About ‘This Season’ Planning

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Spring

This is the first “This Season Plan” I’ve posted on online. It’s the first I’ve done since moving most of my thought processing onto the website. (Putting this online is experimental, and I’m not sure I’ll continue after this one.) I’ve done quite a few since inventing the process about 10 years ago. So let me start with a brief explanation.

Metadata & Marginalia

I’ve alluded to this document before. It’s one of my “Master Docs.”

Have you ever gotten stuck in your own head while trying to sort your thoughts? I get it all the time. Back in the day before programs like Scrivener began to include associated metadata, we writers had to create documents with information about the information we were trying to create.

That’s the best way to explain. We knew things about characters that hadn’t been written yet. We needed to track location descriptions because places change over time. We needed sometimes to keep track of where items are at certain points or bits of information that the reader knows but some characters don’t. We had other documents for research, and still others to track changes made on the fly. For example, I could decide to eliminate a character entirely from the rest of the book and have to leave myself a note to scrub him out of previously drafted chapters on the first revision.

Collating this support material is a going concern, but nothing is worse than trying to keep it all in your head while trying to draft a book. Once I figured out what worked for my writing, I started applying similar techniques to my efforts to build character and become a better human being. I’m writing the novel of my life every day, and it requires metadata and marginalia.

Types of Master Documents:

Most Master Docs are “living docs,” meaning I’ll continue to revise them to keep them up to date. Sometimes I call these Policy Docs because the goal is to record my vision for something and to provide continuity.

Some Master Docs, like “this season” are serial by nature. They speak to a period of time and I expect to replace them a few times a year.

About This Season Planning:

I used to include a lot of specific marching orders in my season plans, but that stuff now tends to land in my current journeys list. The main goal of This Season Doc is to ask God what he’s trying to accomplish in me this season. In looking over some of my older docs I realized how deeply personal this can be, which is why I’m not sure I’ll continue to post these online, but…

  • I need at least one example so that those following along can know what I refer to periodically.
  • I think this season can be shared without getting too awkward.
  • Since I’m posting my Journey list and Journey Plans it will really help to see the stage of processing I use to settle on those.

Note: Don’t get mislead when I include the word “Spring” in the name. I tend to create two to three of these a year and they don’t line up with the physical seasons perfectly. (I always think there should be four but it doesn’t happen). So I name them after the part of the year that I start realizing that I’m transitioning into a new season.

The Reason New Seasons is Crucial to Growth & Breakthrough

Because God is a father. He is loving and kind and nurturing too, but He longs to Father us. How many times did Jesus complain about the disciples not getting it? Comments like, you haven’t gotten off the spiritual milk to the spiritual meat yet. The Father initiates His children. He’s about growth and breakthrough. We’re told He won’t give us what we can’t handle, but I firmly believe that’s a misquote. I think it says, He won’t give us what HE can’t handle.

I recognize a new season coming because I become aware of thoughts and behaviors in me that indicate I’m outside His stream of abundance.

  • Am I making decisions out of fear, anger, or revenge?
  • Am I avoiding something I think will be unpleasant even though I believe it’s important?
  • Am I disconnecting from God so I don’t have to hear Him tell me what I don’t want to hear?
  • Am I overwhelmed, exhausted, stressed or stuck in a rut?

These are classic signs of double-mindedness, a classic double bind situation, and disconnection from God.

Here’s what the hampster wheel looks like–I want a changed circumstance, so I ask God for it. I’m not actually able to receive what I want because of an unhealed wound in my heart, so God asks to heal my wound. When God draws attention to my wound I feel inadequate and ashamed. I get frustrated that I haven’t accomplished it in my own strength. I hear the enemy use that wound to accuse me of being the product of it. I make an agreement that a God who loves me wouldn’t agitate that wound. I perceive God as bad because I believe pain and risk are inherently bad.

All this stems from my lack of understanding the process of being fathered. I have to trust in God’s goodness (the Primacy of God) if I’m to let him make me someone able to receive what I deeply desire. So my lack of trust leads to hiding from God. I make myself busy. If He gives me a vision of my life with that desire fulfilled I try to make it happen myself. I’m like a shattered mug in search of coffee, empty and exhausted.

All our negative circumstances are symptoms of unhealed places in our hearts.

 

New Season Plan Template:

New Season Spring 2018

May 2018

“Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.”— Isaiah 43:16, 18-19 (NIV)

Current Situation:

A brief outline of what I’m sensing, or how I’m feeling. What am I frustrated with?

Seasons Recap:

I usually cut/paste the results from the previous season. A quick review of it can be very helpful.

Bringing it all Together:

What would I do if fear weren’t a factor? What is God saying about my circumstances? What am I procrastinating about instead of doing? Is there an unrealistic obligation I’m holding myself responsible for? Should I trash it, do it, or renegotiate it to a better time?

Daily Battle:

  1. Choose the light side of the paradox. (Declare God is Good and actively showing me His favor.)
  2. Declare who God says I am. (New you in Christ)
  3. List 3 – 5 things I can do, even if I can’t see how they’ll fix things.

