Keep going. I personalize verses 7-12 like this:

Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to Heaven, you’re there; if I make my bed in Sheol (i.e., Hell in Hebrew), you’re there. [That’s extreme!] If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea (or the interstate), even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,” even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you. (Psalm 139:7-12)

If that doesn’t speak to God being with me in the pit of depression and despair, I don’t know what does. In the darkest night, with blackness of soul all around me, I’ve prayed these verses back to him. I’ve prayed, “Lord, it’s dark all around me, and I need you to shine in this darkness right now like you promised.” And in my experience, he always has. I’d press in, warring with this prayer as my weapon, until I either felt his presence or I fell asleep—and woke up victoriously refreshed.

And OMG, the Bible talks about Hell! These verses promise that whatever hell you’re in, there’s no blackness that’s too dark for God. There’s no sin that disqualifies you from his love. No trauma he won’t meet you in the middle of. His love is bigger, stronger, and way more persistent. His love will run you down and find you, even there. No darkness is too dark for him to meet you in and rescue you from.

It’s in this context, God being there in the middle of the blackest blackness, that David writes the most beautiful verses in the whole Bible:

You created my innermost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. (Psalm 139:13-14)

This means, God made me, and he likes who I am. This is true for you too. God made you, and he likes you, he loves who he created you to be, even if you’re not acting like it at the moment.

Look at verses 17 and 18, “How precious are your thoughts to me, O God! How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand. When I awake, I am still with you.” Gee, that “when I awake I’m still with you” is awfully random.

While it’s true that God has a lot of thoughts and they’re important to me, that’s not what this verse means at all! There’s a footnote in my Bible on the word “to” flagging that it could also be translated as “concerning.” So verse 17 becomes, “How precious are your thoughts concerning me, O God!” That puts a whole different spin on these two verses, and it explains the random bit at the end of verse 18.

Since God taught me this, I read now these two verses like this, and they blow me away. They have become one of my favorite passages in scripture:

How precious are your thoughts about me, O God! How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand. When I awake, I am still with you, because you’re still here thinking about me. (Psalm 139:17-18)

God thinks about me a lot! And they’re good thoughts! Even while I’m sleeping, he’s thinking about his plans for me, wringing his hands in anticipation. When I wake, he’s there, excited to bring me the next day of my life, one day closer to the destiny and identity he has for me. Take that, self-hatred. In! Your! Face!

The next verses, 19-22, get aggressive and can sound a bit extreme. They start out, “If only you would slay the wicked, O God!…” But to me, in the context of self-hatred, they’re talking about the spiritual forces lying to me and tempting me to hate and harm myself. He’s talking about the demons behind all the negative chatter I hear in my head. I personalize these verses like this:

If only you would slay the wicked, O God! Away from me, you bloodthirsty demons! They speak of you, God, with evil intent; they are your adversaries and they misuse your name. Don’t I hate those liars who hate you, O Lord, and abhor those who rise up against you? I have nothing but hatred for them; I count them my enemies, and I will never compromise with them. (Psalm 139:19-22)

I hate the lies that rise up against God’s truth for my life, and I hate the lying spirits who tell them. That’s hatred placed where it belongs. “I count them my enemies” means we don’t go shopping together. Don’t be friends or compromise with the liars in your life.

Your agreement is everything. The freedom, or the bondage, in your life comes down to what, and who, you agree with.

And then David ends Psalm 139 where he began:

Search me, O God, and experience my heart; test me and experience my anxious thoughts. See if there’s any offensive way in me, and lead me in your way everlasting. (Psalm 139:23-24)

I love that David ends the psalm where he began—with intimacy. It’s intimacy with Jesus that ultimately set me free from self-hatred and protected me from its devastation in my life.

No One Heals in a Vacuum

While God taught me a lot one-on-one in Psalm 139, and it’s been a powerful, healing force in my life, I didn’t come to the degree of freedom I have alone or in a vacuum.

I’ve sought out and received inner healing prayer ministry, to expose the lies I’ve believed and replace them with God’s truth. I’ve received deliverance ministry to overtly break the power and presence of self-hatred in my life. God places us in community because we need each other. I’ve needed others in my life to love me back to life. So do you. That’s why Satan’s number one weapon against us is shame–to isolate us out of community.

I haven’t arrived yet. I still struggle sometimes. But God’s winning. And I am growing so much in the process.

But what if you know all this, done all this, and it’s not enough?

That’s great that Psalm 139 worked for you, Dave, but it’s not doing it for me. What if you’re still depressed or still have suicidal thoughts? It’s ok. You’re ok. There’s nothing wrong with you. It just means there’s some deeper level of healing God wants to bring you. Get help.

Should I talk to my pastor, or get counseling? Yes. Do both. There’s nothing “anti-Christian” about getting counseling from a counselor/therapist with a Christian world-view. Most pastors are not trained to deal with depression. It’s not an either/or. If your pastor doesn’t get it and shames you for getting counseling (pastors are human too and allowed to make mistakes), then find a different church where the pastor will work with your therapist on the same team.

The same goes for medication. There’s nothing “anti-Christian” about taking meds if you need them. If your church shames you for taking depression medication, find a different church. Those same Pharisees go home and take their insulin for their diabetes and their heart/blood-pressure medicine. But somehow the chemical imbalance in your body doesn’t count? Horse-pucky! There are good churches out there who get it. I encourage you to keep looking until you find one.

