Category Archives: Gifts, Calling & Purpose

Incremental Obedience … God Leads in Steps NOT Leaps

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Incremental Obedience … God Leads in Steps NOT Leaps

Incremental Obedience…God Leads in Steps NOT Leaps

The phrase “leap of faith” is commonly used in Christian circles.  I’ve probably even used the term myself.  But did you know that this phrase is actually unscriptural?  God leads in steps NOT leaps.  We’re not frogs.  We’re humans.  Humans walk, not jump.  We need to learn how to practice incremental obedience via steps that God gives us.

God leads in steps NOT leaps. We’re not frogs. We’re humans—we walk. #incrementalobedience

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Previously, I  read through the devotional plan “How to Neighbor” by Pastor Craig Groeschel from Life.Church on the YouVersion Bible app.  It’s an excellent 10-day plan.  I highly recommend it.  In part of the plan, Pastor Craig is talking about Esther and her pivotal role in helping God’s people.  He mentioned that Esther had to take steps of incremental obedience…

“As a teen, Esther pushed back darkness and risked everything for her neighbors because Mordecai, her adoptive father, reminded her why she was alive “for such a time as this.” Think about this. Esther, and every other person who’s ever done anything valuable for God, basically just took incremental steps of obedience.”

The frequently quoted scripture, “Perhaps you were made…for such a time as this” (Esther 4:14) can apply to our lives too.  We will have “for such a time as this” moments throughout our lives.  Those moments will require steps, not leaps, of incremental obedience leading up to them.

Esther’s steps of incremental obedience

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You Are More Important Than You Realize

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You Are More Important Than You Realize

You Are More Important Than You Realize 

It’s notable to mention that it is highly likely that you are more important than you realize.  I would venture to guess that your gifts and the roles that you play probably hold far more weight in the kingdom of God than you probably give them credit for.  One day when we stand before God and give an answer for how we used our gifts and fulfilled our purpose, it will be exciting to see the magnitude of our influence here on this earth.  I believe that God thinks that YOU are a pretty big deal! 😉 

You are more important than you realize. God thinks that YOU are a pretty big deal!

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As we are coming to the close of a school year, it’s a good reminder for educators, staff, students, and parents alike. I’ve mentioned it before and the same is true now…you might be making a difference in the lives of others without even realizing it.

You and your gifts are necessary

God has given each and every person here on this earth a unique set of gifts and a purpose to fulfill.  Each gift and purpose is vital to God’s plan.  In fact, the Bible uses the analogy of a body and its different parts to demonstrate this point.  Each part of the body is necessary in order for the body to function properly (as God intended), and each God-given gift, role, and purpose is necessary in order for God’s kingdom, or the “body of Christ”, to function properly.

We are the body of Christ, and just as a body has many parts, so does the body of Christ.  The parts are placed exactly where God wants them (1 Corinthians 12:18).  Our gifts are part of this body.  There are a lot of them, and they all have different functions.  They all work together as part of a whole.  Every part is necessary.  We need all of the parts, just like God needs all of our gifts.

“Just as our bodies have many parts and each part has a special function, so it is with Christ’s body. We are many parts of one body, and we all belong to each other. In his grace, God has given us different gifts for doing certain things well…” Romans 12:4-6 (NLT)

It’s tempting, but unwise, to compare our gifts with those of others

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How to Create a Vision Board

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Learn the steps to create a Vision Board

How to Create a Vision Board

Now that you’ve learned to set SMART Goals and how to take some action steps to achieve those goals, it’s a good idea to create a vision board.  A vision board is simply a visualization tool to keep you focused on your life goals and dreams.  It’s a vision for your life in the form of a collection or collage of pictures of your goals and dreams to be displayed somewhere where you will see it often.

Proverbs 29:18 says that “where there is no vision, the people perish”.  We have to have that vision in front of us to make it happen.

What do you have in mind?

You have to see something before you can have something.  For example, you can’t go to a builder and ask him to build your dream home without having something in mind.  It’s been said that you become what you behold.  The Bible describes one example of this in 2 Corinthians 3:18–that we will reflect like a mirror what we are looking at—just as when we look to God, He transforms us into His likeness.