Who is God being for me this season? I’m built in his image, what part of His Glory is He restoring in me this season? If I reimagine my circumstances as part of a redemptive plan, what’s God trying to accomplish with them? Is there a theme to it all? What gift or superpower would result from me being healed?

The New Season:

A) Looking at the crossroads of my answers above, what do I feel God is saying right now about this season?

B) What outliers did I think of during this process? What things did God speak to that I wanted to ignore because I couldn’t see where they fit in?

Note: In my experience, the way forward either comes from group A or group B. Don’t be afraid if its group B. God might be addressing things in a roundabout way. It’ll be more effective to follow the wild goose than to force this to fit your expectations.

 

Journey Plan: House Fix

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Welcome…

I’m not sure how to make keep this from being the most boring Journey Plan ever. I’m still journaling and formalizing my thoughts on this 2nd quarter/new season–which should tell you something because it’s 2/3rds over. (Some seasons are like this.) It might be boring if you’re not constantly fixing up your home like me. I promise I’ll get back to the exciting stuff soon.

House Fix Journey: Mainly a list of my upcoming home remodel projects, but there are couple reasons this qualifies as a journey.

  • I’m not a “handyman.” I’ve gotten better over the last couple years, but like the majority of men I know, I feel insecure when doing these sorts of “macho guy stuff.” So I anticipate uncovering some stuff as I take on challenges I’m resistant to doing.
  • I don’t have resources. So in addition to lacking the know-how and confidence you can add a shoestring budget and less than zero time. This should get exciting!

What it is:

History–My wife and I bought our first home in 2015. It was a fixer-upper on a busy street, surrounded by rentals and apartments but the market was hot and we were lucky to get it. We’d already moved a couple times in the two years we’d been married.

We fixed it up. We fixed it up good. We overspent and then my job became unstable. The stress on our marriage made us list the house we’d only just made our own. My friends called us and begged us not to. Everyone said we were crazy, but it worked. We made good money on the sale and took a giant step toward complete debt freedom.

I wanted to just keep flipping from that point, but we weren’t eager to go back into a situation that strained our marriage. Our relationship is more important, even if we end up living out of trash can.

A few months later we bought a house in a better location, smaller, newer, but still on a busy street (I guess we have a type). We’ve been here almost two years, which seems crazy. The previous owner had a number of rentals which he sold off to retire after the market recovered. It was fixed up already…sort of.

The reality is that the repairs weren’t done that well and the longer we live here the longer the list of things that need to be done or redone. I’m unprepared but ready to start with the strength I have and trust God for the rest.

The List So far:

  • Build a shed 
  • Build a fire pit
  • Build storage into the garage
  • Replace kitchen sink
  • Wall mount the TV
  • Water heater replacement. (99% done )
  • New Windows in bedrooms, and new sliding glass door.
  • Hang house numbers and no soliciting sign & flag pole holder
  • Burn pile of yard Debris (caught up but more coming soon.)
  • Pea gravel and step stone the bare ground – 90% done
  • Yard work-trimming trees, etc.
  • Replace the Fence (4 sides)
  • Paint the Shed & Run power to it
  • Recover floors in both bathrooms
  • Replace master bath countertop
  • Rip out the deck and pour a concrete patio

More to come…

What I’m hoping God will do (heal/counsel/war/walk) with me

I’ll be hitting a number of things I don’t know how to do. I know that God will father me in learning as I go. This should speak to my identity I think.

God is looking to restore His image in me as a provider for my family. I’m excited to see how He provides.

God is also looking to upgrade my rest. He wants to be my rest (for my whole family). So I think taking on this series of projects even though we’re stretched for time right now will be good.

The steps I think we’ll take toward it

I already replaced the water heater. It went well.

We ended up deciding to pay a subcontractor to replace the windows. That’s going to be an expense but we need it done soon for insulation and soundproofing. They are supposed to come this week.

More steps to come.

Any resources I’m leaning on God to help with

God’s got to come through with help on finances, time, and energy.

Specific places I predict challenge (prayer requests)

More to Come

Estimated Start Date: Underway.

Pics!

The Daily Battle

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Appendix C: Bonus Material!

Welcome to the fight!

This picture above is very different than anything else in the book “Primacy of God” or on my website. My target market is men and I don’t include many pictures of women unless they’re in the background somewhere. But this woman and this rose are a perfect metaphor for our daily struggle. We are surrounded by desolation. It’s a rough world. We need to find the one beautiful thing, like this girl did, and focus on it. Be thankful for it.

Graham Cooke says, for every problem, there is a promise from God. With every promise, there is a provision and for every provision, there is a pearl. God doesn’t allow anything near us that wouldn’t benefit us, or grow us in some way. He is expert at redeeming the trials and wounds in our lives. He engineers circumstances that we pray to get out of because getting through them with Him instead is the only way we can become who we need to be to inherit the next blessing.

