Setting Goals

Setting goals has not been one of my strengths.  Even though study after study seems to indicate that those that do are more successful and achieve more than those that don’t, I have struggled every year to set goals.  I wondered why that was so difficult for me.  It came down to this:

I was overthinking it WAY too much and making it much more complicated than it has to be.

In my mind, I was thinking that I had to have the right formula, a certain number of actions points, perfectly formatted and equally bulleted actions steps, etc.  I would often wonder what should I set goals for, and what categories should they be listed under.  See what I mean.  Overthinking.

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By Faith

Hello…Hello….is this thing on?…

Well, I had seriously considered shutting down the blog, but I held off just because I thought there might be a remote chance I would want to blog later on.  This has always been a place where I’ve shared thoughts and ideas that are swimming in my head. So although it’s been a while, here’s the latest.

leap-of-faithThis morning I was reading through Hebrews 11:8-16.  Some would call it the “Hall of Faith” because it goes through several lives of people in the Bible that lived and took action “by faith”.  In fact, that phrase “by faith” appears 4 times in this short passage.

You can read the passage for yourself.  While I’m always struck by the amount of faith each person had and acted on, in my mind, Abraham’s always stands out: “By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going.” (v8)

That is incredible faith.  It’s not just incredible, it’s dangerous.  It’s the kind of faith that would make some look at you like you’ve lost it.  Even other believers in Christ will think that of you.  It’s not “prudent”. It’s not “wise”.  I’m not throwing out wisdom and prudence.  It’s just that so often faith seems to go against the grain of what would be deemed as wisdom and prudence.

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What’s in 15 minutes…

The start of a new day.  Work projects are on the docket and are calling for attention.  The temptation is to throw back some coffee and dive right on in.

This is my morning routine and struggle.  Has been ever since I was a teenager.  The distractions have changed, but the pull is that same. It’s that temptation to totally forego any time alone with God and dive right into work…or even Facebook or Twitter.  Don’t hate.  You know you’re there to. Continue reading

Don’t Forget

It’s that thing that you’ve been praying about for weeks, maybe months or years, that you REALLY want.  If God would answer this prayer in a “Yes!”, life would be just that much better.  Ever been there?  I have.  In fact, I’m there right now.  I’m asking for something that I really hope the Lord will answer in the affirmative, but I’m trying my best to stay at the place of “God, I’m asking You to do this, but not my will, Your will.”  Maybe you can relate.  I think we all have been there on a regular, sometimes daily, basis.  Some things small, some things life critical.

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When It’s Time To Leave

Back in August I shared the news here on the blog about a big transition that we were making in our lives as I was stepping out of “vocational ministry”.  It was this time last year that we began to actively pray and plan towards our transition, and now, being on the flip side of it a year later, I’ve been thinking some back through that period of time.

If you do a search on “leaving vocational ministry”, you won’t find a whole lot of helpful insights and articles online.  There are some, but I guess for one reason or another the topic is just not widely blogged about.  One of the gems I did find was written by Ron Edmondson.  You can read the full blog post on his blog, but I wanted to share his thoughts on when it is time to leave a ministry position, an organization, a job, etc.  Not all of these were applicable to my own situation, but several of them were really helpful to me. Continue reading