Life Talk with Craig Lounsbrough

Craig Lounsbrough
  • 5.0 (3)
  • Christianity
  • Updated Weekly

Life Talk is a podcast intentionally designed to enrich your life, deepen your marriage, enhance your parenting, maximize your work life, and dramatically embolden this journey that we call life.

  1. 6d ago

    Podcast Short: Change - It Begins With Us

    Change - It Begins With Us Change.  It’s needed for sure…just look around.  But if our posture is to wait for someone else to create the change that we’re waiting for, we’re probably going to just keep right on waiting. As a part of my own processing in trying to understand what change is, and how ‘real’ change is caused, I wrote this: “Change. It's needed, but maybe not in the way that we think it's needed.  It seems that we need to be thoughtful about the values that we've embraced because of the ethics that we've discarded.  We need to challenge the apathy that we've fallen into because of the convictions that we've fallen out of.  Make no mistake about it, the collapse of the world around us began with the darkening of the souls within us.  Therefore, it's not about changing a nation that's in turmoil out there.  It's about changing a soul that's gone dark in here.” Change begins with us.  With you and with me.  It begins here…right here.  The kind of change that we need…that we want, isn’t going to come from ‘out there.’  It’s going to come from everyday people like you and like me who decide to be different, to act different, to think different, and to live different.  It’s the impact of the single human being touching the lives of other single human beings in the process of living out our lives as human beings.  It’s how we celebrate with others when all is good, and how we lift them up when it’s not.  It’s determining that if we’re going to live out this life, we’re going to live it out so that when our days come to end, whatever’s left after we’re gone is better than whatever it was when we first showed up.  It’s about deciding to ‘be’ the person to other people that we want them to ‘be’ to us, and not waiting for them to ‘be’ that to us first. It’s about asking if we’ve let our values slip.  If we’ve abandoned some ethics that we shouldn’t have abandoned.  If the principles by which we should be living have been lost because we got caught up in the flood of people, who themselves are lost.  It’s about asking if we’ve let our character be less than what it should be (or less than what we really want it to be).  If we’ve compromised standards, or become apathetic, or given the circumstances around us the power to make us jaded and negative and ultimately toxic to ourselves and to everyone around us.  It’s asking if we’ve let the deterioration of the culture define us, instead of us working to define the culture and turn back the deterioration.  Have we become what we hate and therefore we hate what we’ve become, so we’re stuck in what we’ve become (but not what we are). And in all of that, it’s recognizing that we don’t need to be any of that, or do any of that.  We can be different.  We can set ourselves apart from a culture that’s tearing itself apart.  We can be an agent of change.  It is within us to do that.  And in choosing to be different in order to bring change, we cause those around us to be different as well, which can change everything. Change.  It’s needed for sure.  But let’s quit waiting on someone else to do it.

    Podcast Short: Change - It Begins With Us

  2. Sep 26

    Podcast Short: What Are We Focusing On?