 

Abiding & readiness for the fight

We need 4 factors–Humility, Rest, Thankfulness & our Unique Identity.

  • Humility – To see clearly that God is up to something (blind faith works too.)
  • Rest – The enemy has no patients, its a characteristic of God. We can become relentless in Christ and wear down any circumstances through our standing in Christ.
  • Thankfulness – This should happen naturally but its a good practice. It’s the key to entering His presence which unlocks the gift associated with the provision.
  • Unique Identity – Look out for book 2 – Adventure to Identity

How do we fight our Daily Battle?

The key to fighting this battle to stay in a positive place, learning from God’s flow of provision and abundance is surrendering it all to Christ. I look forward to going into greater detail in book 2 but for now, here’s a great exercise from Sam Williamson.

There is no negative in God. Any time we run across shame, or fear, etc. imaging Christ on the Cross as he suffered for you. Ask him if he died for that specific thing. When he reassures you, let your thankfulness led to praise.

The Daily Battle

PS: The Daily Battle is when we surrender every negative to God.

 

 

The 1st Battle to Fight

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Appendix B: Bonus Material!

Welcome to the fight!

You most likely landed on this essay after reading the e-book, “The Primacy of God.” Or you may have simply stumbled onto it from my website. Either way, welcome to the fight. Everything you’ll encounter in the Cleric Path makes you what John Elderedge calls, “dangerous for good.” i.e. you know too much.

Don’t be frightened. God is with you. But it’s only fair to warn you.

Tactic: You enemy likes to lurk in the shadows until someone shines a spotlight on him. When he can’t pretend he doesn’t exist anymore he’ll try for intimidation and then try to get you to make an agreement so he’ll back off.

He’s a lier. He won’t stop messing with you, but don’t worry. Operate from a place of rest. Graham Cooke has some awesome teachings on rest. If you read five experts on spiritual warfare you’ll get five different opinions on spiritual warfare. It’s not a scripted fight.

BTW: Beware of relying on experience and stick to what the Scriptures say.

I don’t want to spend a lot of time on it, not because it’s not real, but because you don’t actually win by focusing on it to the exclusion of anything else God is trying to do in your life.

BTW: Know this, the enemy’s goal is to isolate you–from God and from your intimate allies.

That’s why shame is such an effective weapon. It’s very isolating. He’ll also use distraction, diminishment, disqualification, and depression.

Tactic: The enemy likes to tempt you, then when you fail he turns back and accuses you.

There’s a lot to this and I encourage you to seek out help from others if you feel oppressed or attacked, but I do want to cover only one aspect that I’m qualified to speak to. Then honestly, go seek more on the topic as you need.

One Final Note:

Before we begin, I want to point out one last thing on the topic of Spiritual Warfare. I personally believe that Heaven is a spiritual place, as opposed to the soul or body realms. We don’t see demons walking around in the flesh (just people who are clearly under oppression). We get scriptural references to the enemy visiting Heaven to argue over Job, and clearly, he pulled something physical off with a snake in the Garden of Eden, but when the enemy and his forces were cast out of Heaven I think they’re essentially stuck in the realm of the soul.

When I saw the “First Battle” I’m not talking about chronologically, I’m talking the first in order of flow. God’s love/glory/abundance flows into us through our place in Christ, transforms us, and then shines from us into the world. The first battle is at our place of connection to God. If we choose to take on that fight, the rest of them are much easier to fight.

The First Battle!

When Adam and Eve fell it’s called original sin, but it’s actually not. John Elderedge points out the lie, we didn’t author sin. That’s how tricky the enemy is.

“Sin is anything that separates us from God.” Mike Galeiotti

The fall created a rift. We were children who doubted the heart of God toward us. Adam and Eve’s first instinct was to cover their inadequacy with fig leaves and we’ve pretty much been doing that since. We sense, without having to be told, that we are in over our heads and we do our best to work it out on our own. But we’re not on our own!

God fixed the problem. Before Christ, they needed to believe that God would fix it and we must now believe that God did. We must take it personally. Our first battle is against anything that creates separation. Our first battle is with our own fig leaves and the wounds that inspire them.

In order for us to have a void in our experience of God’s abundance, we need to cooperate with the rock in the stream. We give permission somehow. We seed our authority in our own lives to something other than God. Often its when we worship our own intelligence, but generally its something that happened in our youth that the accusor convinces us to own.

To quote from Goodwill Hunting, “It’s not your fault.”

Even if, like me, you chose to do the terrible thing, it’s atoned for. We need restoration, the very thing that happens in a Christian’s life if they don’t hold it at bay.

Three Parts to Every Human:

When you become spiritually alive again, the Spirit of God communes with your new Spirit–in your heart (your most holy place). The Bible describes your body as a temple. That means your soul is the Holy place and your Heart is the Most Holy Place.

When Christ died the curtain between the Holy Place and the Most Holy Place was torn from top to bottom. This symbolizes the flesh being circumcised from your heart. IF we allow that healing God will flow freely out through your life. But we must journey with God to restore our understanding of who He is, how He sees us, and what His restored image looks like in us.

