Blog Highlight: Living Fearless

"I had a hard time trying to pick a name for my blog, but I chose "Living Fearless" because that's what God told me to do in high school and ever since then my life has never been the same."
Rebecca Roake - Green means "Go"

I am proud of my cousin Rebecca. She has stepped out of her comfort zone in tremendous ways twice since graduating from high school just a few years ago. First she made the step to leave her home state and follow her pastor to Boise, Idaho to plant a church. It is then that she first started her blog, Living Fearless. She sadly only wrote on it for few months but each post is filled with honesty and conviction. 

Then, last year, she took another huge step of faith and left her home country to do a discipleship training school with YWAM in Byron Bay, Australia. You can read a bit about her experience in her post Curtains Will Rise. She had an amazing experience in her lecture phase and then spent her outreach in Calcutta, India.

Rebecca doesn't post very much at all but when she does post it is powerful and hits you straight in the heart. I encourage you to go Living Fearless and look through her archive. Then don't give up on checking back because when you do catch a new post it will be real, it will be honest, and it will be powerful! Her most recent post, Unbelief, is a great testament to that fact.

The Most Important Trait Related to Personal Growth

"Give instruction to a wise man, and he will still be wiser; 

Teach a just man and he will increase in learning."

Proverbs 9:9

In my time in the blogging world I have found that the most popular blogs have something to do with self development. People are constantly looking for ways to better themselves and improve their situation. They want to be able to get that new job, that promotion, or simply "succeed in life". There are a lot of good blogs that give good tips for those people. I wrote about one of them here. Another very popular blog along these lines is http://michaelhyatt.com/. 

There is a wealth of great information and tips on how to improve yourself and build personal growth and I highly recommend them. However, I believe there is one quality that is the most important thing towards personal growth:

You must be teachable.

In order to have any true growth we must learn to be teachable. That is why Solomon says that the wise become wiser because they are willing to learn from those around them and increase their wisdom. In another proverb he makes his point a little bit stronger:

"Whoever loves instruction loves knowledge, but he who hates correction is stupid."

Proverbs 12:1

If you are now willing and able to take correction then Solomon says plainly that you are stupid. It is a stupid thing to not take correction because we are then never able to learn and grow. Also I can tell you from experience as a supervisor, I will put up with a lot of stuff from my employees as long as when I correct you, you listen and learn as evidenced by your changing your actions the next time. I would rather have someone who is inexperienced and uneducated yet teachable then to have someone who has ten years of experience and a masters degree but think they have everything figured out already. 

So if you are serious about self improvement and personal growth take this one step:

Learn to accept correction and listen to instruction.

What do you think is the most important trait towards personal growth?

Do Not Be Afraid; Only Believe!

"It doesn't matter where you are right now; God has moments of 

favor for you too. You may not be able to figure it out, but that's okay. 

That's not your job. Your job is to believe. God's already figured it out."

Joel Osteen - It's Your Time

This particular quote struck a chord with me. We so often have a tendency to attempt to figure everything out on our own. We think that we can plan our lives and work our way into the calling that God has on our life and then when things don't plan out easily we get discouraged. It reminded me of the scripture in Proverbs:

"A man’s heart plans his way,

But the Lord directs his steps."

Proverbs 16:9

Sometimes we get so busy planning our own way we forget that it is ultimately God's job to direct our steps, to figure it all out. In fact He has it all figured out already we just need to learn to trust Him. 

It's so easy to get discouraged and impatient. It's so easy to think that we should be further than we are or to start questioning whether we missed our opportunity. But even if we did miss an opportunity God is a God of redemption. He wants to redeem the time that you missed! We just need to learn to take to heart the instructions that Jesus gave Jairus:

"Do not be afraid; only believe..."

Luke 8:50

Jairus was already stretched in his faith in believing that Jesus would be able to heal his daughter but before Jesus could even get there he received the report that his daughter had died. At that moment everything seemed hopeless and Jairus could no longer see a way out of his situation and Jesus responds simply "Do not be afraid; only believe..." I find it interesting that Jesus doesn't go into a long message into how he has authority over death. He doesn't start preaching about the power of the Holy Spirit or the gifts of the Spirit. He says simply "...only believe..." 

In other words Jesus is telling Jairus, there is no need for you to understand how it's going to happen just believe that I can take care of this situation. He might be saying the same thing to you. Stop trying to figure out how Jesus is going to turn your situation around and just trust that He will do it! Whatever it is that you are going through Jesus is saying simply:

Do not be afraid; only believe!