(Yes, I believe in supernatural, miraculous healing. I’ve prayed for it and seen it happen. God heals by miracles, but he also heals by medicine. It’s his call, and it’s a different mix for every person. No one type of healing is more holy than any other. All healing is from God, however he chooses to do it.)

Resources

While it’s true that receiving deliverance and/or inner healing ministry from unhealthy or immature practitioners can be worse than none, these are solid, godly ministries that have blessed my life. Getting ministry may not be the whole deal for you, but it can be a huge piece if that’s what God’s doing.

For inner healing and prayer ministry: Dominion Counseling and Training Center (Richmond, VA)

For deliverance ministry: The Church Unchained (Stafford, VA)

For inner healing resources: Elijah House Videos

If you suffer from suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255), or text HOME to the Crisis Text Line at 741741. You matter.

How about you? Have you suffered, or do you suffer, from self-hatred? Tell us your story in the comments or shoot us an email on the Contact Us page. We’d love to hear from you. And please share this post if it would help others. God really does love you. You have value.

How to Move from Good to Beautiful

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I recently listened to Dr Curt Thompson on the Face-to-Face podcast with Cathy Little and Melinda Wilson (the episode on 1/18/2022].

Dr. Curt Thompson said something that blew my mind. It’s a simple thing, something where you might say, “oh that’s nice,” and just move on with your day. But if you stop and think about it, this changes everything.

There’s one word in scripture that could be transliterated into a different English word. It’s the Hebrew word for “good.” Dr Thompson said “good” could also be transliterated as “beautiful.”

Oh, that’s nice. No, stop and think about it! Think about your favorite passages using the word “good” in scripture, and instead use the word “beautiful.”

When God created the world in Genesis 1, after each day of creation it says, “… and God saw that it was good.” But what if “… and God saw that it was beautiful” better captures the essence of the original language? Then, when God made people, “… and God saw that it was very good” becomes “… and God saw that it was very beautiful.” Does that change everything?

From Evaluating to Gazing

Good and bad are things we evaluate. We discern good vs bad. And we should. Not correctly discerning good vs bad is causing a lot of pain, confusion, and evil in the world right now.

But when our concept of God goes from “good” to “beautiful,” it changes everything. This takes it to a whole new level. Our hearts get involved. We stop evaluating him, and we just want to look at him. To gaze at him. To spend precious time with him. More.

As the good shepherd (John 10), I evaluate Jesus. My logic evaluates that, yes, he meets the definition of “good,” so I discern I can trust him. But although my head agrees, my heart still holds back.

But when he becomes the beautiful shepherd, now I just want to look at him. Because beauty is something my heart discerns. My heart is involved now. It’s captured. Is this the beauty I’ve been longing for and been afraid to believe existed?

“Good” is discerned with the brain, while “beautiful” is discerned with the heart.

As a good father, I evaluate God. My brain discerns that, ok, his discipline really is for my good. Intellectual ascent. Boxed checked, let’s get on with my day.

But as a beautiful father, my heart pauses. I just want to sit in his lap for one more timeless moment. Daddy, read me a story…

And I weep. All my pain comes out as I press into his chest, held safely by him like a hen gathers her chicks under her wing (Luke 13:34). Because he’s reading me the story of me. How he sees me. Who he created me to be. Who I really am.

The Lost Art of Gazing

In our modern world, we’ve forgotten how to stop and gaze. And we’re the poorer for it. I’ve got a schedule to keep! And that’s all good. It’s productive. But it’s not beautiful. Stopping to gaze at beauty is beautiful.

“Stop and smell the roses” became “stop and smell the coffee.” That’s a great joke that I’ve used and enjoyed many times myself and there’s nothing wrong with it. But as I’m writing this, I wonder. Is there a subtle shift there? With roses, you actually have to stop to smell them. But coffee you can take with you, no stopping required. So we’ve missed the whole point then haven’t we? The point was never in the smelling, but in the stopping.

We can only gaze at beauty when we stop.

Stop and Gaze

If you’re married, have you stopped to gaze at your spouse lately? Try this exercise. Sit on the couch together. Set a timer for three minutes. No words. Just gaze lovingly at each other. Whatever that means.

Don’t stare – you can blink. You can look away. But gaze. Dr. Thompson says it’s really awkward for the first 90 seconds or so. But when the timer goes off, many couples don’t want to stop. How would our marriages change if we just took three minutes a day to gaze at each other?

How about Jesus? Do we stop and gaze at him? Are we willing to make the jump from “good” to “beautiful” and engage our hearts?

Bible studies are great; we should all do more. But how would our lives changed if stopped to just gaze at him with no agenda for a few precious minutes each day?

Your Turn

What do you think? Tell us in the comments. And please share this post if it would bless others.

Use These 3 Guidelines to Speak Up for What’s Right

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Speaking up for what’s right is important. As God’s people, if we don’t speak up for what’s right, we leave the world in a moral vacuum that our enemy is all too happy to fill with deception. Much of the societal decay in the world around us has risen to unprecedented levels because God’s people have been asleep and silent for far too long.

“Silence does not interpret itself.” – Father Pavone, Priests for Life

But it’s not enough to speak up for what’s right. We have to do it the right way. We’ve all heard about “speaking the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15), but how do we actually do that? Here are 3 guidelines for speaking up for what’s right so we make a difference.

