Life Talk With Craig Lounsbrough podcast

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Life Talk with Craig Lounsbrough

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”Flecks of Gold On a Path of Stone - Simple Truth’s for Profound Living” - Part Two 13:49

1 day前13:49

13:49

Flecks of Gold On a Path of Stone - Simple Truth's For Profound Living An unknown author wrote, “Real treasure lies not in what that can be seen, but what cannot be seen.” Oddly, we possess this strangely cockeyed perception that we must be able to see something in order to treasure it. What we see as treasure is really only the thing that’s revealing the treasure itself. The treasure in a daisy is not the daisy, but the massively creative genius behind the daisy. The flower itself is simply a tender, fragrant and quite intricate manifestation of the real treasure. Reflected in the wonder of this simple flower we are privileged to see a whisper thin slice of something truly marvelous. Real treasure then lies nestled in hidden places with generous clues to its magnificence scattered all about us like a generous field of daisies that rolls off to blue horizons. Sadly, we call those clues “treasure.” The real treasure is often too airy and intangible for us. But, we feel that we have to see treasure, which in reality keeps us from seeing treasure. Not only do we have to see treasure, we think that we have to be able to somehow hold it in our hands. And then, in far too many cases we think we have to be able to own in order to really treasure it. What we haven’t figured out is that if we can possess something it’s simply not a treasure, for real treasure is far too elusive to be held in the hands of any man. Sadly, we rarely consider the reality that real treasure is the stuff that can’t be seen. Therefore, we don’t look for it because we presume that there’s nothing to look for. Because we don’t look for it, we miss real treasure and we accept the bogus, phony and plastic stuff of life for the stuff of treasure. We plod through life with our pockets crammed with a squalid array of worthless trinkets that we think to be treasure. We live anemically impoverished lives and we don’t even know it. In fact, it may well be that to treasure something in a truly treasured manner it must be entirely ethereal; it must be something that we can’t see, that we can’t hold and that we can’t own. When we possess something, the fact that we have the ability to possess it suggests that whatever it is, it’s terribly limited; so limited in fact that we can control it. Possessing something suggests that whatever we possess is subject to our whims and the flux of our own whimsy. Anything we can control must have some sort of inferior status that automatically excludes it as being treasure of the most treasured sort. Being unable to possess something suggests that it has a sweeping scope, an unfathomable significance, and a fathomless depth that is far beyond us or beyond anyone else for that matter. Real treasures are elusive because if they’re not, they don’t rise sufficiently above our sordid and stained humanity to be genuinely categorized as treasures. Real treasure will not be owned, or bound, or appraised, or hemmed in, or leashed, or locked in a vault, or confined to a trust, or be made subject to either our ridicule or praise. Real treasure is priceless because it supersedes and completely eclipses any rogue monetary standards that we’d foolishly attempt to place on it. Real treasure will not bow in servitude or obediently follow at our heels because it is superior to us. Yet the real wonder of real treasure is that it is withheld from no one. Sparrows and a Clapboard Garage Every spring the sparrows came back to the old garage; something like coming back to a comfy, old friend. Darting and bouncing in feathered frenzy, they would burst from the muscular maples and the tangled brush of the Mock Oranges, flirting and flitting in front of the garage in some sort of grand hello after a winter’s separation. Upon their return their boundless energy and contagious enthusiasm seemed wildly intoxicating; vibrant, vibrating and filled with all the fresh energy of spring. I often wondered if they had spent the cold, gray months of winter in a nearly uncontrollable anticipation of greeting their old friend once winter had rolled off the horizon of spring. Sometimes in life there seems to be a subtle yet wonderfully warm camaraderie of sorts that develops between things you’d never think would or could be connected like that. Those things are a kind of treasure in themselves. That seemed to explain the quiet, entirely unspoken kind of relationship that existed between the old garage and the sparrows. They seemed like long seasoned friends that didn’t need to say much because the bond that they shared spoke more than words ever could. The old clapboard garage and the house sparrows were each warmed, gently magnified, and beautifully enhanced by the other. Each was a treasure embraced as a treasure. The sparrows would glide up between the heavy wooden doors and slip by the sturdy steel tracks that they ran on; seeming to nestle into the garages soft, clapboard embrace. Every spring the sparrows would settle in and nest right above the heavy wooden doors, tucked just inside the thin edge of the garage attic. There was far too much love and warmth in the old garage, so there were usually two or three nests enfolded above the wooden doors. It was easy to see the sparrows incessantly coming and going as they bobbed and darted about. Yet, as with any real treasure you couldn’t see what they were doing. Treasure enveloped in secrecy always lends a bit of tantalizing mystery to it all. The sparrows were phenomenally tireless; transporting endless bits of straw and brown grasses into the garage; building a place to birth the treasures of the next generation. Within moments of entering the garage they would poke out elated heads, and then burst into flight with empty beaks. In no time they would return with more strands of lacey grass, or bits of tattered weed, or cottony fibers, or limply discarded pieces of string . . . over and over. Within weeks the sound of new life could be heard tentatively reaching out from above the old, wooden doors. Scattered chirps and peeps liberally tossed out as brilliant shards of spring would be shushed when anyone approached. Patient mothers were teaching their little ones that life is an incomparable treasure, but treasure does not eliminate danger. These little, hidden treasures would become ever louder as they grew. They would grow strong and eventually seek the independence of flight. Before the close of spring they would launch themselves in a gangly and awkward kind of flight. Curiosity would beckon them out to explore the places close to the garage, bursting into uncoordinated flight but never wandering too far way. Life would eventually call them out ever further from the clapboard garage until they were gone into summer’s embrace. Characteristics of Treasures Unobtrusive Treasures are hidden away in quiet places. They speak in soft tones and often become silenced as we approach. They don’t beg to be found, but embrace us if we do happen to find them. They are the product of completely ordinary circumstances unfolding in wonderfully extraordinary ways. They are found hidden in the nooks and crannies of our existence; all around us if we quit allowing our attention to be captivated by that which is noisy and listen for that which is quiet and still. The Product of Unexpected and Loving Camaraderie Treasures are a product of treasures. Real treasure is the product of lives shared, experiences intermingled, roads merged into single lanes, sacrifices jointly experienced, the soulful laughter of two hearts in beat with each other, and lives bountifully expended in unity. Treasures are the step-child of lives lived out in shared experiences that dramatically multiply both the experience and persons in a manner geometrically beyond anything the persons could hope to experience alone. Treasures rise out of the relationship of people who are intimately woven together by the threads of time and the needle of experience. Always Creating and Never Preserving Treasures are not stagnant. They’re not to be preserved as in the preserving they will most certainly wither and they will perish. Real treasures begat other treasures. Real treasures are designed to perpetuate other treasures. Sometimes the perpetuation involves the replication of the original treasure, and sometimes the replication is something entirely different but just as wonderful. Treasures are ingenuously and deliberately crafted to enrich the world. If one thing is for certain, they are not designed to be encased in the lifeless museums of our making, or the vaults we create to keep them to ourselves. It’s in their multiplication that the cold of life’s winters are forced off the edge of the calendar to make way for spring. Sown to the World It’s our natural inclination to preserve treasures; to corral them and box them and seal them tight. We assume that unless they’re preserved they’ll be lost, which is entirely contradictory. In fact, they are designed to be launched and thrown out to the horizons of each of our lives regardless of whatever the season is that we might be in. Authentic treasures permeate our world; they gain wings of their own and they disburse so that they might reproduce in other places and in other lives. The stuff of treasure is irrepressibly infectious and prudently wild; intent on providing enrichment whenever and wherever it can. We must work against our own inclinations and toss treasures out to the world around us. It would be tremendously wise to rethink the concept of treasure in your own life. What you may be holding onto may not be treasure at all. In fact, if you’re “holding” onto it, it’s not.…

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Life Talk with Craig Lounsbrough

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Defined By Our Deficits - "Taking It to Our Knees: Declaring Who I Am" 9:15

約 2 日前9:15

9:15

Defined By Our Deficits “Any deficit that you have can never stand against the asset that that deficit is waiting to become.” Craig D. Lounsbrough You know, we come to define ourselves more by what we lack than by what we possess. We define ourselves by the successes that we haven’t had, the relationships that didn’t work, the careers that never happened, and the dreams that never got off the ground because they never made it to the runway. All of these things tell us everything that we are not. The assets that we don’t have. The confidence that we lack. The intelligence that is never intelligent enough. The talents that we don’t possess, and the determination that is never sufficiently determined. We see ourselves as a sad compilation of everything that we are not. These deficits result in shattered relationships. Shuttered opportunities. Job losses. Financial failures. Addictions. Upended careers. Friendships that went up in flames and the charred remains of families that fell to the same fate. The shame and embarrassment mocks us, telling us that we are everything that is wrong with everything that went wrong. Surrounded by so many failures that evidence both the depth and number of our deficits, we become defined by those deficits. We feel that there is nothing else that we can define ourselves by. We are lulled (or sometimes thrust) into the belief that we are the sum total of our failures. And soon, believing becomes becoming. The Power of Thought Proverbs 23:7 says, “For as he thinks in his heart, so is he…” That’s both incredibly powerful, but wildly dangerous. We become what we think. We think ourselves into who we are. Therefore, we can think ourselves into the deficits that we think about. We can let those things define us until we ourselves are convinced of that definition. The Question… The question then becomes, “Who are we really?” Are we defined by our deficits? Is that our lot in life? Is there no escaping the things that we’ve screwed up? Do they leave an indelible mark of defeat and incompetence? Our Greatest Assets in Disguise Or, are our deficits are greatest assets in disguise? Is it possible that we are defined far more by the potential that rests in the deficit than the deficit itself? Do the roots of something great lay deep in our worst failures? Our lives are assets in the making. We are always standing on the verge of becoming something better. Something greater. The ‘better’ in our lives is always just one step away. One decision away. One choice away. On attitude shift away. The ‘better’ is always that close and never any farther away. The asset that any one of our deficits can become will always be far greater than the deficit from which it arose. Assets birthed of our deficits become the greatest parts of who we are. Taking what we believe to be defeat, seeing the rudimentary elements of victory embedded in that defeat, and turning that defeat into decisive victory is the stuff of true victory. We’ve Got It All Backwards God turns life on its head. He reverses the order of things. What is dead dies to death and becomes alive. Water surrenders its fluidity to feet that walk on it. Blindness becomes blinded by light. Legs that limp become legs that leap. Food for thousands from food for one. Millions from pennies. It’s all backwards. Gloriously backwards. Sin destroys. It’s sets everything back. That’s its single mission and sole agenda. God not only shuts sin down, He throw it in reverse. He works it against itself. As Joseph said to his brothers, “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good…” It’s all reversed. God walks us back from death to life. From hopelessness to hope. From fear to faith. From lives engulfed in deficits to lives empowered by assets. We Don’t Think That Way The problem is, we don’t think that way. Any belief that things might actually work this way is beaten out of us by the messages that our failures have beaten into us. We might visualize stopping something bad in our lives, or at least slowing it down. Maybe we can reign it in or temper it a bit. But we don’t think in terms of reversals. Radical, impossible, improbable, ingenious, and wildly liberating reversals. Sin says that we can’t do that. God says that we’re supposed to do that. And So…The Purpose of Deficits Our deficits were meant to be reversed. That’s what we have them for. And in the reversal they become the assets that we never visualized them becoming. Hidden within our failures there lays all of the composite parts that set the stage for our greatest successes. The worst of us contains the lessons that teach us how to be the best of us. Therefore, our deficits do not define who we are. Rather, they tell us who we can become. You Are More… The deficits that define you are the ones that you’ve allowed to define you. God says that you are more than any deficit or combination of deficits. And that ‘more’ is boldly stated in the thirty-one “I Am” statements outlined in the Bible. That ‘more’ is laid out for you to embrace, ingest, and incorporate into your life in wildly wonderful and transformational ways. Your ‘more’ is waiting for you. Conclusion You will find all thirty-one of these “I Am” statements outlined in my book, “Taking It to Our Knees – Declaring Who I Am.” This book is a fresh, entirely thought-provoking, and richly insightful thirty-one day devotional that will assist you in both discovering and living out your real self. You will find “Taking It to Our Knees – Declaring Who I Am” on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold. Thanks for joining us on LifeTalk today. You will find LifeTalk on most podcast platforms as well as YouTube. I would also encourage you to check out our daily posts on all of our Social Media sites.…

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Life Talk with Craig Lounsbrough

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”Flecks of Gold On a Path of Stone - Simple Truth’s for Profound Living” - Part One 13:16

約 3 日前13:16

13:16

Flecks of Gold on a Path of Stone – Simple Truth’s for Profound Living” Someone once uttered the timeless saying that “timing is everything.” There’s something about things happening in a certain order in a certain time that makes it all fit in a certain way. We sense a natural and correct progression that, if followed, leads to success or happiness or fulfillment or whatever it is that we’re chasing. The whole element of timing seems critical. The more important something is, the greater the issue of timing seems to be. Timing can be so critical that at times we set out to minutely orchestrate the tiniest pieces and parts of whatever we’re doing so that everything is perfectly cinched, tightly in synch and precisely on time. Falling Apart Just to Fall Apart Yet sometimes it all falls apart anyway. I mean it disintegrates; something like Murphy’s Law times three or four. Sometimes it’s not just a matter of something being a bit out of step, or not lining up quite right. It’s not about tweaking something or gently nudging it back into whatever place it was supposed to be. Sometimes the wheels fall off the thing, which then causes everything else to fall off as well. We end up with the classic train wreck where we met a downhill train on an uphill grade. More than that however, there’s absolutely no rhyme or reason for the train wreck. It simply didn’t need to be, but it was. It was all way beyond any odds or all statistics. Whatever happened, it was a cruelly extenuated string of stupid, dumb luck. Sometimes it just all falls apart . . . all of it. We’re left standing dumbfounded, mired in the confusion of it all and running our minds down a thousand roads of the classic “what could have gone wrong?” question. Sure, we’ll likely find some things that weren’t too well thought out or strategies that were a bit ill-conceived. We might unearth some rationales that now, in hindsight, weren’t quite as rational or shrewd as we originally thought them to be. We even might stumble over some misdirected motivations or less than ethical agendas that were part of the whole thing. The way we pasted it all together may have not been entirely seamless, and the stuff that we pasted together in the first place might have been less of a fit than we have originally thought. We may have even chosen to force fit some stuff that in the end really didn’t mesh all too well. Yeah, there are probably some quirks and a few flaws. Yet, there are times when these quirks and flaws and other dynamics really represent only a small portion of the whole train wreck. We dig and scratch and scrape only to uncover a sparse handful of these dynamics. There are times when the sum total of them is far too small and far too innocuous to really explain why the wheels fell off and the whole thing fell apart. They don’t add up sufficiently to explain the mess that lays scattered, derelict, smoking and broken at our feet. When Lack of Timing Makes Us Look Bad George McGovern once said, “You know, sometimes, when they say you're ahead of your time, it's just a polite way of saying you have a real bad sense of timing.” Sometimes we just try to play it all off, or make light of it in order to make it lighter. We missed a step somewhere, or we lost our place in the script, or we missed our cue. We can make it all cute and cut up about it. We can poke fun at ourselves to lighten everything up a bit. We can make polite statements to take the edge off of our stupidity. But when we lose our timing and things go horribly wrong, there may be nothing remotely right that can be said. No Answers In the end we’re left with bushels of questions that rot for lack of answers. Things just didn’t line up. There’s no sustaining or compelling rationale other than it didn’t happen when and how it should have happened. If the timing had been good, it all would have all been good. But the timing was not and now everything lays wrecked and ravaged. Sometimes the losses are marginal. At other times they’re catastrophic. Sometimes we can just pick up our toys, brush them off, head on home and play another day. Sometimes there’s nothing left to pick up other than the charred ash of incinerated dreams and the unidentifiable pieces of years’ worth of hope and sacrificial toil. Sometimes it’s no big deal, and at other times the whole thing is deal-breaker. Sometimes we can pick up and move on, and at other times there’s nothing to pick up and no place to move on to. Better Questions to Ask Maybe we should expand our thinking a bit. Maybe we should ask the question “is loss sometimes the best thing that can happen?” That’s a bitter and biting pill to swallow, on top of the fact that it’s a completely unsavory to even entertain in the first place. It suggests however that things in life don’t line up because maybe they’re not supposed to. Maybe what we were doing was in reality a whole lot more wrong than it was right. Maybe it would have been a whole lot more damaging than it would have been constructive. Maybe it would have been the thing that would have robbed us totally blind rather than enriching us beyond measure. Maybe it would have become the monster rather than the malevolent benefactor. Maybe the fact that wheels fell off of it and it derailed was one of the biggest blessings we’ve experienced in a very long time. Is there room in our thinking to entertain the possibility that failure is sometimes preferred to success? Success does not always deliver a blessing and failure does not always deliver a curse. Life is far too vast to place success and failure into scrupulously neat and tidy categories that we aptly apply in each and every situation. Sometimes the best thing for us is the very thing that we feel is the worst thing. Sometimes in God’s grand scheme, pain and loss are the pavers to something grand and glorious. Sometimes a misstep is a nothing more and nothing less than a change of cadence to right a path right to God. The Taxing Nature of Our Preconceived Outcomes At the beginning, when we’ve started to head off into most of our endeavors we don’t have the perspective of what this will look like on the other end. All we see is what we have in front of us, how it all goes together, and then based on that how we guess it will all come out in the wash. We can take a shot at speculating outcomes and be pretty convinced that our conceptualization will indeed be what it will look like on the other side. We can do the math and project the numbers and point to what it should all add up to. We can play with our mental bell-curves and crunch the emotional numbers to calculate an outcome. But sometimes things don’t add up according to our calculations, despite how tedious they might be. Sometimes our best projections because our most haunting nightmares. We’re typically not open to this kind of thinking because we’re angry about the loss and we’re licking our wounds because we feel gipped. We didn’t land where we projected we would land and we scour the minute fractions and infractions in order to get us to those ill-fated coordinates. We’re not in the mindset to think about the fact that maybe it blew up so that we wouldn’t. There’s no room in our heads to realize that we might have just been saved from ourselves. We’re too recklessly obstinate to realize that if we keep insistently goading the situation in order to achieve our preconceived outcomes there might come a point when we won’t be saved from ourselves anymore. All we tend to focus on is the feeling that we’ve been victimized, ripped off, audaciously cheated, short-changed and short-sheeted. The reality is that sometimes we are. But quite often this is life’s way of putting on the brakes. Is It Untimely? Are our circumstances untimely, or very timely? Do our situations appear untimely only because we’re seeing what didn’t happen, but we refuse to see the things that are happening right in the middle of what didn’t happen? Are we so myopic that we can’t see beyond the train wreck to the fact that the wreck stopped the train and that that might have been the very thing that compassionately saved us, or maybe graciously redirected us? To our chagrin, the exact time and place when we think something shouldn’t have happened may very well be the exact time and place when it absolutely should have happened. Rose Kennedy said that “Life isn't a matter of milestones but of moments.” It’s not about what we achieve, but what we learn on the way to the achievement. We glue our eyes to the goal and we ignore the journey on the way there. And that journey will often involve our world’s falling apart despite heroic efforts to keep them together. Yet, our world’s falling apart have within those events great lessons that we would be well advised to embrace. Moments are not always nice, but they can be rich. So, when your world falls apart in the untimeliness of living, look at the wreckage. You just may have been saved and didn’t even know it. You just may have been mercifully redirected and missed it. Your world falling apart may in actuality be your world being put together.…

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Life Talk with Craig Lounsbrough

1
”Flecks of Gold On a Path of Stone - Simple Truth’s for Profound Living” - Part Four 13:11

