dealing with concerns

I totally get that Jesus says not to worry about what we eat, wear or what’s going to happen tomorrow and I totally want to align myself with His instructions.  And I’d also venture to say that from time to time, we both have a little bit of a challenge in the “concern” area.  Here are some ideas / thoughts that may be useful:

• break big issues into smaller pieces or components and they might not seems as overwhelming
• memorize some verses from the Bible that you can lean into when you feel like you’re drowning in the “worry” zone – Ps 55:22 is a great resource, as a starter
• health upkeep – here’s the normal nagging of drinking lots of water & maintaining an consistent exercise routine
• worship tunes that lift up Jesus always help me to put any problems or worries into a better perspective
• It always helps me to remember to put my trust in God & to lift up my soul to God (Ps 25:1)

These are a few ideas that have been useful to me.  What helps you?  Please share 🙂

help with being stressed

I know that many of you don’t need any help with dealing with stress.  In fact, you may be a person who is completely immunized from anything stressful so you might find these ideas to be boring.  If, however, you find yourself struggling with stress from time to time, these are some things that have helped me of late:

• if I get jittery about the future, it’s really helped me to re-adjust my focus to keep it on Jesus, being confident that when I get to the future, Jesus will be there.  More importantly, I can be with Jesus now in this moment
• provision challenges: sometimes God’s provisions come on a day-to-day basis.  With this in mind, I can trust that He is giving me what I need for this day and even this moment
• while this may sound cheesy, it’s really helped me alot lately to praise & worship God just on my own without music or even a specific song but just singing my own songs and words that are from my heart
• finally, the other day I was up really early & really stressed out;  I read an email about a friend who is going through a REALLY DIFFICULT time.  Reading about her hardship made me instantly want to pray for her – taking my mind off of me

I believe that God has huge help available for us, even in stressful times ,)

Were you ever nervous about a meeting?

 I had coffee with a friend the other day & this friend can be a little cranky from time to time & I was concerned that our coffee gathering was going to be “one of those times.”  I didn’t feel like I could cancel the coffee date but I was kind of jittery about what path the conversation would take.  So I thought about some different strategies I could use for this potentially volatile coffee time & here were some of my thoughts:

• I could endeavor to keep the conversation shallow & discuss the weather, sports & all things surfacy.  I decided against this option because she would know that I was being disengenuous.
• I could arrive late & have to leave early before anything dicey could come up – again, that would be disengenuous
• I could just brace myself for whatever might be said & keep a tough shell so that nothing she could say would zing me.  With this option, I would guard myself from being totally present in the conversation
• I could pre-forgive her – making the decision ahead of time to forgive her no matter what she might say, regardless of if she was trying to be intentionally hurtful or not.  I decided for this option 🙂

So here was the outcome – our coffee time went well, we had a great conversation & there was nothing too zing-y that I had to work through & forgive.  I liked the pre-forgiveness strategy so much that I decided to share it with you & use it again in other situations that have any hurtful potetial 🙂

investment strategies

This is a crazy time for investments, of particular interest is the stock market over the last 6-9 months! Yowzer!!  The stock market can be very unsettling if you’ve invested in it over the years & were relying on it to provide finances for you now!  OUCH!

Investment is deciding to not consume something now but rather to set it aside, so that it will be available to be useful in the future (hopefully, to have grown).  Investment kind of flies in the thinking of modern conventional thinking – to our own demise.  From a macro-scopic viewpoint, I think that we rarely consider investments from an eternal point of view, even though Jesus encouraged us to do this in Matt 6:1-21.  In these verses, Jesus basically identifies 3 resources all of us have at least a little bit of – money, relationships & appetites / desires (energy).  Some personal questions He asks us to consider:

• what are we doing with these resources?
• have we considered these resources from the viewpoint of eternity?
• will we have any resources / investments set aside & ready for us when we cross over into eternity? 

In Matt 6:21, Jesus says that where our treasure is, you’ll find our heart there.  Something interesting to consider in connection with not only our finances, but our relationship w God & our appetites & energy.

Can you pls leave a comment w some ideas on how you can use your money, relationship w God & energy (appetites) for investments in eternity?