“So all of us who have had that veil removed can see and reflect the glory of the Lord. And the Lord–who is the Spirit–makes us more and more like him as we are changed into his glorious image.” 2 Corinthians 3:18 (NLT) 

You have to see something before you can have something. #visionboard

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Vision manifested

There is an amazing, transformational force in what we set our heart (spirit), mind (soul), and eyes (body) on.  Many modern theorists and success coaches refer to this transformation as the “Law of Attraction”.  The Law of Attraction basically states that you will attract into your life whatever you think about–that your mental perspective will attract external circumstances.  This is not a new concept. The Bible encouraged focusing on the positive long before the Law of Attraction theories.

“Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable–if anything is excellent or praiseworthy–think about such things.” Philippians 4:8 (NIV)

“Be careful how you think; your life is shaped by your thoughts.” Proverbs 4:23 (GNT)

“For as he thinks in his heart, so is he…” Proverbs 23:7a (NKJV)

Our minds see in images or pictures

Writing your goals out is an important step in order to achieve them.  A vision board just takes it to the next level.  Our minds see things in images or pictures as opposed to words.  If I were to say the word “bear”, you would probably picture a visual image of a bear in your mind instead of the word “B-E-A-R” spelled out.  The idea behind a vision board is to surround yourself with pictures of your visions and dreams so they will eventually become a reality for you.  When they are in a place where you can visualize and see them often, they will constantly be in the front of your mind.  You will have a visual reminder of your intentions, and your dreams, goals, and vision can become a reality!

Visualization brought into reality

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4 Ways to Show Generosity This Season

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4 Ways to Show Generosity This Season

This past week in the United States we celebrated our Thanksgiving holiday and subsequently the start of the largest shopping season of the year. It’s easy to lose focus and lose sight of what we celebrate this week and to remain in a “thankful” posture. In light of that, that’s a primary reason why the Tuesday following the Thanksgiving holiday has been designated as “Giving Tuesday”.

GivingTuesday.org describes this day as a “Global Generosity Movement” that was “created in 2012 as a simple idea: a day that encourages people to do good. Over the past seven years, this idea has grown into a global movement that inspires hundreds of millions of people to give, collaborate, and celebrate generosity.”

Giving Tuesday can serve to remind all of us to be both thankful for what we blessed with as we recognize others in need as well as become more outwardly focused, looking to our communities and to those in need in order to find ways of helping them.

I would like to take the opportunity before Thanksgiving and before Giving Tuesday to get readers to start thinking about a purposed and intentional plan of generosity.

My challenge today is to encourage you to form a plan of some kind of “sacrificial” generosity or giving in one of four ways:

    1. Financial
    2. Time
    3. Gifts/Talents
    4. Prayer
      Show sacrificial generosity in one of 4 ways this season: Financial, Time, Gifts/Talents, or Prayer

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Financial

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How Are You Making Excuses With God?

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Are you notorious for making excuses? Do you even make excuses with God? Learn how to stop making excuses with God...

How Are You Making Excuses With God?

We’ve been discussing setting goals and making Vision Boards in my college courses recently.  I remembered when I first started doing mine that I experienced quite a bit of doubt, especially on the Vision Board.  Some of those dreams, visions, and goals just seemed so lofty and out of reach to me. I found myself making excuses for why I might never achieve them.

Then I heard a quote from Steven Furtick: “If the size of your vision isn’t intimidating to you, there’s a good chance it’s insulting to God.”  That really struck me and hit me right in my pride!  Anything great that God calls me to do MUST be beyond my reach in order to force me to rely on God and not on my own merits, talents, or efforts.

Is your vision so small that it’s an insult to God? #makingexcuses

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What about you?  When you think of great dreams and visions for your life do you experience some self-doubt?  Do you find yourself making excuses?  Are there some things that you are hesitant or even scared to put in writing or picture form?  Good!  That means then that you will HAVE to lean on God to help you achieve them, and you and others will see that only God could have helped you do that “impossible” thing.  He loves to show off by the way! 😉

You can’t argue with God and win

A few years ago, I was looking back through one of my old quiet time journals.  I came across an entry back in February of 2014 where I was doing exactly what I just described to you.  I was making excuses with God.  At the time I was really feeling God leading me to write, blog, speak, etc.  It was a crazy, scary concept for me to even imagine.

Then, conveniently the story of Moses kept coming up (hmmm…could that be God’s voice?).  I was reading through the books of Exodus 3 and Exodus 4.  God was calling Moses to be a leader, but Moses protested when God told him to go to Egypt to lead the people out.  He kept making excuses with God (this sounded very familiar to me!).  Funny thing though…Moses learned something that I’ve had to learn the hard way too–you can’t argue with God.  He always wins.  Making excuses doesn’t work with Him because He always has a counter. Continue reading →

Name Meanings: How Is Your Name Prophetic?

