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Tag: #spiritualgrowth

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The Gift of Mortality Salience

All over the world people are demanding a higher quality of life. Many have finally found the will to end abusive or stagnant relationships. Many more have refused to go back to the tyranny of long commutes and soul-crushing jobs. The pandemic has sparked a newfound appreciation for an ancient truth – life is short. Too short not to pay attention to what really matters. Too short to waste our days obsessing over trivial things like profits and housework. Too short to do anything less than something that makes our soul exult.

This phenomenon is called mortality salience – a heightened awareness of the inevitability of our death. I first heard about this phenomenon on a Brene Brown podcast. Thus far, over 6 million people worldwide have died from the Covid virus. I think it is fair to say that we are all experiencing a higher level of awareness of our mortality.

In my opinion, this is truly a gift from God. Anything that awakens us from our deception is a gift. It is a merciful opportunity to course correct. So do not let this moment pass you by! Take action now while your soul is still gripped with the urgency of this moment! Don’t wait! Don’t get sucked back into the soul-numbing existence of chasing after more stuff or more security or more success.

I say yes to more family time and fewer office hours! Yes to eight hours of sleep and leisurely breakfasts! Yes to work that you really enjoy and that makes a difference in the world. But most of all I say yes to more of God and less of religion. Yes to watching the sunrise while meditating on His grandeur. Yes to breaking bread with family and friends. Yes to soaking in His Presence for hours.

Life is too short not to seek God. I mean to really seek Him. To seek Him because He is the only thing worthy of ALL of your time and energy. 

Intimacy with God is the ONLY pursuit that is worthy of your lifetime.

Seek Him first. Here’s a secret you may not have heard before: building big ministries, growing megachurches, saving souls, spreading the gospel, impacting nations and the like do not make good goals for your life. They are good things, just not good as life goals, they are much better as by-products of a life spent in pursuit of Christ and Christ alone.

He alone is worthy. This primal pursuit is the foundation of all other pursuits. The pursuit of Christ makes all other pursuits worthwhile. It doesn’t matter how long you have been going to church. It does not matter how much of Him you have already experienced. There is always more. If you think this moment in history (this humanity reset) is only about those who don’t know Jesus, you are wrong. God is speaking to all of us.

We Jesus people need a reset. We have been so caught up in religious activity that we haven’t had time to be caught up in God. We have been living lives of superficiality and striving instead of lives of wonderment. We have been blind, deaf, and half-dead to the wonder of Jesus. We have been slaves to busyness. Too busy serving God to see Him…really see Him. Too busy with building projects, church meetings, and pursuing blessings to stroll with Him in the cool of the garden.

Beloved, let us seek God again. Let us seek Him like water in the desert. Seek Him in spirit and in truth. Let us seek Him with all our heart and soul and might! Life is short!

If you need help defining what a reset looks like for you, our resident life coach, Tricia, would be happy to help. Contact her at celestintricia@gmail.com

Copyright 2022, Matik Nicholls. All rights reserved.

If you haven’t yet, check out our FREE Spiritual Growth Foundation Course in which we cover the four foundational principles for spiritual growth and much more! In addition to on-demand videos which you can watch at your leisure, there are downloadable handouts for those who prefer written content.

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How To Achieve Spiritual Growth Part 2

In the first installment of this series, I introduced two foundational principles of spiritual growth:

  1. Only Jesus transforms. Not religion. Only a real face to face relationship with Jesus. Sure, anyone can change their behaviour and manage their sin but only Jesus can change our desires – change us from the inside out. John 15:4-6 (ESV) says: “4 Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. 5 I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.” It is the abiding connection with Jesus that transforms us.
  2. We change more through relationships than through information. We have been fooled into a left-brained approach to spiritual formation. We have been told that if we study our bibles and attend to our church sermons we will grow. These are helpful, but what really transforms us is loving relationships and strong bonds with people and with God. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 11:1 (ESV) “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.”

