‘Exercising Your Soul: Fifteen Minutes A Day to a Spiritual Life’ by Gary Jansen – Book Review and Giveaway

It is always refreshing when a book about spiritual things includes a bit of humor. That is one of the discoveries I made in the latest book on my reading list, ‘Exercising Your Soul: Fifteen Minutes A Day to a Spiritual Life’ by Gary Jansen, has that unique element.

Here is the synopsis of this book:

EXERCISING YOUR SOUL, by Gary Jansen, is a spiritual fitness program, a guide to firming up faith that offers practical techniques to recharge and enhance relationships with yourself, with others, and, most important, with God. Drawing on spiritual practices from Christian traditions, the prayers and exercises in this book are powerful ways of experiencing God in day-to-day life. Jansen brings to life each of the practices he suggests as he shares his own growth through the disciplines.

With beautifully told, modern-day parables and stories, EXERCISING YOUR SOUL makes complicated concepts simple and exquisite. The antithesis of a self-help book, it is rather a “God-help book,” one that places God at the center of all things and can transform lives forever.

Here is the biography of this author:

Gary Jansen has worked in publishing for more than fifteen years and served as editor in chief of Quality Paperback Book Club. He is currently an editor at the Crown Publishing Group, specializing in books on religion and spirituality. His first book, The Rosary: A Journey to the Beloved, was praised by Paulo Coelho, the bestselling author of The Alchemist, as “a wonderful book."Publishers Weekly’s review of Jansen’s second book, Exercising Your Soul: Fifteen Minutes a Day to a Spiritual Life, called him an author who “amuses and inspires.” Both books were published by Faithwords/Hachette. Jansen lives in New York with his wife and two sons.

Mr. Jansen grabbed me from the start in the first paragraph of his Author’s Note:

This strange little book you have in your hands is essentially a book on prayer. Not the namby-pamby, rattling-off-a-wish-list, “Oh, please let me have nice things” kind of prayer. (Who am I kidding? – just five minutes ago, I asked to win the lottery). I’m talking about prayer that will, by divine grace, help you experience God boldly, deeply, and intimately. This collection of reflections, anecdotes, stories, and exercises may appear to be masquerading as a self-help book. I can assure you it is no such thing. Exercising Your Soul is a God-help book, not because I have delusions of being the Creator of the universe, but because all life, all people, all things – all assistance – come from God. If this book helps you in any way, it is not my doing but because God desires every one of us to know him more fully. (p. xiii)

He also talks in the Author’s Note about one of my favorite subjects – grace:

Grace, in some ways, is like an inheritance. It’s been given to us. It’s waiting for us. But we have to reach a certain level of maturity to experience the wealth. Yet, when it comes to spiritual matters, maturity isn’t based on age or social standing or whether you marry a prince by the time you’re twenty-one. It is measured by a person’s openness to God. (p. xiv)

Gary made an interesting observation about the content of our day:

Did you know there are 1,440 minutes in a day? It’s true. I did the math. Did you also know that 1 percent of all that time is fourteen minutes and twenty-four seconds? What would happen if you made a conscious decision, every day, to exercise your soul by giving roughly fifteen minutes of your time over to God? Just 1 tiny percent of your life. Would your life change?

Mine did. (p. 5.)

I had never thought of time that way. One percent certainly seems doable.

This is Gary’s observation of how his life had been before he decided to commit to prayer:

What I realize now was that I had been suffering from a form of spiritual anorexia. Though I had grown up with religion all around me – and it was just about everywhere I went – I wouldn’t let it enter into me. God, it now seemed, had been a banquet, but I had been a spoiled child who refused to eat. Something was keeping me away from nourishing my soul and in turn nourishing a relationship with God. My soul was hungry but I never opened my mouth.

