Encouragement for the NEW YEAR!

         Over the course of this year you will dig deeper and deeper into these four quadrants of your personal life. As you grow, your quadrants will grow. As a high school student transitioning into college or a college student transitioning into the workforce and adult life you will see that your quadrants aren’t very big to begin with. I call what I listed above the big four: Your Spiritual life, Financial, Time Management, and Goal setting are your key areas of your personal life. As I stated before, as you grow, you will expand these quadrants into what fits your needs as an individual.  These four quadrants will network themselves into other areas of your life. For example your time management might deal with your social life, your goal setting could be integrated with your education or work, and your finances affect everything in your life. Your spiritual life should be the driving force for all of these areas.

        We have all heard that practice makes perfect and if you work hard you will be successful and that in the end you will rise to the top, right? Let me ask you this, what if the practice that you’re partaking in is actually an imperfect standard? See people all across the world believe that if they’re good and do enough good actions in their personal life (without giving Christ glory) that good things will happen to them. This logic is partially correct and does make sense to a point but here is the real truth to it, for a Christian. God made you; He made you to do great things throughout your lifetime. You’re made in his image: So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them (Gen 1:27). God has also given you certain things in your life for you to be a humble steward of. This is where the big four come into play. If you master these key areas that God has blessed you with and you give HIM the glory, you will see your growth as a human being skyrocket.   Once you’ve surrendered your personal life to Christ, your outlook on life will change and I hope through the course of this year that God will use this to change your outlook as he has me.

          Now you can actual focus so much of your life on just one of these quadrants that you throw off your entire life. Imagine an old carriage wheel. That carriage wheel is connected by something called a spoke.  Now if one of these spokes that are holding the wheel together breaks, then the whole wheel breaks! This is a picture of YOUR life. If you focus so much attention on partying and relaxing then your grades, job, and spiritual life will suffer greatly. The same goes for focusing so much on work or school. If you focus 24/7 on school and your work then your social life and relationships will suffer. God designed us to exert balance in our lives.

                       Remember to exert balance in your life this next year. Set goals that stretch you, invest in others around you, and give God the glory in all things. Faith in God removes all limitations.

-SLB

Finances

     Did you know that there are over 2,000 bible verses dedicated to money and possessions? I sure didn’t until I began researching it for myself. Jesus Christ said more about money then he did about prayer and faith combined! So why did Jesus Christ say so much about finances? He spoke about it for one simple reason; it’s a big problem. Almost everything we do as humans will revolve around money in some kind of fashion. Money is a brutal master. Families are separated because of it, people commit suicide because of it, Countries become corrupt because of it and people become bitter over it. So how on earth can money be a good thing, after all money is the route of all evil, right? Wrong, the LOVE of money is a key role in evil.
      Lets look at ways money holds us back from our full potential that the Lord created us for. First, how we handle our money affects our fellowship with the Lord. In Luke 16:11 we read, “If therefore you have not been faithful in the use of worldly wealth, who will entrust the true riches to you?” Jesus clearly lays it all out for us in this verse. He equates our spiritual life with how we handle our money. Secondly, possessions compete with the Lord. God wants nothing in competition with Him. We see in Exodus 20:3 that God is a jealous God, “You shall have no other gods before me”. Thirdly, much of life revolves around the use of money. During a normal week, how much time do you spend earing money in your job, making decisions on how you’re going to spend your money, or thinking about what you’re going to spend your next pay check on. Lets be honest, we all struggle with money.
      So what’s the answer you might ask? There are two basic alternatives to this problem: the Bible and the answers people devise. People spend money the way they see fit. Rarely does a person handle money the way God intended for it to be managed. Money will actually draw you closer to Christ. See society says that God plays no role in handling money, and your happiness is based on what you can afford and what you don’t have. Scripture says that as you learn to follow the scriptural principals of how to handle money, you will draw closer to Christ and you will learn to be content no matter the circumstance.

FOCUS

Margaret Mead once said, "What people say, what people do, and what people say they do are entirely different things."

     What a difference is makes to have a one track mind when it comes to certain things in your life. In 1999, I became a big Major League Baseball fan, and I loved watching Tony Gwynn play baseball. I used to take baseball hitting classes every week and I would always try to mimmic him (Sadly I never could). Tony is one of the best hitters the world has ever seen play the game of baseball. At the time he was the greatest hitter in all of baseball and he is a definite future Hall of Famer. In his career, he batted a tremendous .339 and he has won an incredible eight batting titles (only Ty Cobb has won more.)
     Tony Gwynn loves hitting a baseball, and he DEVOTES himself to it. Several times each season, he would read Ted William's: The Science of Hitting, which  is a book he first found while in college. He watches film of himself hitting from previous games and has a library full of his hitting tapes. The guy even reviewed tapes of previous games while he was traveling on the road. Heres a fun thought, back in 1999, they didn't have the technology we have today. Tony would take VCR'S with him, EVERYWHERE. Gwynn just cant get enough and thats because hitting is a joy to him. I remember hearing stories of Gwynn arriving to social events with a batting glove in his pocket. Gwynn is Mr. Consistency, he has cultivated a kind of concentration for baseball unknown to most people.
    So, what does it take to have the focus that is required to be truly effective in your personal life? The answer to this question is simple: priorities and concentration. A person who knows his priorities but lacks concentration knows what to do but never gets it done. If he has concentration but lacks the discipline of prioritizing his life, he has excellence without progress. Now if that same person does both of these things, he has the potential to achieve great things.
     Are you a Tony Gwynn when it comes to your life or are you the kid in a batting cage trying to mimic his movements like I was but never achieving what you set out to accomplish? We can learn a lot from Tony Gwynn by looking at how he concentrated on his strengths while prioritizing his life so that he could become one of the greatest baseball players in all of history. Tony didn't focus on stealing bases because that wasn't a strength of his. He focused on hitting because that was what he was great at. So, what things in your life are distracting you from fulfilling your true potential for your life? Don't be the guy who chases two rabbits because both will get away.

Welcome to "The Authentic Life"

      Lets be honest with ourselves for a second. Who hasn't tried to strive for the perfect lifestyle? MOST of us, not all but most of us try to be as productive as we can throughout the day. We try to wake up early, create a "to do" list, eat right, and some might even watch or listen to motivational tracks of some kind. Here’s the thing, we can do all of these things and still feel like we have fallen short! This is because most of us try to live out a “Perfect Lifestyle” or some version that the media has put into our brains. Ask yourself this question, what if the standard of which you practice your life is actually an imperfect standard? You see we should be living out and striving for the “Authentic Lifestyle”.

     So, welcome to the Authentic Life Blog! I am very grateful that you are taking time out of your day to stop by and check out my new blog! You can stop by here daily for an inspirational message or just to check out what the authentic life is all about. Here I will talk about a variety of things but it will always be focused around living out the "authentic life" instead of trying to live the "perfect life" (which is impossible). I am a firm believer in developing yourself on a personal and spiritual level. I believe that as you strive to grow yourself personally and spiritually that you will live the life that you desire. This is the number one reason why I have started this blog. I want to help you grow your personal life so that you can be the best steward of the life God has given to you.

      Thank you again for stopping by. I hope that these entries will inspire you to grow and live out YOUR authentic life.

 -SLB