success 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

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

Jesus Will Meet You Where You Are

Sometimes you hear the cliche response for the answer to your problem. “Worship the Lord, cast your cares on Him and He’ll make the burden feel lighter.” Well, that’s true, but it’s not always going to motivate you or actually help you get from A to B in your hard place, especially if you don’t understand what that means. When you come to Him in honesty and let it be hard, Jesus will meet you where you are, and then, He will start to comfort you. That’s what the process looks like. People haven’t always known how to communicate that or teach that, or even accomplish that in their own lives, but you can. Sometimes people get confused and think they need to deny their problems or their hurts and worship through it. But there’s a better way. We are not a people in denial. Jesus wasn’t in denial about His trials, but He took His own hurts to the Father. We are a people of power and self-control, sacrifice and love. Jesus said no one takes My life from Me, but I lay it down. We don’t worship through denial – we worship through hardship. It’s a choice…

Success in Jesus

Patience With Your Desires: Succeed and Continue

“We proceed through rounds of failure because we know success is available if we continue.” The point is this: I was about to give up. Because “I don’t have the time to sow into this as much as I want.” Can you imagine if every successful individual had given up when they felt they didn’t have enough time to invest? At the first sight of opposition? If they gave up when their first attempt wasn’t “successful” in their eyes? Remember with success as we know it, often comes failure. Succeed and continue. The reality is that inventing a light bulb doesn’t come out right on the first try. We proceed through rounds of failure because we know success is available if we continue. Why are we wired this way I wonder? What if I told you that success was available at the start and throughout every round of trial? What have you been dreaming in your heart? What are you working at? What have you been persevering in? How have you been patient with yourself, encouraged yourself or challenged yourself to succeed and continue? Notice that sequence…”succeed and continue“. Isn’t it cool that we are able to…

Success in Jesus

Surprises from God

I was in the prayer room during worship and I had another one of those moments that cannot be described. I love these moments. I was singing about believing the Lord for all we have, all He’s promised. And the verse coming to the surface of my heart was this: Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill his promises to her! Luke 1:45 So we began to sing, “Oh, I have believed and now I will see the goodness of the Lord.” As we did, it lifted up as a prayer of faith. And as we sang I knew that it would ring into the air, into the hearts and bring freedom for faith and pave the way for promises. A release was coming. And it did. In my heart, I saw myself in the mansion of the Father. His great big house, with full rooms, full tables, gifts and abundance for me. In my heart, I saw the warfare of my life manifesting promises, the goodness of the Father and His faithfulness laying out gifts, and the destiny and righteousness that I fought for…being affirmed by the King. A great big house, with everything I…

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Laughing Over Tomorrow

Tag: success

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.

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)

Jesus Will Meet You Where You Are

Patience With Your Desires: Succeed and Continue

Surprises from God