Prayer soon led me to meditation and meditation soon led me back to prayer so that the two became entwined in my life in a way I never knew was possible. The more I spent time with God, the more I felt myself becoming stronger in my day-to-day life. This is not to say I wasn’t weak – I had been asleep for over twenty years of my life and through any kind of spiritual muscle had atrophied to a point of almost becoming vestigial, with each minute I spent in prayer, I felt myself coming back to life. The scary thing is, for most of my life, I didn’t even know I was dying. (p. 10)

The title of Chapter 2 is ‘What is a Spiritual Exercise?’ Gary explains:

A spiritual exercise is any practice that draws you closer to an experience of union with the divine. These practices could take the form of various types of prayer, meditation, or contemplation – three separate and distinct actions that are too often considered interchangeable. (p. 14)

Gary assets that we as humans yearn for the unknown:

It is in this unknown that we find a connection that binds us to God and to each other. This connection is none other than Holy Spirit. Some things exist beyond ourselves. God, however, is not one of them. Neither is Christ. Neither is the Holy Spirit. Some of us may accept this intellectually – that the Spirit of God lives in each and every one of us – but it is the objective of this book to move away from the mind, to stop thinking, and to descend, not into nothingness, but to the depths of everythingness, a place where every thing, every person, every moment, every desire, every yearning is connected to each other and all those things are connected to God. It is a place of perpetual prayer, a place where you no longer practice the presence of God, you experience that presence fully in body and soul – two components of our existence that are intricately woven together.

This is the heart of the spiritual life. (p. 17)

There will be changes in your life that will be noticeable to your family and friends:

Maybe you’re afraid that people will think you’re weird. Look, you don’t even have to tell anyone what you’re doing. You can let it be a secret between you and God. In time, though, people will begin noticing a change coming over you – a positive change. Actions, they say, speak louder than sermons, though your friends and colleagues may not know for certain what’s going on with you. Folks might think you’ve lost weight or comment on how less stressed you look (and you will lose emotional and spiritual weight that has kept you from ascending to the type of person God intended you to be). (p. 18)

Those are some good qualities to develop as a result of more communication with the God of the Universe.

Gary has an interesting observation on why humans resist change:

What frightens people away from a fitness plan, whether it’s physical or spiritual, is fear of the short-term negative impact on their lives. I am a firm believer that people are not afraid of change itself. If I said to you, “I’m going to transform your life by giving you a million dollars,” would you fear that? You might be afraid I had recently escaped from Bellevue, or that the money I have to give was stolen from a Wall Street robber baron. But if everything was legitimate, you’d do cartwheels.

On the other hand, if I said to you, “I’m going to install a new complicated computer system at your job that’s going to make your life difficult and will take you twice as long to do your work,” you’re going to start shaking. People don’t fear change. They fear their lives are going to be worse off than they were before the change. Change in many ways needs to happen in spoonfuls. (p. 20)

One of the benefits of prayers is that it will help us with our fatigue:

Tiredness is one of the biggest culprits that keep people away from the spiritual life. Prayer and meditation are a surefire way of energizing you. They’re even better than Red Bull and Pop Rocks. And while many people believe that what they are looking for in life is rest – Saint Augustine’s often quoted “We are restless, Lord, until we find rest in you” comes to mind – when we turn our lives to God, rest is the very last thing we could want. And if you don’t believe me, what happens every time the Holy Spirit makes an appearance in the New Testament?

Someone takes action. (p. 24)

Mr. Jansen makes the parallel between the power of the atom (as unleashed in an atomic bomb) to that of faith the size of a mustard seed:

Now if you and I are made up of a billion tiny atoms, how much God-given potential – how much God-given power – lies inside each and every one of us? Not to destroy. Not to annihilate mountains, but to move the things in our lives that block us from being truly human and to raise, through the power of the Holy Spirit and the grace of God, ourselves and others to new life in union with God.

How do we do that? Well, we can’t. God does it through us, but prayer and meditation allow us to knock on God’s door so he can answer and allow the gift of human potential – the gift of first life he bestowed on Adam – to flow through. (pp. 33-34)

I love how Gary thinks we should look at ourselves:

God created us to be greater than the angels! Greater than the angels! We slipped, and fell and scratched ourselves. The cut, the bleeding, however, does not change our original nature. Instead the enemy has shifted our focus ever so slightly away from the forgiving beauty of God to depravity. If we become what we focus on, then we as human beings have become everything we were never intended to be. (p. 34)

Gary explains the purpose for his book and the reason for prayer:

The premise of this book is to practice certain types of formal prayer so that you move toward a state of living in perpetual prayer.