約 6 日前13:11

13:11

Common sense is a ‘common’ phrase that is in reality far from common. To add insult to injury, common sense also seems to weigh in a trite bit light on ‘sense’ as well. It might be proper to say that common sense is neither common nor does it make much sense anymore. Today, common sense commonly lacks sense and we are the poorer for it. It seems rather apparent that some things in life should simply ‘be’ without any thought about whether they should ‘be.’ We would define those as the common things. If we tinker with the idea of “common” for a moment, it would imply something that just ‘is’ because it has a place in life that’s uncontested, blatantly obvious, globally useful, intrinsically beneficial and it’s as cleanly natural as sunshine and rose petals. ‘Common’ defines those things whose existence we simply presume without questioning what they are or what role they play. They just ‘are’ because they’re supposed to be and we accept them as such. Common Sense It seems that common sense should be common as well, or at least we would like it to be common. After all, when we apply common sense things usually come out pretty good. Even if we can’t rightly define it, the phrase “common sense” has a nice ring to it. There’s something soothing about the idea of “common sense” as it seems to have some reliable guiding quality to it that’s much more likely to insure a good outcome. Common sense seems to bring a sure and steady compass to situations that are short on compasses. It seems to be the thing that will not fail us when all the craftiness, shrewdness, cunning and presumed brilliance of men who presume themselves as brilliant fails. Common sense is the spotless and orderly notion that we smile at with a kind of soothing and pleasantly simplistic agreement. Common sense implies a cup of wisdom, a dash of discernment and a dollop of intellectual acumen that’s blended clean and translucent. It’s clarity in chaos and focus when all else is frantic. It suggests the direct application of life experience, gently hemmed in by intuition and held fast by reason. Common sense is the best of our senses refusing to react to the worst of our fears. It appears to be a culmination and consolidation of the best of our experiences that in combination are sufficiently adequate to overcome the worst of who we are. The Absence of Common Sense The absence of common sense seems in large part to be related to the fact that we tack so much stuff on to it, or cut so much stuff out of it, or painfully contort it to the point that we’re not certain what we’re left with other than it’s probably nothing even remotely close to common sense. We’re prone to nip, tuck, tinker and toy with it until it’s a whole lot less to common sense and a whole lot more something else. Common sense then gets unrecognizably blurred or worse yet it gets entirely lost in our tinkering. What’s problematic is that once we’ve done all of that stuff to common sense, we think that what’s left over is still common sense. If fact, we often think that we’ve refined it to the point that it’s tight, clean and logically invincible. In reality, common sense is lost to the point that we don’t even recognize that whatever we’ve got left over after messing with common sense, it’s probably anything but common sense. We’ve got our own derivative of something that maybe started out as common sense but is only common in the fact that it no longer makes any sense. But we go ahead and treat it like common sense anyway. The obvious and natural progression is that we act on it thinking all the while that its common sense that we’re acting on. The repercussions are that we end up acting on something that’s likely distorted by our agendas or shaped by whatever the cultural bias is. The result is that we do incredibly stupid things while applauding ourselves for how smart we think we are. Ralph Waldo Emerson said it well when he wrote, “Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.” George Bernard Shaw put it another way when he said, “Common sense is instinct. Enough of it is genius.” Common sense is the stuff of simple man’s uncluttered instinct simply applied to whatever we’re facing. Instinct is all of our life experiences pooled together that gives us a sense that something’s right or wrong, good or bad, constructive or destructive, wise or not. Common sense then is simply using that instinct; refusing to convolute it by engaging in tangled complexities, and doing nothing more than directly applying it to our situation as our instinct tells us to apply it. If that’s the case, then why is common sense so incredibly uncommon? Common sense would suggest that common sense itself is contaminated and distorted by things that dramatically diminish or altogether destroy common sense. We bias it and distort it through a number of means that undercut it and render it largely anemic. In doing that we rob it of its simplicity, we sully its purity and then we strip it of its effectiveness. We make decisions based on whatever we’re left with and the end product is typically something reeking with the rancid stench of stupidity. Authentic Common Sense is Free of Prejudice and Bias Common sense is a frankness that’s not convoluted by prejudice, bias, special interests, personal demands, self-centered motivations, self-seeking agendas or any of a thousand things that twist it to something rank and spoiled. Those things cloud common sense to the point that it’s so mucked up that we can’t see in it, or through it, or even around it. In reality, common sense is a blend of truth and fact untainted by any agenda that would dilute or skew it. It’s clean and transparent, entirely uncluttered by all of the muck and mire that we rigorously pump into it. What makes common sense so uncommon is that we contaminate it with all that stuff. We have a difficult time setting our agendas cleanly apart and maintaining some disciplined degree of objectivity. We don’t get that common sense has a voice of its own and that voice is not our voice. What we adamantly listen for is our voice, our opinions, our sense of what should be. What do we think about this, that or the next thing? What are the pro’s and con’s that we can weigh out to weigh in our favor? We tend to like to hear ourselves talk anyway, so when we hear our own voices we typically like what we hear. Because we like what we hear, we assume it to be common sense and we act on it as such. Common sense is not our voice. It’s the voice of life experience. It’s the voice of uncompromised truth and hard fact. It’s the voice of a guiding conscious that whispers or sometimes screams in the back of all of our heads. It’s the voice of something that’s far greater than who and what we are that speaks simple truths that are so clean that we can’t even apprehend them in the sludge of our own minds. Whatever commons sense is, it’s not our voice. So, if we’re listening to hear what we’re saying, we’re not listening for common sense. Authentic Common Sense Uses Knowledge as Wisdom Despite the fact that it’s pretty clean and simple, we somehow have the need to analyze, decipher, scrutinize, probe, inspect, dissect and then review it all in retrospect. If we don’t go through this gargantuan process, we feel that we’re not being entirely responsible and thorough. In this cumbersome process the intellectual acumen takes it all in a thousand different directions which are then further skewed by our own biases. In the end common sense is altogether killed and swapped out with something that’s certainly intellectually shiny and pretty impressive, but probably entirely irrelevant and likely utterly off-base. Once we get to this place it’s all so messed up that we typically can’t even backtrack sufficiently well enough to find the place where we left common sense buried and dead. Robert Green Ingersoll said that “it is a thousand times better to have common sense without education than to have education without common sense.” Common sense is not something that’s learned in academia. Rather, it’s something gained by raw, hands-on, day-in and day-out experience where we get slapped and slugged. Common sense is gained in the rough and tumble of life, where we get beat, bruised, belittled, betrayed and battered. It’s standing up after we’ve been pummeled, shaking ourselves back to some level of consciousness and asking “what did I learn from whatever it was that just happened?” Whatever we learned, we add it to our base of preexisting knowledge. It’s the pooling of all those experiences and bringing them to bear on our situation that’s the raw fiber of common sense. The Value of Common Sense Common sense is a whole lot more valuable than we might think. There is something inherently grounded in common sense, something that resonates with the facts and the realities of whatever we’re facing. It keeps things on track, focused and balanced. It directs correctly and in a manner that brings relevant solutions that are effective even in seemingly implausible and impossible situations. Common sense takes the confusion that we tend to create and develops a clarity that sometimes seems too simplistic to be worth anything of real value. Yet, common sense can have tremendous value. Re-evaluate your thought processes. Reconsider the impact of both your own mind and all the sordid messages impressed upon you by the culture. Get back to the basics and you’ll find that life often has a stunning clarity that was stunningly missed.…

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Life Talk with Craig Lounsbrough

1
To Think Outside the Box - "In the Footsteps of the Few" 7:53

約 7 日前7:53

7:53

In the Footsteps of the Few I Was Thinking To Think Outside the Box “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.” Pablo Picasso I think that most of our thinking (despite how much there is to think about) is really pretty standardized and chafingly rote. We think in predetermined patterns and pre-existent templates that require no real thinking. And while there’s a whole lot to think about in this big, wide world of ours…we don’t. Not really. Why? Most of this appears to happen because we think within boxes that we randomly (and sometimes not so randomly) borrow. We think within predetermined boxes because they’re convenient and because they’re standardized. But what if our thinking were to open up fresh venues? And what if life could become a journey not lived within suffocating boxes, but rather an adventure crafted of breathless horizons where there are no boxes? What if? So, let’s consider some boxes that we tend to get stuck in. First, The Box of Societal Norms We think within the box of societal norms. We grant these norms legitimacy because most of the people around us adhere to them in one form or another. Because all these people adhere to them, we naturally grant these norms a morality, assuming that others would not dare embrace them if they weren’t sufficiently ethical or moral. To our relief, we quickly discover that if we think within these boxes we are far less likely to be met with rejection, or ridicule, or disdainful judgement, or some other rather distasteful response. Therefore, the rules of the box rule out the role of thinking. Second, The Box of the Mundane We think within the well-worn boxes of the mundane as that path is quite well charted, and therefore void of anything dangerous because other people have figured out where all the dangerous stuff is and either removed it, or they’ve created paths around it. We know that venturing off the path in life is ref with all sorts of calamity that’s just waiting to happen, and so in the box of the mundane there’s nothing to venture off on because there’s one and only one path. It might be mundane, it might go nowhere, but it’s safe (if you happen to define ‘safe’ as refusing to live in order to effectively avoid being hurt). Therefore, the rules of the box rule out the role of thinking. Third, The Box of Our Fears We think within the box of our fears, as anything on the outside of those walls is filled with horrific danger (often of the most fabricated sort). We’ve probably ventured out there a time or two, and when we did, we got hurt. And so, when we were hurt, we put our pain on emotional steroids which exponentially magnified our fear. We then took that fear and fashioned a monster that doesn’t exist, and we hunkered down in our box horrified by the fiction of it all. And while the space out there is a whole lot bigger than the infinitesimally tiny space in here, at least it’s safe. Therefore, the rules of the box rule out the role of thinking. Fourth, The Box of Our Families We think within the box created by our families as we engaged them growing up. In many unhealthy families, their boxes were shaped by their own demons and assorted hobgoblins that they handed the reins of power over to. Over time, they dutifully passed those onto us. Sometimes these families demand that family members stay within those boxes. Other times, family members may prompt us to move outside of the box because they have come to recognize the life-sucking quality of the box. Yet, while they prompt us to step out, they did not know how to do so themselves. Therefore, the rules of the box rule out the role of thinking. Fifth and Finally, The Box of Self-Esteem We think within the box crafted by our low self-esteems. These are often the smallest of all boxes because we dare not create any room whatsoever for anyone else to come in lest they see how pathetically awful we really are. We know full well that there’s great adventure and untapped possibilities outside of our boxes. We can imagine adventure because we’ve imagined it so many times. But we doubt our ability to function in it, or find a place in it, or seize it in the cultivation of our dreams, or much less survive any adventure of any size. Therefore, the rules of the box rule out the role of thinking. I Was Thinking I was thinking that there are a whole lot of boxes. Lots and lots of them. But I was also thinking that they are just boxes and nothing more. And as a box, it doesn’t hold us. Rather, we hold it. And when we realize that power and move beyond our boxes, the parameters of our lives will explode exponentially in a manner that we will be free to think about all the many things that this big, wide world of ours has to think about. And so, I think that I really, really want to think outside the boxes. You will find all of these outlined in my book, “In the Footsteps of the Few – The Power of a Principled Life.” You will find “In the Footsteps of the Few” on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold. Thanks for joining us on LifeTalk today. You will find LifeTalk on most podcast platforms as well as YouTube. I would also encourage you to check out our daily posts on all of our Social Media sites.…

L

Life Talk with Craig Lounsbrough

1
”Flecks of Gold on a Path of Stone - Simple Truth’s for Life’s Complex Journey” - Part Four 11:42

約 8 日前11:42

11:42

"Flecks of Gold on a Path of Stone - Simple Truth's for Life's Complex Journey" - Part Four Did you ever have one of those surreal moments when it seems like something snaps in your head and suddenly you see everything like you never saw it before? Have you experienced those times when things unexplainably shift and they don’t look at all the same as they did only a moment ago? When what was entirely familiar is no longer familiar in quite the way that it was before? A lot of things can trigger these moments . . . an argument, a child leaving the home, a death, a job loss, a divorce, a birthday, unexpected contact from a long-lost friend or any number of similar events. In the middle of whatever this is, you’re suddenly able to see the reality of your life with a stunning, nearly razor-sharp clarity that you’ve never had before. It’s kind of like you were blind and you didn’t know it and in the briefest nanosecond, for the briefest nanosecond you were granted stunningly perfect vision. And with that perfect vision, everything looks perfectly different. Suddenly, what we now see is familiar but strangely unfamiliar at the same time. We intimately know everything that we see around us but it’s entirely alien just the same. It looks different or not quite right. It’s my life but it’s not my life, or at least what I wanted my life to be. It’s what I’ve been living all along, but at the same time it’s not what I’ve been living, or what I thought I was living. And we stand there rubbing our eyes because what we see is not stuff we saw before, or at least what we saw with the clarity that we see it now. In the emotional turmoil these rare moments create we’re often left asking “who am I and where am I?” And in the briefest nanosecond, in exactly the same way it came, this vision is gone. However, the memory of what those few incredible moments revealed is anything but gone. What times like this most often reveal is the paralyzing reality that we are not where we intended to be. This was not the destination that we had mapped out as pimply-faced teens or adventurous young adults or giddy newlyweds. The line that we had drawn from those younger years forward in time didn’t go where we’re at now, or weren’t supposed to go here; to this place that we now realize we are. We never really considered the heading on our compass. And now we pick it up, shake it to make certain it’s actually working and we’re left realizing that it’s working perfectly but we didn’t follow it. And now we stand at some point far removed from, and possibly decades away from where we were supposed to be, or thought we were supposed to be. What hits us really hard is that we didn’t fully realize the deviation from the path that our dreams had laid out so long ago. We got here and we didn’t even realize that we got here. But now we know it. And we’re standing deflated, attempting to figure out where we got so terribly off course, all the while madly calculating how many years we have left, and how many responsibilities we have on our plate in order to determine if we have the time and the freedom to ever get back on course. Worse yet, some of us don’t even remember what the course was in order to retrace it. Others of us never set a course for ourselves in the first place; having allowed the winds of life and the currents of circumstance to bring us here. Whatever the case, there is this chilling, haunting sense that we are not where we wanted to be, and that the path intended to take us there may now be forever forfeited. We fear a life squandered. And the question wildly reverberates in a near panic, “how did I get here?” I Am Where I Am At these times we can certainly pull out our tattered life map, grab whatever compass we’ve used over the years, or review the saved settings on our personal or relational or spiritual GPS. We can then hunker down over the topography of our past trying to scrawl out the line that brought us here. We can do all of that. And in doing that there may be value. However, we are where we are. Like it or not, we’re “here,” wherever “here” is. First, the task is really about determining exactly where we’re at in order to get some sort of bearing on our life. After that, we need to determine where we want to go. Then we need to determine do we have the time and the resources to get there. It’s not about bemoaning where we are. Certainly we can make room to do that for a bit if that gets it off our chests. It’s really more about grabbing hold of our lives and planning a strategy to take us where we want to go. Where Am I? So where am I anyway? Not where I think I am or necessarily perceive myself to be or have deluded myself into believing I am. But where am I . . . really? It may be a tough or even painful thing to think about. It may be harder to accept and embrace. It’s likely that not thinking about it was a major contributor to getting you here in the first place. So look around and be chillingly honest. Embracing where we’re actually at will likely involve grieving time and opportunities lost, anger that it happened, disappointment in that we let it happen, frustration that we weren’t attentive enough to keep it from happening, confusion over how it happened, and a host of other weighty and powerful emotions. Our desire to avoid these may result in a less than honest assessment of our location. However, such a less than honest assessment of where we’re at will entirely undermine any ability to reclaim lost dreams and dashed hopes. Where Do I Want to Go? Where I want to go is not about running from where I am. Sometimes our destination in life is determined by our desire to get away from where we are. If fleeing our present place in life is what drives us, we’re likely to make poor choices about where we want to go simply because the motivation is not entirely adequate. Second, where we want to go does not necessarily have to be a radical resurrection or reconstitution of our old hopes or dreams. We’re in a different place under different circumstances with different realities and different responsibilities than we had way back when. It’s more about re-evaluating life and asking fresh and new questions about where we want to go. Third, we may find that we really shouldn’t go anywhere at all. It may be that we should commit to build upon and expand where we are. Investment and renovation in the very place we’re at may result in the exact life we’re looking for. Where we want to go may very well be utilizing the resources that we have right here and shaping them into something that we didn’t ever consider they could be. Do I Have the Resources? Some resources we have less of, like time. Other resources we have more of, like maturity and knowledge and experience. It’s about assessing our resources and realizing that we likely have more resources at our disposal than we did in the earlier years; we just don’t realize it. Then it’s about pooling and maximizing those resources into whatever endeavor we feel directed toward. Have You Considered . . . ? In reality, most of us end up someplace other than what we intended. Life is not so smooth or manageable as to chart direct courses on tidy timelines. It’s more about recalibrating and making course corrections along the way, believing that life is a journey that takes us off course at times, but provides us resources to likewise alter those courses. Not where you want to be? Think about it.…

L

Life Talk with Craig Lounsbrough

1
Flecks of Gold on a Path of Stone - Simple Truth’s for Life’s Complex Journey” - Part Three 9:53

約 10 日前9:53

9:53

Flecks of Gold on a Path of Stone - Simple Truth's for Life's Complex Journey" - Part Three The concept of sacrifice seems more suited to novels or epic movies. It appears more an ideal; a concept that when observed from a safe distance seems wonderfully heroic, deeply inspiring and chivalrous in a way that stirs up something powerful in us that seems to be forever held hostage despite the fact that it gets stirred. Sacrifice, as we watch it displayed from afar, awakens some internal passion that chafes against our souls in its quest to be unleashed within us. Somehow sacrifice seems to be something that is entirely right, that is likewise entirely lost. There are those things that we believe exist yet are lost to mankind; the things we are ever in search of not because we are caught up in some sort of shallow fascination with them. Rather, there are those things that we know to be authentically real whose absence must be remedied by their discovery. There are those things that we are made for, yet which are entirely absent. Sacrifice is one of those things. It’s something that we know we are all called to. It’s one of those things that we know is the right thing to do; that it’s part of our humanity and represents something undeniably central. Sacrifice is the totality of our humanity called upward and outward in a grand display of selfless behavior. It declares that we are not made solely for ourselves, but that we are made for others. It captivates our minds and catapults our actions to do things we never dreamt possible. Indeed, it defines the core of our humanity; representing the ultimate action that one human being can take on behalf of another human being. That’s sacrifice. The Balance of Sacrifice All of this doesn’t mean that our lives are always about other people. It’s simply about priority and the arrangement of things in our lives. Our culture, and in many cases our world seems bent on maximizing our personal gains in any situation. There appears to be an inherent mentality that the self can be sacrificed, but only to the degree that the self is not actually threatened, or threatened beyond likely recovery. Sacrifice is calculated and made clean. Certainly, we must exercise wisdom when we take actions on the behalf of others, but a clear set of priorities would seem to dictate the manner in which we act with others in mind. Priorities It seems that our actions are dictated by our priorities. There appears to be this inherent grid that we run decisions through. That grid seems primarily to hold the welfare of self above everything else. Clearly, that seems to be in keeping with the natural tendencies and behaviors of base human nature. Yet, there is a sense of some deep sort that runs entirely contrary to human nature; that in putting ourselves first, we must by necessity put others first. There’s some sort of sense of community, of relationship and connection that deems us only a part of a much large whole. And as a part of that larger whole, we are obligated to preserve the whole above the preservation of self. That dichotomy all seems rather strange because it appears to run against our natural inclinations to make certain that we’re okay and that our personal interests are protected. What’s the End-Game? We all ask where we want everything to end up. At the end of it all, when our days are over and the fullness of our time, talents and energies are spent what will be left? That’s a terribly big, and in some cases, a terribly frightening question. If our focus is upon ourselves, then the end results of our lives will be likewise focused on us. The benefits and resources that we will have garnered and spent will serve us and us alone. That might make for a life that we perceived as satisfying and a good ride, but it ends at our end. The service of self terminates at our own death. Therefore we will have left nothing that outlives us, nothing that serves the greater good, nothing for those who remain. It would seem that the end-game is indeed the end-game in a manner tragic and unfortunate. What about Legacy? What kind of footprint will each of us leave? Will it be big enough and broad enough that others are enriched by it and find both comfort and inspiration in it? Will it have changed lives, redirected people who were on crash courses to their own destruction, or given someone somewhere some degree of hope in a place where they saw none for themselves? Will our legacy live on, not just for the purpose of living on but for the purpose of giving others purpose? Are we committed to leaving something of value behind that will cost us, but will in turn be of inestimable value to someone else, someplace else? Or are our lives spent in the service of self which means it all begins, and more tragically ends there? In leaving a legacy, we can’t be so shallow as to leave a legacy of who we were as some sort of monument to self. Monuments are not legacies, they are simply reminders. A legacy is leaving something to others for the sole purpose that it gives them something valuable and needed in their own journey whether we are given the credit for that or not. It’s a selfless detachment where we hand another human being something that may very well be life-saving without them knowing its origin or being able to credit the one who gave it to them. It’s a gift that is given for no other purpose than the nature of the gift and the recipient who will receive it; the giver being entirely lost in the transaction. That is sacrifice. How Will I Live? Sacrifice . . . it runs contrary to who we are, but it is in reality everything that we are. The pinnacle of our humanity is ascended when we descend in the service of others. We are raised up when we lay ourselves down. It builds us, it builds others, and it builds families, communities and nations. Sacrifice is the best of our humanity manifest in shining moments when everything that would diminish us is overcome and set aside. It is all of us at our very best. So how then will you live?…

