Life Talk with Craig Lounsbrough

Craig Lounsbrough
Life Talk with Craig Lounsbrough

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. Personal Testimony - Hope

    3 DAYS AGO

    Personal Testimony - Hope

    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’

    7 min
  2. 5 DAYS AGO

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

    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 som

    9 min
  3. JAN 31

    Taking It to Our Knees - What Prayer Is and Is not

    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. Pray

    7 min
  4. JAN 16

    Self-Esteem: Opportunities in the Pain

    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

    8 min

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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.

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