    What Are We Focusing On? We can be very focused people.  We can decide that there is something that we want to do, or not do, or get, or not get, or complete, or not complete, or argue, or not argue, or whatever it is that we want to focus on.  Indeed, we can be very focused people.  In fact, we can be focused to the point of being quite stubborn about whatever it is that we’re focusing on. The issue is not about being focused, as that’s simply part of our nature.  The issue is what we’re focusing on.  What has captured our attention?  What has challenged us, or captivated us, or made us angry, or riled us up and incited us to some kind of action, whatever that action might be?  What is it that we have latched onto, or what is it that has latched on to us?  What is it that’s seized the whole of our imagination and inspired us to throw off all caution, step up and run after dreams of the most magnificent sort?  Or, at the other end of that spectrum, what’s frightened us to the point that we’ve turned away from our dreams, fled in utter panic, and rushed off to hide ourselves in whatever place we feel has afforded us a safe place to hide?  What are we focusing on? Whatever it is that we’ve given ourselves over to and focused all of our energies on, it’s typically something that we don’t have.  Whatever it is, it’s something that we’re ‘not’ in possession of.  It’s something that’s eluded us, possibly over and over and over.  Or something that’s teasing us because we can’t quite get our hands on it.  It might be something that we’ve got pieces and parts of, but we can’t quite get enough of it to have the whole of whatever it is.  It could be that critical and absolutely essential next step in a career, or something that’s just enough of whatever it is to nudge our position in our social group to that next cherished and sought after level.  It could be that one thing that will give us the financial prowess that we yearn for, or that bit of power that will allow us to leverage ourselves to some ascended position, or that one last resource that will, once and for all, liberate us from the grind of the daily grind. But whatever it is that we’re focusing on, it’s something that we don’t have.  It’s something that we don’t possess.  It’s something that’s not in our grasp, or our control, or our bank account, or in our collection of successes and accomplishments that finally defines us in a way that we feel we are worth being defined as.  Whatever it is, it’s something that we don’t have.  And that’s something to think about. That means that, quite frankly, we’re not focusing on what we ‘do’ have.  What we do have falls into irrelevance because it’s not what we don’t have.  It appears that part of the value of what we have (possibly the greater part) is more about achieving it and less about possessing it.  Somehow its value seems to get diminished by the sheer acquisition of it.  And so we press it aside in the famished pursuit of the next thing, when what we possess is the very thing that’s allowed us to pursue the next thing.  We lose the appreciation of all of the resources that we have as we immerse ourselves in the race for what we don’t have.  We sit amidst all of the resources that nurture us, protect us, feed us, grant us rest when we need it, give us needed refuge when the day has battered us, and solace when the world around us is too loud and overly demanding.  And we end up focusing on everything but that.  We focus on what we don’t have, and in doing so, we abuse and neglect what we do have. And so, maybe you should take moment and ask what am I focusing on?  What has my attention?  Where are my energies being directed?  But more importantly than all of that, maybe you should think about what you’re ‘not’ focusing on?  For that is going to be far more telling.  “Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do.  I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain.’  And I’ll say to myself, ‘You have plenty of grain laid up for many years.  Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.’  But God said to him, ‘You fool!  This very night your life will be demanded from you.  Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’  This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.” Luke 12:18-21

  3. Sep 23

    Podcast Short: Better or Worse?

    Better or Worse? Will the choice that you’re about to make, make you better or worse?  Will it improve your life, or diminish your life?  The fact of the matter is, it’s going to do one or the other.  And because it is, it’s worth asking the question, will it make me better or worse? But that question itself can be clouded by a whole lot of things.  First, there can be people telling us that the choice that we are about to make will, in fact, make us better.  They will look at us square in the face and say that without a doubt, this decision will improve our lives.  And these people can put forth all kinds of reasons as to why it’s absolutely certain to do that.  But do we see that kind of growth in their lives, or do we just hear that in their words?  Are we hearing real life principles and sound values and a truly refined wisdom, or are we listening to flimsy agendas and self-proclaimed platforms and substance-less statements dressed in the finery of something that they are not?  Will these choices make us better or worse? Second, the question of whether a choice is going to make things better or worse can also be clouded by whatever is vogue or trending.  We want to be in step with the culture around us so as to not look the fool, or the ill-informed, or worse yet, the rebel.  And it is assumed that if we are in step with the culture, and if we align these choices with whatever is currently trending, these choices are certain to make us better.  They will improve our lives.  And while the likelihood is that any improvement will be superficial and fleeting at best, they will only serve us until that which is vogue is no longer vogue, and that which is trendy is now outdated and a burden to whatever has now been proclaimed as new and cutting-edge.  The question then remains…will these choices make us better or worse? Thirdly, the question of whether a choice will make us better or worse is also clouded by our own greed and short-sightedness.  We ask ourselves questions of what a decision will get us, and not so much if the decision is right regardless of what it gets us.  We ask if our choices will position us nicely in whatever way that we want to be positioned, rather than asking how the decision positions us relative to sound principles and a set of morals to which we too often turn a blind eye.  We ask how it will make us look to those around us whom we wish to impress, rather than ask how it will make us look once time has peeled away everything that is false and less than admirable, all of which will eventually reveal the true nature of our choices.  And the question remains…will these choices make us better or worse? Will the choices in front of us make us better or worse?  Will they improve our lives, or diminish our lives?  That depends on who and what is informing those decisions.  Is it people with questionable agendas, or is it a culture trending on a rogue wave of self-gratification, or is it our own lack of thoughtfulness and integrity?  Whatever it might be, we might ask who and/or what is informing our decisions?  And how much are they clouding that decision to the point that we will be set up to pay a potentially unimaginable price in making it…for we have all paid such prices before and we would be the fool to pay them again.  For the wrong information, and the wrong motives, and the wrong value system will leave you on the wrong side of every choice, and choices that leave you on the wrong side never make your life better. Will the choices in front of us make us better or worse?  And if Godly principles and Biblical values are not providing the guiding function for those choices, we are doomed to live out a life of ‘worse.’ “Listen to advice and accept discipline, and at the end you will be counted among the wise.  Many are the plans in a person’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.” Proverbs 19:20-21

    Podcast Short: Better or Worse?