The First Battle is to Trust God’s Heart for you.

Now Read…The Daily Battle

 

 

 

Journey Plan: Evening & Morning

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(Note: this journey plan is actually the journey to be supernaturally rested in God, and intentional about the things I do/say/eat.)

Welcome to Spring!

I finally finished my Spring 2018 New Season (Policy Doc.) so it’s time to revise this Journey Plan (it was a little rough but I was flying by the seat of my pants).

Welcome to the Evening & Morning Journey. I love it when I can do one thing, or pursue a single set of efforts and have it move me forward on several goals. This journey is that sort of compound project, addressing…

  • My desire to be more deliberate about everything I do.
  • God’s desire to give me supernatural rest in Him.

I’ve read (soon to reread) the book, “The Power of Full- Engagement,” by Loehr and Schwartz on the powerful way habit can set us up for success. On the flip side, if you watched the movie, “Click,” starring Adam Sandler you realize the way in which most of us use habit. I tend to go on autopilot for periods of time, during which I can make decisions that deepen a rut instead of advancing me toward a goal. As a by-product, life seems to fly by when I want to savor it.

I have many hearts desires that don’t fit the typical flow of the world (I want something other than a 9 to 5 existence, retire a 72 to start enjoying life.) I also have a very full plate of urgent things that crowd out the important things that actually feed my heart. I bet I’m not alone in this situation. God’s answer is to give me His rest so that I can run and not grow weary.

I’ve been pondering this one for a couple months and I’m excited to launch it. So here goes the details.

What it is:

I’m forcibly slowing life down by journaling more. I’m going to track what I eat. I’m going to get up early and do my version of ‘morning pages’ (inspired by the book “The Artists Way” by Julia Cameron). I’m also going to declare my allegiance to the light side of the paradox every morning.

Genesis 1 says, “the evening and the morning,” 7 times. To this day, Jews keep their Saboth from Friday night sundown to Saturday night sundown. I grew up with the concept actually, but that’s not why I’m going to try it out again. So I’ll be starting my day the night before. Each evening, I’m going to front load the next day, so that I’m prepped for success, but I’m also going to listen to a great audiobook from Graham Cooke called the Practice of Rest.

What I’m hoping God will do (heal/counsel/war/walk) with me

As I mentioned, I actually entered this journey a couple months ago and have been doing some elements of it longer than that. I sort of backed into this one, and I’m just now able to formalize it into a journey.

Note: If that seems messy, it’s sorta how it works half the time. Sometimes God tells us what He’s going to do and then we explore it with Him. Other times, God’s does something and then makes you aware so you can unpack it together.

I’ve been rocking my mornings for about a year now. But my attitude and productivity fall off in the afternoon and I go to bed pretty much dead. I’ve been feeling convicted in this new season, to work toward greater intentionality.

I make a lot of decisions on autopilot, and that’s generally okay, however, when it comes to things like eating, it can be sabotaging. 2 Cor 10:5 says to take every thought captive, which I’d frankly I’d always felt condemnation over. They always read it after 1 John 3:15 “if you hate…you have murdered.”

Recently God redeemed the verse for me. Now I’m seeing it more like an internal martial art. Consider Phil 4:8, “whatsoever is good, etc.” think on these things. There is no negativity in God so things like anger, shame, and fear are not of God. Which means I can give them to God and be free of them.

I believe God wants to upgrade my rest in this new season. My purpose in this journey is to crack open some of these automated decisions and increase my intentionality.

The steps I think we’ll take toward it

Intentionally slowing down the number of things I expect of myself in a day. Setting a hard bedtime with a quiet time (no TV) before it. I’ve espoused getting nightly connection time with God and my wife for years, but it doesn’t always happen. I want my mind churning on the right things as I sleep.

I’ve got an audiobook resource on rest by Graham Cook that I want to go through this month.

I want to tie new routines to existing habits like shower, brushing teeth, meal times, etc.

More steps to come.

Any resources I’m leaning on God to help with

God’s got to come through with help on my attitude and finding the root wounds that cause me to allow this level of busyness and overwhelm.

A potential resource I’m going to explore is a type of minimalism, founded on intentional living. This is a developmental part of things, not a work in process. Link to Jonathon Levi’s coverage of Cedric Waldburger.

Specific places I predict challenge (prayer requests)

More to Come

Start Date: May 15th

Humility: the Secret to Accelerated Learning.

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True humility is standing at your full height before something greater than you…

Just do an internet search and you’ll find posts like, “50 ways to be humble,” or “7 ways to tell if you’re humble.” Is Humility really something we manufacture through practice? Perhaps, but if so we’d have to practice it until it seeps deep into our character. It’s certainly not about fake-it-until-you-make-it.

Most of us struggle with the concept of Humility, but I think what we’re really afraid of is humiliation. There’s a big difference.