1) Respect

Everyone has the right to choose what they believe, even if we disagree. Everyone owns the consequences of their beliefs, whether they acknowledge it or not. We can tell someone their choices are leading to bad consequences, but we still need to respect their right to choose what they believe. God does this. God respects our choice but expects us to own the consequences (Deuteronomy 30:15-20).

So respect people’s right to disagree. Respect people’s right to be wrong, no matter how much that frustrates us. When speaking to others, whether it’s in-person or on FaceBook, do so with respect:

  • Don’t call them names.
  • Don’t insult them.
  • Don’t respond in kind.
  • Don’t copy the other person’s bad behavior.
  • Check your own spirit for self-righteousness.

The opposite of respect is offense. There is a major spirit of offense over our country right now. Some call it a political spirit. It’s obviously spiritual warfare because when we get offended, we too often go out of our minds, acting and speaking like no loving Jesus-follower should. But, in our minds, offense justifies all of our bad behavior.

No, it really doesn’t. We need to remember to whom we belong, and act like Him and not the pagans.

But Jesus made a whip and called the Pharisees a brood of vipers! Yes, he did (John 2:13-17, Matthew 12:34, Matthew 23:33). But that was a last resort. He didn’t start there. Jesus did many other things as a testimony to the Pharisees first:

  • Sending the cleansed leper to the priests to make the sacrifices Moses commanded (Matthew 8:1-4).
  • Paying his and Peter’s temple tax (Matthew 17:24-27).
  • Healing the man born blind (John 9).
  • Raising Lazarus from the dead (John 11).

I love the story of Jesus’ paying the temple tax for himself and Peter in Matthew 17:24-27. While Jesus makes it clear he doesn’t have to pay the tax, he pays it for himself and for Peter, and says in verse 27, “… so that we may not offend them…” Jesus picked his battles. So should we.

So yes, Jesus called them a brood of vipers. But he also paid the temple tax to not offend them. There is a time for every activity under heaven (Ecclesiastes 3), to offend and not to offend, and the Holy Spirit knows the difference. My counsel is to let the content of our words be the offensive thing, not the way we say them.

2) Uncompromising Truth

We’re not speaking up for what’s right if we’re not speaking the truth. My heart breaks when I think about entire Christian denominations that have compromised with the world in condoning abortion, homosexuality, and transgenderism. Janet & I pray often for God to open their eyes and send them a spirit of repentance. While sincerely wanting to love people, they are doing so much damage.

People engage in these behaviors because of pain in their lives. God wants to heal that pain. But when we compromise with the world by not calling sinful behaviors the sin that they are, we slam the door of God’s healing in people’s faces. You don’t need healing if nothing’s wrong, do you?

3) Not Being Controlled by the Fear of the Other’s Reaction

When we know we’re saying something the other person doesn’t want to hear, it’s perfectly normal to fear their reaction. There’s nothing wrong with being afraid. The problem comes when we let that fear control us. It’s amazing how much of our actions, and reactions, are actually governed by fear, although we generally don’t realize it.

Many times I’ve been screamed at by dysfunctional family members, “You said that because you knew it would upset me!” Yes, I did know it would upset them, and believe me, I fear someone being upset with me. (I die a thousand deaths before a confrontation!) But that’s not why I said it. I said it because it needed to be said. It was an issue between us that needed to be addressed. And I won’t be bullied out of addressing it any longer.

Here are two litmus tests to discover that we are being controlled by fear.

(1) Silence. When something’s wrong and we don’t speak up, we’re being controlled by fear. We’re afraid of offending the other person. Or of their anger. Or of damaging the relationship. Frankly, if the relationship is in a state where telling the truth will damage it, it needs to be “damaged,” because it’s not healthy the way it is.

Remember Father Pavone’s quote at the top of this post: “Silence does not interpret itself.” Whatever issues we are silent about, we condone.

Confrontation is a godly skill that can be learned through practice. I highly recommend the book “Keep Your Love On” by Danny Silk (Amazon affiliate link) for more on this topic.

(2) Control. When we try to control the other person’s reaction, we’re being controlled by fear. Here are some common behaviors designed to control the other person’s reaction. Do you recognize any of these?

  • Shaming them for disagreeing.
  • Bullying them into agreement.
  • Waiting to talk rather than listening.
  • Monopolizing the conversation.
  • Trying to win the argument instead of connecting to their heart.

As Jesus-followers, fear has no place in our lives. Or shouldn’t. Our entire Christian walk boils down to replacing fear-based behaviors with faith-based behaviors. Faith trusts the other person to God and does not let fear of their reaction control us.

Your Turn

So how about you? Is this helpful? How have people spoken into your life that’s made a difference? Did they follow these guidelines? Tell us your story in the comments, and please share this post to bless others.

Why You Need a Bias toward Action

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It’s counter-intuitive, but action wins over clarity every time. Waiting to act until we have clarity will keep us paralyzed, never realizing our calling. It’s just socially acceptable procrastination.

Mother Teresa

A reporter visited Mother Teresa to do a story. When getting ready to leave, he asked her to pray for him for clarity. He had some big decisions he had to make back home that he was stressed about. She told him no.

He was shocked. “What do you mean you won’t pray for me? You’re Mother Teresa!”

She answered him, “I can’t pray for you for clarity because I’ve never had it. But I will pray for you for faith.”

Who Are We Trusting?

Waiting for clarity before we step out is really a form of self-idolatry. “I’ll be safe if I figure this out first. My clarity is my security, and then who needs God? I got this.”