  4. Sep 20

    Podcast Short: Repentance - Reconfigured Standards

    Repentance Reconfigured Standards We all have standards, even if our standard is not to have one.  We all live by something, even if it’s the denial of that ‘something.’  There’s some sort of inherent code that creates a framework that provides direction to our actions.  There’s a paradigm that we all work within.  Call it genetics, call it cultural, call it greed, call it fear, call it upbringing, call it faith, call it whatever you want…but we all have standards shaped by something.  We each have them. But the thing that shapes them the most is us.  We want standards because we’re supposed to have them, or they were inbred within us, or we just picked them up growing up, or whatever the case might be.  But we want standards of convenience.  We want standards that are fluidly permissive and that grant us ample free reign to do what we want when we want.  We want standards that won’t hold us back if we hold them up.  At times, we want standards that give us permission to do what, in fact, standards tell us not to do.  We want standards that are standards in name only.  We want standards so that we can say to others and to ourselves that we are people of standards…when, in fact, the standard is not to have one. And to pull all of that off, we tediously and rather ingeniously reconfigure our standards to the point that they’re not quite empty, but pretty much empty.  They have a slight hint of ethics or morals or principles or values hidden away somewhere within them.   But that slight hint is left there solely as a means of granting those standards a soothing illusion of legitimacy.  But they are not left there as something to which the standard adheres.  And then we intricately weave these largely empty standards into our lives just enough to provide the illusion that we are indeed people of standards.  We make them sufficiently legitimate to look the part.  We make them tolerable.  We make them doable.  We take the ‘standard’ out of the standard, but we leave them with the name.  And in the end, we are utterly fooled into believing that we are people who live by standards.  That we are people of principle.  That we walk the hard road of integrity.  That we live right.  That we stand for all that is good and just. But we are not.  We are people living a distortion of what we say we’re living.  And that is utterly heart-breaking.  If we honestly face that reality, it’s nothing short of catastrophic.  It’s a shock to our system.  It’s a blow to everything that we’ve built.  It’s a pill that’s far, far too big to swallow.  It’s a reality check that upends this incredibly fragile and permissive narrative that we’ve built the entirety of our lives on.  And it is in the acceptance of this painful and often devastating truth that repentance is born.  This is where we stand before all of the good that we thought we were, and we recognize that this ‘good’ is a myth convincingly spun by this horribly comprised standard that we fashioned.  Repentance is a stark realization and a horribly jarring awakening that we’re living a life of reconfigured standards that are not standards at all.  Repentance is a hard and terribly frank look at the flimsy narrative that we created to grant us permission to live a fluidly permissive life of self-serving, dark, and personally destructive agendas.  Life is full of this stuff.  They’re everywhere in every place.  These permeate everything, including you and including me. Repentance is acknowledging these behaviors, and then rejecting these behaviors as destructive for us and everything around us.  It’s confessing the destruction we’ve brought on ourselves and everyone around us, and it’s repenting of such an inexcusable and wholly squandered life in a manner so comprehensive that no moment, from this one forward, will ever be squandered again.  And once we’ve cleared the house of all of that stuff, repentance is being sufficiently bold to ask what the great standard is.  The final standard.  The ultimate standard.  The real standard.  That standard that will stand no matter what.  The standard that will stand upon, against, and over every other standard.  What is it, where is it, how do I draw it into every shred of my being, and how do I live by it in a manner entirely uncompromised?  Repentance is uncompromisingly abandoning every reconfigured standard that we ever created and embracing the only standard that will outlive every other standard.  Ever.  And that is repentance.  And so where are those kinds of standards.  Those are the standards that God, and only God, can create.  Therefore, it is God to whom we should repent, for He holds the only standards worth dying for and living out.  He holds the only standards that will still be standards when all other standards have long fallen away.  He holds the great standards, the final standards, the ultimate standards, the real standards.  That’s where they are.  In fact, that’s the only place that they are.  Repentance.  Abandon your reconfigured standards and seize God’s eternal standards.  That’s what will save you.  That’s what will bless you.  That’s what will transform you. “If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and heal their land.” 2 Corinthians 7:14