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Name Meanings: How Is Your Name Prophetic?

Name Meanings: How Is Your Name Prophetic?

“A good name is to be chosen rather than great riches…” Proverbs 22:1 (ESV)

Most people love seeing their name.  Personalized items are always in demand.  However, did you know that your name and your name meanings might have a lot more to do with your life than you think?  Your name meanings might actually describe some of your character traits and/or the traits that God will use in you to accomplish His will for your future.

When your parents named you they may have not even had name meanings in mind (I don’t think my parents did–I was named after a horse!), but that doesn’t mean that God didn’t have the name meanings in mind.  God very well may have inspired them to choose your exact name.  God knew your name and had a plan in mind for you before you were even born!

“I knew you before I formed you in your mother’s womb. Before you were born I set you apart…” Jeremiah 1:5 (NLT)

“Your eyes saw me when I was formless; all my days were written in Your book and planned before a single one of them began.” Psalm 139:16 (HCSB) 

Did you know that your name meanings might have a lot more to do with your life than you think?

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My name meanings

We’ve been talking recently about fighting some of the fears that we face (previous posts here and here).  One of the things I didn’t mention is that I often use my name meanings to help me fight fear from time to time.  The name “Tracy” means “courageous”, “brave” or “warrior” (maybe that’s why the horse was named Tracy 🙂 ).  It may seem a little silly, but more often than not that little bit of information has been enough for me to give myself a boost to stand up to my fear and to do things afraid.  I will say to myself, “Your name means courageous and brave.  You can do this.”

My middle name is “Jeannette” which means “grace of God”.  I have also experienced not only God’s grace in my life, but I believe that God has graciously given me the ability to have grace with others.  Looking back on my life, I honestly have a hard time comprehending how I made it through certain times.  I have had the ability and power to make it through situations that I ordinarily would never be able to handle.  God’s grace, his ability and enabling power, was evident in my life.

Names can be prophetic

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Stay in Your Lane

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Stay in Your Lane title image

Stay in Your Lane

My family recently took our first ski trip. My husband, Eric, had skied before when he was growing up, but the kids and I had never skied. This was new territory for us. To be very honest, my first experience with skiing was not fabulous. Consequently the majority of my frustrations didn’t even come from the dislike of skiing, but from the pressure and insistence of others who seemingly found it impossible for anyone to dislike skiing. During this whole ordeal I started seeing a biblical parallel…stay in your lane, and I’m not talking about a physical skiing lane although that’s probably a relevant lesson also! 😉

First, ski lessons

I’ll admit that I was a bit apprehensive from the start. Although I love the mountains, I’m not a big fan of cold weather. I’m also not very athletic. Coordination is not a particular skill of mine. For some reason my head knows what to do but my arms, legs, hands, and feet don’t always cooperate. I’m also not particularly fond of falling or getting hurt, which I knew would be inevitable when learning to ski in my mid-40s. I’m not quite as physically resilient as my kiddos.

Pre Crash photo

This was my last time on skis

Nevertheless, I’m a brave soul, so I proceeded with a fairly open mind. My daughter and I signed up for ski lessons (ignoring my husband’s advice to “just watch YouTube videos”). I knew about an hour into our 3 hour lesson that skiing was NOT for me. However, I pressed on with the lesson. After all, what kind of message would I be sending to my daughter to start something and not finish it? I’m not a quitter, and I don’t like to be defeated. That being said though, I typically know my boundaries and my personal preferences. I quickly learned that I did not like skiing, no matter how hard I tried to master the skill.

I opted not to ski the rest of day. Instead, I just enjoyed observing. The next day, I attempted the bunny slopes again. Then, against my better judgement, I allowed my husband to convince me to graduate up to the next size slope. Let’s just say a crash was involved, which resulted in a hurt elbow and knee and me removing my skis and marching the rest of the way down instead. That ended my attempts at skiing for the rest of the trip, even though in hindsight it’s kind of a funny memory now.

Why is it NOT okay for me to dislike skiing?!