L

Life Talk with Craig Lounsbrough

1
Flecks of Gold on a Path of Stone - Simple Truth’s for Life’s Complex Journey” - Part Two 10:51

約 15 日前10:51

10:51

Flecks of Gold on a Path of Stone - Simple Truth's for Life's Complex Journey" - Part Two Forgiveness often seems to be one of those things that’s a genuinely nice idea, but not really a life liberating reality. Life is full of nice ideas; those trite sayings, gentle stories and brave concepts that would make life a whole lot better if they were really real. Nice ideas often seem to be spun of the threads of idealism and the fabric of fanciful thinking. The reality is that they don’t really seem to work in the real world. Sometimes the very things that we wish were true simply dissolve and disintegrate when the reality of life hits them. Forgiveness seems to be one of those things. Sometimes the greatest, most profound truths seem to be the very things that are completely removed from the reality of the lives that we live. In reality, it’s not that they don’t fit or are idealistic or naïve or far-fetched. Most often it’s simply the fact that we don’t know how to incorporate them. Sometimes the greatest truths are so big and so encompassing that we can’t figure out how to figure them in. And because we can’t somehow make them fit, we assume them to be irrelevant, weak, inadequate or just plain stupid. Such often seems the fate of forgiveness. The Oxford English Dictionary defines forgiveness as “to grant free pardon and to give up all claim on account of an offence or debt.” The American Psychological Association expands the definition of forgiveness “as the process of concluding resentment , indignation or anger as a result of a perceived offense, difference or mistake, and/or ceasing to demand punishment or restitution .” Whatever your definition might be, forgiveness is about letting go in a manner so total that the offense and the restitution are released. Obstacles to Forgiving Forgiveness is a releasing which makes it difficult on at least three basic fronts. First, we typically demand restitution be obtained or that justice be meted out for whatever offense we have incurred. There is a deep sense of justice that demands correction of an offense through some sort of action that both compensates us for whatever loss we’re sustained while teaching the offending party that such actions are inappropriate and intolerable. The act of forgiveness works against this feeling, making forgiveness difficult and contrary. Second, forgiveness creates a perceived sense of vulnerability. If we “grant free pardon,” do we then open ourselves up to have the same offense perpetrated upon us again? Are we giving space and opportunity for the offending party to do to us what they did before? In forgiving, have we relinquished power that we can no longer hold over the person who offended us in order to keep ourselves safe or make them pay? Third, we see forgiveness as letting someone ‘off the hook.’ It’s a free pass, a mulligan, a turning away where we permit ignorance to erase that which should not be erased. We feel we do an injustice by not handing out justice and instead waving off an offense in a manner that seems both irresponsible and ignorant. Forgiveness is often seen as an easy way to resolve or bypass something that should be dealt with. What Forgiveness is Not Forgiveness is not saying that the offense was ‘okay’ or somehow less than what it really was. It’s not watering down the offense or somehow sweeping the whole thing under the proverbial carpet in some sort of passive gesture. Forgiveness has nothing at all to do with avoidance or passivity. There’s nothing placating or escapist about it. It’s not an act of weakness nor is it a means to maneuver around that which we find unsavory or downright scary. It is in reality an act of the utmost strength, the highest form of sacrifice and the deepest manifestation of our humanity. The truth is, it’s simply saying that to hold the offense against the person is simply too toxic for the one holding it. We will be offended and we will take hits that are deep, searing and violently cutting. When that happens, we must have an alternative to holding them. There must be a release of some sort. Holding the offense stymies the one holding it, therefore not allowing the offended party to move on. Forgiveness makes nothing ‘okay.’ It’s not about that. It’s about creating freedom and release in manner that nothing else affords us. Neither is forgiveness a means of giving the offending individual permission to reoffend. Forgiveness comes with the understanding of the nature of the offense, as well as the establishment of boundaries to keep the offense from happening again. Forgiveness is not permissive or passive. It’s not about being an inflatable punching clown that pops up for the sole purpose of taking another hit in an endless series of hits. It is an intentional act of release, not an act of permission. What Forgiveness Is The old saying is quite true . . . forgiveness is more for the one who forgives than for him who is being forgiven. In forgiveness, we choose to let go of the emotional toxicity that harboring anger over an offense breeds. We are not granting permission to the offense or minimizing it. Forgiveness is an act of personal liberation where we are setting ourselves free from whatever was done to us. It is not an action that invalidates the offense. Rather, it is an action that leaves the consequences of the action between a just God and the offending party while freeing us up to move on with our lives. Forgiveness is a choice to leave the past with those who created it so that we can move on to a future yet to be created. It has nothing to do with weakness and it has everything to do with strength. The Hardest Person to Forgive In all of this forgiveness stuff, the absolutely hardest person to forgive is most often ourselves. There’s some sort of blockage when we are the one in need of our own forgiveness. There’s something doubly binding when we are both the offending party and the one extending forgiveness all wrapped in one. The duality of all of that puts us in two roles at the same time, making forgiveness doubly difficult. Despite the inherent difficulty, it’s right here that the greatest grace (unmerited favor) needs to be extended in that we embrace both authentic remorse for offenses we’ve incurred while extending ourselves the full release of forgiveness. Something about this dichotomy is terribly difficult, holding many hostage to mistakes far in the past that dim or even rob the hope of the future. Forgiveness is inherently powerful enough to extend itself wholly and completely to us even when we are the ones in need of forgiving ourselves. Freeing Ourselves What are you holding onto and why are you doing it? If you look closely enough you’re likely to see that the rationale for withholding forgiveness is far outweighed by the liberating release inherent in forgiving. Take stock of what you’re holding onto and consider the worth of holding it verses the freedom found in releasing it.…

L

Life Talk with Craig Lounsbrough

1
Obstacles to Prayer - Taking It to Our Knees 9:40

約 16 日前9:40

9:40

Obstacles to Prayer LifeTalk “I want to live a life where prayer is the first thing that I do, the second thing, the third thing, and the last thing after the prayer has been answered.” Craig D. Lounsbrough Many of the obstacles to prayer are things that we have not given sufficient attention to, or we think that they’re somehow normal, appropriate, or of no real concern. These are the things that present themselves as rather casual issues that are of little importance. But they can (in fact) be major obstacles to an effective prayer life. In this podcast we’re going to outline a handful of these destructive factors that too often lay hidden in our lives. And in wondering how or why our prayer lives seem so ineffectual or hollow, we might ask if any of these factors have found a place of residence in our lives. Obstacles to Prayer Sin. Sin is an intentional living outside of the will of God that places us at odds with who God created us to be. Sin is described as “anything that separates us from God.” If we are engaging in such behaviors, we come to prayer already separated from the God to Whom we are praying. Self-Centered Agendas. We tend to live out our lives based on our agendas and our perception of what is in our best interest. Therefore, we do not come to prayer seeking God’s direction, God’s will, God’s insights, or God’s perspective. Rather, we come with a prepared agenda where we wrangle with God in order to achieve these agendas or obtain the resources to achieve them. Distractions. Prayer becomes the thing that we squeeze into the many demands in our lives. It’s something that sits somewhere near the bottom of the rather extensive checklist that outlines our obligations and duties. We intend to give prayer space and time, but it often falls prey to the many other demands that press prayer off of our calendar. Shiny Object and Squirrels. There are many things that vie for our attention. In reality, most of those things are not imperative to life and living, although we grant them that exact status. It’s often assumed that if something in our life demands our attention it’s because ignoring it will have dire consequences, when in fact deferring the majority of these things is unlikely to result in any consequence of consequence. As such, in the perpetual bombardment of an unnecessarily busy life, prayer is easily set aside. Lack of Faith. We are lacking in faith. The lack of faith either inhibits our prayers as we feel that we bring very little to the process, or we bring little to the process because we don’t necessarily believe in praying anyway. We must remember that the size of our faith only becomes an issue when we refuse to use the faith that we have. So, use the faith that you’ve got to increase the faith that you don’t have. Unmet Expectations. We come to prayer with expectations regarding the outcome of our prayers. If those outcomes are not achieved, we feel that prayer is ineffectual or irrelevant. If it fails to generate our prescribed outcomes, we’re quick to label prayer as irrelevant or entirely powerless. Our assumptions rest in the belief that our expectations are the ones that are right for our situation, rather than being the one’s that we should explore in order to determine what might actually be right for us. A Jaded Heart. We feel that God has not answered our prayers in the way that we wanted, or in the time frame that we wanted, or maybe He didn’t answer them at all. We have found God disappointing, demanding, less than generous, absent, or a God that crushes our desires despite how passionately we bring them to Him. We refuse to understand that God cannot fulfill many of our desires because it is the fulfilling that would do the crushing. Therefore, we either refuse to pray any longer, or we do so in such a limited fashion that it can barely be defined as prayer. The Lure of the World. The world is full of enticing things that have no depth and lack any substance whatsoever. And therein lies the absurdity of it all. We chase after that which we believe will do the things that we’re chasing them to do. And once we actually catch them (or in some cases realize that we can’t because nobody does), we’re struck with the reality that these things weren’t what they appeared to be, or they didn’t possess the resources that we had errantly endowed them with. The Insurance Policy. Is prayer some supplemental thing that we do out of guilt, or a sense of obligation, or to cover the holes that we might have left in our efforts to tidy up our lives? Is prayer that safety net that we keep in place just in case the world fails us, or we fail ourselves? Is prayer that supplemental insurance policy that we hold onto ‘just in case?’ Prayer is not insurance. Rather, it's the assurance that we won’t need insurance. There are many things that create obstacles to our prayer. And we would be wise to thoughtfully inventory our lives and ferret out anything that would create and sustain any such obstacle regardless of what it might be. You will find all of these outlined in my book, “Taking It to Our Knees – Rigorous Prayers for Life’s Greatest Challenges.” This book is a fresh, entirely relevant, and thoughtfully targeted thirty-day devotional that will bring the power of prayer to ‘life’ in your life. You will find “Taking It to Our Knees” on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold. You will find LifeTalk on most podcast platforms as well as YouTube. I would also encourage you to check out our daily posts on all of our Social Media sites.…

L

Life Talk with Craig Lounsbrough

1
”Flecks of Gold on a Path of Stone - Simple Truth’s for Life’s Complex Journey” - Part One 11:41

約 17 日前11:41

11:41

"Flecks of Gold on a Path of Stone - Simple Truth's for Life's Complex Journey" - Part One We yearn for security. There is an inherent need deep within the fiber of our being that desires to be able to lean on and lean into the things around us, knowing with steeled assuredness that they will hold us firm and steady. We want life to be safe because we have a passion to engage life. And to engage life out to its furthest edges, we must of necessity step out of ourselves and into that which is around us. We have to step up, step off and step out. Any real journey is of necessity a journey beyond ourselves. A robust journey unapologetically takes us outside of all that we are able to keep safe, into that which we cannot. To do that, we by nature need some degree of safety in the endeavor. Not only do we naturally yearn to lean out into life, life at many junctures demands it, and a real journey is not possible without it. Life frequently arrays itself before us in a manner that forces us to trust; to moderate or marginalize caution and to step out onto ground or relationships or circumstances that have not entirely convinced us of their certainty or safety. Sometimes we have to step out into things that are not of themselves safe at all. Yet, if we are to journey, we must step out into these things. Likewise, if we want to embrace everything there is to embrace, we must step out into and onto all of these things for most of them do not necessarily come to us. We must of necessity go to them; extending not only the effort stepping out, but taking the entire initiative of seeking them out as they move either largely hidden or complete obscure. Life most often calls us outward. It beckons with grand and rich invitations that hold out the promise of growth and great adventure. But it does not always come to us with those invitations. We most often must go to it. The hard evidence of our passion for the journey is illustrated in our willingness to chase it however elusive it might be. The Risk in it All Life however is terribly imperfect. It seems that there was some grand design that granted us tremendous ability and then graced life with tremendous opportunity. There seems to be shadows of some great correlation where we were equipped to do great things and then life laid out great resources and ample space within which to do those things. The chemistry of it all made life something potentially grand. Somewhere the whole marvelous arrangement seemed to have gotten marred. Somehow it was apparently damaged. “For the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23), which is the ultimate loss of the ultimate gift. The original intention of grand opportunities remains, but it now has to overcome obstacles, barriers, and various difficulties. Life demands that we battle disappointments, cruel turns, unexpected twists and surreal pain. Life remains for the taking, but it now comes with risk; sometimes great risk. Betrayal as Part of the Risk Into all of this comes betrayal. Betrayal is a cruel reversal. It takes the trust entrusted and uses it for purposes contrary to trust’s intent. Trust is a powerful thing. It willingly bequeaths both power and vulnerability when it extends itself to another or to life. Without trust, the greatest things in life are simply not achievable. Trust pushes out the boundaries. It allows us to extend ourselves out into places we would not otherwise venture. Whether that trust is vested in the destination itself, who we’re journeying with, who we’re journeying for, or whether that trust is vested in ourselves, it must be present. Trust is the prerequisite to risk and without risk little can be accomplished. Betrayal takes trust and cruelly uses it to the advantage or purpose of the one initiating the betrayal. The agenda is most often self-centered. It’s about using trust to achieve an agenda that trust was not extended to achieve. Betrayal is altering both the journey and the intent for which trust was extended. A great gift is used for a great evil against the giver. Something painful and at times barbaric is then perpetrated. Betrayal at Its Worst The greatest and most painful aspect of betrayal is the belief that the very action of betrayal is not betrayal at all. Betrayal dressed in love and trimmed with the façade of good intentions is the most barbaric of all betrayals; being in reality a double betrayal. It is where the betrayer is set upon betrayal in a manner hidden and cloaked. It is chillingly devious and it carries an impaling venom deadly to the one who extended the gift of trust. There is also a deluded sort of betrayal where betrayal is seen as a correct course of action or a necessary agenda by the one initiating the betrayal. Betrayal is often justified or rationalized as something other than betrayal. At times the action is viewed by the initiator as healthy or appropriate or entirely just, and it is projected as such. It seems the right and necessary thing to do. Unacknowledged betrayal is the most damaging and destructive betrayal we can experience. It presumes a violation as no violation. In the face of great betrayal it pretends no such betrayal. We are then left with the betrayal itself and no means of resolution with the party who betrayed us because they see no violation. We are left not only damaged, but we are left entirely alone with no means of justice with the betraying party. Coping with Betrayal Betrayal wounds deeply and its effects are lasting. Yet it has come into all of our lives and it will come again. There are several ways to cope and heal. First, we must recognize that betrayal is not our fault. We may have done things that have been damaging or inappropriate, but nothing justifies betrayal. Despite whatever our actions were or were not, betrayal is not appropriate. There are always other means to deal with life issues. Other options exist. Second, betrayal is often another person attempting to navigate their life circumstances. Sometimes those efforts are naively well-intentioned and based in ignorance or immaturity. Other times they are malicious, intended to force an agenda that the person feels can be achieved in no other manner. Either way, betrayal is the effort of an individual attempting to navigate some circumstance. Regardless of how or why it happened, it is inappropriate. Third, betrayal is painful but it affords opportunity for growth. The farther down we are thrust, the higher we can rise. Betrayal pushes us to the darkest lows. These places, dark and cold as they are, create opportunities for us to grow to tremendous heights. Rather than embedding fear of people or life within us, betrayal gives us experiences and profound discernment to engage life with even greater risk knowing that our dramatically sharpened discernment provides us vision for a safer course. Betrayal has likely come for you already. It may have visited you many times. You can be assured it will show itself again. Whatever the case, it can build you or diminish you. It will not leave you the way that it found you. Do not let betrayal betray you or your future. May you grow and be enriched because of it.…

L

Life Talk with Craig Lounsbrough

1
A Personal Testimony - Life 8:57

約 22 日前8:57

8:57

The odds that are we’ve never met, and if we have, I hope that I was able to leave something with you in the meeting as that is my passion and my calling. My life has been devoted to helping people. You know, you start out with a vision to help people, and that vision is often pretty romanticized. In your mind you envision changing people lives, and because you are, you envision changing the world. It all becomes kind of heroic, and valiant, and courageous, and all of that. But you soon discover that helping people (truly helping them), will ask everything of you. It’ll drain you. At times it will drive you to despair. You will look pain, and loss, and abuse, and hopelessness, and shattered lives, and addictions…you will look all of that stuff in the face, and you will find yourself questioning your ability to do anything about it at all. Sooner or later, helping people will leave you with some level of trauma, and there will come a time (more than one time) that helping people make you ask if the world and the people in it are simply beyond hope. Helping people will ask everything of you, and at times it will take everything from you. As I sit with people day-in and day-out, I sit there with my own pain as well. My own life has been marked by pain, by personal devastation, by losses that I thought impossible to survive, by abandonment that left me devastated, and by disappointments that crushed me to the point that I thought that recovery (of any kind) was simply a fantasy that was too painful to fantasize about. And so, I live the two sides of pain. Those of the people that I’ve served for over forty years, and that of my own pain. And there’s nothing heroic in that, as there are untold millions of people who set out each day to make the world a better place despite the wounds that they carry as they seek to heal the wounds that others carry. And to all of you who are the walking wounded who have given their lives over to help those others who are wounded, whoever or wherever you may be, you have my deepest admiration. But here’s the point in all of this. Many people mock God as either someone who only exists in the feeble-minded or those who has to find security is some fabricated myth. Or if He does exist, he’s someone who’s incapable, or incompetent, or irrelevant, or out of touch, or outmoded, or inherently judgmental, or someone who’s failed us in entirely unacceptable ways…or however we’ve labeled Him. But without hesitation, and without any sense of contrived religiosity, or syrupy idealism, or preachy verbiage, I can tell you that God is real. I can also tell you that I would not be sitting here without Him. And that’s not some cute or inspiring statement that’s supposed to trigger some emotion in you. It’s my reality. Life would have destroyed me without Him. God is my rock in every sense of the word. He is sturdy in the storm, both my own and those that I work with each and every day. He is in the turmoil, but He is above it. He is not the cause of our pain, but He is the solution to it. He is not some idealized myth created by weak people who can’t face the realities of the world. He is the greatest reality in all of the world. He is what you need. He is the everything in the middle of your nothing. And I know this because I’ve lived it. More than once. In the pain. In the darkness. In the loss. In the confusion. In those moments of deep desperation. When hope is something that I just can’t believe in any longer because life has left no place for it. At those times in life when I can’t take the next step because I can’t get myself off of the ground so that I can try and take it. I know that God is all of those things because I’ve watched Him do the impossible in my life, and I’ve sat next to tens of thousands of people, and I’ve watched Him do the impossible in lives whose situations were nothing but impossible. Our culture would deny this. In fact, it would ridicule it and do its level best to declare that all of this is the stuff of weakness, and foolishness, and stupidity, and ignorance. And all I know is that I’ve watched it work too many times, in my own life, and in the lives of others to know that it’s far more real than the culture that would say that it is not. If you’re lost today. If your pain is deep beyond imagination. If you’re standing alone in the darkness that is always a part of being alone. If your dreams have died. If your spouse has left, or your child has rejected you, or your finances have collapsed, or hope has eluded you, or if you’ve come to the point that you look in the mirror and you despise everything that you see looking back at you…whatever your situation might be, there is a God that’s big enough to heal you, lift you up, restore you, grant you hope, lay a new future in front of you and grant you the energy to achieve that future. It is not impossible, for God is truly the God who pulls off the impossible. And how do that I know that? How am I convinced of that? Because He’s done that for me. Because I’ve watched him do it for tens of thousands of people in over forty years of walking with wounded people. It’s real, and regardless of who you are and what you’ve done, or where you’re at, or how deep you’ve fallen, or how dark your circumstances might be, it’s available to you. Right here, right now. Today, tomorrow, and forever. Grab a Bible. Find a church. Call a pastor. Get on your knees and pray. It will work. The road back might be long, but there’s a road. And God will walk with you every step down that road. Every step. May God find you in your despair, in your confusion, in your desperation, in your darkness, in your hopelessness. And may He create in you the life that you thought to be impossible, because that’s what He does. That is my hope, and this is my prayer for you.…