    Podcast Short: Repentance - Reconfigured Standards

  5. Sep 13

    Podcast Short: We Reap What We Sow

    We Reap What We Sow We reap what we sow.  In other words, what we do is never free of an outcome that will be shaped by what we do.  The ‘cause-and-effect’ of life is such that what we do will always cause an outcome that is fashioned directly by what we do.  Despite the fact that we often think (or would prefer to think) that what we do is somehow isolated to the action or the choice itself, by doing something we have, in fact, set the stage for a future outcome that will reflect whatever the action or choice was that we made.  We reap what we sow.  And that is an immovable reality. And if we look around us, what we see today will tell us, quite clearly, the stuff that we sowed yesterday.  The events of today grew out of the choices of yesterday.  We can complain about the world today.  We can bemoan our lot in life, or we can find ourselves becoming deeply hopeless and darkly dismayed about the state of our culture.  We can grieve deeply over tragedies that seem to befall us at every turn and that leave us drowning in an agony so consuming that we don’t have time to heal before the next one befalls us.  We can be utterly stunned at the nature of events and the course of the culture, having believed that such things were leagues beyond the scope of reality…but here they are.  The headlines are strewn with news so dark that it sometimes seems nearly apocalyptic and we sit teetering on some abyss that our choices delivered us to.  But does not our surprise reveal our ignorance, because the fact of the matter is, we reap what we sow. Have we been so oblivious as to somehow think that this would not be the case?  And are we so adamant about wanting to preserve our so-called ‘rights’ to engage in whatever destructive behavior that we choose to engage in that we altogether deny the cause-and-effect of those choices?  Will we pretend that we are somehow above such an immovable reality.  Will we delude ourselves with the belief that we have license do whatever we want, and that we somehow have obtained the power to grant ourselves a free pass from the consequences of doing what we want?  Are we foolish enough to believe that we can indulge in the most rogue and base passions imaginable, and do so in some sort of perfect isolation?  Or do we actually accept the fact that we will reap what we sow, but that in time what we reap will somehow magically become better, despite the fact that it was, and will continue to be sown from the same exact stuff from which we’ve reaped the bad stuff?  Or have we been sufficiently fooled by those who would declare that what we’ve reaped was actually that of others who have liberally sown our cherished and rather admirable efforts with toxic seeds designed to undermine our efforts, and it is their seeds which we have reaped?  Let’s not be fooled, for we’ve been fooled for far too long already.  We reap what we sow.  And so maybe we should look at what we’re sowing.  Honestly.  Frankly.  With great pause and even greater thought.  And maybe we should think about what the things that we’re sowing are going to result in.  And maybe we need to refuse to live in denial of that painful and frequently disappointing reality.  Maybe we should understand that while we might like to believe that we will reap something good from compromised seeds, that that is not the case, nor will it ever be despite how much sowing we might do.  And maybe, just maybe we should start sowing something different.  Something very different.  Something radically different.  Maybe it’s time for a change of seeds, a real change, an honest change.  Maybe it’s time to sow something better because we cannot afford to continue to reap things that are this bad. “A man reaps what he sows. The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” Galatians 6:7-9

