Moving Again

Hey Friends!

I’m praying that your New Year is off to a great start and that you’re still on track with the goals and hopes that you set for this new season. Whether you’re a resolution kind of person or you subscribe to a yearly theme or you don’t do any of it at all, I’m hopeful that 2023 will be your best year yet.

Let’s dive right in.

A Thought.

For those of you who may have read the title of this week’s newsletter and started to worry that our family was going anywhere, don’t worry. That’s definitely not the case. We’re staying right where we are.

But in a different sense, we are moving again.

After having so much sickness go through our house over the past couple of weeks, things seem to have finally calmed down.

At least for now.

Toward the end of last week, I came down with whatever funk everyone else in the house had experienced. I’m still not entirely sure if it was the flu or just some kind of bug; but while it was relatively short-lived, it was not fun.

Maybe you’re like me and your life tends to get moving pretty quickly. Before long you look up and realize that things are moving at a pace that you probably cannot maintain, and yet in the name of “I’ve got so much to do that just has to get done,” you keep working.

Until something makes you stop.

Do you remember Newton’s First Law of Motion? An object in motion stays in motion, unless acted on by an unbalanced force.

This is kind of like that.

At some point, if you don’t do something to stop, there’s a good likelihood that something else will come along and make you stop.

God has done that for me more times than I can count in my life. I can think of so many instances where I found myself speeding up, adding more and more to my plate, when suddenly something came out of the blue that halted the plans I’d set up.

Like getting sick last week. That certainly wasn’t in the cards, but it certainly made me stop. And stopping gave me time to think and check myself and refocus my attention and energy where it needed to be in a more healthy way.

But at some point, it’s time to move again.

There are times when God steps in to say, “Stop.” And then God comes again and says “It’s time to get moving.” He did it for Israel in the wilderness (check out Deuteronomy 1:6-8), and he’ll do it for you, too.

But when it’s time to get moving, don’t rush quickly back to the way you used to do things. Use the seasons of slowing down and stopping as a chance to rethink what worked and what didn’t work. To ask questions like, “Why did God want me to slow down in the first place?”

Sometimes getting moving again can be just as hard as stopping. I mean, you probably know how it feels to try to start a new habit or get back in the gym or wake up early after being on vacation. It requires a little bit (or a lotta bit) of effort to get things rolling again.

When it’s time to get moving, take one step at a time. Move at a pace that you can actually sustain, and only add things to your plate that actually need to be there.

There’s a time to stop, and a time to move.

A Resource.

I’m in the process of compiling all of the things that I use regularly into one database so that I can easily share it with people. One of the greatest places that I know of to do this is a website called Kit. Basically, it’s a site where creators compile a list of things they use, complete with links so that other people can purchase and use that same gear. Photographers, YouTubers, and so many other creative professionals utilize this platform.

I’ve started using Kit, and plan to use it in a variety of ways in the future. One of which is to create different reading lists for the teaching series that I do at my job as a minister. That way people can see all of the resources that I use or recommend for a particular topic, and then dive deeper into those things themselves.

You can check out my Kit here. I particularly recommend my newest list of faith-based book recommendations. You can check that out here. All of these links will be available in my Instagram bio and in all of the descriptions of the videos on my YouTube channel.

Enjoy!

A Bible Verse.

Work willingly at whatever you do, as though you were working for the Lord rather than for people. Remember that the Lord will give you an inheritance as your reward, and that the Master you are serving is Christ.

— Colossians 3:23-24 (NLT)