Slow

Celebrate progress, no matter how fast or slow the pace. 

You never know where the path will lead until you step out in faith. When you believe in it, it belongs to you by faith. 

Every path leads you on a journey and every journey costs something. Who can really say what it's going to cost? Your journey is unique to you and so is your cost. 

Truly every journey worth telling and re-telling over and over again is one of someone who made a decision and probably didn't see the end picture they had in mind for many years. But experience is what you get when you don't get what you want right away. How grateful are we for those who mapped out a better life for others around, especially when it meant that they didn't get what they wanted right away? 

Never grateful enough. 

Click here for the song.

Comfort

Life is a big lesson about how to get over yourself in order to love others. 

Doing what you don't like is the best way to grow and change. Doing what you do like makes you more of what you already are. 

Be uncomfortable. Do the uncomfortable thing and learn. Let yourself grow and change and develop in new ways in the soil of discomfort. 

You will either find yourself in the growth zone or the comfort zone, but you can't be in both simultaneously. 

Love says, "there you are!" when pride says, "here I am!" And love resolved a long time ago that "if I'm here, I will give."

Click here for the song. 

Courage

Have the courage to go the way you know you should go, even if it's not the way people around you are going. 

What do you believe about confidence? Do you believe that courage and confidence are interchangeable?

I believe that courage will always win over confidence. 

Listen. 

Confidence is so overrated. Having the courage to take the next step, to do the scary thing, to take the high road: now that is far less common than having the confidence in your ability to do so. 

Courage overrides confidence any day. Acting in the face of fear will trump being certain of your ability whether you are fearful or not. 

If you were to look at areas of your life in which you are confident of your ability vs areas of your life in which you act regardless of your ability, how would you hold the results in comparison? What have you concluded about the distinction between these two words?

Click here for the song.

Steadfast

In a microwave society, how long can you hold that thought for?

What does the word steadfast mean to you? 

I recently encountered someone who decided 40 years ago that he would be the youngest person in the crowd only for a season. He recognized that he would be the smartest person for a season, then maybe the most stylish person. Eventually he would be the oldest and maybe most experienced person in the crowd, but he decided 40 years ago that there would never come a season where being a person of integrity would go out of style. 

To me, this is a steadfast outlook on life. This man was 20 when he decided to live a life of integrity and I have seen first hand the benefits of this decision 40 years down the road. 

What decision have you made in your life that you believe will stick with you in and out of season?

A few new things I learned this week are:

If you don't program on your mind, the world will program it for you. 

Sometimes you buy no regrets with silence.

It's only painful if you're still weighing weather it's worth it. 

You can't get from where you are to where you want to go without significant failures along the way. 

And, how you think will far override your talent, skills and work ethic. 

So, what happens if you fling yourself at that project, that decision, that life change? Do you expect the results to be seasonal or do you expect the person you become in the process to stick with you in and out of season?

Click here for the song. 

Faith

What happens in the unseen shapes everything around and within us. 

How many times have you heard someone say, "I don't know what happened, he just became an overnight success!"? Do you really believe that?

If a kingdom can be built in a day, is it fair to assume that it can also be destroyed in a day? 

If you know why you are doing what you are doing, the peanut gallery can't take you out of the game. Buying in to the millions and millions of complaints and lies going around every single day is exactly what breeds mediocrity, but joy takes root in the fertile soil of trust and faith. 

"Faith never knows where it is being led, but it knows and loves the one who is leading." -Oswald Chambers

We live in a society that demands all tasks and changes happen "as soon as possible" but a great and true God dwells within us whispering "as long as it takes." Learning to listen to his voice (my sheep individually know my voice) is key to abiding in an ever quickening society with any semblance of peace and truth. 

So, how long are you willing to stick with it? Faith does not grow in the house of certainty. Faith is being sure of what you hope for and certain of what you do not see. Subtle changes that happen in the dark while God is developing the film of your life's story - this is where relationship with Jesus is accomplished. Because who you are when no one is watching is who you are. 

Click here for the song.