L

Life Talk with Craig Lounsbrough

1
What Our Purpose Tells Us 7:27

約 24 日前7:27

7:27

The question of purpose is simple, direct, but inherently complicated. The question demands bravery. It rises on the belief that we have an utterly indispensable role to play in our own existence because it is not just our own existence. Fulfilling our purpose has an equally critical role to play in the existence of others. It is our part in this ever-unfolding corporate story that we have been granted an indispensable part in. What “Purpose” Tells Us: First, We’re More Than Just the Sum Total of Our Existence The fact that we have a purpose evidences the fact that we are more than just the sum total of whoever it is that we are. A purpose says that we have a much larger role in this thing that we call life than just the living out of our individual lives. Life is bigger than any of us will ever be as an individual. Purpose tells us that we’re specifically designed to engage every bit of that expanse. A purpose tells us that we are far more than just the sum total of our existence because we are called to do something in an existence that far exceeds us. A purpose tells us that we are more than just “us.” Second, There is Something Greater Than Us That We’re Invited to Participate In The fact that we have a purpose tells us that is ‘something else’ out there. It tells us that the horizons in life don’t come anywhere close to ending at the end of our existence as the single, solitary human beings that all of us are. The nature of purpose is such that it will always be bigger than us and it always live beyond us. It grants us the opportunity of legacy. It extends our influence beyond our own death when we’re no longer here to extend it. These unshakeable realities substantiate the fact that there’s more out there than we can possibly imagine. Gratefully, a purpose tells us that we are not the end of all that there is. In fact, ‘we’ are barely the beginning, and that in and of itself is wildly exciting. Third, We’re a Piece of a Much Larger Puzzle That Would be Incomplete Without Us Our purpose tells us that this massive world out there, as huge as it is, is sorely incomplete without us. As big and as enormous and as complicated and as intricate as the world is, it remains less than completely complete without us. We have a purpose in this world that only we can complete. Large or small, complicated or simple, breathtaking or life giving, regardless of what our purpose is, the world will be incomplete unless we fulfill it. We are utterly irreplaceable which makes every one of us invaluable beyond any sort of monetary reckoning that we could hope to calculate. Everything that’s out there will be less than everything that’s out there if we forsake our purpose. And that fact makes us incredibly valuable. Fourth, We Do Not Need to Surrender to the Mundane Our purpose tells us that life is intentional. It is to live out something not in the frustration of random happenstance, but in something for which this life was purposely designed. It tells us that we have the power and the mission to vividly enhance life, rather than living in some terribly foreboding mindset while we sit on ‘pins and needles’ anxiously waiting to see how life is going to play itself out. There is a destination that has enough meaning and sufficient value to call us to the challenges that will certainly be part of fulfilling that purpose. That we are not here to aimlessly pass by and leaving nothing in the passing. To the contrary, our existence is designed to live on beyond our existence. To leave a bold legacy of generational impact. And to do this for those that walk beside us as well as those who will come behind us. Fifth, We Can Deny It Could it be that the first and foremost purpose of ‘purpose’ is to convince us that we have one? Is it likely that our purpose can only be fully manifest in a manner utterly transformational when we are convinced that we have a purpose to manifest? Possibly the most brilliant way that ‘purpose’ can do that is by granting us permission to deny that we have one. And any reasonable person would hold that if we’re putting so much thought, energy and passion into a defense of this sort, there must be something there to defend against. Therefore, it is our own arguments against having a purpose that substantiates our actually having one. Closing Today’s podcast is drawn from the book, “The Self That I Long to Believe In – The Challenge of Building Self-Esteem.” Get your copy today at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold. Thanks for joining us on LifeTalk today. You will find LifeTalk on most podcast platforms as well as YouTube. I would also encourage you to check out our daily posts on all of our Social Media sites.…

L

Life Talk with Craig Lounsbrough

1
Personal Testimony - Dreams that Die 6:35

約 28 日前6:35

6:35

You know, I grew up with a lot of dreams. A lot of things that I wanted to do. We all have dreams. Maybe your dream was to have a great marriage. Maybe it was to start a company that changed a community, or a nation, or maybe the world. Maybe it was to raise solid kids, or travel, or write a book, or invent something revolutionary that made life better for other people, or live in some particular place, or achieve some level of financial comfort, or whatever it might have been. And as you grow older, you actually find yourself kind of refining those dreams. You tweak them. You roll them over in your head. You begin to adjust them ‘here and there’ to fit the world as your understanding of the world matures and sharpens and grows and expands. And as that refining thing happens, you begin to figure out how these dreams might actually work. How you might actually be able to pull all of that stuff off. It’s a really neat kind of thing. And in thinking out loud, I would guess that, at some level, you’ve had those kinds of dreams as well. That you’ve played with some really cool ideas. That there was something that you were excited about, that gave you some sort of energy or sense of excitement. That you had some sort of vision for your life that added something to your life that you needed. But then life happens. In whatever way it happens, it happens. It happens to all of us. And many times, whatever happens ends up killing those dreams. They die. They just die. Sometimes they die before they were ever born, or sometimes the dream is actually beginning to unfold and then it dies. However or whenever it happens, they die. And sometimes we try to bring them back, or resurrect them in whatever way that we try to do that. We try to figure out how to do them differently, or modify them, or come at them from a different angle. Or we decide to fight the thing that’s killed our dreams. We figure that if we can eliminate whatever killed our dreams, (or at least beat it up pretty thoroughly), that maybe, just maybe, we can get our dream back. At other times we just let our dreams die. We either don’t know what to do, or we’re overwhelmed, or we can’t get past a sense of injustice or unfairness, or whatever it is. And because we let it die (because we feel that we have no other option but to let it die) we refuse to ever dream again because the death of a dream is just too painful. It’s just too much. The world will kill our dreams. Life has no qualms about showing up and killing the very things that we spent a large part of our lives living for. Dreams die every day. They die at the hands of whole bunch of stuff. And for every dream that dies, something on the inside of the person dies as well. The death of a dream is just too painful because a part of us dies right along with it. I’ve had many dreams die. So have you. And every time one died, something inside of us died too. But when my dreams died, here’s I’ve found. I learned that God has a dream for each of us that will never die. Never. It’s just too big to die, it’s place in God’s plan is just too important to let it die, and it’s backed up by a God who never dies. There are many who would not agree with me. And that’s okay. However, I believe that God has a dream for your life that’s bigger than any dream that you could conjure up. God’s dream for you exceeds anything that you could dream for you. So, ask Him what it is. Talk to a pastor. Get into your Bible and start reading. If you don’t have one, buy one, or download a Bible app. Listen to Christian music. Find a church. God can and will use any or all of these to help you discover the dream that you were fashioned to live out. And that dream won’t die.…

L

Life Talk with Craig Lounsbrough

1
Who I Am and Who I'm Not - "The Self That I Long to Believe In" 8:15

4 weeks前8:15

8:15

“You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one.” - Henry David Thoreau “Who am I?” The question seems a bit overused these days. In our culture, I tend to think it’s less about thoughtfully unearthing who we are. Rather, I think it’s more about creating something that’s culturally acceptable and that adheres to whatever trend is currently trending in the culture. It’s the creation of a self suitable to the world rather than discovering who we are as both in and above the world. And so we might ask, how do we not know? How could we wake up every day and go to bed every night with this person that we are and still not know who we are? How is it that we walk through the myriad array of dynamics and demands of life and living, and somehow not see ourselves in the act of dealing with those things? How have we lived with ourselves yet missed ourselves in the living? Well, one answer is that we don’t want to see. We don’t want to see because we fear that if we actually look at who we are, we might not like who or what we see. It may confirm our deepest fears about who we are. It may convince us that we really don’t have the capacity to achieve the dreams that we want to achieve. It may corroborate all of the negative things that people have said about us, when we’ve spent our lives fighting against believing that that’s who we are. We may choose ‘ignorance’ as opposed to ‘knowing’ so that we can continue wearing the weathered façade that we’ve found comforting, in whatever way it might comfort us. Or second, maybe we’ve spent our energies not coming to understand who we are, but vesting those precious energies in becoming whoever it is that everyone says we should become. There are demanding social pressures to adhere to. Heavy-handed societal expectations that press us for compliance. There are those who are committed to whatever politically-correct agenda they’re committed to who are easily aroused and readily enflamed to rage should we refuse alignment with their agendas. There are the voguish trends that demand adherence lest we be labeled as outdated or just plain ignorant. There are the expectations of parents that rest heavy upon us, and the voices of well-meaning mentors that too often called us to some vision of who they thought we were. Therefore, we don’t have time to see ourselves because we’re spending our time trying to become another ‘self.’ Or third, it’s possible that we might have determined that it’s not ‘who’ we are, but who circumstances made us to be. Abuse as a child. Bullying at the hands of thoughtless people bent on propping up their own fragile insecurities at our expense. Jobs lost in acquisitions that sacrificed employees on the cold altar of budget and profit. Marriages that collapsed at the hands of spouses who decided that the trade-off for personal agendas as held against the life of a marriage and a family was legitimate. Enemies that we mistook for friends who slowly circled around behind us and stabbed us in one of the many ways that people stab others. For us, these answered the question, “Who am I?” Or fourth, we don’t feel that there’s any identity to discover. That somehow we are the embodiment of a bunch of ‘nothing’ that will only add up to nothing. That because there’s nothing there, the need for some sort of pursuit becomes unnecessary and embarrassingly ridiculous. We are what we already know, despite how little that might be. Somehow we ended up at the shallow end of the gene pool, or we showed up late when things were being handed out. We got to rummage through the left-overs or we were looked over. There was no motivation to develop anything along the way, or the opportunities to do so simply never came our way. Therefore, we don’t know who we are because we’re pretty much nothing and we already know that. Or finally, could it be something entirely different? Could it be that we are vast beyond comprehension? That we’ve mistaken this journey of ‘who am I’ for a destination that gives us a clear and solid answer, verses seeing it as a journey where the answer is always fleshing itself out with ever-great clarity as we go along? That we are someone who is perpetually in the process of becoming more of whoever that someone is? That we are not meant to be something that’s stagnant in time and space, but we are something that is always evolving in a manner that we are constantly advancing into time and growing in space? And to understand that is to begin to build a sense of self that will effectively begin to disassemble our negative sense of self. “Who are you?” Get this stuff out of the way, quit falling into these identity stealing behaviors, look beyond all of that and you’ll begin to see the authentic self. Closing Today’s podcast is drawn from the book, “The Self That I Long to Believe In – The Challenge of Building Self-Esteem.” Get your copy today at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold. Take a moment and visit us daily on all of our Social Media sites.…

L

Life Talk with Craig Lounsbrough

1
Love - A World Without It 8:56

5 weeks前8:56

8:56

LifeTalk Love – A World Without It “Love is the essence of our humanity expressing itself in actions of sacrifice so profound that we risk not surviving those expressions.” Complacency is a tragic hallmark of our lives. We’ve certainly got bunches of it. In fact, as the old saying goes, we’ve got it “in spades.” Complacency is conceived in the bosom of familiarity, where something becomes so commonplace that we errantly render it as ‘common.’ We’ve yet to beat this tendency that we have to assume that the more we have of something, the less it’s inherent value. And so we end up taking great things, important things, even critical things for granted. And it’s at that point that we begin to lose the very things that we can’t live without because we become complacent. Diluting of Love One of the things that we become complacent about is love. We blithely toss around the idea of love in a manner that paints it as something of a magical storyline. It seems that far too often we’ve relegated it to the penmanship of misty-eyed novelists or the musings of our own minds, and in doing so we seem to have created some horribly diluted understanding of love. We’ve penned that anemic kind of live into a million cards, and we’ve inserted that self-same prose into tens of thousands of chapters that lay nestled between the covers of a thousand novels. We’ve got songs, and movies, and plays, and poetry, and t-shirts, and a thousand different sayings that expound on this diluted and pathetic kind of love that we’ve manufactured. Yet, we’d be wise to ask, “Is this love?” “Really?” I don’t think so. Losing Love to Understand Love If we want to appreciate something in earnest, it seems that we must first lose it. There’s something at the basest core of our humanity that doesn’t wake up until that part of our humanity is violently shaken. And often that violent ‘shaking’ is to lose the very thing that we need to be awakened to. Therefore, maybe the best way to understand love is to understand what life would be like without it. And so, what would we lose if love didn’t exist? If it was suddenly gone? Loss of Community Take away love and we have no reason to consider our fellowman nor join him in the partnership of life and living. The sense of community that’s forged strong by empathy, fired by sympathy, and cinched tight by respect would be obliterated. The strength of community as sustained by things like conscience, and ethics, and morals, and compassion, would collapse and completely implode. Without love our communities would disintegrate, civil society would be obliterated, and the world (which is built on community) would collapse. Without love we would lose community. Well, what else would we lose if love didn’t exist? Loss of Self Take away love and our own individual existence would fall into abject irrelevance. The desire to sustain ourselves would devolve to a singularly primitive savagery that would be completely dependent upon the degree of savagery that we possess to sustain our lives. We’d have no passion for living. No sense of worth or value. No sense of purpose or meaning. Hatred ‘of’ self and ‘for’ self born of the absence of love would cause us to turn on ourselves and likely destroy ourselves out of some sense that we don’t have enough value to maintain our existence in the first place. In essence, to become loveless is to undermine our own existence and any rationale for that existence. What else would we lose if love didn’t exist? Loss of Meaning Take away love, and nothing would capture our imagination. We would find nothing compelling. We would never marvel at anything. We’d never be held in the mesmerizing embrace of wonder. We would never be lifted to heights of ecstasy, nor would we know the depths to which one could fall. Passion, desires, dreams, vision, purpose, and hope are all borne of love and entirely sustained by it. And when those things are gone (because love is gone) we become little more than mindless carbon-based life forms driven by a drive to exist that is no deeper than the drive to exist. Take away love and we take away meaning. And try to imagine a meaningless existence? What else would we lose if love didn’t exist? Loss of Existence Finally, have we postulated that without love existence would never have existed in the first place? While we have done a bang-up job of banging up life, it’s always love that puts it all back together again. And when genuine love puts things back together, it always puts them back together better than they were before we messed them up. And so, I would be so bold as to say that if it weren’t for love, existence would have never existed in the first place. And without love, it would be impossible to maintain that existence. Getting Back to Love Love is far more than something that has arisen from the penmanship of misty-eyed novelists or the musings of our own minds. Love is far more than the sugary-sweet caricatures of love that we’ve woven into everything from t-shirts to holidays. Imagine life without love if you dare, and if you do you will begin to touch the periphery of this incredible thing that we call ‘love.’ You will be reminded (in a very powerful way) what love really is and what love really does. And so ask yourself, what would the world be like without love? And then ask, how do I bring that kind of love back into my life? Closing Portions of today’s podcast were drawn from the book, “An Intimate Collision – Encounters with Life and Jesus.” Get your copy today at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold. Thanks for joining us on LifeTalk today. You will find LifeTalk on most podcast platforms as well as YouTube. I would also encourage you to check out our daily posts on all of our Social Media sites.…

L

Life Talk with Craig Lounsbrough

1
Personal Testimony - It’s Just Too Much 5:54

5 weeks前5:54

5:54

How many times have you felt that there’s just no use? There’s just no sense in going on. You know, we’ve made way too many mistakes. Or the hole that we’ve dug, or the hole that misfortune dug is just too deep. And it really doesn’t matter who dug it anyway because, either way, we’re not getting out it. We failed out of college, or we didn’t go to begin with. Or our marriage went away. Or our addiction won’t go away. Or our career goals always stall no matter how much we’ve invested in what we’re doing. The medical issues just keep happening. We can’t hold onto a friend to save our lives, or our family just can’t get along long enough to actually look like a family. The bills never stop. It’s always bad news. Our self-esteem is shot, our dreams are dead, the kids won’t call us, and we’re dreading tomorrow because it’s going to be the exact same thing all over again. How many times have you felt that there’s just no use? And when we’re at that point, life doesn’t really matter all that much anymore. It’s just something that we tolerate until we’re tired of tolerating. It’s not about living. It’s about surviving. And at some point, after we’ve done it long enough, surviving ‘becomes’ our life. It ‘becomes’ who we are. It ‘becomes’ all that we do. And then, over time, it ‘becomes’ all that we think we can do, or should do. How many times have you felt that there’s just no use? And you know, we try all kinds of stuff to fix this. We immerse ourselves in some self-help philosophy, or we’re on a mad hunt for the right podcast, or we’ve ordered the latest breakthrough book, or we’re hanging on the words of some person of prominence. We try change our diet, or change our attitude, or change our social circle, only to realize that all of that really never changes anything. So, we’re in a hole. We blew college, our marriage is long gone, the addiction keeps showing up, our career is stalled, the doctors can’t figure out our issues, friends come and go, the family bickering doesn’t stop and neither do the bills, our self-esteem is shot, our dreams are dead, and the kids won’t call. Yeah. How many times have we felt that there’s just no use. I have. And I’m guessing you have too. For me, when I’ve been at those places, the only thing bigger than everything that’s laid me flat is God. Some would say that God has failed them just as much as everything else has. And in my own life I’ve discovered that when I feel that way, it’s really a whole lot more about the fact that I failed God. Because God doesn’t fail us. He might not show up in the way that we want Him to. He might not engage all of this stuff in the way that we think is best. We might think Him to be too slow in the way that He works. Or we might not believe in Him at all. But what I can tell you is that with God, you never have to feel that there’s ‘no use’ because He’s got a ladder for every hole that you’re in, and a solution for every problem that you have. So get your Bible out and read it. If you don’t have one, buy one or download a Bible app. Go to church. Call a pastor. Pray. Listen to Christian music. See what happens. Believe me, God’s got a lot of ladders, and He’s got an endless supply of solutions.…