Prayer is a gift from God for our benefit and is a way of entering into a state of intimacy. Practically speaking, it is a tool that helps to relieve stress and anxiety, quiet our minds, center our souls, and lead more efficient lives. (p. 38)

And meditation is hearing from God:

If so much of the way we communicate is nonverbal, couldn’t God be communicating to us nonverbally? Meditation therefore helps us understand the body language of God. How can we read this? By reading the signs of God’s creation around us, by listening to the voices of others and paying attention to how those words affect us emotionally and intellectually. Few of us are ever going to hear God speak in dramatic tones. Most of the time his words come from places you’d never expect – a friend, a bird, a song on your iPod, a billboard, a pothole, an illness, a disappointment – and when it does, you are on your way to contemplative experience of God. (p. 40)

Gary shares with us the definition of contemplation from Thomas Merton’s New Seeds of Contemplation:

[Contemplation] is the highest expression of man’s intellectual and spiritual self... It is a spiritual wonder. It is spontaneous awe at the sacredness of life, of being. It is gratitude of life, for awareness and for being. It is a vivid realization of the fact that life and being in us proceed from an invisible, transcendent and infinitely abundant Source. Contemplation is, above all, awareness of the reality of that Source. (p. 42)

Mr. Jansen presents us with four Breath Prayer exercises. He explains the benefit of focusing on breathing:

All life begins with a single breath, and so we begin these spiritual exercises by focusing on our breathing. Why? Besides the fact that deep, controlled, focused breathing is beneficial to our physical health, it also helps us shift our attention from whatever is on our mind – our problems, our desires, our responsibilities – to the gift we received from God at birth – breath. (p. 51)

I especially like Breath Prayer Exercise # 3: Come, Holy Spirit, Come:

This prayer is a petition for increase awareness of the Holy Spirit in your life. The Spirit is ever present, flowing through each and every one of us, tying together all of creation. Yet, we forget or don’t realize the sometimes subtle flow of this divine person who exists and flows like energy from God the Father, through Christ, and into all of us.

This prayer is not a petition for the Holy Spirit to make an appearance in our lives, but to bring us to a level of awareness in which we realize that the Holy Spirit, the gift from God to all of us after the resurrection, is always present inside of us. We just need to let him out. (p. 56)

Another type of prayer is the Centering Prayer:

In this prayer, through the grace of God we focus our attention on the Holy Spirit, who lives within each and every one of us. How do we do this? By attempting to evacuate all the extraneous thoughts in our hearts and focus on a single representative word for that indwelling, for example, God, Jesus, Spirit, love, faith or strength. It is a quiet form of prayer, one we do individually and in solitude. (p. 59)

One other type of prayer is the Lectio Divina:

Lectio Divina, a form of Centering Prayer, is Latin for holy reading, in this case, the holy reading of Scripture. It is, as Adele Ahlberg Calhoun writes, “a way of entering deeply into the text with a heart alert to a unique and personal word from God. Words and verses that catch out attention become invitations to be with God in prayer.” (p. 64)

Gary asserts that what is there is a crucial ingredient missing in the world:

Then what do I mean by enthusiasm? Let’s look for a moment at the definition of the word. According to Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, enthusiasm comes from the Greek word enthousiasmos, to be inspired from God (en-theos) and means to have “a belief in the special revelations of the Holy Spirit.”

What the world is missing now isn’t misdirected energy, it is an outpouring – a flowing awareness – of the living presence of the Holy Spirit that exists in each and every one of us. (p. 75)

I love how Gary sees us as called to be heroes:

What is a hero? A hero is a person who takes action to help people. That is what the Holy Spirit calls us to do. When the Spirit descended on Mary after the angel Gabriel told her she was to be the mother of God, what did she do? She took action. She packed her things and journeyed to her cousin Elizabeth. To do what? To serve her. When the Holy Spirit descended on Christ after his baptism by John, what did he do? He took action and did what? He began his ministry and began serving. When the Spirit descended on the apostles at Pentecost, what did they do? They relinquished fear and began serving the people. Not just one group of people, but all people, of all nations.

We, too, are called to serve, to not be afraid. With the Holy Spirit already in us, there is no time to waste. We need to take action now and assist those around us, whether it’s a family member, a friend, a coworker, a stranger on the street, our environment, our nation, our world. (pp. 79-80)     

Mr. Jansen spends the majority of the end of the book outlining prayers pertaining to Jesus’ parables and to Stations of the Cross Exercises:

The Stations of the Cross offer a way of walking in the footsteps of the Beloved. To walk through the stations is an examination, a journey of the soul, an exercise in being a witness, a supporter, a bearer of burden. In the Christian tradition, the Stations, also known as the Way of the Cross, are a sacred devotion that focuses on the Passion of Christ. Traditionally composed of fifteen events that trace the final path of Jesus’ life – from the hours after the Last Supper up until his Resurrection – the Stations are a meditative prayer, a mystical pilgrimage into the suffering heart of Christ. They are, at their core, the story of Easter, which has at its center the story of a new exodus – a Moses-like movement out of myopic spiritual slavery into the panoramic promise land of love. (p. 139)

I found this to be an interesting book. These exercises can be used to draw us closer to God, and that is always a good outcome. I will take some of these exercises and put them into practice, and I thank Mr. Jansen for bringing them to the attention of the readers of this useful and practical book.