I had a pastor who always used to say, “You spell faith R-I-S-K.” It’s a scary thing to trust God instead of ourselves. Faith is risky. But faith is where our calling lies.

Ships Weren’t Made for Docks

Waiting for clarity keeps your ship chained to the dock. It’s a lot safer than sailing out in that big, scary ocean, where many ships have sunk. But it’s not what the ship was made for.

Staying safe isn’t what you were made for, either. You were made for adventure. What’s the passion of your heart? God put that there.

“It’s a scary thing to step outside your front door.” – Bilbo Baggins

The Best Way to Get Clarity

The best way to get clarity is to act. Try something. What’s the next right thing? If you were actually going to pursue that passion in your heart, what’s the first baby step you’d take? Do that.

“Clarity comes with action.” – Jeff Goins

A former mentor, Jeff Goins, used to always say, “Clarity comes with action.” After you try something, you have much greater clarity about it. You’ve learned something. It worked or it didn’t. Most likely, it partially worked, and you’ve learned how to make it better.

Talk About Fear

A bunch of Christians running around fulfilling the passion God put in their hearts is Hell’s nightmare scenario. This is what keeps the enemy up at night. Because if we actually live out who God created us to be, the Kingdom of Darkness falls all across the world like a house of cards.

Yet all the enemy can do to prevent us from fulfilling our destiny, reaching our potential, and living our calling is pass his fear along to us. If he can anchor us to the dock of false safety with fear disguised as needing clarity before acting, he wins.

The people our message will touch are loved by God. But until we start doing things to move toward our calling, those precious lives remain firmly under enemy control. How sad.

On that Day we meet him face-to-face, what if Jesus shows us all the resources of Heaven that were positioned to help us live out our heart’s passion? Like dominoes, they were ready to fall into place to enable our calling. But it never happened because we never pushed over that first domino. How tragic would that be! I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to have that conversation.

How to Use Your Brain

No one is saying be stupid. Use the brain God gave you. But use your brain to figure out the wisest path toward the passion God put in your heart. Don’t let your brain talk you out of it. So often “waiting for clarity” is just an excuse to live in fear.

Your brain is your GPS. It navigates the route. It never selects, or denies, your destination.

Say you get in your car and enter a destination into your GPS. “You really don’t want to go there,” said no one’s GPS ever. No. You, the driver, pick the destination, and, given that destination, your GPS plans the best route. That’s how it works. Your GPS is not allowed to have an opinion about your selected destination. Neither does your brain.

Your heart, led by the Holy Spirit, is the driver. Your passion is the destination. Your brain doesn’t have the right to talk you out of it. Your brain’s job is to say, “Ok, given that’s your passion, here’s the route. Here’s the best way to realize that in your life.”

Then take that first baby step. Clarity comes with action.

Your Turn

What’s the passion in your heart? Are you “waiting for clarity”? What is the first baby step you can take? Tell us in the comments. And please share if this would bless someone else.

4 Ways to Live as Royalty

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What does living in freedom look like? We are, sons and daughters of our Father, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. We are princes and princesses, destined to be kings and queens ourselves. In fact, we are kings and queens now in our spheres of influence. Do we act like it? Do we speak like it? Do we know, as Christians, the ways of royalty?

We write a lot on this blog about identity and who we really are in Jesus. We write a lot about how to pull down the vicious lies that, even as Christians, keep us bound up away from the amazing, adventurous life God has for us. We write a lot about how to replace those lies with God’s truth. But what does walking in God’s truth, the freedom Jesus died and rose to give us, actually look like on a practical level?

The children of Prince William and Catherine (formerly Kate Middleton) are given a tutor to instruct them in the ways of royalty, protocol, and honor. Protocol is a way of formally dispensing honor, but that’s a subject for another post. (Frankly, our American culture is currently suffering from our own politicians, on both sides of the aisle, being unschooled in the ways of royalty, protocol, and honor. Amen! But I digress.)

Have you ever had someone teach you the ways of royalty? I am learning them. I learned some of them growing up from Christian parents. And I’m learning more as God brings healing to the wounded and unevangelized parts of my heart. I want to share with you 4 practical tips I’ve learned so far to live like the Kingdom Royalty we are.

1) Don’t Call Names

I recently saw a Christian friend on FaceBook that we’ll call “Patrick,” I believe correctly, rebuke a Christian leader for calling the socialist freshman congresswoman from NY, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a liar and other names. One of my other friends, a strong Christian, rebuked Patrick, sarcastically commenting, “…because Jesus never called anybody names.” He was using Jesus calling the Pharisees a “brood of vipers” to justify calling people names when we don’t agree with them. That is not the way of royalty!

Before Jesus blasted the Pharisees, Scribes, and Sadducees in Matthew 23, he spent 3 years trying to foster relationship with them. He sent them healed leapers as a testimony to them (Luke 17:14). He paid the temple tax for himself and Peter to not offend them (Matthew 17:27). He healed a man with a crippled hand in the synagogue right in front of them (Mark 3:1-5), and was frustrated by their stubborn hearts. He reached out to them over and over again.

Ecclesiastes 3 says there’s a time and a purpose under heaven for every activity. There is a time to bless and a time to curse. There is a time to blast like Jesus did in Matthew 23, but only after every other attempt at reaching out and building relationship has failed. And even then, often the Holy Spirit’s strategy is to walk away, not casting our pearls before swine (Matthew 7:6).