L

Life Talk with Craig Lounsbrough

1
Personal Testimony - Hope 7:16

6 weeks前7:16

7:16

People ask me, “Is there any hope?” And there have been times (more than one), where I’ve found myself asking the same question. “Is there any hope?” And I often ask myself, “What kind of world do we live in? How dark has it all become? How bad must it be that we somehow find ourselves driven to some point, or some place in our lives that’s so desperate that we actually find ourselves asking that kind of question?” And I’ll tell you what, if you’re asking that question it’s because you’re in a really dark place. And I know how dark they are because I’ve been there…and so have you. Think about it for a minute. Without hope, what have we got? What have we got? If we can’t apply some feeling of hope to our future, or a marriage that’s hanging by a thread, or a disease that could go really wrong really fast, or a child who’s gone rogue, or a career that teetering on the edge of some abyss, or an addiction that’s eaten up someone’s life or someone’s family…if there’s no hope that you can apply to any of that stuff…what have you got? You know exactly what it’s like when life collapses. We both know what that’s like. When your dream just dies, and they can die for a lot of reasons that are just brutal. When your marriage vanishes, and you didn’t even see it coming. When you’ve run into so many walls just trying to get to ‘some next place’ in life, (any next place) that all you end up spending your life doing is waiting for the next wall to show up because you’re certain that it’s going to. When you begin to realize that the damage is just too much, and as you realize that it begins to dawn on you that it’s humanly impossible to ever climb out from under all of it. If there’s no hope that you can apply to any of that…what have you got? If there’s no hope, what’s the sense in all of this? Why go on? Why try? Why invest? Why keep moving forward? If there’s no hope, nothing matters. If there’s no hope then this existence, living out whatever this is that we’re living out, all of this is meaningless. It just doesn’t matter. You’ve felt that. I’ve felt it. The world feels it. Hope is indispensable. And I mean…indispensable. And if we’ve lost it, as we all have at some time, or some place, we’ve gotta find it because going on without it is simply impossible. It just doesn’t work. I know that, and if you’ve lived long enough, and if you’ve faced the darkness long enough, you know that too. Hope is indispensable. But where do you find hope anyway? I mean real hope. I’m not talking about someone persons promises (because those break), or some passing fad (because those have no depth), or some vogue philosophy (because those are typically failed ideas that have been dressed up in new clothes), or political platforms (because those typically serve the platform rather than the people), I’m not talking about any of that because life is littered with that stuff. We’re drowning in it. I’m not talking about the latest book, or some trending podcast, or some ‘woke’ idea. And as far as I can tell, all of that stuff promises hope, but delivers nothing. If it did, we wouldn’t be here. This is my experience. I’ve had times where everything seemed hopeless. Everything was dark…I mean really dark. Bleak. When all of the resources and all of the promises that this world made me, failed me…miserably. And when the world fails you, where do you go? Well, you go where I went. I went to God. Now, that statement won’t sit well with some people, but if hope is indispensable and the world can’t give it to you, where else do you go? What other option do you have? But more than that, what other option would you really want anyway? I want an option that works, that’s sustainable regardless of what life throws at me. An option that delivers hope for my future, hope for my marriage, hope for a disease, hope for a child who’s gone rogue, or a career that teetering on the edge of some abyss, or an addiction that’s eaten up my life. And there’s only one place where you find that kind of hope. And that’s in a relationship with Jesus Christ. Get a Bible and check it out. Go to church. Call a pastor. Give it a shot. If you do, you’ll find exactly what you need in the exact way that you need it, because that’s how the God of hope operates.…

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Life Talk with Craig Lounsbrough

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Believing In a New Start - The Self That I Long to Believe In 9:22

6 weeks前9:22

9:22

The Self That I Long to Believe In Believing in a New Start Some of us don’t believe in new starts. We may feel that we’re not worthy of a new start. Or, we may feel that we just don’t have what it takes to pull off a new start. But, what would we actually do with a new start, if it were possible? Not something that looks new because we’ve cleaned it up in order to make it look new, when it’s not. Not some radical make-over of something that’s radically old so that it looks new, but it’s not. Not some tedious restoration that’s going to temporarily erase the footprints of time and grant something old a few more years of life until it eventually shows it real age again. Because that stuff’s born of the belief that we’re not worthy of something really new, and that we’re just not smart enough to actually create something that’s different than whatever it is that we’ve got, and whoever it is that we are. New. How do we make something new? Well, here five brief ideas on what you need to do in order begin making things new: First, A New Future is Built From the Raw Materials of the Past We build for tomorrow on the foundation of the past because, for good or ill, the past is what we’ve got. The past holds the raw material from which futures are built. The memories, experiences, wounds, trauma, gains, losses, betrayals, and the various lessons of the past that we draw from those things are the natural fodder that feeds a future seeking sustenance to foster its growth. Think about this. The more the damage, the more the material that we have to work with. We grow in pain. We learn in struggle. We’re stretched when it’s hard. Wounds, trauma, disappointment, loss, regret, betrayal, failure…yeah, all of that stuff is painful. But all of that stuff is also filled with some of the greatest growth opportunities that you’re ever going to get. A new future is built from the raw material of the past. Second, A New Future Demands Risk When our self-confidence has been beaten to a pulp, every risk looks big. There is no little risk. Risk is risk, and it’s formidable regardless of how big or small it might be. Risk is hazardous because it can turn on us. It can go sideways in a heartbeat. And if it does, it can instantly affirm all of the negative stuff about us that we don’t want affirmed. It’s dangerous. But we have to think about the risk in ‘not’ going forward. We have to consider the risk of staying where we are and remaining who we are. We have to ponder the price that we will pay for being apathetic verses pressing against our apathy and taking a shot at something better. We will actually affirm out low self-esteem by not acting, because that’s what will happen! Look, we may not have the confidence that the future will be good, but neither do we have the certainty that it will be bad. Not to risk is the greatest risk of all. Therefore, we must weigh the risk in acting against the greater risk of not acting. A new future demands risk. Third, A New Future Will Demand Something New If we want a truly new ‘new’ future, something about it’s got to be new. ‘New’ implies something that does not possess any of the elements that we already possess. Something must be added that has not been added before because we’ve been too afraid to add it. Some place that we have never been before must be some place that we’re now willing to consider going, despite how afraid we might be of going there. Some direction that we’ve either adamantly avoided, or never thought to consider needs to be considered and mapped out even though such a thought is incredibly frightening. Some decision that we may have avoided out of the fear that it may rock our world may need to be made and be granted permission to rock our world a bit knowing that sometimes it’s the rocking that brings the changing. A new future will demand something new. Fourth, a New Future Means Grieving What We’re Leaving When we leave something behind it will naturally leave a hole of some sort. Whether that hole is large or small, disorienting or desired, painful or painless, it is the now vacant space that was once occupied by whatever it is that we’re leaving (or whatever left us). Having these holes creates a measure of discomfort because we’re not used to a hole being where something else used to be, and maybe should be. On top of that, we’re naturally prone to try to fill empty spaces for the simple fact that they’re empty. And we do that because we assume that there’s something wrong with us because they shouldn’t be empty. ‘Empty’ doesn’t mean that something’s wrong with you. It means that something’s coming to you, and now you have space for it. It’s a commentary on the opportunity that stands in front of, not some deficit that resides within us. A New Future Means Grieving What We’re Leaving Fifth and Finally, a New Future is Not Building a Museum You know, we want to keep a few mementos. We want to hold onto a few things. We want to grab a handful of assorted trinkets and knick-knacks to have something to ground us in the certainty and familiarity of days gone-by, even though we wish that the pain associated with those day would go ‘bye.’ However, too often keeping a few mementos turns into keeping a whole lot of mementos. Eventually, we’re starting to create a memento museum. Before long, we’ve managing a memento museum. And soon thereafter, we’re living in it. We not supposed to live in the past because the past wasn’t designed for that purpose. Yes, it’s familiar and it doesn’t present us with the unknown of the future. But as we noted previously, the past is the rich raw material from which we craft a future, not the raw material that we use to preserve the past. However, we want to sort and catalog and categorize and organize and stow and store all that stuff. And before we know it, the museum is managing us because our self-esteem constantly yells that we have no ability to manage a new future, so we settle for managing a past. The things that we’re preserving in the museums of our yesterday are the precious raw materials that stand ready to construct our tomorrow. Let them do what they’re supposed to do. A new future is not building a museum. Closing Today’s podcast is drawn from the book, “The Self That I Long to Believe In – The Challenge of Building Self-Esteem.” Get your copy today at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold. Thanks for joining us on LifeTalk today. You will find LifeTalk on most podcast platforms as well as YouTube. I would also encourage you to check out our daily posts on all of our Social Media sites.…

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Life Talk with Craig Lounsbrough

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Taking It to Our Knees - What Prayer Is and Is not 6:55

7 weeks前6:55

6:55

LifeTalk Reshaping Our Understanding of Prayer Hi, I’m Craig Lounsbrough. Welcome to LifeTalk. Thanks for joining us today. You know, I think that we would like prayer to be a real thing. Whether you believe in it or not, I believe that most of us would like it to be true. We all have those difficult and devastating points in life when we would love to have something that would connect us to something bigger than we are. Something to get us out of the mess that we can’t get ourselves out of. Regardless of what you happen to believe, I believe that most of us would like prayer to be true. And so, out of that hope, maybe we need to take a minute and revisit prayer. Whether you tend to believe in it or not, maybe we need to ask what it really is. Maybe we need to consider abandoning all lesser ideals and see if we can embrace prayer as the potent and indispensable power that handily moves everything that would dare to step in its path. And if prayer is actually that powerful, how do we get ourselves there? To achieve this, we might begin by asking what prayer is, and in doing that highlighting what it’s not. And so, what is this thing that we have been privileged to do? How have we diminished prayer by adding our own contrivances to it, or attempting to tame it so that it walks in-step with our anemic agendas? In what ways have we gutted by losing it manmade traditions, or secularizing it to make it more palatable to the masses, or attempting to formularize it thinking that there’s some sort of code to break or keywords to use? How have we cheapened it by seeing it as some sort of ready-made laundry list, or something demanded of us by people who don’t demand it of themselves, or how has prayer been cheapened by the cheap promises that so many have made of it? What is prayer, and what is it not? Whatever we’ve done to prayer, I think that we need a basic reminder or reorientation. We need to untangle whatever we’ve done to prayer. We need to rid it of all of our contrivances. We need to quit trying to tame so that it walks in-step with our anemic agendas. We need to rid it of our manmade traditions. We’ve got to stop trying to secularize it to make it more palatable to the masses. We’ve got to quit trying to formularize it thinking that there’s some sort of code to break or keywords to use. We’ve got to refuse to see it as some ready-made laundry list, or demand imposed on us by others, some a cheap promise made by self-appeasing men. We’ve got to stop that stuff and get back to what prayer actually is Now, you will find a more detailed dialogue presented my book “Taking It to Our Knees – Rigorous Prayers for Life’s Greatest Challenges.” But for today, in order to set the stage for this renovation, I would have you consider these eleven points. If you apply these eleven truths, they can recalibrate and literally transform your prayer life, regardless of what you believe about prayer: Prayer is courageously living out our faith in the real world. It is not some ascetic exercise carried out in some mystical nether world. Prayer is a natural connection to a marvelous God, not an academic pursuit. Prayer is the rawness of the soul connecting with the goodness of God, not an obligatory tip of the hat. Prayer is discovering what we were built for, instead of questioning if we should have been built at all. Prayer is the activity which before all other activities, movements, people’s and nations will bend if we just bend our knees. It is not some anemic exercise helplessly held within the four walls within which it was prayed. Prayer is not a lifestyle that we learn. Rather, it is the life that we were born to live. Prayer is not a formula that we concoct, but an intimacy that we develop. Prayer is not the last resort. Rather, it is the first step that will never leave us facing a last resort. Prayer is not the thing that we squeeze into our day, but the thing that squeezes everything that would kill us out of our day. Prayer is not a discipline, but a manifestation of our love for our God that results in a discipline. Prayer is the choice to invade the impossible, not live out our lives hampered by the probable. I would suggest that you take a few moments to ponder these points. I would let them begin the process of reshaping your understanding of prayer so that prayer becomes everything that God created it to be and nothing that it is not. Today’s podcast is drawn from the book, “Taking It to Our Knees – Rigorous Prayers for Life’s Greatest Challenges.” Get your copy today at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold. Thanks for joining us on LifeTalk today. You will find LifeTalk on most podcast platforms as well as YouTube. I would also encourage you to check out our daily posts on all of our Social Media sites.…

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Life Talk with Craig Lounsbrough

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"In the Footsteps of the Few" - Steps to Start Living 7:50

8 weeks前7:50

7:50

In the Footsteps of the Few The Power of a Principled Life By Craig D. Lounsbrough Are you where you want to be in life? Are you even close? Where have your dreams gone and has your hope gone with them? Have you found yourself someplace so far removed from whatever vision it was that you had for your life that you're convinced that there's no way back (if you even remember where 'back' might be)? This is the story of so many. So very many. And this story ends up becoming the tale of so many lives for the whole of their lives. "In the Footsteps of the Few" helps us understand how to live a bold life. A courageous life. A solid life. A life of dreams reclaimed and hope revived. This book takes a fresh and principled look at life and how to live it in a manner that's robust and incredibly enriching. Get your copy of "In the Footsteps of the Few" at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold. Take a moment and review a selection of Sample Chapters at https://craiglpc.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/In-the-Footsteps-of-the-Few-Sample-Copy.pdf. You can also enjoy this podcast on our YouTube page at Craig Lounsbrough.…

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Life Talk with Craig Lounsbrough

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"Taking It to Our Knees" - What Prayer is Not 10:51

8 weeks前10:51

10:51

Eight Things That Prayer is Not We can ask what prayer is. That’s a great question. But it might be better if we ask what prayer is not. If our prayers aren’t working right, or if we’re not feeling any kind of energy, or if there’s nothing that we’re connecting with, or our prayer life has become some flat, boring routine, it might be that we’re engaging in something that prayer is not. Are we praying, or are we doing something else that we thought was prayer? This podcast discusses eight things that prayer is not. Understanding these and honing our prayer lives to remove these diminishing tendencies will add a fresh dynamic and greater depth to our prayer lives. You will find "Taking It to Our Knees - Rigorous Prayers for Life's Greatest Challenges" on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold. Also look for our daily inspirational quotations on Facebook, Instagram, X, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.…

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Life Talk with Craig Lounsbrough

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Self-Esteem: Opportunities in the Pain 8:00

9 weeks前8:00

8:00

Today we’re going to talk about self-esteem. To one degree or another, at one time or another, each of us deal with feelings of low self-esteem. We questions ourselves. We have doubts about ourselves. And so, I want to give you some thoughts that will help you build and maintain a strong self-esteem. Let’s start with this thought. It reads this way: “Oddly enough, we might want to consider the fact that the things that have run rough-shod over our self-esteem are the very raw materials from which great futures are constructed. The more the damage, the more the material and therefore the greater the opportunities. The future cannot help but be shaped, built and ultimately fed by the past. The worst the past, the greater the feeding.” We have this tendency to focus on the negative. On what went wrong. What didn’t work. What backfired. What came back to bite us. We have this really interesting tendency to become consumed with all the bad stuff. The bad stuff is what comes to define us, it defines our situation, and it defines every outcome of whatever it was that went wrong. And because the bad becomes so predominant, the bad becomes ‘all bad.’ By that I mean we can’t find the ‘good’ in the ‘bad,’ even though some element of good is always there. The lessons that we can learn. The perspectives that we would have never had had we not tried and fallen short. The opportunity to learn things like patience, and endurance, and flexibility, and how to manage disappointment, and how deeply the human heart can feel when things go bad. The opportunities in the carnage are massive, and often those kinds of opportunities can’t be found any place else. But our pain convinces that the opportunities aren’t there, or if they are, it’s basically impossible to ferret them out. We just need to focus on getting rid of the pain (because it’s painful) versus spending valuable time trying to find the good in something that seem entirely bad. Now, think about this. Bad things have happened to all of us. Nobody’s excluded. Nobody’s exempt. There are no exceptions. And at some point, bad things going to happen again. You can count on it. And it’s not just ‘bad’ stuff that happens to us. Sometimes it’s ‘devastating’ stuff. Stuff that knocks us down in ways that we never really get back up again. We’re all walking wounded. The real issue is the depth or degree our woundedness and what we’re going to do with it. Think about this: “We’re going to get knocked down because of a thousand unjust things that should never have happened. But are we determined enough to get back up so that a handful of good things might happen?” Regardless of what has slammed itself into your life, there is something good within it. And there is enough good within you to ferret it out. These situations that you’ve experienced and the wounds that you’re carrying around because of those situations contain within them some of the greatest assets that you have available to you. And you have enough within you to mine those assets out of the carnage. As someone once said, “It’s not what happens to us…it’s what we do with what happens to us.” What happens to you is opportunity, even though that opportunity is often wrapped in pain, and sometimes a lot of pain. But if we dig the opportunity out of the pain (which we have the capability of doing) in time the pain will be offset by the opportunities that lay within it. Therefore, rather than these difficulties and struggles destroying our self-esteems, they are the very assets that can build them. The very things that have crushed your confidence, hold within them the things that can build your confidence. As we’ve said: “Oddly enough, we might want to consider the fact that the things that have run rough-shod over our self-esteem are the very raw materials from which great futures are constructed. The more the damage, the more the material and therefore the greater the opportunities. The future cannot help but be shaped, built and ultimately fed by the past. The worst the past, the greater the feeding.” I would suggest that you take some time and think about that. “The Self That I Long to Believe In” is a timely, thoughtful, and straight-forward look at both building and strengthening your self-esteem. You will find “The Self That I Long to Believe In” on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold. Thanks for joining us on LifeTalk today. You will find LifeTalk on most podcast platforms as well as YouTube. I would also encourage you to check out our daily posts on all of our Social Media sites.…

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Life Talk with Craig Lounsbrough

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The Five Big Lies - Effectively Building Your Self-Esteem 11:26

10 weeks前11:26

11:26

Think About It You are what you choose to be. Life is not a dictated script. It’s far from being something to which you have to surrender. Yes, there are things that we did not ask for that we have to deal with. Regardless, whatever our flaws there is always room to do something about them. Always. Some option always exists. There are always possibilities. Life affords us choices and chances. The human spirit is tenacious, and powerful, and wonderfully creative. Don’t underestimate your capabilities and your resources. Realize that the resources that you possess outclass and outweigh any flaw, perceived or real. Choose to view yourself differently and more accurately. Choose to choose you for despite your low self-esteem, you won’t be disappointed. “The Self That I Long to Believe In” is a bold, timely, and inspirational book that will help you to effectively build your self-esteem. Get your copy at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold. Thanks for joining us on LifeTalk today. I hope that you take the time to enjoy all of the many programs on our podcast. You’ll find us on most podcast platforms as well as YouTube. See you next time.…

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Life Talk with Craig Lounsbrough

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Like a River - "In the Footsteps of the Few" 0:21

10 weeks前0:21

0:21

"Despite the challenges, the river never reverses its course. Rather, it decides to cut fresh banks, fashion serene inlets, feed swirling eddies, sweep away fallen timber, lavish the floodplains with rich nutrients, and declare by actions such as these that the cowardice of reversal would never have created rivers this magnificent." - Craig D. Lounsbrough Enjoy a video of this thoughtful and challenging podcast on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/@craiglounsbrough . Discover "In the Footsteps of the Few" on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold.…

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Life Talk with Craig Lounsbrough

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The Unrecognized Potency of Prayer 7:16

10 weeks前7:16

7:16

Let’s start here. Think about this thought: “Too often we have stripped our single greatest asset of its power and hobbled it to the degree that it has come to be viewed only as a pathetic last resort. Yet despite our incessant meddling, this asset nonetheless remains a first resort so potent that it never needs a last one. And that asset is prayer.” Prayer. You know, through our own lack of understanding and discipline, we’ve granted prayer the characteristics associated with some antiquated religious monk living in some secluded monastery off in the woods. For us, prayer sits on the far fringes of life as some traditional nicety that we toy with when we’re not wrestling with bigger things. It might serve a purpose in life’s special moments, or in the midst of life’s most dire emergencies, but even then we’re not all that confident that it actually brings anything to either. To varying degrees we’ve rendered prayer as culturally outdated, logistically outmoded, a backburner endeavor, and far too simplistic to grapple with the monumental realities that are part of living in the 21st century. But I would challenge all of that by saying this: “I am convinced beyond words to convey that prayer is infinitely more than the mindless ranting of some poor, delusional soul talking to some imaginary friend in some imaginary place. Oh, to the contrary. Prayer is the manifest pleading of a soul worn raw that, by the simple act of prayer, unleashes untold forces that we can’t imagine that surge in a descent so massive and so inconceivably powerful that the ground of everything before them shakes. And in this descent lives are changed beyond recognition, nations are transformed beyond comprehension, and history is brought to its knees in the face of a God who says, “be healed.” That, my friend, is nothing of a delusional soul or imaginary friend or any other such nonsense.” That is what prayer is. But let’s build on that. Consider this: “How do I tell you what prayer is? It is everything that I need every time I kneel in the practice of it. It shakes the infinite alive and sets its armies afoot in defense of me. It will never run aground or find itself drowning in the waters of the adversity that I bring to it. Nothing it faces is insurmountable, for to think that such an adversary exists is to run a fool’s errand. It will shield me in its advance, it will beckon me to anticipate the miracles that it is about to wield, and in the midst of it all it calms me as it whispers, 'Be still and know that I am God.' And because of these reasons and a million more, I find prayer the single greatest place that I could ever imagine being.” That’s what prayer is. And if that’s not what prayer is in your life, or if that’s not what your experience of prayer is, then you’ve missed one of the powerful things that we have the privilege of engaging in. We’ve settled for this slumlord existence of spiritual impoverishment when we can be spiritually rich in ways that give light, and energy, and meaning, and purpose to life. Enjoy LifeTalk's wide array of inspirational and timely programs on most podcast platforms. You can also enjoy his daily quotations on Facebook, Pinterest, X, Instagram, and LinkedIn. __________________________________________________________________________________ You will discover all of Craig's books on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold.…