You can order this book here.

This Advance Reader Copy was provided by the publisher, FaithWords, for review purposes. All page number references are from this ARC and may not appear exactly the same in the final product.

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I have three copies of this book that I would love to send along to three winners! 

There are several ways to gain entry:

1) Leave a comment here on the blog, telling me how you would like to improve your relationship with God.  Please make sure to leave your email address in this format – sample[at]gmail[dot]com.

2) Follow me on Twitter; I will more than likely follow you back!  If you are already a Twitter follower, that counts, too!  Please leave a new comment to that effect.

3) Follow me as a Google Friend on this blog; if you are already a Friend, that counts, too!  Please leave a new comment to that effect.

4) Become my Facebook friend.  Please leave a new comment to that effect.

5) Follow this blog as a NetWorked Blog Follower after you’ve become my Facebook friend.  Please leave a new comment to that effect.

So there are five chances to enter!  Please limit one entry per option.

This giveaway is for U.S. residents only.  The deadline for entry is Friday, August 20, 2010 at 11:59 p.m. EST.  A winner will be chosen via the Random Number Generator (www.random.org) on Saturday, August 21, 2010 and will be contacted via email.  The best to all of you!

‘Pray Big: The Power of Pinpoint Prayer’ by Will Davis Jr. – Book Review

One of the most important – and most neglected – actions in the life of a Christian is prayer. In his book ‘Pray Big: The Power of Pinpoint Prayer,’ Will Davis Jr. provides terrific pointers on what he has learned in his many years of ministry and study on this world- and life-changing activity.  

Here is the synopsis of this practical book:

Why do we settle for weak, vague prayers, couching our requests in words like “just be with Bob” or “bless Janet in her time of need”? God wants us to be bold and direct in our prayers. It’s time to pray big to unleash the power of God in the big and small things.

Will Davis Jr. calls this kind of specific and biblical prayer “pinpoint prayer.” He offers straightforward guidance on how you can call on God with focus and confidence when praying for big miracles, small details, other people, and, yes, even ourselves. He teaches you how to pray the Bible back to God and includes one hundred pinpoint prayers based directly on Scripture. Each chapter ends with questions to guide small group discussion and help you develop a more focused, passionate prayer life.

Here is the biography of the author:

Will Davis Jr. is the founding pastor of Austin Christian Fellowship, a nondenominational church in Austin, Texas. He is a Baylor University graduate who also holds a Master of Divinity and Doctor of Ministry degree from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas. In addition to being the author of six books (Wake-Up Calls, Pray Big, Pray Big for Your Marriage, Pray Big for Your Child, Why Faith Makes Sense, and Faith Set Free), Davis frequently travels and speaks to audiences on the subject of prayer. He and his wife, Susie have been married since June 1985 and have three children. The family enjoys the outdoors and, in their free time, participates in horseback riding, hiking, snowshoeing, mountain climbing, waterskiing and bicycling.

I had the pleasure of reading and reviewing his wife Susie’s book, ‘Uncovered: Revealing the Secrets of a Sexy Marriage’; you can read my review here.

Here is Pastor Davis discussing his book:

Pastor Davis begins by showing us that, in the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus gave us a perfect prayer sample:

You know those words and have probably prayed them on countless occasions. But have you ever noticed the pure simplicity of this prayer? Have you noted its brevity and clarity? Jesus obviously was giving us a model outline for how our prayers might flow. But as a simple prayer, the Lord’s Prayer is the perfect example of what I call pinpoint praying. There’s no fluff, no fat, no extra words or theologically heavy terms. There’s just simple, spot-on, pinpoint accuracy from Jesus. Jesus acknowledge the character and sovereignty of God, surrendered to the Father’s will, and sought provision, protection, and guidance from God. That’s pinpoint praying. (p. 12)

