Tag: needverse

325 – Learn & Know Who You Are

Discover your path of work in your life by discovering who you are. Analyze your skills and passions. Don’t just look at the things that fascinate you, but seek to understand them at an elemental level. If dinner fascinates you, ask why. Is it because of the food or the people or the preparation?

There is a difference between being interested in the non-profitable “consumer” side of a thing and the profitable “production” side. God makes everyone a producer in some capacity, able to carry one’s own weight and then some. None of us are able to completely carry ourselves, but we can carry more than our own weight. In this, we help each other, carrying each other and contributing more than we take. That cooperation between humans can only happen because God Himself designed us to at a level that stretches even more fundamentally than DNA.

You will find a reliable vocation for your life by seeing where you fit into this grand scheme of human cooperation.

There is no profit in analyzing your “consumer” interests. If you pursue non-profitable interests, you will end up in debt and a burden to others. Pursue those skills that contribute and lift others, not just activities that you enjoy. Even when brainstorming new ideas, the only good ideas will contribute and carry their own weight. “Contributing” is the same thing as “prospering”.

Understand “what” you are as a human. As the Image of your Creator God, you are a prosper-making machine. You were designed to help, lift, build up, encourage, contribute, and be a benefit to all around you. When seeking to discover your strengths, constantly remember that strengths refined will help others to prosper. When you work toward “prospering others”, you effectively work within your strengths.

Once you see the prosperity programmed into yourself, the skills that help you prosper others will be easy to identify. God doesn’t make failures; people only become failures when they don’t operate in their strengths, namely helping others to prosper along with yourself. Within your skills you have much room for choice; your individual creativity can’t not be imprinted on your working prosperity. Only failed prosperity fails to be unique.

323 – Stop Everything and Ask God for Breakthrough

Facing challenges drives us to test our priorities and rearrange them when they are out of order. This relates to the adage, “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.”

When hard times come, some people “self-medicate” as a means of escape from having to face reality, either through substance abuse, immorality, or recreation. Other people start working hard and diligently. Hard work is less irresponsible than escapism. The mature response must prioritize prayer above diligence.

We know that God must watch the city for the watchmen to be able to keep it safe. God must establish a building for the construction crew to complete it successfully. Your own work needs God’s breath, as well as your hard work to solve whatever situation you are in.

Your challenge of the day may be that you don’t have enough challenges or that you feel dry and need to grasp hold of some sense of direction and vision for your life. You may need to learn something, you might even have the luxury of knowing what you need to learn. Or, you may have the usual financial, professional, and social conflicts. Whatever challenges you face, pray for God to break through.

Never fret and worry—never! Every situation has elements beyond our control, sometimes we even know what those things are. You will always need to trust God, sometimes you even know it. If you struggle to find the property to build a house, then finally buy the property, you will struggle to build the house. Once the house is built, you will struggle to maintain it. Once you are comfortable maintaining it you will struggle with the relationships that develop under its roof. Once your relationships are in order, your business will bring challenges that risk financial loss, take time from your family, and often both.

We never get past the place of needing God to enter into our circumstances and turn them all the way around. He loves to delay His deliverance for the end, so don’t be surprised if He adds a little suspense like so. Just keep praying for breakthrough. If you don’t think you need breakthrough today, then pray for tomorrow’s.

322 – Affluenza

Affluenza is the informal “street talk” term for the uncaring laziness that gets us when we have just enough money to be comfortable. The social status is often called “affluent”. But, money has its way of infecting its hosts with a diseased mentality that squanderously throwing money is the best say to solve any problem. The sad news about money is that it never solves any problems. The problems get distracted by eating the money—making the problem seem to go away for a short time—but then the problem returns with a vengeance, having fed on all the money just thrown at it.

Affluenza lurks behind the self-destructing CEO who doesn’t know how to rejuvenate a company’s vision. Money is earned by staying lean, reducing waste to a minimum, and working with the same energy as when you’re driving to make an important date. Money and security are eternal for no one. Even Jesus worked to die on the Cross and we can always count on him to carry his own load. That’s why he is a worthy king. Once a celebrity, company, or country presumes that money and security will “just be there” forever, the waste begins, the drive diminishes, and the said-to-be unsinkable flounders.

…it happens every time. That’s how—and why—every world superpower eventually falls. When leadership stops working hard and takes for granted what must be earned, everything starts to unravel.

The idea that wealth is bestowed—rather than earned through wasteless work—is the idea that keeps poor people poor. Affluenza is this same root of “poverty thinking” visited upon people with money. They may have money today, but when hard times come, those with affluenza will eat pistols and jump out of buildings because they had money without understanding it.

Symptoms show up in the form of canceling appointments because “we can always reschedule”. The notion of a missed opportunity doesn’t occur, even if the missed opportunity is both real and missed. When you’re hungry, every morsel counts. If you can spare extra morsels, it’s chivalrous to let morsels fall for the poor, but you’ll be poor again if you don’t treasure every morsel you let fall.

321 – Stop Everything and Befriend God Just as You Are

Wherever you are in your life, God love you just as you are. You will always have things to learn and sin to repent of. Learn what you need, repent of sin you know about, but even before those things, know that God does love you. Repenting of sin and learning more opens up more room for friendship with God. Growing your friendship with God comes both before, during, and after learning and repentance.

Friendship with God is part of every step of the Christian life because God stays with us through everything, all the way.

Put the business of life on pause and think about your friendship with God. Think about how much you love Him because of how much He loves you and how much you enjoy thinking about enjoying thinking about Him as your friend. Take a moment, right now while reading and think about it.