First off, we don’t have to search very hard to find humility. Just find someone who’s better at something than you are. Look at this great nation we have. We’re proud to be Americans, but we didn’t build this place, we inherited it. Brave men and women have fought and died to give us this peak from which to leap. It is ours to screw up and that should be humbling.

So often our response when comparing ourselves to others is pettiness and jealousy. We wish we were them, accept life is a package deal and we seldom wish we had the parts of their lives that come along with their greatness. So how do we respond with humility instead of envy? The answer is deceptively simple.

Being humble hearted is part of God’s Character. Galatians 5:22 lists “…the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control…” which paints a pretty awesome picture of God’s character. Given his power and worthiness, God is very humble. Look at how Jesus lived.

The neat thing here is that any characteristic of God is ours in Christ. When we delight ourselves in God we can reflect his character. What will happen when we do?

If Pride blinds us then humility brings clarity of vision.

There’s a connection between humility and simplicity. Perhaps that’s why so many religious groups, Quakers/Amish etc. I think that’s part of where humility brings clarity. When we’re humbled, it strips away things we think are urgent and leaves what’s important to our hearts.

I found 32 verses that seem to speak to humility, here’s a sample.

Eph 4:2, Phil 2:3, Prov 2:11, Rom 12:16, James 4:10, 1 Peter 3:3-4, Col 3:12, 2 Chron 7:14, Matt 11:29-30,

The key one seems to be Matt 11:29-30:

“Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

Why, because we simply can’t do real life without God’s help. Without humility, we can’t see the places where God is trying to partner with us. We keep asking God to get us out of circumstances when He wants to be with us through them. It should be humbling to think how much God wants to grow your relationship intimacy. If you want to get into your Promised Land you need to head into places you can’t go without Him.

The other power of humility is the power to fail. If your focus is to protect your pride then you don’t risk. If you don’t risk you don’t grow. Everything you learned you learned through trial and error. Stop making errors, stop learning.

This is why Grace is so vital. Jesus couldn’t just die once for our sins and then turn it over to us. He had to create an environment in which we could learn–be Fathered, by God.

Christians really suffer here. To understand the power of Grace. We keep asking God for an answer and then running off to do it ourselves. It doesn’t work. We need so many things, like thankfulness, BUT it all starts with humility.

PS If we don’t have Grace for ourselves then we aren’t likely to be extending it to other people. If they’ll know you are Christians by your love, then we can’t just shout at people. “I’m a Christian,” and then not extend them Grace. If there is no greater command than to love, how are we going to shine the light of God into the world without Grace?

Future Post about Humility to be included as an appendix in the Primacy of God.

About Journey Plans

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(The goal of this post is to explain how I’ll be handling Journeys. Like weekly updates, quarterly course corrections,

What are Journeys?

The Goal of taking Journeys is to expose the wounds and agreements that act as constraints in our ability to behold the Glory and Abundance of God, be transformed by it, and share it with the world.

It might seem like skill building or goal setting, but it’s not. Like learning to ride a bike: you learn balance, yes, but mainly you learn how not to fall down. In the process, you fall down a few times and learn not to fear falling down. (What Randy Pausch called, head fake learning.)

What Journeys Do

Biblically speaking, there are four streams that flow from the Throne of God out through the saints–Healing, Counseling, Spiritual Warfare, and Walking with God. John Eldredge speaks about it in more detail, but in short:

  • Healing – God’s love restores a heart wound to its pre-damaged state
  • Counseling – Provides an understanding of a would or false identity
  • Spiritual Warfare – Battles for freedom from bondage to demonic thinking
  • Walking w/ God – daily interaction w/ God (clarifies our adventure, or our Identity & Relationship w/ God)

Seasonality of Journeys

We can easily divide the year into quarters (1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th), but Spring, Winter, Summer, and Fall have a lot of blurry lines. Spiritual seasons work like natural seasons–off-kilter and changing a little every year. So journeys really start when they start and end when they end.

However, if you try to take on a challenge thinking, “It’s okay to pull a Crazy Ivan and change to whatever’s next whenever I feel like it,” then you’re doomed to play whack-a-mole instead of drawing the deep lessons God desires to provide.

So I’ve decided that even though it is okay to follow the Wild Goose and make dynamic course changes, I’m going to push through to a preset goal line the best I can. What that looks like is that a journey is either completed or I don’t give up on it until the start of the next quarter. It’s been said that we don’t have a lack of time, only a lack of priorities.

Most of us hang onto a list of things we ought to be working on but never seem to get to. It’s a form of ‘To Do List’ passive selection, where we never have to do the work of painful deck clearing we can just never get to some projects. But what happens when the things we never get to are important to our hearts, or to our physical reality? (e.g. dating your wife or losing belly fat, etc.)

To some extent its okay to allow a healthy level of ‘decision by procrastination.’ Americans are blessed with so many “good” things to do that we can live for years before we get to the “GREAT” things that would bring us satisfaction, character, health & wealth. In fact, if you are only biting off what you know you can chew how will you increase capacity or leave room for God to perform miracles.