I’m not saying we sugar-coat our disagreement with unrighteous policies or people. But we can’t win a Kingdom battle using the weapons of the devil. Usually, name calling is a hellish tool, not a heavenly one. Royalty gives the other person honor, not necessarily because they are honorable, but because we are. Royalty behaves and speaks in an honoring way whether the other person does or not.

2) See People Like God Sees Them

If a politician or someone on the other side of the aisle lies, they are not a liar. They are lying. There’s a difference. God did not create them as a liar and does not see them as one. He sees them as the potential he created them for. So should we.

By the same token, God does not tolerate unrighteousness. If someone’s lying, we should call out the statement for the lie it is. Abortion. Sex outside of marriage. Homosexuality. Transgender. Cheating on your taxes. These are all lies the culture accepts that we need to call out unrighteousness as unacceptable, offering the forgiveness of a loving God. We need to teach them that true repentance means a change of lifestyle. Repentance is no longer doing the thing, not just being sorry about the consequences while continuing the lifestyle.

3) Respect Someone’s Right to be Wrong

You’ve heard the joke, “I respect your opinion. You have the right to be totally wrong!” But seriously. Being “right” does not give us the right to steamroll over someone else. It does not give us the right to post hateful memes about them on FaceBook.

I saw a meme, posted by a Christian and shared by a friend who I know is a strong Christian, about Ilhan Omar, the new Muslim congresswoman who’s been so anti-Semitic in the hateful things she’s been saying. When she was sworn into office, she used the Koran instead of the Bible. The caption of the meme was, “If you’re not willing to be sworn into office on the Bible, then get the h*** out of America!” Except the meme had the full profanity, not the asterisks I used. This is not the way of royalty!

When Jesus encountered pagans acting like pagans, he told them the truth in an honoring way. He found a way to compliment them (he complimented the woman at the well, see John 4:18). He honored them by eating at their houses (eating with tax collectors in Matthew 9:10 and Luke 19:5). He rescued them from the religious people who were all about name-calling and blasting them for their sin (see the woman caught in adultery in John 8, and Jesus at the Pharisee Simon’s house in Luke 7).

4) Remember They Are Human Beings Jesus Loves

They’ve just forgotten, or never knew, who they really are. It’s our job to remind them. How? By beating them over the head with the Bible? No! By sharing the same sacrificial love when they don’t deserve it that Jesus gave us when we didn’t deserve it. We still don’t deserve it, by the way. But Jesus can’t stop loving because that’s who he is. It should be who we are, too.

Your Turn

Does this resonate? Have you had someone call you up to a higher standard of behavior by their good behavior toward you when you were being nasty to them? Have you done this for someone else? How’d that go? What transformation did it bring? Tell us your story in the comments, and please share if this post would bless someone else.

The Most Damaging Thing We Do to Each Other without Realizing It

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People are people.

We get saved, and we’re instantly justified before God by the blood of Jesus. But we’re not instantly sanctified. We bring all our godless behavior with us into the church.

Being justified means being forgiven. Cleansed of our sin. No longer cannon-fodder for Hell. We were saved from hellfire and brought back into relationship with our loving God when we gave our lives to Jesus. Check.

But being sanctified means being like Jesus. Living like Jesus. Loving like Jesus. Seeing other people like Jesus does. We all have a long way to go. Being sanctified means agreeing more and more with God, and from that place of intimacy, we learn who we really are and start acting like it.

One of the most insidious ungodly behaviors we bring with us into the church is fear of the unknown. We try to control what we don’t understand. It’s natural and human. It’s also wrong, and it does a lot of damage, both outside and inside the church. 

Often, that fear comes out as this really spiritually immature Thing that we condemn in our children when we see it on the playground. In fact, much of our effort in guiding our school age children revolves around teaching them how to avoid this Thing. But we use this Thing on each other in church all the time. Here are some examples. See if you can guess what this Thing is.

Can You Guess This Thing?

Example 1: Someone else is expressing their Christianity differently in a way we don’t understand.So we punish them. Nasty glares. Avoidance. Gossip. Judgmental thoughts that sneak out on our faces.

In one church setting, this Thing might look like, “How dare they lift their hands during worship!” In another church setting, this Thing might look like, “How dare they not lift their hands during worship!” 

(Aside: And to both the Holy Spirit says, “How dare you look at the other person during worship instead of Jesus!”)

Example 2: A young mother, just saved, admits to her women’s Bible study group that she’s having a tough time. She admits to having an abortion years ago, and since getting saved, is grieving for her lost child. The older women scowl at her and say, “Don’t you know that everything in your past is under the Blood? If you’re not full of the joy of the Lord, are you even saved?” 

(Aside: There’s a mile of difference between being forgiven and being healed. If you’re post-abortive and grieving, that’s a sign this is your season of healing. Here are some resources that provide post-abortive healing: Rachel’s Vineyard and Project Rachel. Or call your local Pregnancy Help Center.) 

Example 3: A pastor works up the emotion during worship. “Come on, church! Let’s worship Jesus, he’s worthy! Sing louder! Sing with me!”

(Aside: Yes, he is worthy, but you can’t force or manipulate worship out of people. You can force & manipulate singing and dancing and carrying on, but worship has to be given freely or it’s not worship.)   