It’s important to keep pinpoint prayers simple:

The great news is that pinpoint praying doesn’t require a master’s degree in principles of advanced theological and spiritual dialogue. In fact, it’s just the opposite. If anything, pinpoint praying is what you’re most likely to do when left to yourself. It’s the childlike, straightforward kind of communication with God that Jesus applauded in the Gospels and modeled in his own ministry. At its core, pinpoint praying is simple. (p. 14)

We’ve made praying too difficult:

…Somehow we’ve gotten the impression that true prayer requires big words, lengthy phrases, and choice theological terms. But that’s not what Jesus modeled for us. He taught his prayer-hungry disciples to pray with focus, confidence, specificity, and brevity. What a concept! If you want to be razor-sharp in your praying, tell God what you’re thinking in the most direct, blunt and simple terms possible. Pray in a language that you understand, and then trust that God will get it. (p. 15)

Pastor Davis also suggests that we use the Bible in general to pray to God:

Praying the Bible takes the guesswork out of prayer. Right at your fingertips there is an arsenal of pinpoint prayers that you know God will answer. Why spend time trying to figure out how to word your requests and needs to God when the Bible has already done it for you? Instead of struggling with what to say, just pray God’s holy Word right back to him. (p. 17)

Pastor Davis suggests we should pray big, and we should call those prayers Big, Hairy, Audacious Prayers (BHAPs):

The Bible teaches that such praying is neither arrogant nor irresponsible. In fact, both Testaments of the Bible endorse the principle of praying big. It’s the kind of praying that the Old Testament leaders and heroes engaged in. It’s the kind of praying that Jesus both modeled and encouraged. And it’s the kind of praying that we need to practice.

Do you make big asks of God? Don’t be timid in your prayers. Prayers should be as big as God’s promises and as full as God’s resources. Your requests should require the full power and provision of God. (p. 25)   

God is waiting for us to ask:

….Are you praying BHAPs? Do you regularly go before God seeking kingdom-level answers? Do your prayers require the best of God? As a follower of Christ, you need to know that you’re on solid biblical ground when you’re seeking miraculous things from God. You also need to know that all the divine power of the Creator of the universe stands ready to move when you pray. (p. 31)

We are also expected to be relentless in our prayers:

[God] wants us to persistently seek him until he answers. Tell God that you are completely serious about securing his answer. Tell him that you will not be silent until he moves in the situation for which you’re praying. Show God that you’re willing to pray and wait until he comes through just like he promised. (p. 36)

God also cares about the small things:

Philippians 4:6 instructs us to pray about everything. If Paul had wanted us to limit our praying to everything big, he certainly would have told us. But he tells us to pray about everything. For those of us who are in the habit of losing our checkbooks and car keys, that’s great news.

God is as interested in your small, seemingly insignificant requests as he is your kingdom-level, life-changing needs. God’s interest in your prayers isn’t dependent upon their relative kingdom weightiness. It’s based on his love for and interest in you. (p. 43)

Praying for little things teaches us to be dependent on God:

When I’m praying, I’m acknowledging my dependence on God. I’m deliberately unplugging from my earthly and human sources of strength and choosing rather to plug in to God’s holy and infinite source. Prayer is an all-out declaration of dependence. When you choose to seek God’s leadership, direction, and provision for something as seemingly insignificant as a parking place, the right wording of a letter, or what clothes to wear to the office, you’re acknowledging that you want and need God’s direction in every aspect of your day. You’re inviting Jesus to rule and reign as Lord over every last detail of your life. That’s pinpoint praying that pleases God. That’s prayer that teaches you how to depend on him in everything. (p. 51)

It is also important that we pray for the lost:

Without Christ, we entomb ourselves spiritually. The things unbelievers choose over Jesus become the sites of their spiritual burials – their spiritual crypts. People invest themselves in all sorts of hobbies, activities, work, recreation, relationships, and even addictions in an effort to find life; in reality, they’re lying down in their spiritual graves.

