Kevin Tumlinson's Blog, page 8

failureocity

You are a complete and utter failure. Me too, actually.

Ain't it great? Wow! What freedom! What a wonderful gift! Can you believe that we ... err ... some of you have that "look" on your  face. OK, let me back up a bit.

A while back I was thinking about my life. Mostly I was thinking, "Wow. I really haven't accomplished anything worthwhile, have I? And I'm overweight. And I'm in debt. And I tend to make some bad choices. I'm pretty sure God's unhappy with me."

Best. Thought process. EVER.

Because it was around that time I started to realize I have to actually change something if I want to live the life I want to live, and that God intended me to live.

Haven't accomplished anything worthwhile? Did I plan to do anything worthwhile?

Overweight? Was I adjusting my diet, and was I exercising more often?

In debt? Was I improving my financial education and making to changes to how I think about and manage money?

Bad choices? Was I learning from them, and consciously deciding not to repeat them?

God's unhappy with me? Can I blame Him? What have I done to please Him? What have I done to glorify Him? What have I done to be obedient to Him?

Thank God I finally woke up. I spent the first 40 years of my life vacillating about right and wrong, about wealth and poverty, about health and sickness, about all the aspects of my life I was unhappy with, and whether or not I was unhappy enough to CHANGE THEM. 

I wasn't. Or rather, I was, but I wasn't willing to change them. I hadn't made the decision to make changes in my life. I hadn't asked God to change me, because I was afraid of the pain that would come with change. But above all, I was afraid of failing.

Thing is, I actually made a thinking error right from the start. See, I made this assumption that God was unhappy with me based on the fact that I was unhappy with me. And sure, maybe God would have preferred I make better choices. Maybe He was displeased with the choices I was making. But "unhappy" is a long way from "not loving," which is how I was thinking of it. I was thinking, "I haven't done anything to earn God's love."

Brrrrt. WRONG! Back to zero. Re-read the rules. You are playing the wrong game. No wonder you're losing!

God may well be unhappy about your life and your choices. But that isn't the same as not loving you. He loves you, no matter what, because He made you to be loved. He sent Christ as a sacrifice, the embodiment of God and man, to die in our place for the evil and sin in our lives, and to be reborn to prove God's power over evil and sin and death. He did that so that He could just love us, straight up, without us having to do a thing to "earn it." 

We do not have to earn God's love. We have it. We do not have to earn God's forgiveness. We have it. We have only to accept Christ as the guiding force in our lives, the strength in our hearts, the rule for how we think and behave and decide. All of that, it's what Christ came here to make available to us.

And we fail.

Oh yeah, we fail. Big time. We lust. We envy. We lie. We steal. We cheat. We experience wrath and anger. We are gluttonous. If you don't fall somewhere in that list, I bet we can dig for a bit and find something that applies to you. Because we fail. It's what we do.

And God knows that. And He's OK with it. He loves you "even though."

That phrase has special meaning for me and my wife, Kara. When we were planning our wedding, our minister sat with us to counsel us about marriage and the decision we were making. And when he wrote our vows, he included something in them that he had brought up during those sessions. "God loves you even though." Even though you sin. Even though you become angry. Even though you doubt or disbelieve. Even though you fail. God loves you even though.

Look, we're all falling on our faces, all the time. It's going to happen. You should try your best to avoid it, try to make changes, try to be a better steward of the gifts God has given you. But you're going to fail sometimes. It's part of the package. 

God loves you, even though.

And God is your only way to improve. It starts by asking him to change you.

I recommend reading Lord Change Me, by James MacDonald. I first encountered this book when I started attending Sugar Creek Baptist Church in Sugar Land, and it was a great start for changing my life to the glory of God. It offers very practical advice and a structure for asking God to change your life, and for turning away from the sin that has dominated you in the past. 

Short version: Ask God to change you. Repent (turn away) from the sin in your life by proclaiming, "I'm dead to that. And Christ is alive in me." And act on what you know to be good while avoiding what you know to be sin. 

You're going to fail. God knows I do, every day. And when you fail, your first impulse will be to feel an overwhelming guilt and shame. Go ahead. Feel it. Then pray a sincere apology to God, and start again with "Lord, change me." Make the request every time you fall, and make your best effort to die to sin and live in Christ. The effort is worth a lot.

Failing does not make you a failure. In the end, every failure is just a chance to learn and grow and become stronger and better than before. When you pick up and keep going, the failures in your wake become the steps you climb to reach new heights. God is waiting for you at the top, but he's also walking along beside you, to help you get to where you're going. Trust that. Trust that even in failure, God has your back. 

You are amazing. God made you, so you know it's true. 

faithnicity

I was thinking about the atheist thing. You know ... there's a surprising number of people who don't believe in God. That always bothered me when I was younger, in high school or even in my early college years. I had a tendency to try to "convince" folks. I formulated complex but "unbeatable" arguments, as if I could somehow logic an atheist into believing. 

Shocker—you can't.

If someone doesn't believe, nothing you say is just going to magically convert them. But logic arguments, in particular, are going to fail. Because frankly, atheists have logic in their favor in an argument about God. They can point at hard evidence for anything they "believe," and all you have is "faith." 

Key words here. Read closer.

If you can point to something as a fact, you don't "believe" it.  You know it. You have evidence, concrete and verifiable. You can pick up the object of your knowledge, or touch it, or demonstrate it. Not so with God. 

Kicker for Christians—you either have "faith" or you don't, but if you do, then you don't just "believe." You also know. Logical arguments against the existence of God don't really work for persuading you, because even with the "evidence of your eyes" you still, deep down, somehow, know the truth. You've seen too much. You've felt too much. 