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Life Talk with Craig Lounsbrough

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A World That’s Lost 3:11

10 weeks前3:11

3:11

Everybody seems lost these days. People don’t like to admit that, or they refuse to admit that…but everybody seems lost these days. I suppose that the greatest kind of ‘lost’ is to be ‘lost,’ but to deny that you’re ‘lost,’ even though you are. That’s about the worst kind of lost that I can think of, and we certainly see a whole lot of that kind of ‘lost’ today. Everybody seems lost these days. Let’s face it, we live in a world that’s lost. In one way or another (or to one degree or another), the world’s always been lost. There’s a pattern to our humanity that should cause us to wise up a bit, and that pattern is that (as a species) we’re pretty consistently lost. It just seems that we’re a bit more lost these days. Of course we’re lost. We’re lost because the woods that we’re in are bigger than the resources that we have to get out them. And those woods become increasingly bigger the more that we convince ourselves that we can get out of them by ourselves. Where we are is too big for any map or any compass that we can create. And while we tend to bristle at the idea, God holds the map and has the compass. A sure map and a steady compass. And while we’re likely to continue to refute that reality, or work to ignore it in light of our incessant stubbornness, He’s got the map and the compass. And all we have to do (all we have to do) is ask Him for it. And I wonder (I wonder) exactly how lost we’re going to have to become before we finally ask Him.…

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Life Talk with Craig Lounsbrough

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The New Year - Wisdom to Start the Year 6:46

11 weeks前6:46

6:46

New Years 2025 Wisdom to Start the Year How do we live differently this year? I mean, with intentionality. With some sense of purpose and meaning that’s way beyond just living out our lives in order to meet some set of obligations that we’ve confused with real living? How we live with some deep sense of satisfaction and personal enrichment? How do we do it all differently? Well, at the beginning of this New Year I want to share some simple, foundational thoughts with you. Some thoughts that we don’t think about because our lives don’t create any space for us to think about them. Or we’re afraid to think about them because they might challenge us to something better and we might not be able to achieve that. Or whatever it might be. And we end up the poorer for it. So here’s some thoughts for you. And if you walk away from this podcast with only one of these on your mind as you head out into the coming New Year, this time will have all been worth it. Let’s start with this: “We are created for more than we’ve given ourselves permission to be.” That’s you. Whatever lays ahead of you today, tomorrow, next month, or in the coming year, you bring to those things more than you’ve given yourself permission to bring to them. You are more than the challenges that lay in front of you. You have unchecked resources, untapped abilities, yet undiscovered capabilities that are waiting on you. This New Year, give yourself permission to be your fullest self. Consider this: “It is the doubt of success that insures the fulfillment of that doubt.” Doubt is the cancer of great things. Our doubt takes the ‘achievable’ and pushes it so far out of our reach that we come to see the possible as the impossible. We become deluded that our greatest dreams, our fondest hopes, the things that thrill us will do nothing more tease us. We can play with the idea of them, but the reality of them is doomed to stay a reality because we doubt our ability to achieve them. Begin getting rid of your doubt. Here's another thought: “You were not made to tend to the grave of your mistakes because God removed the coffin and backfilled the hole.” You are not defined by your mistakes, no matter how many of them you might have made along the way. No matter how bad they were. No matter how painful the repercussions of whatever they were. You are not defined by your mistakes. Mistakes are a sign that you tried. You might have tried in a way that didn’t work, or in a way that you shouldn’t have tried. But you tried. The key is to try differently. Try in a better way. A more thoughtful way. Try again, and when you do your tenacity, your commitment, your fortitude…that stuff doesn’t define you either, but it does reveal the qualities that you have within you. And finally, remember this: “Dead-ends are never the ‘end of the road.’ They are only the end of ‘this’ road.” You may be facing the end of this year and the beginning of the next one feeling like your life has been a bunch of dead-end roads. Some roads do end. Some end harshly and abruptly. Some end unfairly and brutally. But a dead-end is never an end. Never let yourself believe that an end is an end. Somewhere there’s a ‘next’ road. A new path. It might be wide and easy, or it might be thin and tough. But it’s there. This New Year, find those roads. Walk them. Don’t run from them, or sit by them, or let your doubt cause you to turn away. Believe in yourself. Don’t let your mistakes tell you that you’re not worth it. This coming year might be easy. It might be hard. It might be somewhere in-between. But I’m committed to walking those roads. And I hope that you are too. As we walk those roads, tune into LifeTalk on most podcast platforms as well as YouTube. Here’s wishing you a truly great New Year. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Tune into LifeTalk on most podcast platforms. You can also enjoy our daily quotations on Facebook, Pinterest, X, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Visit LifeTalk's website at https://lounsbroughslifetalkpodcast.wordpress.com/?.…

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Life Talk with Craig Lounsbrough

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”New Year Reawakened and Reclaimed:” New - It Does Not Mean Better 5:19

11 weeks前5:19

5:19

New It Does Not Mean Better What is “better?” I mean, the definition of “better.” When we change something, we tend to label the change as “better,” whether it’s better or not. If we adjust something, or alter something, or eliminate it altogether, we define the changes that we make as “better.” We initiate new programs, or we reconstruct old ones, and in doing so we say that we are making things “better.” We craft new policies, or we tear down old businesses, or we adopt new beliefs, or we upgrade this, or we downgrade that, and we label all those actions as “better.” But “better” based on what? What’s the criteria that determines if something is, in fact, “better?” Is it based on the current cultural climate? Or, is it based on the trends that tend to be trending? Or, is it based on the desire to make a name for ourselves, or get ahead, or beat the opposition, or bring down a boss, or lift up a cause, or promote a philosophy, or demote anything that irritates us? Is it based on our desire to make a win-fall, or get ourselves out of a freefall, or just create a free-for-all? What do we base the idea of “better” on? Labeling something as “better” is often a justification for something that’s anything but “better”. It’s that label that we attach to our actions, hoping that people will pay a whole lot more attention to the label, and a whole lot less attention to the actions that we’ve pasted the label on. Sadly, most things are not better. They’re certainly ‘something,’ but they’re not “better”. But what should “better” be based on? “Better” is when others benefit, even if we don’t. “Better” is driven by the need of the common man, as the common man is the common cause. It’s something in the service of a hurting world, and not something that serves to hurt the world. “Better” is something that we do that leaves the world “better” than what we found it, even if we end up not being “better” in the service of that world. It’s sacrificial. It’s recognizing our responsibility to the lives around us, not the agendas within us. “Better” is when we end the day having gained nothing, but having given everything. “Better” is where love is given legs to run and greed can’t find its shoes. The world needs to be “better” in a “better” way. And that starts with you, and it starts with me, and it starts with rejecting anything that is not truly “better.”…

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Life Talk with Craig Lounsbrough

1
To Believe in a New Beginning 7:37

11 weeks前7:37

7:37

Have you ever gone so far in a bad direction that you feel there’s no coming back? Is there a point where we’ve screwed up things so badly that there just can’t be a new beginning? Is the carnage that’s a result of our bad decisions, or our poor relationship choices, or our career failures, or our financial mis-management…does the carnage of all that stuff reach a point that a new beginning can never (and will never) find a place to begin? Because once we give up on the idea of a new beginning, at that point we’ve allowed our mistakes and our failures to define us. They become who we are and who we will always be. We become the ‘bad’ of whatever bad we did. And I’m here to tell you that no one is the sum total of their choices. You will always be bigger than your worst mistake. And because that’s the case, there will always be a place for a new beginning. Think about this: “A new start is not about a new day. Rather, it’s about a new attitude. And that can happen any day.” So what’s your attitude? People get tired of hearing about the idea of attitude. But your attitude shapes your reality. The Bible has a really great verse in Proverbs that says, “As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.” Think about that. What you think about yourself is what you become. That is the power of attitude. And so, “A new start is not about a new day. Rather, it’s about a new attitude. And that can happen any day.” So here’s how to change your attitude. Here’s what you need to think about if you believe that you’ve screwed up things so badly that there just can’t be a new beginning for you. Here’s what you need think about: “It’s not about the ashes, for they tell a tale of what was. It’s about having a vision sufficient to understand that the tale that lies among the ashes stands ready to build the dream that will rise above the ashes.” The ashes in your life are the things that new beginnings arise from. Ashes are the ingredients of your new beginning. They’re not just what’s left over of whatever it is that you burnt up. The ashes in your life are the essential materials of great beginnings. They’re the fertilizer that nourishes great dreams. That needs to be your attitude. Let’s look at it another. Think about this: “To evaluate the probability of a new beginning as held against the overwhelming number of our mistakes, or the suffocating gravity of our pain, or the immensity of our losses is to forget that the most spectacular new beginnings are forged from the raw materials embedded in these very things. Therefore, the greater the things that would destroy us, the greater the new beginning that stands in front of us.” Think about that. The most spectacular new beginnings are forged from the raw materials embedded in our mistakes, in the suffocating gravity of our pain, and in the immensity of our losses. Your new beginning is sitting in the very places where your worst endings took place. And more than, the worse the ending, the greater the beginning. Enjoy LifeTalk's wide array of inspirational and timely programs on most podcast platforms. You can also enjoy his daily quotations on Facebook, Pinterest, X, Instagram, and LinkedIn. __________________________________________________________________________________ You will discover all of Craig's books on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold.…

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Life Talk with Craig Lounsbrough

1
”New Year Reawakened and Reclaimed:” Crafting the New - Birthing a New Beginning 7:33

11 weeks前7:33

7:33

Crafting the New Birthing a New Beginning She was born into an emerging America in 1890. Through the ninety-five years of life that stood in front of her she would watch an Industrial Revolution unfold, Henry Ford roll out the Model T, and Edison light the world. She would read the headlines of dough boys marching off to fight a Kaiser in what was originally called the ‘Great War’. Some twenty-four years later she would watch history repeat itself as millions of GI’s marched off in similar fashion to fight a dictator in something called World War II. In-between it all, she would face the economic depravity and emotional ravages of a devastating depression within which her husband would abandon the family and summarily vanish. She was left to support three children on a meager income of scant dollars earned in the hot kitchen of a small diner. She never drove a car. She lived out most of her life on pocket change, making what seemed impossible possible. The furniture in her meager home was old, lending it the enchanting aroma of another era long vanished. It all was tenderly cared for in a manner that lent her home an indescribable, but wonderfully simple charm. The few appointments in her small home were tidy, clean, and above all cherished. She saw herself as marvelously blessed in the midst of manifold need, for Granny understood that ‘need’ was more an issue of attitude than a matter of circumstance. And I was privileged to be touched by this solitary life until her passing in 1985. For over ten years, every month Granny would tease ten dollars out of her meager collection of dimes and dollars. And she would send it off to a young Hispanic girl whose father had abandoned her, and whose mother had placed her in an orphanage and summarily walked away. All Granny had was a single photo of a tattered little girl standing in front of a weathered hut. It sat in a slight frame on her tiny buffet. At the feet of the photo there laid a handful of yellowed letters that Granny had received from this little girl over that most precious decade. Some years after Granny had passed, another letter came. In it were several photos bearing the striking image of a young Hispanic woman in professional attire standing in a small but simple office setting. On the back of one photo in stuttering script it said, “Thank you for my new life.” My grandmother didn’t live long enough to see the results of her sacrifices. However, while real sacrifice is committed to the result, it relishes the effort. Granny relished the effort and birthed something ‘new’ into the life of a young woman. We Are the ‘New’ Each of us possess ample resources to be the ‘new’ in the life of another. It is not the execution of some strategy as we might think, or the happenstance of life that births something ‘new’. It is not about some level of tenacious persistence, or the right choices made at the right time. These things and many more can bring something ‘new’ to our lives and the lives of those around us. But it is the raw power of that single human being stepping up and stepping into the life of another that can bring something ‘new’ in ways that nothing else ever can or ever will. It is the energy of our humanity shared. It is the hope that is released in the touch of another. It is the voice of another that calls out when all other voices have long fallen silent. It is an investment that may cost us much, yet it is an expenditure that will cost us much more if we refuse it. It is pressing against the giant of greed and intentionally raising the eyes of our hearts past our own circumstances to focus on the circumstances of another. It is a passion that unleashes everything away from us so that it can be drawn into everyone around us. And it is this that sets the grand stage upon which to birth something ‘new’ in another that would never have been ‘new’ were it not for such a sacrifice. Be the ‘New’ Might I suggest that this New Year, the ‘new’ in our lives is making the choice to become the ‘new’ in the life of another. In whatever manner we choose to do that, we all can change a life and in doing so change a world. Therefore, let us not contemplate ‘New Year’s’ resolutions. Rather, let us formulate ‘New Life’ commitments. And let us begin to do that by becoming the ‘new’ in the life of another.…

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Life Talk with Craig Lounsbrough

1
”New Year Reawakened and Reclaimed:” The New Year -Refusing to Be Relegated to the Sidelines 11:50

11 weeks前11:50

11:50

The New Year Refusing to Be Relegated to the Sidelines We stand on the escarpment of a New Year. In many ways, it seems that what lies ahead doesn’t rally us with energizing hope, but rather it seems to rattle us with deep apprehension. From the vantage point we stand on at the beginning of this New Year, the landscape that lies ahead looks uncertain at best and disastrous at worst. We see a world reeling from decisions that we don’t understand, actions that appear to border on the irrational, and directions that seem to have forsaken any mooring that the founding principles of our nation might have given them or a sense of mortality might afford them. We stand on the listing precipice of this New Year with a host of political agendas and secular philosophies promising rosy tomorrows and a year brimming with the brightness of a world throwing off the old and seizing the new. We hear the words and they tickle our ears, but in many ways we don’t see the landscape ahead reflecting what the words say it should reflect. While many have taken hold of the words hoping that they pan out, deep inside, many of us aren’t certain that the promises made and the agendas outlined are deep enough, rich enough, transforming enough or solid enough to really accomplish what they say they can accomplish. The reality is, we’re not all that certain that we want them to accomplish what they say they’ll accomplish anyway. Resting in Hope Because We Can’t Rest in Anything Else So, we rest in the hope that hope is enough because we don’t believe in the people that are preaching hope. We hope that hope will be strong enough to drive the political agendas and secular philosophies; bolstering and empowering them sufficiently to do what they grandly visualize in their documented frameworks, but what they can’t do on their own. Or do we hope that they don’t work because the disastrous outcome of their implementation is only going to make worse the very things that they claim their efforts will make better. Often, we don’t even believe in ourselves and our ability to bring change, or in any manifestation of whatever this ‘self’ is that we are. Our hope then rests in hope, not necessarily in the viability of what we hope for and who we hope in. Somehow, we hope that it will all turn out okay. But we might ask why do we do that? Why do we so often opt for something that’s really not going to do what we need done, out of the hope that hope will carry whatever this is when whatever this is can’t carry itself? Why do we settle like that? Why do we pin our hopes on something that will likely explode in our faces if we pin anything on it, much less hope? Sidelined Bystanders I wonder if at its core our issue is a fear that is actually a multiplicity of fears. Fear that we’re far too small to do anything but hope for the best rather than fight for it. Maybe it’s an issue of being unable or unwilling to realize that we can actually impact things sufficiently to change things, rather than seeing ourselves as being exiled to some distant sideline of life where we can do nothing more than sheepishly root for a life that’s far too far away to touch. Change is too often seen as an external thing that happens outside of our efforts, so we relegate ourselves to some periphery role where all we can do is hope with no means to exert any real influence. I wonder how often we see ourselves as hapless and helpless bystanders in a greater drama that we have no ability to impact, whether that’s the drama unfolding in our nation, or the drama unfolding in our lives. We look around us at the wild spiraling of a culture relentlessly gyrating in some direction that appears unhealthy at best, and with no direction at worst. This massive “ship of state” or the various “ships” of our lives seem to be rolling on the churning seas of some wild societal storm with those at the helm announcing that the course is sure and the speed is steady. Yet, peering out from our obscure place on the deck of these enormous ships, it seems that their courses are entirely unsure and their speeds are anything but steady. Yet, despite the angst of the journey that we see before us, we feel far too small, far too irrelevant, and far too inconsequential to do anything about it. And so our best hope is to hang on and hope . . . or so we think. Can You Make a Difference? Are we simply bystanders living out some periphery role in some larger drama whose stage is far too massive for us to ever ascend? Are we doomed to haplessly sit by and watch our culture, our businesses, our marriage, our kids, our communities, or whatever it is that we might be watching spiral off into some cold, dark abyss? Will we engage the coming New Year without really engaging it because somebody else is already engaging it in a way that gives us no room to engage it? Is it Actually Possible that We Might Have Power? We might ask “what is power?” Is power derived from a collective of people whose numbers grant them power? Is it derived from a position of authority that’s derived from some established structure? Is power something granted to people by something bigger than the people to which it is being granted? Is power a product of social position, breeding, wealth, education, the ability to be relationally savvy, or culturally astute, or outrageously intellectual, or is it held by people possessing an elevated acumen of some sort? Or, is it the average person who takes the ‘all and everything’ of what they have and engages their world with what they’ve got? That’s power! It’s the average person like you or I who realize that it’s the “little things” that change “big things.” It’s the small steps that ultimately result in giant leaps. It’s the average person faithfully living out lives of integrity in the everyday grind of everyday living that changes cultures, redirects nations, and rewrites history. Indeed, that’s power. Ordinary People Who Do Extraordinary Things Daryn Kagan wrote, “Bad things do happen in the world, like war, natural disasters, disease. But out of those situations always arise stories of ordinary people doing extraordinary things.” It is ordinary people who change the world because they’ve stepped up in situations both large and small, believing that whatever their situation might be they can make a difference either large or small. It’s not about being ordinary. It’s about being available. It’s not about being ordinary. It’s about refusing to refuse opportunity. It’s not about being ordinary. Rather, it’s about recognizing that the great movements and moments in history laid on the back of ordinary people. It’s not about being ordinary. It about recognizing the power of the ordinary to be extraordinary simply by being ordinary. As Marco Rubio wrote, “America is the story of everyday people who did extraordinary things. A story woven deep into the fabric of our society.” The same story is woven deep into the fabric of our lives. The New Year – Will We? As we stand on the escarpment of this brand new “New Year,” we don’t have to relegate ourselves to some periphery role where all we can do is hope with no means to exert any real influence. We don’t need to be a hapless and helpless bystander in a greater drama that you have no ability to impact. We can live out intentional lives in our everyday worlds, being ordinary people of integrity engaging the world with integrity, and doing so believing that the smallest changes result in the biggest transformations. And so, will we dare to understand that it’s the average person who takes what they have and engages their world with what they’ve got? Will we rise up sufficiently to grasp the reality that it’s the average person like you or I who realize that it’s the “little things” that change “big things?” Will we step out on the belief that it’s the small steps that ultimately result in giant leaps? Will we embrace the fact that it’s the average person faithfully living out a life of integrity in the everyday grind of everyday living that changes cultures, redirects nations, and rewrites history? If we do, if we faithfully embrace these truths and live them out, we will change our worlds and we will alter this coming year. May that be your commitment this New Year!…

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Life Talk with Craig Lounsbrough

1
”New Year Reawakened and Reclaimed:” A Clean Slate - The Possibility of a New Start 6:35