Someone who is so determined to find his or her life’s meaning in things outside the church isn’t likely to spend much time there. So it is incumbent upon us, like Mary and Martha, to get Jesus to our lost loved ones. And the way we do that is through prayer. (p. 68)

I really liked this paragraph on how we should pray that Jesus should interrupt the lives of the lost people in our lives:

When you’re praying for unbelievers, there is nothing wrong with praying for them to go to church with you. That can be a great step in helping them find Christ. But why not start by asking Christ to find them? Picture your unbelieving friends in their study, in their bedroom, in their office, in the gym, or on the jogging trail. Think about them at school, at the computer, on a date, or giving a lecture. Ask Jesus to meet your friends there. Pray that he’ll interrupt their plans and disrupt their day. Ask Jesus to ambush them in their thoughts and ideas. Encourage him to invade their privacy when they think they’re alone. Pray that they’ll have an undeniable God encounter at a time and place they least expect. In short, ask Jesus to go to the place where they’re buried spiritually and to start speaking life to them. (p. 70)

We often need to be knocked over the head in order for us to see the Lord. This is an aggressive method which should work!

We need to be involved in Peacetime Praying – praying before a crisis, not just during or after one:

One of the most important factors in crisis pinpoint praying is to be a person of prayer before the crisis hits. A crisis is not the time to start praying; it’s the time to keep praying. That isn’t always easy. It’s typically a crisis that drives us to prayer. When things are just rocking along, we usually don’t feel the need to pray. But we need to pray “in season and out” (2 Tim. 4:2), in good times and bad. Be a praying person before the hurricane blows through your life, and then when it does, you won’t have to try to start praying. (p. 84)

It’s also important that we pray with other believers:

In Matthew 18:19, Jesus used a descriptive term to help the disciples understand why praying together is so powerful. Our English Bibles typically use the word agree, but that doesn’t do it justice. The word Jesus used is the Greek word symphoneo, and you can probably see its similarity to our word symphony.  At its most basic meaning, the word means “to sound the same.” This we get the meanings “to agree,” “to be in one accord,” or “to be harmonious.” When Jesus used this word, he obviously had in mind the appealing sound of his people praying for the same things. And while Jesus probably wasn’t thinking of a symphony, it’s still a great illustration of what he meant. (p. 103)

We need to remain pure in our words and needs; David provided a good example for us:

David believed that whatever went into his heart would flow back out of his mouth, so he fed himself a strict diet of God’s commands. He contemplated, reflected on, memorized, and internalized them. He bombarded his mind with God’s teachings in the hopes that no errant thought would be allowed in or out. David prayed that as he learned the truth of God’s commands, he would always be committed to speaking it. He wanted to be a truth teller, a truth promoter, a truth messenger. He asked God to help him always speak the truth. (p. 144)

Pastor Davis suggests these seven pinpoint promises you can pray for yourself (pp. 161-168:

                1. Lord, help me hate sin.

          2. Lord, help me love prayer.
          3. God, give me a platform.     

          4. Lord, please give me the gift of brokenness.

          5. Father, please give me your heart for lost people.

          6. God, please give me wisdom.

          7. God, please make me a “so be it” Christian.

I thought this book was very helpful. Each chapter ends with probing and insightful discussion questions; therefore, it is terrific for personal or group study. I appreciate Will sharing what’s he learned over the years with us!

You can order this book here.

This book was published by Revell Publishers and provided by B&B Media Group for review purposes.

Discovering/Rediscovering One's Passions

I have been 'between jobs' now for a little over a month. I have taken that time to study (I am attending Michigan Theological Seminary - to be known as Moody Theological Seminary in January, thanks to a merger!) and to spend some time discovering - and, in some cases, rediscovering - my passions.

One of them is writing. That is one reason why I got started in the blogosphere. It is fun to share one's thoughts with the world, and to let the words flow!

Another thing I have done is spend more time on Twitter. It is fascinating to see the thoughts of others in a succinct form! It is a challenge to form a tweet in a way that is (hopefully!) interesting and enlightening to other! I think it is a wonderful tool. It does make me wonder if thinking in tweets will change a person's thought process!

I noticed this morning that last night, Matthew West, a singer, was nominated for his first Grammy award for his song, "The Motions." This song speaks to the mindset I have - that I don't want to go one more day doing what is not worthwhile and is not going to make a difference. I encourage you to take a listen to it if you have never heard it.

In addition to spending time in the social medias, I have also spent time praying that the Lord would guide and direct me to where He wants me to land next! He is sovereign, and I am leaning on faith rather than fear!

I think, over time (although not too much time, as bills wait for no one!), that the next position will be a great one - and God will get all the glory from me for walking ahead of me and making it happen!