Some of the atheists in my life like to bring out this little gem: "You only believe because you were raised in a Christian household, here in the U.S. If you were born in another culture, you'd have different beliefs."

I think that's true. I think that being a Christian is in large part a matter of where you were born, how you were raised, what you encountered as you made your way through life. So you can pretty easily persuade me that my "Christian-ness" is a factor arising almost exclusively from my upbringing.

Don't know if you noticed, but the argument just shifted.

Go back. Re-read. You see it? It's right there in front of you.

We're no longer arguing the existence of God, but whether or not we'd be Christians in another culture. The argument changed, but the subject is close enough that most people shrug the change off as semantics. It ain't. 

Semantics would be arguing over the name of God. I say God, you say Jehovah, she says Jesus, he says The Eternal One, that guy says something else entirely (or says nothing at all ... some belief you can never utter the name of God ... so does not speaking His name mean he doesn't exist?). Bickering over how to refer to God is a semantic argument. It gets you nowhere. It's definitions of terms, nothing more. A rose by any other name would smell as omnipotent.

The logic trap from above is the subtle turning of the argument of existence to the argument of your particular flavor of religion. I'm a Christian because I was born into a Christian household, I was raised in a Christian home, I attend a Christian church and I participate in a Christian community. But I'm a believer in God and in the Word, and that is independent of my upbringing.

There's a reason that, universally, it is considered wrong to steal, bad to murder, unacceptable to hurt a child. "Human decency" is one of the semantic names we throw at these universal truths, but what makes them universal? What makes even the cultural "exceptions" to these rules somehow offensive to the rest of civilization? How many cultures were conquered and destroyed because they veered away from these universal truths, and why would that happen? Why should we care, we who live on this side of the globe, what people are doing to each other on the opposite side?

People are inherently good? Then what defines good? People are inherently a bunch of ignorant, angry jerks? Says who? Humanity? We're not fit to judge each other. We all have our hang-ups, right? How can I point at you and say, "You're wrong! You're evil!" and at the same time be unconcerned that someone else is pointing at me and saying the same thing?

So humanity isn't a good judge of good and evil, right and wrong. Those concepts are somehow outside of us, above us. And that's the rub for Christians, or people of any faith. We see that as evidence of God. Atheists see it as evidence of ... what exactly? Evolution of personality? We all spontaneously decided, as a species spread far and wide, at times with no contact with each other whatsoever for thousands of years (if ever), that "these are the rules by which we shall all abide?"

Ever heard of Occam's Razor? 

The principle (attributed to William of Occam) that in explaining a thing no more assumptions should be made than are necessary. (Pulled from Google, 5 April 2013. "Define: occam's razor")

Or put simply, "All things being equal, the simplest explanation is the most likely explanation."

What's simpler? Man evolved a universal sense of right and wrong despite little to no contact with each other across oceans and continents for thousands and thousands of years? Or universal rules for right and wrong exist because a higher intelligence established them?

Logic again. Sorry. That won't work to persuade anyone. It's just an exercise in showing how smart I am (Answer: Not very, when considered on the whole of my life). But there's a reason why logic doesn't win a faith argument. It comes down to "choice."

In Matthew 13:10-17, the disciples ask Jesus why he's always goin' about and speaking in parables. His reply reveals a lot about why logic can't win a faith argument, and what it takes, exactly, to believe in God:

10 The disciples came to him and asked, “Why do you speak to the people in parables?”

11 He replied, “Because the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them.12 Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them. 13 This is why I speak to them in parables:

“Though seeing, they do not see;
    though hearing, they do not hear or understand.

14 In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah:

“‘You will be ever hearing but never understanding;
    you will be ever seeing but never perceiving.
15 For this people’s heart has become calloused;
    they hardly hear with their ears,
    and they have closed their eyes.
Otherwise they might see with their eyes,
    hear with their ears,
    understand with their hearts
and turn, and I would heal them.’

16 But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear. 17 For truly I tell you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.

Matthew 13:10-17

It's there. You can pray for wisdom to understand it and it will probably pop out at you. I'll do my best to nudge that along with my pitiful and inadequate summary:

God hides the truth in plain sight, but to believe in Him you have to choose to believe. Faith is, in the end, the choice you make to believe, even when all evidence and all logic tells you it can't be.

And suddenly, miraculously, this goes from being "choosing to believe" to "knowing the truth!"

Seriously. I can't explain it any better than that, because God actually designed the Word so that it cannot be understood until you believe.

You can logic it all you want. You can scoff and eye-roll and sneer. But it's right there in front of you the whole time, waiting for you to notice it. And the only way you can is to choose it.

It's a little like germs.

Bear with me, this works.

Germs are there. We know they're there. But how? We see their effect, sure. People get sick. We know a lot about germs, these days. But before their discovery, no one would have ever believed in the existence of tiny bugs that live everywhere and make people sick. Still, there they were, whether we believed in them or not. 

Then, one day, someone says, "I bet if I take this powerful set of magnifying lenses and start looking at stuff, I'll find all kinds of things." And they did. They chose. They took action. They built something that let them start looking closer, and then they saw them. Germs, never having existed before in all the knowledge of man for centuries, suddenly came into existence.

Now you can buy soap for a buck that helps you kill germs on contact. Thank you, science. We live because of your endeavors. But frankly, the majority of the Earth's population, throughout all of history, has never actually seen a germ. We believe they are there, and we take actions to prevent them from harming us. We make a choice to behave as if they are real, whether we can see them or not, and that protects us from their machinations. 

Believing in God is a little like believing in germs. Not the best analogy I've ever come up with, but let's put a little thought into it. 