12 weeks前6:35

6:35

A Clean Slate The Possibility of a New Start With the New Year we long for a fresh start. We want to wipe the slate clean, removing the smudges and the smears. We want to get rid of the errors, the poor choices, the misguided decisions and the bruising flops that populated the previous year. We want to wipe away old habits, clean up destructive behaviors, sponge up toxic relationships, run away from blood-sucking jobs and frantically flee the debt-feeding financial decisions that we made. The New Year is our time to use a whole bunch of elbow grease to clean up the horrendous messes of the old year, sweep those dirty little choices under the carpet, smooth over places where the carnage of our decisions tore the landscape of our lives apart, and precariously prop up the things that were blown over by the selfish choices we made. We’re wildly busy about the ‘spit and polish’ of getting everything tight and clean. The Past Relished or Rejected? We cross the threshold of the New Year without wanting to look back. It’s not that we want to reject the past, but we much prefer to leave it behind. We want a clean break, a new beginning, a fresh opportunity that’s in no way inhibited by whatever the past has been. Indeed, we do cherish the good things that have happened. However, we seem to celebrate them with a diminished sense; that they weren’t as good as good can potentially be. We engage the New Year holding out some hopeful hope that it will bring us twelve months of living that will be good in a way that we haven’t quite been able to achieve. That somehow this year will be what no year has yet been. So celebration is often less about what we’re leaving behind, and a whole lot more about what we hope will come. The Seeds of Staleness The New Year is the old year in redress. It’s nothing more than the final tick of the second hand of the clock that throws December 31st over into January 1st. It leaves nothing old behind and it takes nothing new with it. It’s a continuation of whatever was into whatever’s going to be. There is nothing inherently new about New Year’s. Yet, because we ascribe a false newness to it, we assume that something has changed, that something has been left behind, that something has transitioned or transformed in the process of one day rolling into another. So we celebrate and we ‘party.’ We raise robust toasts to the new opportunities that we’ve fabricated from the broken and desperate shards of the past year. We pen feel-good resolutions across our minds and across the pages of the calendar of the upcoming year. We tell ourselves that it’s going to be better, that we’re going to beat old habits and turn careers around. We shout down the corridors of the New Year, declaring in advance that we’re going to recommit to our marriages; that we’re going to complete college degrees, balance our spending, and watch our language. We assertively put the New Year on notice, telling it that we’re going to beat addictions, lose weight, change our attitudes, bury hatred, resurrect forgiveness, overcome fears, undercut bad attitudes and change. Wiping Out Staleness The New Year is an opportunity for reflection. We’ve set the calendar and flow of the year in such a manner that the New Year is parked at a place that affords us perspective. In reality, nothing changes. The truth is, we’ve been handed nothing new. But we can stop, catch our breaths, rub our eyes clear of the smudges that life smears across them, brush off the dust that’s caked on us from the long roads we walk, and simply look around. We have a chance to inventory and assess; to deliberately engage the reality of our lives, doggedly evaluate those realities, decisively execute strategies to change, and embrace an enthusiasm about the possibilities that these actions will bring to the New Year. We can’t wipe the slate clean, but we can rewrite it. We can’t ignore things but we can change them. We can pretend that the New Year is something that it’s not, or we can persevere in learning from the past to change the future.…

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Life Talk with Craig Lounsbrough

1
The Frightening Call of Great Things 11:03

12 weeks前11:03

11:03

Great things scare us, as they should. If something doesn't scare us then it's probably not all that great. All of us are called to great things. Those things will likely be different for each of us. However, in whatever way they are great, they are great. We are not here to pass through this existence as some distant observer of whatever's going on in this existence. Our lives are not passive and our role in the lives of others is not passive either. Whether large or small, we are here to do great things. However, our fear often keeps us from doing great things. The task is too large. We don't have the knowledge or the time. Our resources are far too inadequate. The task would be better left to others who could do it better than how it would be left if we did it. Great things are for those 'other' people. We might be called to do a few 'good' things, but great things are beyond the scope of who we are. Nonetheless, we are called to great things, and to avoid them or miss them would be one of the most tragic ways that a person would waste the wonder and potential of their life.…

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Life Talk with Craig Lounsbrough

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”Christmas Reawakened and Reclaimed:” The Last Christmas - The Greatest Small Package 14:27

12 weeks前14:27

14:27

Great things are hidden in small things. That sounds terribly illogical. Yet, it's only illogical because we don't really understand the nature of great things and that their greatness is marked in part by their ability to inhabit small things. Greatness is not so much about size or importance as it is about meaning and value. It's not necessarily the size of the thing, but the power that it possesses. It's not about how vast something is, but the potential that it has within it. It's realizing that great things find the best home in small things, for great things are always a compilation of small things anyway. The God Who inhabits the vastness of this entire existence was born into the body of a single baby. Greatness in smallness. His plan to invade the world in order to save the world would not be to unleash all of the forces at His disposal in some strategic sweep. It was, in fact, the opposite. And therein lays the brilliance of it all. In the same way, we are small. Yet, because we are, we have the space for great things. Ample space. This Christmas, we need to celebrate the birth of this baby. But we likewise need to ask, "What does the greatness of God wish to do in the smallness of us?" Resources for Your Holiday Celebrations Discover an array of holiday resources designed to enhance your celebrations on our website at www.craiglpc.com . Craig's thoughtful, timely, and inspirational books make lasting gifts. Discover all of his books at Amazon. com , Barnes and Noble , or wherever books are sold. Also, take a moment to explore Craig's Public Speaking Resources for information regarding the resources available to your business, ministry, or organization.…

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Life Talk with Craig Lounsbrough

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Thirty Days of Hope - Day Thirty 2:57

12 weeks前2:57

2:57

“The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is a novel about hope. A novel about how incredibly devastating life can be, and yet how God can bring an incredible hope into the most devastating situations. This story unapologetically and frankly embraces the harsh realities of life and allows us to walk alongside of people who are struggling with those realities. And in sharing in their remarkable and poignant journey, we able to see through the pain and struggle and hopelessness of it all to finally understand where we can find abundant, enduring, and empowering hope. Real hope. Hope for a lifetime and more. “The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is an inspirational and energizing story of hope lost and hope rediscovered. This is a story for our time, and every time. It’s a story for you, today, tomorrow, and forever. Each day, this thirty-day podcast series called “Thirty Days of Hope” provides the listener a brief excerpt from this inspiring and moving book. Tune-in each day through Christmas and begin your own journey of hope. You will find “The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold. You can enjoy this thoughtful and inspirational book in paperback, Kindle, Nook, and audio book formats. It is my hope that this timely, inspirational, and moving novel will become part of your Christmas tradition each and every year. Enjoy a brief video outlining this uplifting series "Thirty Days of Hope" at https://youtu.be/DiEUIcRm7vo .…

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Life Talk with Craig Lounsbrough

1
Thirty Days of Hope - Day Twenty-Nine 3:07

12 weeks前3:07

3:07

“The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is a novel about hope. A novel about how incredibly devastating life can be, and yet how God can bring an incredible hope into the most devastating situations. This story unapologetically and frankly embraces the harsh realities of life and allows us to walk alongside of people who are struggling with those realities. And in sharing in their remarkable and poignant journey, we able to see through the pain and struggle and hopelessness of it all to finally understand where we can find abundant, enduring, and empowering hope. Real hope. Hope for a lifetime and more. “The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is an inspirational and energizing story of hope lost and hope rediscovered. This is a story for our time, and every time. It’s a story for you, today, tomorrow, and forever. Each day, this thirty-day podcast series called “Thirty Days of Hope” provides the listener a brief excerpt from this inspiring and moving book. Tune-in each day through Christmas and begin your own journey of hope. You will find “The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold. You can enjoy this thoughtful and inspirational book in paperback, Kindle, Nook, and audio book formats. It is my hope that this timely, inspirational, and moving novel will become part of your Christmas tradition each and every year. Enjoy a brief video outlining this uplifting series "Thirty Days of Hope" at https://youtu.be/DiEUIcRm7vo .…

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Life Talk with Craig Lounsbrough

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Thought for the Day - Christmas #4 1:23

13 weeks前1:23

1:23

If we fictionalize the story of Christmas as some fanciful tale spun in the backwaters of history and people long removed, in that action we have succumb to the debilitating belief that the only viable idea of rescue is fiction. And I can think of few things that are sadder than that.” - Craig D. Lounsbrough…

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Life Talk with Craig Lounsbrough

1
Thirty Days of Hope - Day Twenty-Eight 3:17

13 weeks前3:17

3:17

“The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is a novel about hope. A novel about how incredibly devastating life can be, and yet how God can bring an incredible hope into the most devastating situations. This story unapologetically and frankly embraces the harsh realities of life and allows us to walk alongside of people who are struggling with those realities. And in sharing in their remarkable and poignant journey, we able to see through the pain and struggle and hopelessness of it all to finally understand where we can find abundant, enduring, and empowering hope. Real hope. Hope for a lifetime and more. “The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is an inspirational and energizing story of hope lost and hope rediscovered. This is a story for our time, and every time. It’s a story for you, today, tomorrow, and forever. Each day, this thirty-day podcast series called “Thirty Days of Hope” provides the listener a brief excerpt from this inspiring and moving book. Tune-in each day through Christmas and begin your own journey of hope. You will find “The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold. You can enjoy this thoughtful and inspirational book in paperback, Kindle, Nook, and audio book formats. It is my hope that this timely, inspirational, and moving novel will become part of your Christmas tradition each and every year. Enjoy a brief video outlining this uplifting series "Thirty Days of Hope" at https://youtu.be/DiEUIcRm7vo .…

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Life Talk with Craig Lounsbrough

1
Thirty Days of Hope - Day Twenty-Seven 3:46

13 weeks前3:46

3:46

“The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is a novel about hope. A novel about how incredibly devastating life can be, and yet how God can bring an incredible hope into the most devastating situations. This story unapologetically and frankly embraces the harsh realities of life and allows us to walk alongside of people who are struggling with those realities. And in sharing in their remarkable and poignant journey, we able to see through the pain and struggle and hopelessness of it all to finally understand where we can find abundant, enduring, and empowering hope. Real hope. Hope for a lifetime and more. “The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is an inspirational and energizing story of hope lost and hope rediscovered. This is a story for our time, and every time. It’s a story for you, today, tomorrow, and forever. Each day, this thirty-day podcast series called “Thirty Days of Hope” provides the listener a brief excerpt from this inspiring and moving book. Tune-in each day through Christmas and begin your own journey of hope. You will find “The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold. You can enjoy this thoughtful and inspirational book in paperback, Kindle, Nook, and audio book formats. It is my hope that this timely, inspirational, and moving novel will become part of your Christmas tradition each and every year. Enjoy a brief video outlining this uplifting series "Thirty Days of Hope" at https://youtu.be/DiEUIcRm7vo .…

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Life Talk with Craig Lounsbrough

1
Thirty Days of Hope - Day Twenty-Six 3:16

13 weeks前3:16

3:16

“The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is a novel about hope. A novel about how incredibly devastating life can be, and yet how God can bring an incredible hope into the most devastating situations. This story unapologetically and frankly embraces the harsh realities of life and allows us to walk alongside of people who are struggling with those realities. And in sharing in their remarkable and poignant journey, we able to see through the pain and struggle and hopelessness of it all to finally understand where we can find abundant, enduring, and empowering hope. Real hope. Hope for a lifetime and more. “The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is an inspirational and energizing story of hope lost and hope rediscovered. This is a story for our time, and every time. It’s a story for you, today, tomorrow, and forever. Each day, this thirty-day podcast series called “Thirty Days of Hope” provides the listener a brief excerpt from this inspiring and moving book. Tune-in each day through Christmas and begin your own journey of hope. You will find “The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold. You can enjoy this thoughtful and inspirational book in paperback, Kindle, Nook, and audio book formats. It is my hope that this timely, inspirational, and moving novel will become part of your Christmas tradition each and every year. Enjoy a brief video outlining this uplifting series "Thirty Days of Hope" at https://youtu.be/DiEUIcRm7vo .…

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Life Talk with Craig Lounsbrough

1
Christmas - Denying Our Need for Rescue 6:09

13 weeks前6:09

6:09

Rescue. It is hard to admit that we need to be rescued. We think ourselves to be smart enough, cunning enough, strategic enough, and enough of whatever it is that we need to be enough of to save ourselves. We tediously craft an endless array of things to rescue us from the things that we previously crafted to rescue us that ended up stranding us. We add problem to problem. Dilemma to dilemma. Disappointment to disappointment. The very effort to dig ourselves out of the holes that we’ve dug only serves to dig them that much deeper. We preach the commitment to the effort as the victory because the victory that we promised never materialized. Therefore we are left having to save face and salvage the failure by believing that we’re accomplishing something by at least having tried. We fancy ourselves as rather ingenious, but the outcome of our supposed ingenuity is anything but genius, even though we proclaim it as such. Our efforts to rescue ourselves only serves to enhance our need to be rescued. Rescue. It’s hard to admit that we need it.…

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Life Talk with Craig Lounsbrough

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Thirty Days of Hope - Day Twenty-Five 3:45

13 weeks前3:45

3:45

“The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is a novel about hope. A novel about how incredibly devastating life can be, and yet how God can bring an incredible hope into the most devastating situations. This story unapologetically and frankly embraces the harsh realities of life and allows us to walk alongside of people who are struggling with those realities. And in sharing in their remarkable and poignant journey, we able to see through the pain and struggle and hopelessness of it all to finally understand where we can find abundant, enduring, and empowering hope. Real hope. Hope for a lifetime and more. “The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is an inspirational and energizing story of hope lost and hope rediscovered. This is a story for our time, and every time. It’s a story for you, today, tomorrow, and forever. Each day, this thirty-day podcast series called “Thirty Days of Hope” provides the listener a brief excerpt from this inspiring and moving book. Tune-in each day through Christmas and begin your own journey of hope. You will find “The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold. You can enjoy this thoughtful and inspirational book in paperback, Kindle, Nook, and audio book formats. It is my hope that this timely, inspirational, and moving novel will become part of your Christmas tradition each and every year. Enjoy a brief video outlining this uplifting series "Thirty Days of Hope" at https://youtu.be/DiEUIcRm7vo .…

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Life Talk with Craig Lounsbrough

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”Christmas Reawakened and Reclaimed:” Am I Listening to the Lyrics? - The Music of the World at Christmas 7:34

13 weeks前7:34

7:34

What am I listening to? What is it that I fill my head up with? Whatever we listen to is eventually what we will become. We can pretend that's not the case, and we can lead ourselves to believe that we can manage the stuff that we let into our heads. But the fact is, what we list to is eventually what we will become. However, the worst of it is that we don't think about what we put in our heads. We find some element of something as appealing or soothing or nice in whatever way it's nice, and therefore we grant all of it entrance into our lives without really stepping back and asking what it's saying to us. What is the world speaking into your head? What have you given it permission to say and in what way has that changed you? At Christmas, we might wish to ask what that message is. In fact, we might want to hold that message up against the message of Christmas and ask ourselves which one we would rather have shape our lives? The message of Christmas is a message that no message formed by man can challenge. The message of Christmas is the message that we're all looking for that we will never find in the messages of the world...despite how hard we might look. The message of Christmas is "the message." So this Christmas you might ask, "What message am I listening to?" Resources for Your Holiday Celebrations Discover an array of holiday resources designed to enhance your celebrations on our website at www.craiglpc.com . Craig's thoughtful, timely, and inspirational books make lasting gifts. Discover all of his books at Amazon. com , Barnes and Noble , or wherever books are sold. Also, take a moment to explore Craig's Public Speaking Resources for information regarding the resources available to your business, ministry, or organization.…

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Life Talk with Craig Lounsbrough

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Thought for the Day - Christmas #3 1:09

13 weeks前1:09

1:09

“For the power of Christmas rests in the fact that we will never completely understand the vastness of it, but that will never stop its ability to completely transform the fullness of us.” - Craig D. Lounsbrough

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Life Talk with Craig Lounsbrough

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Thirty Days of Hope - Day Twenty-Four 3:36

13 weeks前3:36

3:36

“The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is a novel about hope. A novel about how incredibly devastating life can be, and yet how God can bring an incredible hope into the most devastating situations. This story unapologetically and frankly embraces the harsh realities of life and allows us to walk alongside of people who are struggling with those realities. And in sharing in their remarkable and poignant journey, we able to see through the pain and struggle and hopelessness of it all to finally understand where we can find abundant, enduring, and empowering hope. Real hope. Hope for a lifetime and more. “The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is an inspirational and energizing story of hope lost and hope rediscovered. This is a story for our time, and every time. It’s a story for you, today, tomorrow, and forever. Each day, this thirty-day podcast series called “Thirty Days of Hope” provides the listener a brief excerpt from this inspiring and moving book. Tune-in each day through Christmas and begin your own journey of hope. You will find “The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold. You can enjoy this thoughtful and inspirational book in paperback, Kindle, Nook, and audio book formats. It is my hope that this timely, inspirational, and moving novel will become part of your Christmas tradition each and every year. Enjoy a brief video outlining this uplifting series "Thirty Days of Hope" at https://youtu.be/DiEUIcRm7vo .…

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Life Talk with Craig Lounsbrough

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Thirty Days of Hope - Day Twenty-Three 3:30

13 weeks前3:30

3:30

“The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is a novel about hope. A novel about how incredibly devastating life can be, and yet how God can bring an incredible hope into the most devastating situations. This story unapologetically and frankly embraces the harsh realities of life and allows us to walk alongside of people who are struggling with those realities. And in sharing in their remarkable and poignant journey, we able to see through the pain and struggle and hopelessness of it all to finally understand where we can find abundant, enduring, and empowering hope. Real hope. Hope for a lifetime and more. “The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is an inspirational and energizing story of hope lost and hope rediscovered. This is a story for our time, and every time. It’s a story for you, today, tomorrow, and forever. Each day, this thirty-day podcast series called “Thirty Days of Hope” provides the listener a brief excerpt from this inspiring and moving book. Tune-in each day through Christmas and begin your own journey of hope. You will find “The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold. You can enjoy this thoughtful and inspirational book in paperback, Kindle, Nook, and audio book formats. It is my hope that this timely, inspirational, and moving novel will become part of your Christmas tradition each and every year. Enjoy a brief video outlining this uplifting series "Thirty Days of Hope" at https://youtu.be/DiEUIcRm7vo .…

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Life Talk with Craig Lounsbrough

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Thirty Days of Hope - Day Twenty-Two 3:09

13 weeks前3:09

3:09

“The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is a novel about hope. A novel about how incredibly devastating life can be, and yet how God can bring an incredible hope into the most devastating situations. This story unapologetically and frankly embraces the harsh realities of life and allows us to walk alongside of people who are struggling with those realities. And in sharing in their remarkable and poignant journey, we able to see through the pain and struggle and hopelessness of it all to finally understand where we can find abundant, enduring, and empowering hope. Real hope. Hope for a lifetime and more. “The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is an inspirational and energizing story of hope lost and hope rediscovered. This is a story for our time, and every time. It’s a story for you, today, tomorrow, and forever. Each day, this thirty-day podcast series called “Thirty Days of Hope” provides the listener a brief excerpt from this inspiring and moving book. Tune-in each day through Christmas and begin your own journey of hope. You will find “The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold. You can enjoy this thoughtful and inspirational book in paperback, Kindle, Nook, and audio book formats. It is my hope that this timely, inspirational, and moving novel will become part of your Christmas tradition each and every year. Enjoy a brief video outlining this uplifting series "Thirty Days of Hope" at https://youtu.be/DiEUIcRm7vo .…

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Life Talk with Craig Lounsbrough

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Thirty Days of Hope - Day Twenty-One 3:21