The main problem I encountered though was not my inability to ski or my lack of love for it but instead the confrontations of people who insisted on my love and appreciation of skiing. It seemed unfathomable to some people that I just didn’t like it. I was consistently being pressured to keep trying, don’t give up, you’ll get the hang of it, you’ll like it if you just keep trying, you just need to overcome your fear, and on and on. I felt like people were trying to force me to do something that I KNEW internally was just not me, not in my wheelhouse, and not a part of my preferences. Why couldn’t people just understand that?!

To me it’s kind of like eating salmon. I don’t care how many times I try it (and believe me I keep trying it over and over…for years) or how it’s prepared, I hate salmon. It triggers my gag reflex. Bleh! Or…like running. You know those people that live for the next 5K or marathon? I’m not one of those either. I love walking. Running…not so much….unless something is chasing me. But then again, you have those people who insist on running being the best, most exhilarating form of exercise, and they want everyone else to love it just as much as they do. Have you ever met those people?

Maybe not everyone is a skier. Maybe some people are skiers, and some are runners, and maybe some are just observers or hikers or fisherman (another situation where I’d rather just sit and observe or ride along and read a book). Could it possibly be that maybe, just maybe, everyone can have different preferences, and hobbies, and roles? Might it not work out even better if people were different and had different tastes and different talents? Wouldn’t it be HORRIBLE if everyone were exactly the same?!

Stay in your lane—know and operate within your particular preferences, place, gifts, and talents

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Burn the Ships

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Burn the Ships title image

Burn the Ships

A couple months ago I heard a song for the first time called “Burn the Ships”, by for KING & COUNTRY (video below). I got really excited to show my son the song because he had just told me the story about the Spanish explorer and conquistador, Hernán Cortés, who burned his ships to give his men motivation to fight. I never remembered learning about this story before.

He had actually learned it from his baseball coach this year. In fact, it’s one of the team’s mantras this year. You see, last year the team made the state playoffs but just missed making it to the championship game. This year their coach didn’t want that to hold them back. He said they need motivation just like Cortés’ men did in order to conquer the new land. They have to fight in order to survive.

For the baseball team, the metaphorical ships are their past (the past losses, being an ordinary team, almost winning, etc.). They needed to burn them down, get out of their shell, and fight as a team this year. To symbolize this, the team huddles up and shouts “1-2-3-BTS!” (BTS=Burn the ships) The back of their hoodies this year also say “Burn the Ships”.

Hernán Cortés-Burn the Ships

Cortés was said to have burned his own ships upon arrival in Veracruz, Mexico in 1519 to prevent the retreat of his men. This would send a clear message—that there was no turning back! After doing a little bit of research I discovered that Cortés, in fact, may not have actually burned the ships. There is some dispute about whether or not he burned the ships or instead sank, scuttled, or ran them aground. Additionally it is debated whether or not he actually spared one ship to send to King Charles V in Spain with a portion of the treasure from his conquest.

Regardless of the “how”, it is evident from history that the ships were indeed destroyed. Thus, the result and reasoning remain the same…to prevent retreat and ensure his men were committed to their mission. Cortés knew one thing: retreat is easy when you have the option. Therefore, to burn the ships is to cut all sources of retreat. Consequently he removed any obstacles that could potentially hold his men back from giving their full effort. The message? “Succeed or die. We are not leaving this place alive unless we win.”

A reminder to me

This reminded me of a particular time that I too had to burn the ships at one time. 10 years ago our marriage was in a deep and dark place, to the point of separation and divorce papers. It was very broken—beyond any repair that we could humanly do. Only by God’s grace, forgiveness, and power was our marriage restored.

Tattoo rings...symbols of what God has done

My tattoo ring is a reminder to me of what God has done in my marriage

We symbolically burned the ships when we literally burned our divorce papers. (I had a picture I was going to post of us burning them with fireworks on the 4th of July, but I can’t seem to find it.) My “ship” was divorce, and by burning that it took that option off of the table forever. Then on our 15 year anniversary, five years later, we re-committed with another symbolic (yet quite permanent!) declaration by getting tattoos on our wedding ring fingers as a reaffirmation of our vows.

Last month (December 2019) we celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary. The traditional “gift” for 20 years is china, so I made Eric a mosaic out of a broken piece of china of my grandmother’s. This mosaic represented how God made something new and beautiful out of something very broken. This was only possible because we committed to burn the ships and decided to look ahead to the possibility and promise of something new.

Mosaic china heart

Mosaic china label

Still need reminders on occasion

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