God is there, whether we know it or believe it or not. Right now, we don't have the tools to see Him. No microscope. But even if we can't see Him, we can make a choice to behave as if He is real. We can study His Word, we can commune with His people, we can seek His will for our lives. And when we do that, something starts to happen within us. 

God responds.

Suddenly, we are watching a movie we've seen a million times and some small throw-away line takes on new meaning, maybe even shapes our life a bit. A book we're reading about the invention of the printing press suddenly opens our eyes to how people work together. We hear someone utter a Bible passage we've heard a million eye-rolling times, and suddenly WE UNDERSTAND IT.

Our tiny, insignificant, mustard-seed-sized act of faith is suddenly blossoming into the bud of a tree, and that bud is starting to grow, and suddenly it fills our whole life with the truth of what WE see but what otheres CAN'T see, even though it is RIGHT. THERE. IN FRONT. OF. THEM.

That's why logic doesn't work to convince an atheist about the existence of God. It can't. They're smart. They have that tool on their side, all sewn up. All we have is He who invented logic in the first place. They're arguing from within, where the rules are established and make no allowances for anything that doesn't fit. We're arguing from outside and above, where the one who made the rules is keeping the next level of knowledge, unbound by the rules of the system.

The Kingdom of God is hidden right in plain sight, and we can only see it when we choose to see it. That's why it's so hard, even impossible, for some people. They argue that if you have to "believe" something for it to be true, then it isn't true."The great thing about science is it's true whether you believe or not!" That's brilliant. I couldn't agree more! Science is about facts! Provable facts! 

That's right. It is. And Faith is about Faith. It's a paradox that people can't live with. Until they do.

And that's just about as plain as this Wordslinger can make it.

budgeticity

Last night was "Week 3" of Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University. In general, the message for the evening was "Tell your money what to do or you'll wonder where it went." We learned about the importance of sitting down and planning a budget, finding an assignment for every single dollar that comes into your hands, and doing that every month for the rest of your life.

Sounds kind of scary when you put it like that.

And yeah, when the class started I was a bit intimidated by the whole concept. Budgets, for me, have always felt like shackles. They were something used to limit me. Whatever I wanted out of my life, it definitely did not involve allocating every dollar to a task, every month, forever.

But then, what exactly did I want out of my life?

See, there's the problem, right there. I have had no plan for forty years. No real goals. Yeah, I've had a list of wants, things I was keen to accomplish. Wealth has always been on that "list." I've even gone so far as to figure out my own definition for wealth:

Wealth is the freedom and ability to do, have, or be anything I want, including the ability to give to others and to help others achieve a wealthy lifestyle.

That definition changes all the time, actually. I modify it as I learn more. You should have a definition of wealth of your very own. Just keep this rule in mind: Wealth is about more than money. 

Having a defintion is great, but the problem is I had no plan. How, exactly, did I intend to get to wealth? I know the destination, but I don't know the route. I haven't sat with it, written out a plan of action, set milestones and goals that will continuously get me closer.

That's the biggest reason I enrolled in FPU in the first place. I recognized, eventually (FINALLY), that I lack a financial education. Or, at the very least, my financial education has some major gaps in it. I understand business, I understand strategy, I understand marketing and consumers and how industries and markets can move and grow. I don't understand money. 

And even though wealth and money aren't the same thing, you're going to have a much easier time achieving wealth if you have control of money. Money is a resource, a tool, that helps you achieve your goals faster.

Think of building a skyscraper. 

In theory, you could start searching the Internet for everything there is to know about building a skyscraper, from building techniques and materials to local laws and restrictions. You could go and interview people who have built skyscrapers, from contractors who put up the support beams or dug holes or laid tile in the lobby, all the way up to the guy who oversaw the entire project, from blueprint to majestic tower, rising into the sky. You can learn everything there is to know, and then move on to gathering materials. Mining and then smelting iron into beams. Making your own cement from scratch. Building a factory that churns out any and all materials, from floor tiles to window glass to the flag that will wave from the building's roof.

That's a lot of work. So yeah, in theory, you could get it all done, and nary a penny might leave your pocket. You may also be the approximate age of Methuselah by the time you turn that first shovel-full of dirt for starting the foundation. 

But let's say you have a few hundred million dollars at your disposal. Wouldn't that speed things up a bit? Pay an architect to design the building. Pay a builder to oversea operations. Pay contractors to do the labor. Pay for materials. It all happens so much quicker with money. Money is like a time accelerator for getting stuff done.

Common sense, I know.

And yet, this is not how we tend to think about money in our personal lives. We think of it as the end, not the means. My own theory on this, from my own experience, is that we don't have plan for how to use the money we make. If we have a plan, a budget, money stops being the end in and of itself, and starts being the tool we use to get to what we really want.

We tell our money what to do, instead of wondering where it went.

My skyscraper analogy isn't mine. It actually comes from the Bible. Check it out:

28 Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won’t you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it? 29 For if you lay the foundation and are not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule you,30 saying, ‘This person began to build and wasn’t able to finish.’

Luke 14:28-30

Whaaaaaat? The Bible is telling me to plan how to use my money? Set a goal? Manage things? 

And look at what you can accomplish when you do that. You can build a friggin' TOWER. If that's your thing. Or a small business. Or a large business. Or a house. Or a vacation to Europe. Or college for the kids. Or a debt-free life. Or steak dinners every night. Or a million other things that all add up to ONE thing: Wealth.

I haven't done this. I'm doing it. I can't tell you it works for me personally, but I bet I'll be able to soon. I do believe, though, that telling your money what to do is what God wants from you, as a good steward.

