Embracing the New Year: Five Tools for Growth

The first indispensable item for me is a pen, and the reason that I choose that is because of the importance of words and in particular listing for God. One of the things that I want deeply for this year is I want to live inspired. I want to be captivated by thoughts that have nobility and goodness and strength and Grace and humility and courage in them. [00:53:32]

There's a very old practice that I have been engaging in for a while since I read about it. It actually comes out of the 12-step movement and approaches to Christian spirituality. The idea was that sometime during the day, for me it's an hour in the morning because I'm a morning person, to spend some time reading scripture, having my mind circle around some thoughts that are from God and that are filled with love and power. [01:21:04]

Write everything down that comes into your mind, everything. Writing is simply a means of recording so that you can remember later. Don't sort out or edit your thoughts at this point. Don't say to yourself, "This thought isn't important, just an ordinary thought, can't be guidance, isn't nice, can't be from God, just me thinking," etc. Write down everything that passes through your mind. [02:11:28]

I have been going through a period over the last month or so where circumstances have been difficult for me, as happens periodically. I have told you about many, many years ago when my friend Dallas Willard asked me how I was doing. I said I was doing okay under the circumstances, and he said, "Well, what are you doing under there?" We were not meant to live under the circumstances. [04:03:43]

Deceptive brain messages are the statements that I live with, and we all do. These statements may not be completely untrue, but they are very unhelpful. They will trap me in the process of rumination and spiraling downward. What's false about them is that they offer the promise that if I will just obsess over them, it will lead to something constructive, but of course, it never will. [04:56:24]

Jeffrey talks about four different steps to relabel, you know, words to say with that thought, "I don't have to live with that all the time. That's actually not going to help me," and then to reframe it to recognize, "Oh, that's catastrophizing," or "That's black and white thinking," or "That's taking it too personally," or "That's magnifying it." I come to see what's not true about it. [05:20:52]

Friendship and the farther I go in life, and especially as I'm passing through this season of life, to recognize for those friends for you where when we are together, we speak truth to each other, and there is love, and we're able to help each other. We're able to find God with each other in ways that we couldn't otherwise. We're able to see the image of God in one another. [07:55:08]

When Jimmy sees a person, any person, he is seeing a creature who is made in the image of God. As he looks into each face, he's looking at least a bit into the face of God. When Jimmy sees a person, any person, he is also seeing the creature endowed with an immortal soul, a soul of infinite value and dignity. [10:08:36]

I can do that. I can say, "God, how do you want to partner together with me so that I can pour myself into this in partnership with you and do whatever I'm doing heartily as unto you and with you?" And so I have this little uniform to remind me this is my fourth indispensable item for 2024. I get to do work. I get to create value. [14:43:86]

Cooper is a 12-week-old yellow Labrador puppy, and he is the indispensable item for 2024 that reminds me of joy and the beauty of joy. I want to live inspired, and I want to live in peace, and I want to live in friendship, and I want to live doing good work, but I also want to remember the goodness of God and what it is that God has created. [15:18:39]

Al Pla has written a wonderful book, "Not the Way It's Supposed to Be." He writes about how the beauty that we were all created for is what the biblical prophets would call Shalom, the webbing together in mutual harmony and delight of creation and every human being and God. He writes in there about how part of Shalom is our internal response to things. [15:52:80]

For this year, along with the pain and the sorrow that I know will be there, I want to remember joy. When we took this guy into the vet, and they oohed and aahed and cooed over this dog so much, Nancy said, "You should pay me for getting to touch this dog. I should have to pay you for bringing him in." [16:37:24]