    Podcast Short: We Reap What We Sow

  6. Sep 8

    Abandonment - When People Make Destructive Choices

    Abandonment When People Make Destructive Choices There are times when the best of our logic fails to understand the worst of other’s behaviors. It’s part of the oddity or maybe complexity of the human psyche that we sometimes make choices that defy any shred of reason or seem void of even the slightest hint of sensibility. More times than we can count we stand in awe of the choices that some people make, standing at some distance shaking our heads in disoriented disbelief and wondering what in the world they were thinking. Sometimes our own choices are perplexingly confusing, defying our own logic and leaving us patently bewildered and entirely befuddled at who we are and what we just did.  Clearly, we can be our greatest mystery. Yet, the most confounding situations are those when these rather irrational decisions are made at the expense of others. Sure, we can make wildly poor choices that effect ourselves in ways slight or significant. I suppose it’s within our rights to chart spurious courses that descend to dark places as long as the only person that ends up in those dark places with us is ‘us.’ It would seem that we can “shoot ourselves in the foot” as long as it’s our foot and no one else’s.  Yet, far too frequently we shoot a lot of other’s feet other than our own. And so the pressing question becomes, why would we take someone else down with us?  What in the world behooves us to make choices that reach out with arms either long or short, grab someone else in whatever way we do that and drag them down? Why is it that we just can’t leave others alone? What compels us to make choices that are certain to seize the course of the life of another and set their path on some dizzying descent?   Self-Preservation When life presses us with an unnerving intensity we’re reflexively prone to revert to defensive position of self-preservation. Sure, it’s quite easy to be gracious and selfless when the cost of doing so isn’t all that significant. We can look quite the part when we don’t have a lot of skin in the game, or when we know that we’re not likely to be skinned while we’re in the game. We live within limits that are long on self and short on others. Therefore, as the cost/benefit analysis swings away from us we’re more likely to gradually or not so gradually swing the cost over onto others. We’re noble, but noble to a point.  We’re generous, but only to the degree that what we’re getting sufficiently offsets what we’re giving. We will extend ourselves in ways that appear magnanimous and philanthropic as long as we don’t have to extend ourselves beyond arm’s reach of ourselves. There comes a point where the responsibility of accountability is just a bit too revealing, where the selflessness of putting ourselves aside is pinching our egos a bit too hard, and where the concept of sacrifice and the ‘good of our fellowman’ hasn’t given us all that much in return, if it’s given us anything at all.       Our Expectations When the world around us doesn’t reciprocate our simple acts of simply being a ‘good person’ in the manner in which we feel it should, we begin to become jaded and we take a darker turn into ourselves. When the world is perceived by us as greedy, when it seems that every action is driven by a covert agenda, and when the rampant selfishness appears wholly unrepentant and entirely irreparable, we pull inward and we put up impenetrable walls. And in putting up the walls we would be quite wise to ask if the things that we find so aberrant and awful are indeed the very things we ourselves engage in.  It may well be that our own greed is worse than those that we condemn because we too often demand that we dictate what we give to those around us. If we are not aware of such distortions, we will make it about us. And in making it about us we’re foolishly led to believe that all of our many cherished expenditures are never expended because they never move outside of us. It’s all about us investing all of ‘us’ back into all of ‘us.’ This self-sabotaging, self-absorbing cycle creates an ever-hardening pattern where the deepening pain that we’re inflicting on others and the manner in which we are diminishing their lives begins to go entirely unnoticed.  Often we are on the receiving end of such behaviors, and sometimes we’re often the ones dishing them out.   We Are Too Expensive When we make it about us, someone, somewhere is going to go down simply because the cost of being about ‘us’ is a cost that will always extend itself beyond ‘us.’ We don’t have the life currency to make it about us, so we borrow or steal that ‘currency’ from other places and other people. Despite our frequent arguments to the contrary, we simply do not have the inherent capacity to generate everything that we need. However astounding we might perceive it to be, our capacity to independently generate resources will perpetually fall short of the resources that we actually need. Therefore, as our accumulated needs swiftly exhaust our scant resources we are forced by our limitations to reach outside of ourselves to obtain those resources. And in either borrowing or stealing those resources from someone else, that ‘someone’ is going down as we attempt to push ourselves up.    Need We Dare Remember We’ve regularly failed to realize that being a good person pays exceedingly generous dividends far beyond anything we can borrow or steal. Riches born of sacrifice fill the coffers of heaven. Yet we miss those dividends because they’re not exactly the ones that we’re looking for, or they’ve come at some cost when we’d much prefer to receive them free of charge. And so, cynicism wins the day, pessimism reigns and we’re going to take others down with us without even recognizing that we’re doing so. It’s quite sad enough that we do things to take ourselves down and shoot ourselves in the foot. Yet, it’s infinitely more tragic that we do that to others. We cannot control the actions of others as they perpetrate such behaviors upon us. Yet, we can control ourselves. So to avoid taking others down we’d be wise to look at the state of our heart, take the temperature of our attitude, and see if our soul is still breathing because we may find that they are all in some state that we’d much prefer them not to be. And once we’ve inventories them alive again, maybe we’ll realize that to sacrifice is to fill the coffers of heaven which will spill over into the vault of our soul. 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 as well as our array of books on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold. Thanks being here today. See you next time.

