todd nelson

Before you head off for the weekend, here are three things that I have read and been thinking about this week. Hope they are as helpful and challenging for you as they have been for me.

Have a great weekend!

#1

It is great art to know how to live with Jesus, and to know how to keep his friendship demands great wisdom. Be humble and peace-loving and Jesus will be with you. Be devout and calm and Jesus will abide with you. If you wish rest and wish to see how sweet the Lord is you must bring to God a pure and uncluttered heart.

Thomas a Kempis, The Imitation of Christ

I’ve been working hard recently trying to unclutter my heart so I can see how sweet the Lord is and find rest in him in the busyness of life and not just the relaxed times. I am tired of waiting for vacation to find rest? How about you?  In fact, the busy times are when I need the rest the most. Jesus said to the disciples that he had bread that they did not know about. Jesus was helping us see that the Father has ways of nourishing our soul in every season…including the busy ones if we will be devout, calm, and unclutter our hearts.

#2

Calm is defined as creating perspective and mindfulness while managing emotional reactivity. Calm is a superpower because it is the balm that heals one of the most prevalent workplace stressors: anxiety.

Calm is contagious.

Brent Brown – dare to lead

Sometimes I succeed in being calm and others…well, not so much. You can’t just say, “be calm”. I’m convinced it is a trial and error effort. And the key is this…just because you and I  aren’t naturally gifted toward calm doesn’t mean that you can’t get there. Calm is reminding ourselves that God is control regardless of how it feels in the moment. 

#3

To trust the real person of Jesus is to have confidence in him in every dimension of our real life, to believe that he is right about and adequate to everything.

Dallas Willard – The Divine Conspiracy

We begin our relationship by trusting Jesus to forgive our sins…to be our Savior. But it must not stop there or we will stay immature believers. Growth happens when we begin to “have confidence in him in every dimension of our real life”…to be our Lord. To throw open the junk drawers and overstuffed closets of our life where we store the stuff we don’t want to see or deal with. Have you ever seen a junk drawer or overstuffed closet grow organized and minimal without intentional effort? Me either. It begins by trusting Jesus enough to open these space up, take the stuff out, and let him help us deal with it all.