Christian Peer Pressure

So what do all these examples have in common? What is this Thing? Christian peer pressure. Yikes! That’s a thing? Unfortunately, yes, and it’s all too common. We’ve all experienced it, and, if we’re being honest, we’ve all done it.

We try to force other people to stay within the experience we’re comfortable with. C’mon, be a good Christian, stay in my mold for you! Conform!

When I was growing up in the late 60’s and 70’s, “cool” was the big word. Everybody wanted to be cool. The adults didn’t know what it meant. I remember hearing adults saying, “Why do you want to be ‘cool?’ It doesn’t mean anything!” While they were right to exhort us to not be influenced by that, it totally means something. It means “acceptable.”

And that’s the thing with Christian peer pressure. You’re only acceptable if you fit into the mold. Be comfortable in there, and don’t be peeking out over the edge!

To be sure, there are some non-negotiables in Christianity: 

  • Jesus is the name above every name and the only path to God. 
  • In fact, Jesus is God. 
  • He’s the God who loved us enough to become human and die for us when we hated him. Jesus was the only person ever who was born to die. All to demonstrate his love for us. What kind of over-the-top, crazy, passionate, love does that? Crazy stuff.
  • And there are a few others I won’t go into here for lack of space. But you know them. Sexual integrity. Giving. Respect. Fruit of the Spirit. Etc.

But here’s the deal. God totally is anti-peer pressure. God doesn’t force us or manipulate us into his way of living. He gives us a choice. In fact, he’s so into this that there’s a whole book of the Bible — Deuteronomy — dedicated to nothing but God articulating our choice so we can make an informed decision. 

“I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him.” 

Deuteronomy 30:19b-20a

It’s the same choice today as he gave the children of Israel as they were about to come into the Promised Land. But it’s our choice. If we don’t choose God’s ways, it breaks his heart and he weeps for us, for the pain we’re bringing on ourselves. But God honors our choice by giving us over to the consequences of it. 

The difference between godly exhortation and fleshly peer pressure is honoring the person’s choice.

Sometimes churches mistakenly get into the business of sin management instead of transformation. And often the chief tool of sin management is Christian peer pressure. Conform. Be like us. Be acceptable. 

Now I’m not saying we need to pretend to agree with people’s bad choices. The world is trying to bully us into doing just that — calling us “haters” if we have the audacity to say someone’s sinful choices aren’t healthy. That’s worldly peer pressure, and whole denominations have succumbed to it.

But there’s peer pressure in the church too, and we need to stop it. God is not calling every man in the church to go to the men’s ministry breakfast, although he probably is calling most. He’s not calling everyone to feed the homeless every Saturday morning. 

Your Calling

But God is calling everyone to do something. If you’re just drifting through life with no real purpose, just killing time till retirement so you can play with your toys, you’re missing your calling. 

Sometimes we truly don’t know our calling and have to really pursue the Lord to find it. Sometimes it finds us while we’re pursuing something else. But often, we know our calling. We’re just afraid to chase it. We’ve found something we’re good at that’s comfortable and safe.  

What makes your heart leap but you’re terrified to pursue? Or to ask it another way: What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?

The best way to stand up against and defeat Christian peer pressure is to know your calling. Then, when pressured to do whatever, you can honestly say, “I’m glad you’re doing that; that’s really great, thanks for inviting me. But I’m called to do this.”

We’re learning to say “no” to good things we aren’t called to so we can focus on the good things we are called to. So can you. You don’t have to be controlled or guilted by someone else’s mold. You don’t have to be a prisoner to anyone else’s peer pressure, Christian or otherwise. Actually, that’s a choice we make to duck our own calling. Doh! No more. Your calling is too important to get run over by somebody else’s mold.

How About You?

Have you experienced Christian peer pressure? What happened? Tell us your story in the comments, and please share if this post would bless someone else.

3 Steps to Stop Sabotaging My Life

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How do we keep from sabotaging ourselves? I’m old friends with self-sabotage. We go way back.

When I was 8 or 10 or so, my friends and I rode bikes (bicycles, not motorcycles). Constantly. All the time. On road and off-road. Especially in the fields and canyons around our housing track in Southern California, in a suburb called Canyon Country north of Los Angeles.

I was not a strong kid, and I had a heavy Schwinn bike. My friends had more expensive, lighter bikes. I couldn’t pull up on the handle bars going over jumps like they could. My front tire would always land first, and over the handle bars I would flip. But I was smart. I learned quickly after a couple crashes not to go over jumps. I learned quickly (and falsely!) that I couldn’t do what the other kids did.

One day my two best friends and I were riding around through the fields. The trail went down sharply into a small canyon (75’ deep or so). The trick was to go down as fast as possible so you’d have enough momentum to make it up the other side. The path down was steep, narrow, and rocky. I did not like the looks of it.

My friends encouraged me. These were good, solid, Christian friends. There was no peer pressure; just true, healthy, “you can do it” encouragement. My friends went first. First Marc effortlessly made it down and up, and then Bruce did the same. Then it was my turn.

I didn’t know you were supposed to stand up on your pedals over bumpy terrain. I had a really bumpy ride going down. Although it was probably less than 15 seconds, it seemed like slow-motion terror to me. This was not fun at all; I was filled with fear. My bike was out of control!

I knew I was going to crash. Since crashing was inevitable, the best I could do was decide where I was going to crash. On rocks, or in a bush? I decided crashing into a bush would be safer. So I picked a big, 3-foot high bush and steered into it. What I didn’t know, until it was too late, was that particular bush hid a 2-foot diameter boulder, a much bigger rock than any other rock on the trail. My front wheel stopped abruptly. I did not. Over the handle bars I flew. Again.