Be faithful with a little and you'll be entrusted with a lot. That's from the Bible, too. 

 

discernmentation

One of the things that always frustrated me when I was looking for "answers" to some of the "big questions" in my "life" (this quote thing gets "addictive") was the fact that I constantly read, hear, and watch material from experts on business, lifestyle design, and philosophy, but never seem to find any real, practical advice.

And that extended to the Bible as well. I would read a passage in the Bible, and I might find some inspiration from it, but I couldn't see how it would immediately impact me, or how I should act on what I was learning. I'd read books by Christian authors, books by business leaders, books by or about great figures in history, and I could see how they lived their life, but I couldn't seem to spot any literal, actual steps I should take to live the way they lived.

That information was there, of course. It's just hidden. Hidden in plain sight, most of the time. Because, frankly, even though I was exposing my heart and mind to the right messages, I was missing a vital component. I was skipping one of the most important steps for learning from the world around you. 

God hides wisdom from us. Not in a malcious way. More like an Easter egg hunt. It's a jewel, a prize that you really, really want (even if you don't know you want it), but to get it you have to actually search for it. 

And God isn't mean about it. He gives you hints. He nudges you in the right direction. In fact, He's armed you with the perfect tool for finding wisdom—pray for it, and then start looking for it. You'll find it. I guarantee that. 

In Proverbs 24:32, Solomon wrote the formula for finding wisdom in the world around us. It's so simple, you probably breeze right past it when you read it. Read it in context. I'll even highlight the bits I'm talking about:

30 I went past the field of a sluggard,
    past the vineyard of someone who has no sense;
31 thorns had come up everywhere,
    the ground was covered with weeds,
    and the stone wall was in ruins.
32 I applied my heart to what I observed
    and learned a lesson from what I saw:
33 A little sleep, a little slumber,
    a little folding of the hands to rest—
34 and poverty will come on you like a thief
    and scarcity like an armed man.

 Proverbs 24:30-34

My trouble has always been keeping my mouth shut long enough to learn from what I'm witnessing in the world around me. I talk too much, or I write too much, or I think too much, and instead of seeing wisdom right in front of me I end up being critical and closed-minded and self-aggrandizing and I learn nothing. Then I have the audacity to complain that there is no wisdom to be found. 

So I'm going to stop short right now, and pay attention to this message myself. I'm going to apply my heart to what I observe, and learn a lesson from what I see. Try it yourself. Let's see how much we grow.

 

 

struggleation

Sometimes there's a whole lot of tough stuff hitting you at once. Money gets tight just when your air conditioner breaks down, and your mother calls to tell you her apartment is flooded and she needs a place to stay for a few weeks, and one of your cats gets injured and has to go to the vet, which ends up costing more than a house payment, and while you're coordinating all of this you get a flat tire. For a nice cherry on top, while trying to find a parking spot at the grocery store, someone zips in ahead of you without so much as a wave. 

I've always handled things like this very poorly. I get mad. I say things (paint-peeling things that could make a sailor blush). I make rash decisions and take stupid actions. More than once I have hopped out of my truck to confront the jerk that just cut me off, or the one who won't back up and let me get out of a parking space, or the one who was just minding her own business but happened to be in my way on a very bad day. 

Not good. Dangerous, even. But beyond that, so outside the scope of what God wants for us it's unbelievable. 

Here's a news flash—bad stuff happens. It's like it happens all the time, am I right? 

It's true. Even when we are fervently praying that nothing bad will happen, something always seems to go wrong. Scary stuff that makes us feel like we're alone here, like no one, but especially not God, is looking out for us. We're on our own.

And it's true. We really are on our own. 

What ... you expected something different?

Here's the truth—when we are focusing on the things that scare us, that make us angry, that make us worry, we are on our own. God is there, of course. Always. But he's more or less hovering just a bit away, waiting for you to realize that you're thrashing and struggling and trying to stay afloat in a situation in which you have no hope of surviving.

I like the lifeguard analogy.

I heard this from my pastor, Mark Hartman, at Sugar Creek Baptist Church in Sugar Land. Lifeguards are trained to scan the waters for danger, for swimmers who are struggling. And when they see someone, they leap into action. They grab their rescue board and dive in, they swim to the person who is struggling and drowning and then ...

They stop.

Whazzawhozitnow? Stop?!? Hello! Drowning victim here! Struggling, barely keeping my head above water, trying desperately to hold on to something, anything that will keep me firmly in the "living" category! And you choose now to take a break?!?

The thing is, if a lifeguard immediately rushes over and grabs the person who is drowning, panic will cause that person to resist and struggle even harder. They'll grasp onto the lifeguard, clinging for life, and end up dragging both of them down. There's a greater chance that they'll both drown out there if the lifeguard doesn't stop, assess, wait just a beat, and act only when the person has stopped struggling.

That's God. He sees us struggling, he knows that we're drowning and that we are scared, but until we stop the struggle He's going to wait. Until we realize that there's nothing we can do—that it was us that got us here in the first place, that if we could swim our way out we would have done so already—He's just going to wait, just out of reach. 

We can swim toward Him, of course. That means that we've calmed down enough to be rational. We're focusing less on the struggle and the danger and more on the positive things in our life. We've realized that our struggle is getting us nowhere, and if we don't get a grip we're going to go down. We can move toward God, and He will open up His arms and take us back to shore.

More often, though, we can't seem to get out of the struggle. We're focused on everything that's wrong about the situation. We can't find our footing, we can't find anything to grip on to, we can't seem to calm down enough to even out and take smooth, steady strokes, to follow a pattern that will get us back to safety. In those cases, God waits. He's not going to let us down ... He's still there, still cares, still knows exactly what to do. And eventually He acts to save us, because He loves us.