So I choose to engage in the process of prioritizing, knowing that some journeys may be put off until it’s bucket list time. But journeys are actually a reverse process to goal setting, so we’ll get into that in the next section.

The point here is to pick a journey, or complementary set of journeys, for three months at a time, and don’t entertain a serious course change until that three month period is over.

Journey’s vs Goal Setting

“Human thinking looks is drawn to the negative!” – Mike Galeotti

Consider this: how much time on the evening news is spent on happy things that went well?

We look at our lives, and without spending much time at all on what we truly wish it looked like we highlight the things that aren’t right and make a list of things that must change for us to be happy.

We spend almost no time at all being grateful for what we have or what might have gone wrong and didn’t. We enter God’s gates with thanksgiving (Psalms 100:4). What if the key to abiding in God’s presence is focusing on gratitude.

Think about it. There’s no negativity in God. Therefore, any place you are experiencing fear, shame, anxiety, self-doubt, anger, hatred, etc. is a place you tolerate a void in your experience of His presence.

Like a mossy rock in a stream parting the flow of abundance around it. If anything is missing that’s what is causing it–not the lack of resources (time, money, energy, know-how, support, etc.)

So, instead of making goals to fix a problem we’ve noticed, we need a journey to eliminate the constraint. This can mean tackling a place that you’ve failed, but it’s inherently relational. It focuses on something good, which we can be grateful about–even if that’s just the promise that God will come through in that place!

Journey Plans

It can be a daunting plan to write down what/why/how etc. for a journey. Still, journaling is powerful because of the warfare that springs up during this process. Recording “what the hell you were thinking” when you took on this crazy thing, will help you reveal and cling to the promise of God that inspired it.

So hopefully you’ll find journey plans for each of the journey’s God and I are currently taking on. Ideally, I will identify:

  • What I’m hoping God will do (heal/counsel/war/walk) with me
  • The steps I think we’ll take toward it
  • Any resources I’m leaning on God to help with
  • Specific places I predict challenge (prayer requests)

Current Journeys Page & Weekly Journey Updates

I’m posting all my current journey’s to this page on my blog (because God has healed my fear of public humiliation). So I have a single snapshot of the season with links out to all the specific plans for each journey.

I’m also doing a collective update of all the journeys weekly, instead of updating each journey individually on each Journey Plan Post. This was a gut-level, judgment call, hoping that it would be easier to follow along and less time consuming to write. We’ll see if I’m right soon.

So weekly updates will include the status of journeys past and upcoming journeys.

Final Disambiguation: Journeys, Rebounds, and Walking with God

(I love the word disambiguation. It just means to clarify a place of confusion.)

Walking with God is a Spiritual stream from God through us. It combines the other three streams into a way of living out your Adventure.

You might see me take on a journey with the Goal of walking with God. How can I take a focused journey into a daily walk? I could be meaning one of two things:

  1. I’m taking a journey to get clarity of my Adventure.
  2. I’m taking on a rebound to create a positive habit.

We’ll take on a number of adventures in our lives, but your Adventure (capital A) is the unique way you reflect the glory of God into the world around you. It’s often referred to as your calling, or your purpose, or life mission. Your roles (father/husband etc.) and your assignment (pastor/banker etc.) will change over time but your Adventure will stay.

A rebound is a type of Journey which can only be achieved through focused iteration–like a gratitude journal, or new diet. These are some of the most challenging types of journeys to take on. Let’s say God creates a miracle three-day weekend alone in the mountains. You could suddenly make great strides on that book you need to write with God, but you are only going to eat 9 meals and go to bed 3 times.

I’ll soon review a book that I know speaks to positive habit forming that I believe will end up being a terrific resource for rebounds. I’ll post a link to it here…one day soon.

 

Personal Culture vs Lifestyle Design

Posted on by sirbunch

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Lifestyle Design gets a lot of attention these days, and it deserves a closer look. At long last, folks are attempting to put things like success, happiness, and wealth into personalized perspective. They are asking the postmodern question, “if I pursue what everyone says is the American Dream, will that bring ME satisfaction?”

I wrote on a related topic in my post on stoic reality. The gist is that we do need personal definitions but we also need to realize that reality doesn’t care about your definition. Sometimes the things that are difficult in the short run bring more life in the long run. Sometimes we need to lean into discomfort, or even pain, in order to pursue more LIFE. Sometimes we need to risk personal disaster in order to live in line with our values.

The famous quote from William Wallace’s character in the movie Brave Heart comes to mind. “Everyone dies, few men ever really live.”

So, I advocate something I call Personal Culture. It requires you to create your personal definitions, but then test it against your values. The trick here is that most of us don’t really think through our values. It takes an intentionality that isn’t possible in the typical busy American schedule.

The Average American Life

(Note: I use the term American a lot before things I’m criticizing. I’m not bagging on the U.S. I love America. Out of all the ways we do government and culture, America has figured out the best over-all way. Since I myself, and most of my audience, live in America I’m using it to indicate typical way most of us live. )

The two biggest challenges facing most of us are fear and shame. I plan to write on these at greater length, but my mentor, Sam Williamson covered shame far more brilliantly than I can.