After my friends helped me get back to my house and get the road rashes bandaged up, they asked me, “Why did you crash into the bush?”

“Because I was going to crash anyway.” Duh.

“No you weren’t, you almost made it!” 15 more feet and I’d have done something I never thought I could, but I blew the opportunity because I sabotaged myself.

I was actually succeeding in spite of myself, in spite of not knowing the basics, like standing up on the pedals. But I made myself fail, to be true to be script playing over and over in my head: “I can’t…, I’m not…, I’ll never…”

Do you do this? Is there a script playing inside your head: “I can’t…, I’m not…, I’ll never…” Sound familiar?

That whole thing’s a lie. From. The. Pit. Designed to hold you down, to keep you from reaching your potential, the identity God created you for.

  • “I can’t be both successful and happy.”
  • “I’m not lovable. No one will ever love me.” (My personal favorite hogwash.)
  • “I’ll never reach that dream.”

None of that rubbish is true. Yet because we believe it is, it has power over us and we live it out. Because we’ve heard it in our head our whole life, we don’t even notice it anymore and we think it’s normal. So we sabotage our relationships, our success, and our dreams. We pick the safest bush to crash into, discovering too late that lying bush hides the very rock we’re trying to avoid.

So here’s 3 ways to escape self-sabotage:

1) Identify your limiting beliefs. Limiting beliefs are the chains we use to hold ourselves down.

Someone in my writer’s group recently asked the group a question: “A friend wants to pay me to edit his book. But I’m not an editor, what should I charge?” Do you see her limiting belief? “I’m not an editor.” Even though she’s written a couple books, and part of her day-job is editing sales-copy! If someone wants to pay you to edit, you’re an editor!

The worst limiting belief we all have to some degree is our Upper Limit Problem (kudos to Gay Hendricks for coining this term in his book The Big Leap (not an affiliate link). Our Upper Limit Problem is the false belief that we can’t be simultaneously successful in love, finances, and creativity. If one area, or especially two, start to go outrageously well, we sabotage the other area(s) to bring ourselves back down to where we (falsely!) think we belong.

The good news is, we can shed our Upper Limit Problem. The first step is identifying those limiting beliefs.

2) Start telling yourself a different story. Out loud. In Public.

My former mentor, Jeff Goins, has a short, little powerful book called You Are A Writer: So Start Acting Like One (not an affiliate link). His point is, you’re a writer (or whatever) when you start calling yourself one. Silence the limiting beliefs “I can’t…, I’m not…, I’ll never…” by telling yourself a different script.

Ok, you sold me, but what script should I tell myself? Do I just make one up? No, get Heaven’s script for you. Because it’s not a script. It’s a calling.

So how do I find my calling? It’s that thing you’re passionate about. What makes your heart leap? Who do you think put that there? That’s heaven’s calling God planted in your heart.

The enemy’s plan is to get us so weighed down with the day-to-day, going-nowhere, hamster-wheel, slog-of-life that we forget what it feels like to be passionate about something. The kingdom of darkness can’t risk many of us actually living out God’s calling on our lives. The most effective way to squelch that calling is to break our heart, where the calling lives.

That’s why sexual purity is so important in our culture. The lure of pleasure and relationship without cost, restraint, or commitment trick us into giving our heart away, one broken relationship at a time. Pretty soon we have no heart left, and no calling. We forget who we are, let alone what we’re passionate about.

God wants to restore your passion. What feeds your soul? Get away and go do that thing, get some soul time. Ask God to remind you what you’ve forgotten. What used to make your heart sing? Then start telling yourself that story.

So often the Holy Spirit’s job is dealing with our limiting beliefs that war against our calling. Look at Moses’ calling in Exodus 3 and 4. Moses had a whole slew of limiting beliefs:

  • “I’m a nobody.” (Exodus 3:11)
  • “I can’t take a mission from God. I don’t even know God’s name.” (Exodus 3:13)
  • “I’m just some random guy wandering in from the desert. The Israelites won’t believe me.” (Exodus 4:1)
  • “I can’t talk to Pharaoh. I stutter.” (Exodus 3:10)

The thing is, they were all true! And Heaven totally doesn’t care. God’s calling wins over earth’s limitations every time. Unless…

Unless we actually say, “No, I’m not doing that.” God was fine with all of Moses’ excuses until Moses actually said “please send someone else” in Exodus 4:13. Verse 14 says God’s anger burned against Moses. But even then, God made a deal with him to send his brother, Aaron, with him to do the talking.

So start telling people you’re a writer/musician/artist/chef/entrepenuer/whatever/fill-in-the-blank-for-you. What are you passionate about? What makes your heart leap?

3) Take the first step in that direction. Really.

Don’t overthink it. Just take that first step. Any first step. Yes, I know it’s easy to say, but hard to do. As an engineer, I have a PhD in over-thinking things. The truth is, that’s just my fear protecting me from my calling. “Gee thanks, Fear, but with friends like you, who needs enemies.” Exactly. Over-thinking is not your friend.

Play this game. Ask yourself, “What would I do if I wasn’t afraid? If I really was that thing, what would I do?” Then do that.

Do a little acting. You’re Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie. You’ve been given a star role. Start playing it. This isn’t “fake it till you make it,” but “believe it till you become it.” (Thank you Jeff Goins!)

