Success in Jesus Archives | Laughing Over Tomorrow

Christian Entrepreneur, natural birth, Success in Jesus

Count It All Joy Sounds Impossible Until You See What the Hard Part Is Building.

We talk about labor a lot in the world of building a business and a life. The labor of showing up consistently. The labor of doing the work when you don’t feel like it. The labor of building something from scratch, of managing a team, of raising kids and running a home and still finding time to grow. That kind of labor gets talked about. It gets celebrated. And it should. But there’s another kind of labor I don’t think we talk about nearly enough. The Labor That Happens in You Think about childbirth for a second. Not as a metaphor you’ve heard a hundred times, but as a real, physical reality. Labor in childbirth is not productive in the way we typically define productive. You’re not checking things off a list. You’re not making progress you can measure from the outside. You are going through something that is hard, and relentless, and asks everything of you, and there is no shortcut through it. And yet. Something is coming. That is the kind of labor I want to talk about today. The labor that is happening in you, not just around you. The kind that’s forming something, producing something, building…

Christian Entrepreneur, Success in Jesus

What Happens When You Show Up With No Agenda (And Why God Loves That the Most)

I want to tell you about a farm. Not in a metaphorical way. An actual farm, the kind that still actually farms, with wide open land and a quiet that sits differently than the quiet you find at home. I was there for a gathering and I showed up with something I don’t always carry into a room. No agenda. No outcome I was chasing. No ROI I was measuring in the back of my mind. Just me, settling back, and asking the Lord to show me what He was going to do. Why Letting Go of ROI Is So Hard I talk about ROI a lot. Return on investment. What we get back for what we put in. As an entrepreneur, as someone who loves strategy and building and seeing things move, I’m very familiar with going into a room and quietly calculating what this is going to produce. And honestly I don’t think that’s always wrong. Intention matters. Clarity matters. Knowing why you’re in a room matters. But here’s what I’ve found to be true over and over again. Our definition of what a return is supposed to look like is almost always too small. Too flat. Too…

Christian Entrepreneur, Success in Jesus

Becoming Like Jesus Doesn’t Erase Who You Are. It Actually Reveals It.

I want to address something I’ve heard come up more than once, and maybe you’ve thought it too. If we’re all becoming like Jesus, does that mean we all end up the same? Does growing into the image of God slowly flatten out everything that makes you distinctly you? Does sanctification produce one kind of person? I want to sit with that question for a second because I actually think it points to something really important, and the answer is one of the most beautiful things I’ve come to understand about who God is. There Is a Standard. And It’s Him. Yes, there is a quality, a level of righteousness, a standard of goodness and kindness and love that every believer is moving toward. That standard is not abstract. It is a Person. It’s God Himself. God is love, and everything we’re becoming is rooted in that. As we grow into imitators of God, as Paul calls us to be in Ephesians 5, we are all rising toward the same character. The same fruits. The same spirit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control. And here is what I find so merciful and so holy…

Christian Entrepreneur, Success in Jesus

You Are Not Wrong. You Are Righteous. Here’s the Difference God Wants You to Know.

We are so afraid of getting it wrong. Afraid we didn’t actually hear God. Afraid we’re pursuing the wrong thing, saying the wrong thing, or that somewhere underneath it all, we’re just wrong at our core. And sometimes, if we’re being really honest, we’ve been so conditioned to be suspicious of our own confidence that having any inner boldness starts to feel like pride. So we shrink. We second guess. We call it humility and keep waiting for a clearer sign. But I want to talk about that for a second, because I think a lot of us have been confusing two very different things. Fear Is Not Humility This is the thing I keep coming back to. So much of what we call humility before God is actually just fear wearing a spiritual mask. Real humility is yielded. It’s submitted. It says, “Search me, Lord. If there’s anything in me that’s not of you, show me.” David prayed that prayer. That was genuine, beautiful, Holy Spirit led humility. But David also said, “I am blameless before you.” Both of those things were true at the same time. And that tension is not a contradiction. It is actually the invitation….

Christian Entrepreneur, Success in Jesus

You Are Not Too Far Gone. What the Prodigal Son Teaches Us About God’s Relentless Love

There was a season in my life where I was basically living a double life. I’m not going to get into every detail right here, but I will tell you this. Someone I loved was genuinely hurt by it. And when I started to turn back toward the Lord, she struggled to believe that God’s mercy was really available for me after what I had done. I don’t blame her for that. Honestly, I wasn’t fully sure myself what God was going to do with that chapter of my story. But looking back now? I see it so clearly. And I want to share it with you because I know I’m not the only one who has sat in the weight of a past season and wondered whether it was just too much. Coming Back to the Prodigal Son I kept returning to this story in scripture during that time, and I still come back to it now. The prodigal son. A son who took everything from his father and wasted it. Who ended up so low he was desperate just to eat. Who rehearsed a speech on the walk home because he was certain the best he could hope…

Christian Entrepreneur, Success in Jesus

Patience Isn’t What Happens After the Wait. It’s What Happens Inside It.