Of course, some of us keep strugglng for a long, long time. We've been treading water for so long, we have no idea how to stop. We're so afraid of sinking that we expend massive amounts of energy resources to keep our head above water. And it seems like it's working for a time. From the outside, from anyone swimming nearby or walking on the distant shoreline, we may not even look like we're struggling. "I'm OK," we say. "I can do this. I can keep kicking, keep paddling, keep struggling until I suddenly fly out of the water and glide safely to land on a cloud of my own making!"

Get real.

This is the kind of swimmer I've been for years. I struggle, but I largely keep it hidden. God sees me, though. He knows the truth. He's a trained lifeguard, able to see all the signs. And he's just waiting, waiting, waiting. Immortal, omnipotent deities seem to have way more patience than we mere mortals do, am I right?

If you're facing struggles in your own life, it's OK. It's OK that it bothers you. It's OK that it scares you. It's OK that you don't know what to do or where to turn. God's there, waiting. He won't let you down.

Sometimes we lose the things we're trying to hold on to—our home, our job, our pets, our family, our health. That's going to happen. Everything has its time in our lives, and when that time is over we have to deal with the grief of loss. God is there, too. He's waiting for you to come to him for comfort. We can't always understand the "why" of loss, but we can have faith that there is a reason for it, somewhere, somehow, and that it's tied to the love God has for us.

Our child playing with something dangerous—it could be fun for the kid, and it could hurt their feelings if they lose their toy, but we take it away for their good, whether they know it or not.

A student is punished for cheating on a test and has to miss out on after-school sports—no fun, and they don't get the benefits of being part of the team, but when they have to retake the test they learn and grow in a way they would have missed out on before.

A drowning man, struggling in the waves as a lifeguard floats nearby—he's afraid, panicking, and not thinking clearly, but someone is there to rescue him, once the struggling stops.

Lots of things happen that aren't pleasant, and that seem to bring no good at all. In the end it's about our perspective. What are we capable of understanding in that moment? Not much, really. That's why faith is so important. We have to know that God is aware of our struggle, and beyond that He knows how to use our struggles and pain to make us safer, stronger, better. 

Believe that, and act on it in faith, and the things that you struggle with become less frightening. Look for a way to learn and grow from every experience, and count all of the good that you have in your life, even during the hard times, and you will live a fuller life with less fear and pain. That's the point. That's the plan God has for you. Accepting it takes a leap of faith, but living it makes for a grander life than you ever imagined.

addictectomy

The adage goes, "Addiction is a disease." I like Mitch Hedberg's quote, "Alcoholism is a disease, but it's the only disease you can get yelled at for having." Drug addicts and alcoholics have managed to contract the equivalent of an STD for their souls—a disease that they've willingly infected themselves with, and that controls them even when they know better and want more out of life.

The thing about addition that makes it so harmful is that it really IS a disease—a disease that infects everyone else in the addict's life.

Addiction is strange, because it's broader than you suspect. I've never been addicted to drugs or alcohol, but I've rarely passed on a bowl full of chocolate or a pile of chicken wings. I used over spending to comfort myself when I was single and lonely, such as when my Granny died and I was feeling a keen pain, deep in my soul. 

Addiction to drugs and alcohol was never the bondage I turned to, but it has has touched my lfe. And it leaves an ugly stain wherever it sits. The addict has no idea just how much they are hurting everyone around them. They aren't thinking rationally. When you speak to them, you're not speaking to THEM but to their sickness, to the thing that has control of them. Want to seen modern day demon possession? That's it. That's what it is. It feeds on the victim until there is nothing left, and it tries to feed on every relationship in the victim's life in the same way. And it will, if you let it.

I am always trying to control everything that happens around me, and frankly that's when things fall apart fastest. I take responsibly, even for things that have nothing to do with my own decisions, because that's what good leaders do. But there are times, many times, when you have to step back from taking action, and instead you have to set rules.

I like to create processes. I have a process for everything in my professional life. Now I need to focus on creating a process for my personal life. 

We're commanded to love others as we'd love ourselves. But even in love, even in unconditional love, there are rules. I have to write those rules down, to use the gift God gave me for creating by using words. I have to write that I will always love the people in my life, unconditionally, but there are rules to interracting with me and my family and my home. If you can obey those rules, you can be with me. If not, I will love you anyway ... from afar.

I can't have an addict around my family, around my home, lying to me and stealing from me. I can't have a realtionship with the thing that has control of them. I love the addict, I hate the addiction. I will be here, any time and every time. "Here are the rules."

Addiction really is a disease, but it's a disease that infects the family and friends and community of the one addicted. For some diseases, the only cure is amputation and cauterization. 

The toughest part about addiction for the people in an addict's life is simply acknowledging that there's nothing you can do. It's all on the shoulders of the addict ... until they ask for help. So here we are, sitting and waiting for them to ask, so that we can finally DO something. 

That's the same relationship we have with God. As sinners, we are addicts to our own nature. But God is waiting there, loving us, ready to help as soon as we ask. But He has rules. He has requirements of us, if we're going to have a loving relationship with him. We have to die to sin. We have to repent and turn away. We have to love others. We have to love the Lord, our God, more than we love anything else on this Earth. He will love us no matter what. He will have a realtionship with us only if we die to sin.