The thing that makes fear and shame so terrible isn’t the temporary grip on our emotions, it’s that they take hold deep in our identity and become a guiding force in our decision-making.

If we don’t live from God, we live from fear or shame…or both.

Guilt vs Shame

As I mentioned above, unless we heal the wound in our ability to trust God we won’t be able to slow our pace enough to develop an effective personal culture.  Guilt is a soul level issue that can motivate us to make changes, but shame is at the level of our heart.

Guilt says, “I did something bad,” where shame says, “I am bad.” –Chris Skaggs

They require different weapons to combat. If you have debilitating guilt talking actually does help. Talking with a counselor can identify shame, even create ‘understanding’ of it, but it cannot heal it. That takes God.

Sam’s post will describe how to heal shame, permanently.

Cleric Path

A major factor in walking the Cleric Path is living inside out, authentically, in line with your values. As the 1st book in the series, The Primacy of God, points out; abundance flows from God, through us/changing us, then out to other people. We must subordinate our lives to God or we are relegated to a life on the hamster wheel–trying to outrun our problems and succeed in our own strength.

When Christ said he came that we may have life abundant, I believe him (John 10:10).

Very few people I know, Christian or not, live a truly abundant life–including me. The Cleric Path is my journey to receive abundance. The vision is a bullet-proof Tarzan, who could manage a kingdom or lose everything and still function in my purpose. I want to be responsive to what Micheal Q Pink calls Spontaneous Wealth–those flashes of epiphany that seem to almost accomplish themselves which we commonly ignore for lack of time.

What’s the Differences?

The key differences between lifestyle design and personal culture are the direction of flow and the source of the answers.

  1. Clearly, I’m going to advocate for God as a solution, but hear me out. The secular answer to shame, for example, is to be self-compassionate, improve self-esteem, think positive, or recast our stories, etc. Basically, try harder/run faster on that hampster wheel. Which leads to more failure and more guilt. We must have a source outside ourselves to defeat something bigger than ourselves and believe me, our problems are larger than us.
  2. Instead of living outside in, where your actions arise from a desire to create a desirable environment, we must live from inside out. Want to stop playing whack-a-mole with your problems? Stop reacting to urgent crap and let your actions arise from who you really are.

 

Personal Culture (see also this post)

 

An effective Personal Culture has three elements:

  • Mythic Reality Vision
  • Intentional Pacing
  • Authentic Actions & Rebounds

Mythic Reality Vision

We need to get a bigger perspective. When we worship our own intellect we tend to blind ourselves to things that are beyond the scope of our influence. The result is we live in a smaller story where the right thing to do is everything you can do to improve your existence. Sure we want to help people but what can one person really do, right?

Well, we lack the perspective to effectively make decisions in our lives. Only by seeing ourselves in the context of the story God is living, can we begin to glimpse the factors beyond our immediate circle of influence. On your most triumphant day at work, the most truly important thing you did all day, in God’s eyes, was smile at your barista.

While we’ll never be able to predict the unintended consequences of our actions, positive or negative, we can view life through a larger lens by consulting God about every situation.

Intentional Pacing

If we can learn to trust God we can move at a slower, more deliberate pace. You actually get more stuff done. How? Well, when your actions arise from your authentic identity you feel more satisfied. You spend less time on urgent things that turn out to be meaningless (although sometimes you’ll swear its the opposite). You also gain a secret blessing called multiplication.

While the world is telling you to multitask (split your focus and do several things at once) God’s answer is to bless you with manifold outcomes to your single efforts. God is the original two birds with one stone guy. He has given his people crops they didn’t plant, and victories over armies without lifting a finger. He will bless you manifold if you do everything you do with Him.

Authentic Actions (Journeys & Rebounds)

Living outside-in is when you try to change your circumstances. You’re always reacting to your circumstances because that’s how you know what to do next.

Living inside-out means letting your actions arise from who you are and then living with the consequences. You actually end up living above our circumstances.

For example, God is always abundantly giving to you. If you lose your job you could drop everything and seek a new job to replace the income. Or, you could ask God what He’s up to. Are you now poor because you don’t have an income? Or are you now rich in time to work on things?

God does understand that you need to provide for your family, but if you live from the assumption that God has your back you gain the ability to look around for God’s blessing in the hardship. You are free from the myopic and self-limiting belief that without money you can do nothing.

I’m not actually advocating that you throw your hands in the air and take whatever life hands you. We are given stewardship over our bodies and our kingdoms, which means we are authorized to manage these things. In fact, Jesus told an entire parable about a rich man leaving talents with his three servants. It didn’t go well with the servant who buried his talent. His reason, BTW, was that he feared his Master and couldn’t risk losing it. If God gives you a hammer find a nail and start swinging–it doesn’t go well for that third servant.