Every day, all day long, steal any time you can to fix your thoughts on the God above who love you just as you are.

Growing up is one of God’s expressions to us, explaining His own love for us. Children are adorable, yet dirty, immature, yet lovable, and naughty, yet full of potential. The tender understanding and wise patience that a grandparent has toward grandchildren—having seen the growing process all the way through its cycle—shows us a glimpse of how and why God looks at us at any stage of our growth and loves us just the same.

Never outgrow your childlike ability to need God’s love through the patient eyes of parenting. You will always have things to learn, improve, and outgrow. Even the greatest theologians over a hundred years old understand that God looks at them like snot-faced children just starting out. The more we grow, the more we can work along side God in bringing beauty and justice to the universe. Learning about God always includes knowing that He is the best friend you can ever and will ever have.

Even after the first ten thousand years of Eternity in the next life, friendship with God will be just as relevant. So, think about God as your best friend today.

319 – Stop Everything and Praise God for Who He Is

In the midst of the storm, your greatest need can only be given by God. In the peace and quiet, when there are no pressing needs anywhere to be seen, you have the best time to prepare to receive whatever God has to give you later when those storms come. Whether in the quiet or in the raging wind, praise God!

In a manner of speech, praising God “turns on the lights” wherever you are and for whatever you pray for. The lights of praise dry up disease and drive out fear. When hardship and opposition stand in your way, praising God will bring a light so bright that it blinds your enemy and washes him out in pure white—and all you will be able to see is your peaceful path forward.

The praise comes first, before the good results—before the solution to your situation. Praise God for the problems He will solve tomorrow, especially the problems you don’t know about yet. He already knows tomorrows problems and He already has His own solution waiting for you.

God is already worthy to receive praise, that is why He must be praised right now. It is injustice against the existence of every molecule, every human, every angel, and against the Creator God Himself not to praise Him for what He already deserves. He is worthy now, already, so praise Him now, already!

Stop what you’re doing to praise Him as a gift to Him. Don’t stop if it is dangerous, of course, or you might create a terrible situation in which you must repent before praising God. You can’t praise God with conscious, intentional sin continuing on in your life, sin that you either know is wrong, including harming others. Refusing sin and declining temptation are also forms of praise, forms that God loves. Those forms of praise are easier when you praise Him for Who He is already.

No matter what your situation, praise is the solution, both for the problems you face and for the problems you have yet to see. So, praise God now while you have time. Tomorrow, you may need to rely on the praise you gave him today.

315 – Stand on Truth, Let Others Climb Up

Don’t compromise on essential values just because other people might not understand you. Humans are highly capable creatures. We can do the most outrageous things if we want to. If someone doesn’t understand why you hold to your values then it is because that person is working hard at trying to not understand.

A competent teacher does not stop teaching a subject if the students do not understand; a competent teacher will teach the subject all the more!

Hopefully, you have already set out on some noble task—it could simply be your attempt to do something that has never been done before—it could be to do what no one from your neighborhood has never done before—it could be to shake your entire nation’s culture to end a dishonest routine. But, whatever noble thing you attempt, people whom you thought would never make a positive change in the world will soar with newfound powers to tell you that you’re wrong.

One of humanity’s great hidden strengths is our ability to wake from the deepest sleep just to tell someone to stop doing what is right.

People will drive miles, pay for expensive meals, use words they didn’t know they knew, step out into courageous situations that they have never stepped into before—all to convince you that you are so very, very selfish, unethical, and outright immoral—especially if you are trying to do something that they agree with.

“That can’t be done!” they will say. “We want to do it, but I always failed. It is therefore a crime against others to do this good thing that others reject.”

Society continues bad, dangerous, cruel practices because no one retraces the lines—no one stands for the right standard.

Every culture is made and every culture is remade by the troublemakers, the misfits, the malcontents, the discontents, the “unteachables”. Be that person. If you can get a thousand people to say you can’t, you might actually be on the right track. If ten thousand people say you shouldn’t, you’re surely dead on the money.

They’ll learn. Stand at your post. Show how it’s done. Make sure the culture has an example to watch.

314 – Navigating a Lifetime of Careers

No job needs to be your dream job. Any work will do as long as you can do it. Don’t think about choosing work too much, just ask if you can make money at it and get better at making more money at it every day.

Of course, one’s work must be ethical, but that’s about all. Work is for money. If you can change the world at the same time, that’s a plus. But, you can also change the world through your profit-potential hobby. Don’t buy the lie that you must have puppy love for your cash cow every day.

Income sources can change over time. There is a skill all in itself to recognizing any source of income as a source of income—that might be the best and most important skill to learn. Income streams are all around us, slightly camouflaged, but easy to find once you break off the codependent, dysfunctional relationship with your delusion of that “one and only dream job”. The skill of income itself can take over, then you will be better at staying focused, staying on task, and you will be better at being much happier while you are doing work that you may care little for, but that other people need so badly that they’ll help you pay your bills if you do that job for them.

Part of the fluidity of business means that college textbooks are out of date by definition, but so are any job skills or craftsmanship. Business changing the economy means that your job can also change. Tsunamis affect everyone near the coast. Your best chance is to learn multiple skill sets.

Learn skills in a classroom that are best learned in in a classroom. Chase after a career and curriculum that you are likely to finish—regardless of whether you “like” it. Whether you need a challenge or an interest—chase whatever cat you can grab by the tail!. Most importantly, never learn only one skill!

Most businesses and marketable craftsmanship combine multiple skills, creating “third skills”. The more skills you combine, the more “third skills” you create, the more marketable you will remain in the fluid world of money.