  7. Sep 1

    In the Footsteps of the Few - Our Calling

    In the Footsteps of the Few Our Calling   “This is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.” I Timothy 2: 3-4 (NIV)   “The Bible tells us that Jesus Christ came to do three things. He came to have my past forgiven, you get a purpose for living and a home in Heaven.” Rick Warren   It’s inevitable.  Sooner or later our lives will be over.  The day will come when we will reach the last minute of the last day on the last page of the calendar of our lives.  Sooner or later we will all have that single day when ‘tomorrow’ won’t be standing at the ready to become the next ‘today.’  At that point, the daily obligations and challenges that both defined and drove our lives will come to an abrupt end.  All of the assorted tasks, the innumerable problems, the incessant obstacles, the various celebrations, the breaking and making of relationships, the paying down of mortgages, the paying out of compliments, and all of the things that consumed both our thoughts and our time will be forevermore concluded.   The Tally of What We Got Done If all that’s left is an endless litany of tasks accomplished and problems overcome, then the tally of our lives is the tally of what we got done.  We suddenly find that we had lived out the sum total of our days bowing to the stale tedium of checklists. We completed a bunch of stuff, most of which didn’t really matter at the end.  Yes, it was impressive.  But impressive toward what end? And all of this we had mistakenly taken as living.  Life has now fallen into the dramatically expanding backlog of history that tediously records achievements accomplished and dutifully stores them in the catacombs of history as life now completed.  We checked the boxes, but did we live? We live to live life, but not change it.  We live to figure out its cadence, not transform it.  We live to create a comfortable place, rather than dare to discover our place.  We live to be good, but not to be great.  We live to win, which means that we’ve forsaken what it is to succeed.  We live without a calling because we didn’t deem it of enough importance to ask God what it was and how we fulfill it.  We checked a bunch of boxes, but we didn’t live.   A Calling Do we live solely to check off the relentless list of incessant obligations that life pens on the pages of our lives?  Have we drearily defined life as something more of a strictly linear course where we begin at one point and methodically plod in a single direction in single steps until we reach a single point?  And if this cycle is the sum total of our existence, is it simply existence that we errantly took for living?  Have we chosen to be that ignorant and therefore squander our lives out of that ignorance?  And if it is simply existence, have we completely confused authentically robust living with something more akin to a robotic subsistence? And in it all an exhilarating sense of calling is lost.   The Core of a Calling A calling calls us to charge the world rather than solely walk in blind lockstep with it. A calling declares that a strictly linear course can be majestically swept upward by wonder, breathlessly elevated by vision, and potently energized by faith. A calling is a brilliant and entirely undimmed vision that breathlessly engages this existence of ours.  In the engagement, it loudly declares that there is infinitely more to all of this and that we have been specifically ordained to boldly usher that ‘more’ into our own existence. It is a surrender to the great God of great callings, who has not created a single life without gifting it with a calling in the creating. And in altering our own existence as well as transforming that of others by clothing ourselves in such a calling, we do nothing less than change the whole of our world.  That is a calling.  That is our calling.   Do I Have a Calling?                We may at times state that we don’t have a calling, or that life has somehow bypassed us in the area of a calling.  However, such a view is often birthed of fear and fed by trepidation as we know that a calling will demand sacrifice.  Simply put, ignore your calling and you forfeit your life. The issue is not having a calling.  The issue is in boldly setting out to discover it, embracing the whole of if without the fear that its size would impart, and living it out despite the inherent costs that are certain to be ours to endure in accepting it.  It is about living above our line of sight.  It’s about living beyond the reach of our vision.  It’s about living outside of that which provides us comfort.     Identifying Our Calling One very effective way to identify your calling is to ask yourself what do you spend your time running from?  What have you repeatedly avoided?  What have you perpetually ignored?  What have you persistently pushed off to another day that never becomes ‘the’ day?  What is it that have you attempted to replace with a dizzying array of things that never replace it? It’s not that we don’t understand our calling.  In fact, it is our running that evidences the fact that at some level we do understand it.  A calling is consuming, demanding, relentless and uncompromising.  It will hand you everything you could hope for, but it will demand everything that you hope in.  In a world drowning in trinkets marketed as treasure, next to God our calling is the single greatest thing that we could ever hope to engage.  And when something so frighteningly magnificent calls, the frailness of our humanity kicks in and we run.  Your calling is calling.  Are you listening or are you fleeing?  Because if you’re fleeing, your will live within the box of fear.  If you listen, you’ll never know what a box is. 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.