So how about you? What have you forgotten makes your heart sing? God hasn’t forgotten. He’s dying (literally, Jesus did that) to redeem and awaken your forgotten passion, so you can live the adventure he created you for. What is it? Tell us in the comments, and please share if this would bless someone else.

How to Partner with God in Reclaiming Your Identity

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The most common malady in the human experience is loss. We have all experienced it in the past. We will all experience it in the future. It is a sad fact in this fallen world. By far though, the greatest loss is ourselves. That is trauma’s worst consequence—the loss of our identity. The good news is God wants to restore our lost identity. We can partner with God and reclaim our lost identity. I recently saw a brilliant illustration of this process.

Our new favorite Internet-TV series is The Chosen, a dramatization of the gospels that is done extremely well. Instead of trying to cram everything into a two or three-hour movie, they are presenting the life and ministry of Jesus as a multi-season series. This gives them the luxury of developing fictional but plausible backstories for the various characters that meet Jesus, like the disciples, Pharisees, and others.

Jesus is not the main character, although he becomes more and more of a central character as the series develops. The main characters are the people who meet Jesus. The vision of the production is to introduce Jesus to viewers through the eyes of the people who met him, so viewers can have similar experiences meeting Jesus. The stories surrounding its production and the impact it is having around the world are truly the fingerprints of God. This series is reaping amazing Kingdom fruit.

(You can download The Chosen app on your device from your app store, and watch the series for free.)

Spoiler alert. The first episode of season 1 is all about Mary Magdalene, whom Jesus delivered from multiple demons (Luke 8:2). There is nothing in scripture about her initial encounter with Jesus, so The Chosen gives her a fictional but plausible backstory. The trauma in her life has completely robbed her of her identity, even to the point of her name. She goes by the name of Lilith, which means “night monster.” None of her friends even know her real name.

3 Steps to Partnering with God in Reclaiming Your Identity

At the end of episode 1, Mary meets Jesus, who restores her identity in a way that’s amazingly practical for us. There are 3 steps, and Jesus wants to partner with us in each one.

1) Jesus Called Her by Her True Name

When Jesus shows up, the demons plaguing Mary aren’t happy being around him. Mary bolts. Jesus goes after her, stopping her dead in her tracks with one word:

“Mary.”

He calls her by her true name. Not the false name, the false identity, the trauma has given her, that everyone else knows her by. But her true name. Her true identity. The one she thought was lost forever. BTW, “Mary” means “beloved.”

How to Partner with Jesus when He Calls Our True Name

Agree with him. Mary stopped and turned. He had her attention. Does he have ours? Do we acknowledge our true name?

Agreement means action, not just an intellectual nod while we continue on with nothing changing. We stop. We turn to him. And we, in our heart of hearts, buy into the truth of our real name, the one he gave us.

Don’t buy into the false identity anymore. Mary stopped going by the name Lilith. And whenever someone calls her Lilith, she reminds them, “I’m Mary now.”

At one point Jesus says, “You always were” (episode 8).

One area where we are actively encouraging people to keep, and even celebrate, their false name is by condoning transgenderism. These individuals have suffered such deep trauma that it has completely stolen their identity down the most basic, fundamental level: their gender. Rather than helping them reclaim who God created them to be, we slam the door of God’s healing in their faces by celebrating the false name they give themselves when they “switch” genders. (“Switch” in quotes because they aren’t really switching genders; they are just pretending. They still have the same XX or XY chromosomes God created them with.)

2) Jesus Quoted Her Life Verse to Her

In the episode, there was a particular verse from Isaiah that her father had taught her. She’d saved the paper with that verse for many years, but finally had given up. She tore it up and threw it into the sea. Goodbye identity.

After he calls her by her true name, Jesus miraculously quotes her life verse to her. He’s reminding her of who she really is.

How to Partner with Jesus when He Quotes Our Life to Us

Agree with him. Let your heart leap! It may not be a Bible verse per se, but Jesus will remind us of our life’s passion. That part we thought could never happen, that we’d given up on.

Agreement means action. Think about it: If this passion, this calling I thought was dead, were really to happen, what’s the first thing I’d do? Then do that. One step at a time. Keep doing the next right thing.

3) Jesus Claimed Her

Finally, Jesus says to Mary, “You are mine.” He claims her. It’s in that place of holy surrender to him that the healing happens. Mary collapses into him sobbing tears that were many years overdue.

How to Partner with Jesus when He Claims Us

Agree with him. We have a choice. We can surrender to him, or we can go our own way. Will we release our defenses and trust him, or will we continue to protect ourselves? The choice is up to us.

Agreement means action. What does this look like? Being claimed by Jesus is all about lifestyle. If you agree with his claim on your life, you can’t live a lifestyle that breaks his heart. For example, we get healing for addictions through a recovery process. We save sex for marriage. We start tithing and our tips at restaurants substantially increase because we’re living in generosity. We love hanging out with God’s people, the church.

It’s All in Our Agreement

Are you noticing a pattern here? Although healing can be a painful process, Jesus is doing all the heavy lifting here. We partner with him through our agreement and our actions coming out of that agreement.

There are many voices vying for our agreement. Who are you agreeing with today?

Tell us your story in the comments. It will help others when they see they aren’t the only one. And please share this post so we can bless as many people as possible with the freedom that comes from agreeing with Jesus.