I was at the park this morning praying, and my mind kept circling back to one thing. Patience. We talk about patience a lot as believers. It shows up on every list of the fruit of the Spirit, and most of us have prayed for more of it at some point. But I think we forget what patience actually requires of us. It’s not something God just hands you one day. It’s something He produces in you, slowly, while you’re still in the middle of the hard thing. Still waiting on the answer. Still waiting on the shift that hasn’t come yet. What “Do Not Grow Weary” Really Means There’s a verse that tells us not to grow weary in doing good, because in due season we’ll reap a harvest if we don’t give up. For a long time I think I read that as a verse about endurance alone. Just keep going. Don’t quit. But I’ve come to believe it’s deeper than that. I think it’s actually telling us this. When you’re in the middle of your stress, your pain, your trial, God is perfecting your faith right there. He’s producing patience in you while everything around you stays…

Christian Entrepreneur, Success in Jesus

The Holy Tension Every Christian Entrepreneur Feels (And Why It’s Actually a Gift)

There’s a tension I live with as a spirit-filled entrepreneur, and it shows up far more often than I’d like to admit. I’ll be moving through my work, building, creating, showing up, and out of nowhere I find myself stopping to ask the Lord some pretty hard questions. Are my motives laid down? Am I doing this for my own gain? Is this about putting myself in the limelight, or is it about love? Is it about loving others? Is what I’m doing right now motivated by fear, or is it actually led by God? I used to think that constant inner questioning was a problem. Almost like a kind of turmoil I needed to fix or push past so I could finally feel confident in what I was building. I think a lot of people would look at that wrestling and assume something’s wrong. That if you really trusted God, you wouldn’t have to keep asking. But here’s what I’ve come to believe instead. That inner struggle, that holy tension, is actually what keeps you whole. It keeps you holy. It’s Not About Earning Your Righteousness Here’s the truth I keep coming back to. No amount of inner judgment,…

Success in Jesus

Godly Self-Care

There’s a lot of talk in the world about self-care. As the church, we’ve jumped on the bandwagon, no reason not to, the concept and premise is spectacular. In reality, our culture has been self-sabotaging and this new wave of fundamental health is refreshing! Even the church has lacked sorely in this area where we should have been leading the example in healthy practices of caring for our whole bodies…well, we haven’t been. Now we have an opportunity to set an example for a group of hurting people who are trying to self-medicate! However, we also have a temptation to give in to ungodly but seemingly good self-care practices. Notice the phrase in its essence, self-care. Without taking up a religious or haughty spirit, shouldn’t we at least recognize that we can’t much take care of ourselves? Shouldn’t we be in the habit of promoting God-care? Putting that aside, let’s strip the stipulation or confusion and stick with the term self-care for simplicity’s sake. We are going to identify Godly self-care so that we can discern the difference between what the world is promoting for beneficial self-care and what God defines as self-care. Before we can be an example in…

Success in Jesus

The Striving Leaves Me Empty

It always happens this way. I find myself, at the end of myself, and realize…I ran out. How long was I running? When did I stop leaning into Jesus? What motivated me to do it in my own strength? What fear overtook me and forced me into this corner of striving? What hurt or trauma enticed me to control? Have you ever found yourself in this place? Have you found yourself in that moment where you recognize that you’re not operating in His strength anymore? Not operating in His grace, or freedom, or rest, or trust? You realize that you’re completely in your flesh, and as you take a moment, you get stuck trying to remember where you crossed the line. Let’s troubleshoot. How do we backtrack and resolve what’s happening? But, even better, how do we manage or monitor the engagement of our hearts and our whole selves to ensure that we aren’t leaving our Friend behind? If we’re leaving Him behind, we’re leaving ourselves behind. It’s like this ghostly picture of us is running ahead, and the real us is at rest in Jesus 10 feet back. The version of us that we thought was ok and moving…

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Laughing Over Tomorrow

Category: Success in Jesus

Count It All Joy Sounds Impossible Until You See What the Hard Part Is Building.

What Happens When You Show Up With No Agenda (And Why God Loves That the Most)

Becoming Like Jesus Doesn’t Erase Who You Are. It Actually Reveals It.

You Are Not Wrong. You Are Righteous. Here’s the Difference God Wants You to Know.

You Are Not Too Far Gone. What the Prodigal Son Teaches Us About God’s Relentless Love

Patience Isn’t What Happens After the Wait. It’s What Happens Inside It.

The Holy Tension Every Christian Entrepreneur Feels (And Why It’s Actually a Gift)

Godly Self-Care

The Striving Leaves Me Empty