  8. Aug 25

    ”An Intimate Collision - Encounters With Life and Jesus” - Part Four

    He was four years old . . . barely.  Boyish innocence was tightly stitched and held fast to a deep zest for living.  He was a mosaic of the threads of a splendid tapestry whose fibers were being woven into a soft spirit that reveled in life.  I love Corey.  I love him for what he is, and what I see in him that I am not.   He is innocence untainted and unsoiled, a young boy that catches the essence of living through windows of the soul yet unsullied by life.  Splendidly exuberant, he draws in all the energy of life and expels it freely out to anyone who will embrace its gift.  He is both a repository of living and the embodiment simplicity.  One without the other would dramatically diminish him, as it would any of us. “I have seventy cents,” he said.  Sitting at a red light, I had no idea as to the nature, purpose or rationale of his comments, arising it seemed from the incessant babbling and spontaneity that frequently marks him.  “Dad, I have seventy cents.”  Attending to the blur and bustle of the marauding traffic that rushed around me, I attempted to placate him, hoping that he would drift on to something else.  “That’s nice,” I replied.  He was irritably insistent.  My verbal pabulum was blatantly insufficient for him.  “Dad, I have seventy cents!”  His voice was emphatic.  I glanced in my rearview mirror and watched him squirming in his car seat, obviously possessing some agenda of great importance to him that was swallowed up in the supposedly greater agendas that dictated my day.  Catching my eyes in the mirror, he held out a clenched fist clutching seventy cents and with sordid determination said, “Dad, I have seventy cents!”   What We Miss I am occupied, attending to the congestion and myriad events around me.  The traffic of my life is made up of frustrating red lights, a rare green one, and irritating yellows that flash across a myriad of my intersections.  All of the congestion of commerce and career, the snarls of success and the raucous rhythm of rush hour that I embrace as essential and necessary to achievement. I am caught in the blindness of believing that living life means winning, being horrified that an opportunity missed is an unredeemable loss that creates a permanent setback and lifetime diminishment.  I must master life by gouging and gorging myself on its complexities at every opportunity, without having time to savor the tender exquisiteness of its intricacies.  Mine is a hoarding of life, rather than a delicate sampling.  In and through it all I miss the minute details in the mayhem, the subtleties that are the very essence of the larger things that I gorge and feed upon.  In essence, I miss simplicity.  “I have seventy cents Dad!”  It was a statement of simplicity, and so I missed it. Crystal blue eyes and romping blonde hair, his small hands cradled two quarters and two precarious dimes.  They were clenched so firmly that his tiny fingers turned shades of red and white; holding them valiantly in front of him with arms outstretched.  His face was chiseled with a squared hint of boyish determination, the manifestation of four year old eyes apprehending the core of life and living when I could not see it.  His perceived with a crystal clear soul what really mattered when all I saw was an annoying red light and thick traffic.  “Dad, I have seventy cents!” And then I saw it.  Quite accidently it caught the barest edge of my mind.  Out of the corner of my eye, from the farthest fringes of my life it stirred.  The simple intruded upon my chosen world of complexities.  A solitary figure sat on the margins of my wild world, passing by me except for a four year old attuned to the wonder of simplicity, hoping that the din surrounding me might ebb just enough to catch a glimpse.  I finally saw it. Scrawled by an unsteady hand across a tattered piece of discarded cardboard, stained and bent were a handful of words.  The edges of cardboard were torn, frayed and mutilated, much like the man who held it.  It was stained and bent.  Primitive letters etched out the silent plea of a lost life.  He was no more than ten feet away, and I missed him.  The sign read, “Need help, please.”  “Dad, I have seventy cents!”   Simplicity Missed and Reclaimed “Don’t push these children away.”  Jesus’ voice was purposeful, highlighting an eternal principal violated by stumbling men who chased after life and missed living in the pursuit of living.   “Don’t ever get between them and me.  These children are the very center of life in the kingdom” (Mark 10:14, The Message).  Simplicity is central to the infinite, which is an odd and incomprehensible dichotomy.  That which is complex beyond comprehension embraces simplicity at its core and derives all that it is from that core.  The infinite invites us to simplicity as that which is of eternal value is best seen in that which is simple and uncluttered. Simplicity is the key that turns the tumblers to the door of the eternal.  It is the single and sole passport to an audience with the infinite.  We must suspect then that such a concept is built into the fabric of the finite as well.  