Month: December 2016

  • Don’t Let Other People Tell You Who You Are

    I share my stories with you in case you’ve experienced something like it. You’re not alone. And we CAN get through this.

    A few months after I gave my life to Jesus, people started prophesying over me at various church gatherings. Then after I completed the church membership classes, a few leaders in the church prophesied over me. 

    I started collecting these statements and promises, but really had no clue what to do with them. In some ways those words made my life worse. They tortured me. I was destined for something great, and yet I was a cowardly, insecure young man with no sense of direction for my life.

    Looking back, it hurts to consider that possibly some of the words received were just plain wrong. Maybe they were for someone else. Maybe they were misinterpreted. But what if the confusion I’ve felt paralyzed by for so long is the result of giving these prophecies the power to shape my life?

    What if most of the prophetic words spoken over me were flesh or just in error?What if my life feels so out of sync because I let other people tell me who I am. Instead of telling the world who I am. Or asking Father who he says I am.
    What if some of these crucial prophetic words from two decades ago mean nothing because they never confirmed much about my current or past life and therefore should be judged much more critically?

    One of the best personal philosophies I have I got from nonbelieving entrepreneurs. And that philosophy is that I don’t have to wait for life to choose me. I can choose life and make it happen. And I really didn’t know that for most of my life.

    It’s possible to feel an obligation to seek out, wait for, or work really hard to make prophecies come true. But when there’s a heart disconnect, allowing yourself to be limited by the parameters of a personal prophesy seems destructive. You are who God made you far more than you are what Joe Blow has the maturity and clarity to hear from God about you. 

    If the prophecy is in error, it has the potential to weigh us down just as much as other people’s opinions or curses. Trying to live up to the wrong ideal is soul crushing.

    I’m tired of confusion and error. I’m tired of floating through life. I’m ready to swim.


  • How Do You Know if You’re Working to Live or Living to Work?

    How Do You Know if You’re Working to Live or Living to Work?

    It’s one of the worst kept secrets in American culture. While we frown upon obesity and addiction, we often praise workaholics and treat them as the heroes of the 21st Century. 

    Workaholism is a vice. It’s an unhealthy imbalance. Yet how many Prime Time tv series focus on a doctor, lawyer, or detective who works late into the night every night, to the detriment of their families? It’s become the most cliche character type in our day. 

    Most of us will never be doctors. We’ll never be detectives. And we’ll definitely never be lawyers. But we watch these shows because we live vicariously through the dramatized excitement of their professions. Careers where lives hang in the balance every single day. It makes the mundane workday seem so exciting. You can never phone it in because someone needs surgery or an acquittal.

    None of it’s real, of course. Those are our tv lives. Whether we answer phones, write code, take blood samples, or balance accounts, our day to day work is often the stuff that daydreams are formed to escape from. 

    There’s a growing number of bored and unchallenged employees who’ve become fans of real-life entrepreneurs. Mythical business heroes like Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Sergey Brin, Gary Vaynerchuk, and Mark Zuckerburg. These people rose from the ranks of everyday high school and college students and took big risks that paid off years down the road. And we who are stuck in jobs we don’t like doing work that doesn’t fulfill us look to those people and live vicariously through them. Just like I imagine teenage girls live through the constant tweets and shows and articles on the Kardashians. 

    I don’t track the everyday nature of most entrepreneur’s lives, but I know many of them work nonstop from dawn til dusk. They rarely if ever take vacations. They’re driven to arrive at a destination they’ve envisioned. 

    I’m not saying don’t learn from them. I’m not even saying don’t emulate them. I just question where the line is. You know… That line where temporary hard work to achieve a major goal blurs over into working long and hard all the time as the definition and destination of one’s life. 


  • A Collection of Thoughts While Deer Hunting

    Do I really want to kill a deer? I mean, I’m not overly fond of venison. I’m not going to use the pelt. I WILL eat deer meat but more as both an obligation after killing and a practice for a self-reliant future.

    I get to spend hours alone in Nature, which recharges my soul.

    If I killed 2+ deer each year, how much money would I SAVE on meat?

    If I buy all the gear most guys use to hunt, how much money will I LOSE on meat?

    At some point, the gain has to exceed the expense. Otherwise I have a very expensive hobby. 

    Why does it cost so much to do EVERYTHING? Land is expensive. Building a house is expensive. Owning chickens is expensive. Hunting is expensive. Farming is expensive. Grocery shopping is expensive. There has to be a line drawn where we decide to make due with minimal supplies or build our own accessories with minimal tools.