14 weeks前3:21

3:21

“The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is a novel about hope. A novel about how incredibly devastating life can be, and yet how God can bring an incredible hope into the most devastating situations. This story unapologetically and frankly embraces the harsh realities of life and allows us to walk alongside of people who are struggling with those realities. And in sharing in their remarkable and poignant journey, we able to see through the pain and struggle and hopelessness of it all to finally understand where we can find abundant, enduring, and empowering hope. Real hope. Hope for a lifetime and more. “The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is an inspirational and energizing story of hope lost and hope rediscovered. This is a story for our time, and every time. It’s a story for you, today, tomorrow, and forever. Each day, this thirty-day podcast series called “Thirty Days of Hope” provides the listener a brief excerpt from this inspiring and moving book. Tune-in each day through Christmas and begin your own journey of hope. You will find “The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold. You can enjoy this thoughtful and inspirational book in paperback, Kindle, Nook, and audio book formats. It is my hope that this timely, inspirational, and moving novel will become part of your Christmas tradition each and every year. Enjoy a brief video outlining this uplifting series "Thirty Days of Hope" at https://youtu.be/DiEUIcRm7vo .…

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Life Talk with Craig Lounsbrough

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Thirty Days of Hope - Day Twenty 3:35

14 weeks前3:35

3:35

“The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is a novel about hope. A novel about how incredibly devastating life can be, and yet how God can bring an incredible hope into the most devastating situations. This story unapologetically and frankly embraces the harsh realities of life and allows us to walk alongside of people who are struggling with those realities. And in sharing in their remarkable and poignant journey, we able to see through the pain and struggle and hopelessness of it all to finally understand where we can find abundant, enduring, and empowering hope. Real hope. Hope for a lifetime and more. “The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is an inspirational and energizing story of hope lost and hope rediscovered. This is a story for our time, and every time. It’s a story for you, today, tomorrow, and forever. Each day, this thirty-day podcast series called “Thirty Days of Hope” provides the listener a brief excerpt from this inspiring and moving book. Tune-in each day through Christmas and begin your own journey of hope. You will find “The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold. You can enjoy this thoughtful and inspirational book in paperback, Kindle, Nook, and audio book formats. It is my hope that this timely, inspirational, and moving novel will become part of your Christmas tradition each and every year. Enjoy a brief video outlining this uplifting series "Thirty Days of Hope" at https://youtu.be/DiEUIcRm7vo .…

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Life Talk with Craig Lounsbrough

1
Thirty Days of Hope - Day Nineteen 2:59

14 weeks前2:59

2:59

“The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is a novel about hope. A novel about how incredibly devastating life can be, and yet how God can bring an incredible hope into the most devastating situations. This story unapologetically and frankly embraces the harsh realities of life and allows us to walk alongside of people who are struggling with those realities. And in sharing in their remarkable and poignant journey, we able to see through the pain and struggle and hopelessness of it all to finally understand where we can find abundant, enduring, and empowering hope. Real hope. Hope for a lifetime and more. “The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is an inspirational and energizing story of hope lost and hope rediscovered. This is a story for our time, and every time. It’s a story for you, today, tomorrow, and forever. Each day, this thirty-day podcast series called “Thirty Days of Hope” provides the listener a brief excerpt from this inspiring and moving book. Tune-in each day through Christmas and begin your own journey of hope. You will find “The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold. You can enjoy this thoughtful and inspirational book in paperback, Kindle, Nook, and audio book formats. It is my hope that this timely, inspirational, and moving novel will become part of your Christmas tradition each and every year. Enjoy a brief video outlining this uplifting series "Thirty Days of Hope" at https://youtu.be/DiEUIcRm7vo .…

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Life Talk with Craig Lounsbrough

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Thought for the Day - Christmas #2 1:26

14 weeks前1:26

1:26

“Christmas is a vivid and brilliantly revealing lens. And if we dare to look at ourselves through this rich and telling lens, we are able to clearly see the majesty within ourselves that we’ve so foolishly forsaken. But rather than leaving us saddened and forlorn by what we’ve abandoned, this lens also possesses ample power to give us back what we threw away.” - Craig D. Lounsbrough…

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Life Talk with Craig Lounsbrough

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Thirty Days of Hope - Day Eighteen 2:41

14 weeks前2:41

2:41

“The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is a novel about hope. A novel about how incredibly devastating life can be, and yet how God can bring an incredible hope into the most devastating situations. This story unapologetically and frankly embraces the harsh realities of life and allows us to walk alongside of people who are struggling with those realities. And in sharing in their remarkable and poignant journey, we able to see through the pain and struggle and hopelessness of it all to finally understand where we can find abundant, enduring, and empowering hope. Real hope. Hope for a lifetime and more. “The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is an inspirational and energizing story of hope lost and hope rediscovered. This is a story for our time, and every time. It’s a story for you, today, tomorrow, and forever. Each day, this thirty-day podcast series called “Thirty Days of Hope” provides the listener a brief excerpt from this inspiring and moving book. Tune-in each day through Christmas and begin your own journey of hope. You will find “The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold. You can enjoy this thoughtful and inspirational book in paperback, Kindle, Nook, and audio book formats. It is my hope that this timely, inspirational, and moving novel will become part of your Christmas tradition each and every year. Enjoy a brief video outlining this uplifting series "Thirty Days of Hope" at https://youtu.be/DiEUIcRm7vo .…

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Life Talk with Craig Lounsbrough

1
”Christmas Reawakened and Reclaimed:” Christmas In a Box 10:22

14 weeks前10:22

10:22

Christmas In a Box As the snow began to quietly début winter’s arrival, I made my yearly descent to the basement. Rummaging through the backwaters of the musty root cellar, I spied the dusty stack of aged boxes with the word “Christmas” hastily scrawled across their cardboard sides. Inside of them lay the wonder of Christmas embodied in carefully crafted decorations and precious mementos of all sizes and sorts and types. Staring at the boxes, I suddenly found myself entirely engulfed by the horrifying fact that we spend much of our lives boxing up wonder. The Abuse of Boxes Indeed, we put things in boxes. The function of a box is to provide a set of distinct parameters designed to effectively contain whatever needs containing. A box imposes restrictions. It sets a limit as to how far something can go. Things are assigned a defined space where they are on hold, typically because we have no use for them in the active part of our daily existence. Therefore, they’re stored away until our existence grants them whatever tiny bit of space they are granted for however long our existence grants it. We put things in boxes. Boxes of Heart, Mind and Soul But the majority of our boxes are not made of cardboard, or plastic, or metal, or any other such rudimentary substances. Our boxes are not those things stored in the shadowy corners of our damp basements, or shoved into the tight confines of our suffocating attics, or crammed into the five-by ten of some self-storage on the other side of town. These do not represent the vast majority of our boxes…at all. The majority of our boxes won’t be found in basements, or attics, or some self-storage facility. They are, in fact, within us. Deep within us. And we have made them. We’ve tediously constructed them to protect ourselves from painful histories, or shut down truths that don’t set well with us, or eliminate the people in our lives who we find distasteful. We build them to shield ourselves from ourselves (in whatever way that we feel we need to do that). We build them to keep ourselves from the guilt of doing or being what we shouldn’t be doing or being. We build boxes so that we contain those things that we would otherwise be running from, or we build them to give us a ready excuse not to run ‘to’ the things that maybe we should be running to. We put things in boxes. Why Boxes? Some boxes might make sense. “But why,” I asked, “do we put great things in boxes?” Powerful things? Things that can handily rescue us from the tangled messes that we make with such tedious perfection? Why do we box up that which can heal our deepest wounds, wrestle our worst addictions into submission, grant us a sustainable hope that will stand against the most sustained darkness of a world gone dark? What in the world would behoove us to box up the very things that can handily reign in all of the destructive things that we’ve cut loose that are constantly cutting us up? What sort of insanity compels us to box up the very things that we spend the entirety of our lives searching for? We are a stubborn bunch of people. But that’s the message of Christmas that’s tough to swallow, and that’s the very thing that prompted the delivery of that message. That we are stubborn to our own demise. That we would be ‘the death of us’ unless God was willing to come and give ‘life to us.’ That the enemy is not necessarily something that’s prowling around in the shifting shadows that constantly circle us in some stealthy manner. Rather, that we are the enemy and that it is from ourselves that we need to be saved. That is the message embodied in the boxes tucked away in the musty confines of the root cellar with the word “Christmas” errantly scrawled across them. That is the intent of Christmas. That God decided to initiate the greatest rescue mission in all of human history at the greatest cost that any mission would ever demand…the death of His own Son. Boxing Up Christmas Despite the sour rhetoric of our times and the efforts of so many to massage us into complacent ignorance, this is the message that we as a culture have placed, pressed and imprisoned in boxes built by self-serving philosophies, special interest groups gone rogue, and platforms born of greed and power. This is the message that we find so aversive and chafing. It is our single salvation, but we box it up anyway. It is the only light in the darkness that we have foolishly come to call light. It is the only thing big enough to be able to course the turbulent seas of our times and throw us the lifeline that we refuse as we wait for other promised lifelines that never come. This is what we box up. And such an action is ignorance of the greatest sort that will insure a death of the most painful sort. We must take Christmas out of the cultural boxes into which we have thoughtlessly crammed it. We must free it of the confines of our stupidity, we must release if from the filthy hands of our greed that shaped each box, and it must be freed of the bane of special interests that attempt to seal these boxes tight. And once we’ve done all of that, we must burn every box to ash and cinders. Christmas Can’t Be Boxed Yet, the oddity of it all is that we really can’t keep Christmas in a box anyway. We might ignorantly presume such power, but it is only an assumption and nothing more. Despite our most robust efforts to ignore it, deny it, render it a fairy-tale, play it off as the invention of misty-eyed dreamers, and press it far off of the edges of a blind culture, Christmas remains what it is. It will forever remain the only rescue mission that set out with enough power to actually rescue us. No matter the propaganda and hype that we grant them, all other missions will fail…miserably. And I would hate to meet my own death realizing that I was ignorant enough to box up the only thing that could have saved me. When Christmas has concluded and the celebrations have stilled, when the songs have fallen silent and the parties have ceased, leave Christmas out of the box that you can’t put it in anyway. Let it be what nothing else can be. Let it rescue you, your family, your children, your marriage, your community, and your world. And I don’t believe that any of us want to put in any box anything that has the power to do that. Resources for Your Holiday Celebrations Discover an array of holiday resources designed to enhance your celebrations on our website at www.craiglpc.com . Craig's thoughtful, timely, and inspirational books make lasting gifts. Discover all of his books at Amazon. com , Barnes and Noble , or wherever books are sold. Also, take a moment to explore Craig's Public Speaking Resources for information regarding the resources available to your business, ministry, or organization.…

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Life Talk with Craig Lounsbrough

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Thirty Days of Hope - Day Seventeen 2:31

14 weeks前2:31

2:31

“The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is a novel about hope. A novel about how incredibly devastating life can be, and yet how God can bring an incredible hope into the most devastating situations. This story unapologetically and frankly embraces the harsh realities of life and allows us to walk alongside of people who are struggling with those realities. And in sharing in their remarkable and poignant journey, we able to see through the pain and struggle and hopelessness of it all to finally understand where we can find abundant, enduring, and empowering hope. Real hope. Hope for a lifetime and more. “The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is an inspirational and energizing story of hope lost and hope rediscovered. This is a story for our time, and every time. It’s a story for you, today, tomorrow, and forever. Each day, this thirty-day podcast series called “Thirty Days of Hope” provides the listener a brief excerpt from this inspiring and moving book. Tune-in each day through Christmas and begin your own journey of hope. You will find “The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold. You can enjoy this thoughtful and inspirational book in paperback, Kindle, Nook, and audio book formats. It is my hope that this timely, inspirational, and moving novel will become part of your Christmas tradition each and every year. Enjoy a brief video outlining this uplifting series "Thirty Days of Hope" at https://youtu.be/DiEUIcRm7vo .…

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Life Talk with Craig Lounsbrough

1
Thirty Days of Hope - Day Sixteen 2:39

14 weeks前2:39

2:39

“The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is a novel about hope. A novel about how incredibly devastating life can be, and yet how God can bring an incredible hope into the most devastating situations. This story unapologetically and frankly embraces the harsh realities of life and allows us to walk alongside of people who are struggling with those realities. And in sharing in their remarkable and poignant journey, we able to see through the pain and struggle and hopelessness of it all to finally understand where we can find abundant, enduring, and empowering hope. Real hope. Hope for a lifetime and more. “The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is an inspirational and energizing story of hope lost and hope rediscovered. This is a story for our time, and every time. It’s a story for you, today, tomorrow, and forever. Each day, this thirty-day podcast series called “Thirty Days of Hope” provides the listener a brief excerpt from this inspiring and moving book. Tune-in each day through Christmas and begin your own journey of hope. You will find “The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold. You can enjoy this thoughtful and inspirational book in paperback, Kindle, Nook, and audio book formats. It is my hope that this timely, inspirational, and moving novel will become part of your Christmas tradition each and every year. Enjoy a brief video outlining this uplifting series "Thirty Days of Hope" at https://youtu.be/DiEUIcRm7vo .…

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Life Talk with Craig Lounsbrough

1
Thirty Days of Hope - Day Fifteen 2:31

14 weeks前2:31

2:31

“The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is a novel about hope. A novel about how incredibly devastating life can be, and yet how God can bring an incredible hope into the most devastating situations. This story unapologetically and frankly embraces the harsh realities of life and allows us to walk alongside of people who are struggling with those realities. And in sharing in their remarkable and poignant journey, we able to see through the pain and struggle and hopelessness of it all to finally understand where we can find abundant, enduring, and empowering hope. Real hope. Hope for a lifetime and more. “The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is an inspirational and energizing story of hope lost and hope rediscovered. This is a story for our time, and every time. It’s a story for you, today, tomorrow, and forever. Each day, this thirty-day podcast series called “Thirty Days of Hope” provides the listener a brief excerpt from this inspiring and moving book. Tune-in each day through Christmas and begin your own journey of hope. You will find “The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold. You can enjoy this thoughtful and inspirational book in paperback, Kindle, Nook, and audio book formats. It is my hope that this timely, inspirational, and moving novel will become part of your Christmas tradition each and every year. Enjoy a brief video outlining this uplifting series "Thirty Days of Hope" at https://youtu.be/DiEUIcRm7vo .…

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Life Talk with Craig Lounsbrough

1
Thoughts to Enrich and Enliven Your Holiday Celebrations 8:57

14 weeks前8:57

8:57

The gift of Christmas (the gift of God’s Son) empowers us to do all of what we were designed to do, but will fail to God unless God empowers us to do it. It is the liberation from everything that we were ‘not’ designed to be and not designed to do. It is the opportunity and the power to finally, finally be our authentic selves. And then, how about the durability of Christmas? These things that Christmas does…but how long do they last? “Have we ever consider the boldness of Christmas? For to craft such a daring story and to do so in a manner that it is sufficiently sturdy to stand up under the relentless scrutiny that is certain to be brought to bear against such a story is boldness indeed. And when God pens a story He does so not fearing scrutiny, but inviting as much of it as any one of us can muster up, for God does nothing that is not bold. Such is God and such is Christmas.” What God writes and what God does has no expiration date attached to it. There’s no last page. No period. What He writes and what He does will never find an end in itself. He’s the Creator of eternal stuff, and only eternal stuff. This stuff lasts forever. And then finally, does it really transform, because a lot of things say that they transform, but they don’t. Does Christmas transform right down to the bottom of everything that needs to be transformed? Does it really change everything? Does it really make everything new? And if so, if it really does, why do so many people just walk past it? Think about this: “One of the things that vexes me to the point of near insanity is understanding the message of Christmas and realizing the potency of this message to transform the worst of our lives so that we can become the best of our ourselves, to shift the momentum of entire cultures so that the world is brilliantly enriched by each instead of destroyed by all, and to handily touch the hem of history itself so that history is changed in the touching. And while all of these are ours for the taking, I continue to watch the mindless hoards trudge past these things in order to embrace everything that is not the ‘everything’ of these gifts. And so I pray that God would grant them a heart ready to be captured by the ‘everything’ of Christmas.” Don’t miss Christmas anymore. Don’t. Don’t miss the immensity of what God did, and what God continues to do. Get out of your rigid and confined thinking. Look at what Christmas truly is and what it truly does. Let this Christmas be the beginning of a ‘forever’ transformation in your life. Here’s wishing you and yours all the power of this incredible gift. __________________________________________________________________________________ Enjoy LifeTalk on most podcast platforms. You will also find daily inspirational quotations on all of Craig's Social Media sites. Finally, visit Craig's website at www.craiglpc.com to discover an array of timely and thoughtful resources.…

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Life Talk with Craig Lounsbrough

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Thirty Days of Hope - Day Fourteen 2:37

15 weeks前2:37

2:37

“The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is a novel about hope. A novel about how incredibly devastating life can be, and yet how God can bring an incredible hope into the most devastating situations. This story unapologetically and frankly embraces the harsh realities of life and allows us to walk alongside of people who are struggling with those realities. And in sharing in their remarkable and poignant journey, we able to see through the pain and struggle and hopelessness of it all to finally understand where we can find abundant, enduring, and empowering hope. Real hope. Hope for a lifetime and more. “The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is an inspirational and energizing story of hope lost and hope rediscovered. This is a story for our time, and every time. It’s a story for you, today, tomorrow, and forever. Each day, this thirty-day podcast series called “Thirty Days of Hope” provides the listener a brief excerpt from this inspiring and moving book. Tune-in each day through Christmas and begin your own journey of hope. You will find “The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold. You can enjoy this thoughtful and inspirational book in paperback, Kindle, Nook, and audio book formats. It is my hope that this timely, inspirational, and moving novel will become part of your Christmas tradition each and every year. Enjoy a brief video outlining this uplifting series "Thirty Days of Hope" at https://youtu.be/DiEUIcRm7vo .…

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Life Talk with Craig Lounsbrough

1
Christmas in a Box - Greatness Boxed 9:46

15 weeks前9:46

9:46

We must take Christmas out of the cultural boxes into which we have thoughtlessly crammed it. We must free it of the confines of our stupidity, we must release if from the filthy hands of our greed that shaped each box, and it must be freed of the bane of special interests that attempt to seal these boxes tight. And once we’ve done all of that, we must burn every box to ash and cinders. Yet, the oddity of it all is that we really can’t keep Christmas in a box anyway. We might ignorantly presume such power, but it is only an assumption and nothing more. Despite our most robust efforts to ignore it, deny it, render it a fairy-tale, play it off as the invention of misty-eyed dreamers, and press it far off of the edges of a blind culture, Christmas remains what it is. It will forever remain the only rescue mission that set out with enough power to actually rescue us. No matter the propaganda and hype that we grant them, all other missions will fail…miserably. And I would hate to meet my own death realizing that I was ignorant enough to box up the only thing that could have saved me. When Christmas has concluded and the celebrations have stilled, when the songs have fallen silent and the parties have ceased, leave Christmas out of the box that you can’t put it in anyway. Let it be what nothing else can be. Let it rescue you, your family, your children, your marriage, your community, and your world. And I don’t believe that any of us want to put in anything in any box that has the power to do that. ________________________________________________________________________________ Discover all of LifeTalk's programming on most podcast platforms as well as Craig's YouTube channel. Also look for Craig's daily quotes and posts on Facebook, Pinterest, X, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Finally, enjoy Craig's thoughtful, timely, and inspirational books on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold.…

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Life Talk with Craig Lounsbrough

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Thirty Days of Hope - Day Thirteen 2:44

15 weeks前2:44

2:44

“The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is a novel about hope. A novel about how incredibly devastating life can be, and yet how God can bring an incredible hope into the most devastating situations. This story unapologetically and frankly embraces the harsh realities of life and allows us to walk alongside of people who are struggling with those realities. And in sharing in their remarkable and poignant journey, we able to see through the pain and struggle and hopelessness of it all to finally understand where we can find abundant, enduring, and empowering hope. Real hope. Hope for a lifetime and more. “The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is an inspirational and energizing story of hope lost and hope rediscovered. This is a story for our time, and every time. It’s a story for you, today, tomorrow, and forever. Each day, this thirty-day podcast series called “Thirty Days of Hope” provides the listener a brief excerpt from this inspiring and moving book. Tune-in each day through Christmas and begin your own journey of hope. You will find “The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold. You can enjoy this thoughtful and inspirational book in paperback, Kindle, Nook, and audio book formats. It is my hope that this timely, inspirational, and moving novel will become part of your Christmas tradition each and every year. Enjoy a brief video outlining this uplifting series "Thirty Days of Hope" at https://youtu.be/DiEUIcRm7vo .…

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