Simplicity is the essence of life and living from which all else springs.  Without it complexity loses it roots, it has no grounding, no boundaries and no identifiable point of departure that defines it and shapes it.  And it is here, with the cluster of children swirling around Him in innocent admiration that Jesus declares simplicity as simply central. The Pharisees and their malicious attempts to trap Him were barely hours old, still resonating in His mind.  God incarnate, the Creator of the universe had been asked to justify Himself.  It was indeed the absurdity that arises when simplicity is missed.  The rich young ruler and the stench of materialism were only moments away.  Face to face with God, the rich young man would prove himself unable to see Jesus in the tangled web woven of wealth and the complexity inherent in the sordid accumulation of power.  He had too much of this world and too little of the next; all of which leaves no room for simplicity.  The walk to Jerusalem, betrayal, spikes, a splintered beam, oozing blood, death . . . all of that was only a mere handful of days away.  Awash in the many manifestations of man’s sin and on the threshold of abolishing it, Jesus “gathered the children up in His arms and He laid His hands of blessing on them” (Mark 10:16, The Message).   Simplicity Lived As you look at this picture of Jesus, do you see it?  It too is on the margins of our lives, sadly so.  Jesus is sitting, gingerly drawing an armful of giggling and squealing children into His lap.  The thick hands of a carpenter run calloused fingers through mounds of curls gracing a tiny head, drawing a smile out of a timid child with a playful and slightly bemused stare.  Embracing their innocence and simplicity as so far removed from the world He faces, the world that He will die for. He sees in their impish and innocent faces the simplicity that keeps the world from seeing Him.  He is at the vortex of His earthly life.  In a matter of days all of history will be rocked by His death.  The universe will itself reel.  Hell will fall.  Satan will flee.  The immensity of the powers of darkness will suffer complete and uncompromising defeat.  He will defiantly tread the bowels of Hell itself and then He will rise and He will, in His resurrection, change the entire course of human history for the full course of human history.  What He is about to do is monumental beyond anything that has ever transpired in the whole course of existence. But here, at this moment, sandwiched between these cataclysmic events, He laughs with children who have no sense of Who He is, or what awaits Him.  But, innocent they are.  And so He plays for a moment.  He tickles and gets tickled.  He tells a joke and the air is filled with the squeal of childhood laughter.  Eye to eye with gentle intensity He tells them of their immense value and of a Father’s love for each of them.  He will die for them shortly, their innocence maybe making that sacrifice more bearable and more compelling. It is the Creator connecting through simplicity with the created in a way that is entirely unabated and unobstructed.  It is the treasure of the deep soul finding connection with the vast God through the conduit of simplicity.  The mayhem of life’s traffic, all of the red and green and yellow lights that had dogged His ministry were laid aside so that He could immerse Himself in life’s real purpose.   The Door of Access From this adoring pile of romping children His gaze shifted, directing his words to the twelve standing about the scene.  It was not to be a lesson for children, but one from them.  Tussling with their youthful energy, He says, “Unless you accept God’s kingdom in the simplicity of a child, you’ll never get in” (Mark 10:15, The Message).  The contrast is numbing, even paralyzing.  The key to complexity is simplicity?  But how can simplicity ever hope to grasp complexity?  Simplicity would suggest intentional ignorance through the abandonment of the acquisition of knowledge.  It was a stunning and completely puzzling reversal. The complexities of life and living, the minute intricacies of the Law and the sacrificial system, the unfathomable breadth of the cosmos and starry hosts that beg exploration and contemplation, the mysterious yet striking predictability of nature, the grandeur and the magnificent majesty of God as the incomprehensible “I AM” (Genesis 3:14, NIV) next to which all of creation fades and pales into oblivion is accessed through simplicity?  Here, in the laughter and play of these children laid the incalculably priceless key to kingdom access and the sole passport to the infinite?  It was simply too simple, s

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Life Talk is a podcast intentionally designed to enrich your life, deepen your marriage, enhance your parenting, maximize your work life, and dramatically embolden this journey that we call life.

Information

  • Creator
    Craig Lounsbrough
  • Years Active
    2016 - 2026
  • Episodes
    200
  • Rating
    Clean
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    © Copyright 2016 . All rights reserved.
  • Show Website
    Life Talk with Craig Lounsbrough