So here are two Godly ways to pursue God’s abundance in your sphere of authority: Journeys & Rebounds.

Journeys:

Journeys – a mini-adventure to remove a constraint to the flow of good things from God through us to our unique audience.

If you want to improve your physical fitness, financial outlook, or organize your environment better you can take on what I call a journey.

A journey looks a lot like the sort of secular mission-driven effort to fix our lives through our own strength but there are a couple key differences.

  1. You take a journey with God and as a result, it should draw you into a more intimate relationship with your Father.
  2. While you are trying to accomplish the goal of the journey (changed situation) your goal is to reveal constraints (wounds) that impede the flow of abundance through you.

About Journey Plans

For more on Journeys see this post.

Rebounds:

Rebounds are habits we undertake to make incremental improvements. Where a journey is more like a project to lose 15 lbs by efforts x, y, & z, a rebound is an attempt to replace certain bad habits with beneficial ones.

The goal, again, is to bring you closer to God.

Examples of rebounds:

  • Prayer before meals
  • doing 5 pushups on the counter before you brush your teeth
  • keeping a gratitude journal
  • parking further from the door so you get more walking in

And so on. The idea is to replenish you by doing things that make you more aware of God, more aware of your decisions, and to increase the bring more heart satisfaction.

More on Rebounds coming in a separate post…(Link?)

 

Food: Good, Bad & Ugly

Posted on by sirbunch

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I’ve decided to make this post so I can collect and track tips I get about the nutritional value of different foods. Not the specific vitamin/fiber/calory stuff, but basic is it really good or a wolf in sheep’s clothing type of stuff. I intend to update this post periodically, but I wanted to have a place to start collecting so I’m posting now.

To my mind, food falls into three broad categories (when viewed thru a lens of health).

  • Junk Food – Just plain not good for you body (although in tiny bits it might make your heart feel better).
  • Regular Food – In moderation, contains a balance of good things that justify the calories they contain (although you may be more sensitive/allergic than other people are).
  • Health Food – So packed with nutrition and devoid of contamination that you should eat it whenever you get hungry for a long, and healthy life.

In the health food category, there are four sub-categories:

  • Fake Food – Food that actually isn’t healthy for you at all.
  • Food that’s so healthy it tastes terrible.
  • Food that is healthy and delicious and EXPENSIVE!
  • Food that is healthy and delicious and priced well.

I really need to keep track, at the brand item level, of which foods fall in which categories so I don’t keep having to re-read labels or get derailed on my eating plans.

So here we go…

Fake Food – Food that actually isn’t healthy for you at all.

Cool Whip – puts on the label that it contains no transfats because it weighs nothing so it limbos under the bar of having to report it.

Tic Tacs – their tiny so that they can round down the sugar to 0. Take 2 and you’re getting 1.5 grams of sugar.

 

Food that’s so healthy it tastes terrible.

 

Food that is healthy and delicious and EXPENSIVE!

Bear Naked Granola – this stuff tastes amazing and has fewer calories than their competitors without all the bad stuff. Costs about $5 for a small bag.

Food that is healthy and delicious and priced well.

 

Scripture Meditation vs Bible Study

Posted on by sirbunch

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Something hit me while sitting in church the other day. The pastor quoted 2 Cor. 10:5 “…we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” (NIV). In the context of Matt. 18: 3, “And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

I’ve never come to that verse in that context. It’s always studied in the context of 1 John 3:15, “15 Anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him.”

The condemnation of combining these verses is clear. We are meant to infer that if we don’t instantly control our emotions we’re outside Christ. That’s so condemning!

What are the fruits of that? We end up emotionally constipated and guilt-ridden when God wants passion and enthusiasm for his Good News.

One of the fruits of the Spirit is self-control, yes. (Galatians 5:22) It’s part of His divine Character, available to us if we’re in Christ. We don’t take every thought captive to avoid sin, we choose to battle in the place of perspective. This is actually our permission to slow down and keep our thoughts on God.

God has you in His hands. He asks us to take his Yoke upon us for his burden is light (Matt. 11:29).  2 Cor. 10:5 is an awesome key to the process of reflecting God’s glory into the world.

How could I have read it wrong all this time?

Easy, I attended Bible Studies. I’m not anti-scripture. It’s just that the real goal of those Bible studies was to indoctrinate me on biblical principles instead of using the Scriptures as a vehicle to a relationship with the author.

Religion is institutional. It just is. God moves through the church, of course, that’s all we give Him to work with. In all our ways we must point to Christ and that doesn’t come from creating bible-inspired religious tenets.

Is there a better way?

I suggest adding scripture meditation to your practices. Pray before reading, that God would join you. That he would provide understanding, and use it to reveal Himself.

Yes, the Bible is full of Truth, but truth without love can be brutal. So start with declaring the times and ways that God has come through for you. If nothing comes to mind, try declaring that He’s good by faith. Try saying thank you for saving me. Try anything that helps you remember that God is on your side.

I pray that God would save you from a religious reading of His awesome love letter to you.