When you look at that list, you start to realize it's not such a tough bunch of rules. We just have to choose to obey them. We can have the rewards of a loving relationship with God, with family and friends, with ourselves, if we choose to turn away from what binds us, and instead enslave ourselves to God's will for our lives. It's slavery that comes with more freedom than you've ever known. 

hopeitude

I was reading Following Your Bliss, Right off the Cliff on the New York Times website. Long and the short of it, "Following your dreams is risky and sometimes you fail." 

Duh. But yeah, it's true and it's something to think about during the planning process for your business (or your side business, or your community program, or wherever your dreams fit in the scheme of things). Sometimes the dream isn't enough.

There's some science in this article, about the part of the brain that controls worry and the pain that comes from it. And to overcome that physiological reaction—so that we can take action and attempt to make our dreams come true, despite the risk of pain and failure—we feel hope.

I love this line from the article:

As paradoxical as it sounds, [Michael Derring] said, “If you stop worrying about the outcomes, you will achieve a better outcome.”

Stop worrying about the outcomes? Yikes! Most of the time, it seems like "worrying about the outcomes" is all we do! But there's a sweet sort of logic here.

The article is more or less saying, "Don't let your emotions become invested in the business." Don't put your self-worth on the line for a shoe store or an auto shop or a novel. If you fail, you'll believe you are the failure. But that's not how failure works. A person isn't a failure. Only actions can be failures. A person is a decision-making, action-taking, hope-and-faith-having machine. We make decisions, we take action, we have hope and faith that it will work out. And if it doesn't ...

If you approach a business or any other endeavor with the attitude that, should it fail, it isn't the end of the world, you can pick up and recover, you're chances of success actually increase. You're willing to take more risks, for starters, and risk is the price of momentum. You may take actions you wouldn't have taken before, in a more cautious mindset, and those actions lead to results, and those results may end up bringing you increased benefits. Or they may blow up and fade out. It happens.

From a financial standpoint, this is why you want to be smart about the way you invest in a business. Make the decision early on to stay away from debt. Take on investors, but don't take on loans. Investors know that they're taking a risk, and that it may not make a return. Lenders don't care either way if you succeed or fail, they expect repayment with interest and they'll try to destroy you if you don't follow through. Investors empower, lenders enslave. 

Trust me on this one ... I'm enslaved to a lot of lenders at the moment.

From a spiritual standpoint, this is why you want to ensure that your business is built to glorify God. God likes it when we do things that are empowering, that build something that brings good into the world. Staying focused on God's Ultimate Rule—Love your neighbor as you love yourself—means you're doing everything right. You won't have to worry about mistakes coming back to bite you in the ... assets. The business may fail, due to a lack of demand or bad timing or myriad other reasons, but it won't take you with it. 

So what happens after failure? Learning. This is the point where you pray and ask for wisdom. "Show me, Lord, where it went wrong. Show me how I can pick up and start again. Show me how to change my plan and build something that glorifies you." God never denies the request for wisdom. He just requires you to commit some brain power and effort to it.

This article ... I'm on the fence about it. I get a real "don't pursue your dreams because they're risky" vibe from it. But there are points made that are more encouraging. Hope—that's a good message. So read it as a cautionary tale. Have hope, but also have a plan. Have a goal, but don't worry about the outcome. Invest, but don't enslave yourself to the dream. You belong to a greater power than dreams.

wisdomification

I'm 40 years old, and I'm pretty sure I haven't done my best at being a steward of the gifts I was given. Some, yes, maybe. I've definitely nurtured skills such as writing, marketing and strategy, self improvement, knowledge about innovation and technology and leadership thought. My education in those areas isn't "complete." There's always more to learn and more ways to grow, but that's true of any field of expertise. I spend a lot of time growing in these areas.

I've fallen short in a couple of major areas, though. Money ... that's a big one. I had a lot of wrong-headed thinking about money, all through my 20s and 30s, and that has lead me to be deep in debt, with nothing put back for rainy days or long winters. I'm changing that now, growing in my financial education and developing the long-abused self discipline I need to be better with my finances, and to build a better future.

I've also fallen short on my health. I'm actually pretty "healthy," in that I'm not suffering from anything debilitating or inhibiting. I do have a pacemaker, but that's actually improved my health and physical stamina, rather than be a debit to my health account. Where I've fallen short is in diet and exercise, of course. I'm about 70 pounds overweight. I get winded walking from my truck to my office, or taking small flights of stairs. I'm chronically fatigued a lot of the time. I suffer from indigestion and other digestive irritations. In general, my energy and my stamina are low, and the way I look actually impacts my self esteem. I'm working to change these facts, too, by changing the way I approach food and by taking opportunities to move more, any chance I get. 

In both of those areas I have a ways to go. I have miles and years of damage and abuse to undo. Maybe some of it will never be undone, but I don't think that's true. I think that if I turn to the source of my strength, if I trust and rely on God's strength instead of my own, I'll be able to accomplish anything that brings good and joy into my life, and the lives of others.

The other area where I see need for change is my ego. I am utterly self-centered and selfish, much of the time. I know that my focus should be on loving and helping others, as often as possible. This is my mission from God, the commandment I can't avoid whenever I open my Bible or simply look around me. If I'm going to glorify God in all I do, I have to start with the one indomitable command He's given. I have to love others as I love myself. I have to help others the way I would want others to help me.

If I concentrate on that, it's possible ... more than possible, likely ... that the other areas of my life will fall in line, and even with all the work I'll have to put into it, they'll seem easy to me. 

This morning I started reading Proverbs (actually, I started listening to it from the Bible Gateway app ... worthy). I've read through it before, but this morning I approached it with new focus. I had read about Solomon, who was told by God that he could have any one thing he asked for. He could have asked for long life, or for all the earth to come under his command, or for more gold or more power, or for any number of things that might be attractive to anyone, even a king. But what he asked for was wisdom.

