Personal Development

For the longest time, Jason had no concept of self-development and felt as though his life was spiraling out of control. He was one of those people who’s been gifted with intelligence, a good sense of humor, and a warm personality that was inviting to others. But it just seemed as though things never quite lined up for him – his relationship with his fiancé ended after they found themselves on different paths in life, and various other friendships of his crumbled when he sought to build accountability into those friendships. He had tried his hand at various business ventures; he had great ideas and a solid work ethic, but somehow things just never quite got off the ground. It wasn’t long after that Jason began to feel like not only had he failed at a few things – he felt as though he was a failure. Life doesn’t always go according to plan or stick to our schedule. Our desires for a certain kind of life get frustrated through a combination of our poor choices, the choices and actions of others, and circumstances simply not lining up in our favor. A business can fail because there are poor systems in place, but even the best-positioned business can struggle in the face of huge events such as a global pandemic or a severe economic recession. The dynamics in personal relationships aren’t always under our control, and that’s partly the reason they are both rewarding and a little scary. Failure will happen in everyone’s life. When things go off the rails, that leaves one with a choice of how to respond meaningfully to that setback. It is possible to use failure to catapult yourself further toward your goals, but that requires the cultivation of a certain mindset regarding self-development. How [...]

It is something you see wherever you look: your immediate network of friends and colleagues and most certainly on social media – people trying to manage stress by working more. This faulty logic may be that work equals money, and because money is inversely proportional to stress the more money you have, the less stress you have as a result. Is this true? If people could expertly manage stress through more work, then why would God designate a whole day every week to rest and worship? Well, let us start by taking a look at what it is to remember the sabbath, and then how this relates to managing stress. Manage stress through obedience to God Remembering the Sabbath is a command from God. It is not just a good idea that we should seriously consider. It is a direct instruction from the one who designed and knit together each one of us so that we would live in line with how we were designed. Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. – Exodus 20:8-11, NIV For a refresher on the type of work God undertook in those first days, open up your Bible to the first page of Genesis. Like himself, God has given us the [...]