The result of that wisdom, beyond becoming a ruler who has become the benchmark for wise rulers throughout history, was the book of Proverbs. It's a treatise of Solomon's wisdom. It's written in simple language that, somehow, hides more truth than it reveals, and that can only be dug up through repeated reading and study. It's a guide for anyone who wants to improve his or her life, to get on a path that leads to greater life, to better health, the increased wealth. Looking for the ultimate self-help book? It was written a few thousand years ago, in the format of a letter from father to son. 

In Becoming a Millionaire God's Way, Dr. C. Thomas Anderson writes that if you want to improve your life in every avenue, if you do nothing else, read, study, and dwell upon Proverbs. Follow the wisdom there and you'll start seeing positive results in your life. I already am.

It's not all about money, obviously. Money is just a tool for reaching goals, helping others, serving God. It's not all about health, either. We need strong health to have the energy and physical reserves to do what's good for us and for others and for God. Really it's all about gaining wisdom, and using that wisdom to glorify God.

Pray for wisdom. Ask for it right now. I pray this prayer throughout the day:

Lord, change me. Give me wisdom. Increase my faith. Fill me with your Holy Spirit. Show me how to glorify you in all I do. Amen.

Pray. Study. Pray and study. 

And it's not just about the Bible. Solomon studied the literature and wisdom of Egypt and other nations. He wrote about it all extensively, along with his insights and interpretations and ideas. He used what I call the REAL Word of God.

According to John 1:1-5 The Word was with God in the beginning. It was God. Ultimately, the Word became flesh in the form of Jesus, the Christ. So the Word is more than just the Bible. It has existed, exists, and will exist in all of creation and eternity. Which means you can find the Word, and wisdom, anywhere you look. So look broad and wide. Think about what you're seeing, consider it through the lens of your faith, and suddenly Wisdom starts to show herself.

Wisdom is the path to wealth, health, long life, and happiness. Wisdom is the road to God's kingdom. Trade everything for it. Forget feeling low about the failures of your life. Learn from them, grow from them, use them to cultivate a nice crop of wisdom. Every garden needs fertilizer.

I'm working on those rough patches in my life. I'm praying for God's wisdom and guidance, and that I wil receive increased faith and be filled with the Holy Spirit. And ya know, I can see it happening. I'm making a lot of progress, every minute of the day. I'm already well beyond the man I was just a couple of months ago. I'm grateful for God's touch on my heart and my life. I feel sorrow for those times I let Him down, and grieve the Holy Spirit, but I feel joy in His mercy and grace, and in the wisdom I'm seeing build slowly in me.

Wealth, health, and happiness come from love, righteousness, and wisdom. God wants us to seek all three, and he wants us to help each other in the search. I'll help you walk if you help me walk. We'll make the trip together.

wealthitude

The two biggest management challenges for lifestyle design (Christian or otherwise), are time and money. Seems like we're always short on both, or otherwise they're freakishly out of balance. For most of my 20s I had more time than money. These days I find a shortage on both sides of the scale, but if you take debt out of the equation I have less time than money, overall. Them's the breaks, right?

I always thought so. But that's pretty much a wrong-headed way to approach either subject. Nothing is inevitable about time or money. Both are tools, and our job is to learn how to use them.

I'm working on my financial education these days, because building wealth is important. With wealth you can help people. You can be at peace about one of the most stressful parts of life. Most importantly you can do good and glorify God.

Part of our "charter" on Earth is to be good stewards of what we're given, to be responsible and increase what has been entrusted to us. Building wealth gives us more resources to use on our mission.

Time, though, is the other side of that equation. Most of us are short on it, because we're busily trading it for coins. Wealth may be part of the charter, but we have to remember that time is the commodity in our life that we can spend but can never increase. God wants good things for us, and wants us to do good. Both require time.

Wealth can help free up your time, this is true. But here we have to be careful, and look a little closer at the definition of the term. Wealth is different than money.

Money is a symbol—it stands for the value of something. And since value is negotiable, according to supply and demand, that means money has a variable value. 

Wealth, on the other hand, has a constant value. Wealth—true wealth—is the ability to choose. If you want to take a vacation, you can choose where and when, but also how long and how many people to take with you, how many fine restaurants you'd like to visit, which hotel you want, and a myriad of other choices that have less to do with what you can "afford" and more to do with what you "want." Wealth means you are able to operate above the level of "need," and in the domain of "want." 

That's why wealth is such a tricky and controversial subject. As a rule, we humans are pretty poor at choosing the right "wants." If we aren't diligent in our obedience to God's Word, our wants become entirely self serving. We think only about what we want, what we have planned, what we will do with our wealth. We become a closed loop.

You know where a closed loop leads? Nowhere. You just keep running in the same circle, over and over, getting right back to where you started and starting right back up again.

One way to veer out of that rut and run at angles to your closed loop is to start focusing on others. God's greatest command is to love others—love 'em like you love yourself. Love 'em like your momma and your granny. Love 'em like you love your kids. You'd do a lot for your kids, right? How would you feel if someone else loved your kids as much as you do? How much joy could you take from someone giving to your kids the way you'd want to give to them, if you could? How sweet would life be if you knew that someone out there was taking care of those you loved?

That's how God feels about it.

We're all God's kids. We're all God's loved ones. "Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me." (That would be Matthew 25:40).

You want true wealth? Start doin' for the least among us. Start focusing on finding ways to increase your reach and your ability. Build a store of tools and resources that you can use to help others, to do good, to glorify God.

I haven't been so hot at this plan in the past, but I am definitely starting to see it in action in my life. The more I get away from focusing on Kevin, and the more I focus on God, the greater my joy and the greater my wealth. Now it's time for me to start focusing on ways to help others increase. How can I use what God has given me to do good among my brothers and sisters on Earth? How can I glorify God with everything I say, think, feel, and do? 

That's the reason I've started writing about Christian lifestyle design in this blog. God gave me an ability—I can think and I can organize that thinking and I can put that thinking on the page or the screen. I've used that ability, that gift, all of my life. I've served myself with it. Now it's time for me to use it to its real potential, to serve and glorify God. And to do that, I love you by sharing what I've learned in life. 

I'll need to go further, of course. I'll need to increase the wealth I steward, and then use that wealth to further the work. I'll need to use my tools to build and acquire better tools. That's the point.

Time and money. They run short. But humans—we have a remarkable ability to do a lot with very little. That's God at work in us. So let's embrace it, and use it to build something God will be proud of.

beliefitude

I have a tendency to get overwhelmed. I've always been a "big picture" guy, preferring to look at the general flow and the potential outcome, rather than dither in the details. The more steps something has, the more reluctant I am to be involved.

The problem is that a large chunk of life involves details and steps. If you want to buy a home, there's a stack of paperwork that may make no sense whatsoever, but it has to be filed. (Why isn't buying a home like buying anything else? "Here's my money. Gimme a house." There's a whole 'nother blog post in that one, I think.)

If you want to learn to play the piano, you have to learn the layout of the keyboard, learn to read music, learn to make chords, learn to keep time. 

If you want to learn to be a better writer you have to learn the rules of grammar (and when to make exceptions), you have to learn how to edit, you have to learn how to rewrite and how to start the whole process all over again.

Anything worth having in life is usually going to involve going through steps. And going through steps requires patience.

I am not a patient man. And thus, I am often overwhelmed.

My biggest issue, as far as I've determined, is that I like to do the work fast, so I like to do everything that's required ALL AT ONCE. I don't just want to write the book, I want to edit as I go, lay it out as I go, create the cover, and publish it, all within a week's time (even that is stretching the limits of my patience sometimes). The result? A book. Sometimes a very good book. But often a book with errors and issues that could have been avoided. 

There's an argument that can be made here, from a marketing and strategy standpoint, regarding "build to ship, ship to profit." I agree with that argument, actually. But let's put the marketing hat aside or second and put on our life hat.

Life requires taking things in smaller chunks. Baby steps. Remember What About Bob? Dr. Leo's "Baby Steps" were just the thing to get Bob out of his apartment, with Gill in tow, and down to Lake WWinnipesaukee. He was even sailing! He was a sailor! And it started with baby steps to the elevator.

It's taken me a long time to get past just knowing that this is common sense and actually accepting it as common sense. One step, and you've started. Action is taken. Progress is made. You are closer than you were just a step before.

I had an epiphany yesterday as I was on a walk (trying to lose the gut I regrew thanks to my past commitment to chicken wings and chocolate). The truth is I don't have what it takes to do all that is expected of me.

That's OK. I can admit it. I can accept it. I'm not a failure, just because I can't accomplish everything that's on my plate. But here's where things veer from the typical, accepted course ... that doesn't mean I won't accomplish it all.

My epiphany really came down to this: True, I don't have what it takes. But God does. True, I will be overwhelmed, but God won't. True, there's just too much, and I just don't have the attention span, commitment, dedication, brain power, money, time, resources, connections, know-how, expertise ... But God does. 

That's what faith is really about, see? It's not about wishing and hoping and believing with all your might that "some giant spirit in the sky will fulfill my wish." It's about believing that God will give you everything you need to fulfill His WILL. It's about knowing, without doubt, that God really wants the best for you, and the best may not always be what YOU want.

I get overwhelmed by the details. But God always delivers on what I really need. If something slips through the cracks, even if there are uncomfortable consequences, I can rest easier knowing that something I'm not aware of is in the works. Something bigger, better, and more wonderful than I had anticipated. I can rest, knowing that even if things seem to be going wrong around me, there's someone who sees a picture even bigger than what I see. 

The struggle for me, right now, is that I'm thinking, "My non-Christian friends aren't going to get this." In my study of God's Word, what I'm finding is that it takes belief to understand what you're reading. It's like having the pass key for an encrypted file.

You have to actually want it. You have to actually believe, even if just a tiny bit, before the "data" starts to flow. This is what causes atheists to scoff, and I totally understand why. It caused ME to scoff, and I WAS a believer. "You have to believe to believe?"

Notice I didn't say "keep an open mind." It's not about that. It's about true belief, or the willingness to admit that you know so very little of what's really there to be known, and there is truth in what you're hearing. I'm a complete ingoramus, but as I study and learn and grow in God's Word, praying for wisdom and increased faith and to be filled with the Holy Spirit, I'm starting see more than I expected. 

Remember those pictures that were made up of thousands of smaller images, and if you stared long enough you could see the shape of something else? That's what it is. The details are masking it, hiding it from everyone, right in plain site. If you just glance at that picture without knowing something is there, you'll never see it. You have to stare. You have to know. You have to believe that the picture isn't just some big joke, some random collection of images. You have to look at it with the expectation that eventually you'll see past all the details and get the real picture.

Until then, it's going to seem overwhelming. After all, not all of the smaller images in those pictures is actually used to create the hidden image. Some have to be ignored. Some seem important, but end up being distractions. It can really start to feel overwhelming, it's true. But relax your eyes, be diligent, be calm, and suddenly the real picture comes into focus, and you can't believe you never saw it before.