Today, I want to continue with three more principles:

  1. Transformation works from the inside out
  2. Fruit not gifts/accomplishments is the evidence of transformation
  3. Jesus is our model of maturity

Transformation

Transformation is one of the core values of Authentic Joy. We are about inside-out transformation. We are convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that no lasting change comes through external means such as rule-keeping, sin-management, or behaviour modification. Transformation starts with the Holy Spirit re-connecting our spirit with Christ, progresses through a heart regenerated by His love and a mind renewed by beholding His glory, and finally ends in an incarnated Christ-like life. The imperative for transformation then is not more education, more willpower, more effort, or more external motivation (whether through fear, shame, or the approval of men) but rather more encounters with God (the only one who can truly change us).

Fruit

Giftedness is not a measure of maturity. God gives gifts freely to all men. It does not require maturity to be a gifted soccer player, musician, public speaker, businesswoman, pastor, evangelist, or prophet. This is huge because we often erroneously choose highly-gifted people as our role models, mentors, or worse yet, spiritual advisors. Mature people are those who have put in the inner work of growth in Christlikeness. The result of a life abiding in the vine and submitting to the Master’s pruning is fruitfulness.  According to Galatians 5, the fruit of the Spirit looks like love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Only mature trees bear fruit!

The Model

Our role model for maturity is Christ Himself. He is the standard. While we may emulate different aspects of Christlikeness that we see in people, only Christ is perfect and complete. We like to give a relational perspective of Christ’s maturity:

  • Intimately connected to the Father.
  • Discipling, empowering and unifying our brothers and sisters.
  • Sacrificially and powerfully demonstrating the unconditional love of the Father to the world.

If we keep these principles in mind, we will have a good foundation for the spiritual growth that we all want to see in our lives.

Live long and grow!

Copyright 2022, Matik Nicholls. All rights reserved.

If you haven’t yet, check out our FREE Spiritual Growth Foundation Course in which we cover the four foundational principles for spiritual growth and much more! In addition to on-demand videos which you can watch at your leisure, there are downloadable handouts for those who prefer written content.

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Beneath The Surface Of Authentic Joy

As Authentic Joy evolves, we have found it necessary to be more intentional about communicating the unique calling and identity of our organization. To this end, we are pleased to announce a new revamped ‘About’ page that does just that. Here is a preview:

OUR VISION

Our vision is of a world inhabited by mature believers who live like Christ did. We define this Christ-life by describing the way that Jesus related to the Father, His disciples and the world:

  • Intimately connected to the Father.
  • Discipling, empowering and unifying our brothers and sisters.
  • Sacrificially and powerfully demonstrating the unconditional love of the Father to the world.

OUR MISSION

The mission of Authentic Joy is to promote, accelerate and support the spiritual growth and maturation of the body of Christ.

The Authentic Joy Growth Model focuses on 7 core growth processes:

  • Love
  • Intimacy with God
  • Identity
  • Responsibility
  • Wholeness
  • Resilience
  • Purpose

Our Motto: Your spiritual growth is our passion!

OUR VALUES

Intimacy with God is the one thing

For us, the Christ-centred life is not about doing things for Him but being with Him. Like Lazarus’s sister, Mary, it is our #1 priority to sit at His feet. Everything else is secondary. We will forsake all else just to be with Jesus.

There is only one thing worth being concerned about. Mary has discovered it, and it will not be taken away from her. ~ Luke 10:42 (NLT)

 Love is the most powerful force in the universe

We believe that the unconditional, lavish, sticky, fierce, pursuing, jealous, covenant-keeping, longsuffering love of God is unstoppable! We believe that His love for us, our requited love back to Him, and the overflow of love for each other is the dynamic that changes the world. There is no situation too hopeless, too far gone, too dark for the love of God to turn around.

Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails. ~ 1 Corinthians 13:4-8a (NKJV)

 The world conforms from the outside in, but Christ transforms from the inside out.

We are about transformation. We are convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that no lasting change comes through external means such as rule-keeping, sin-management, or behaviour modification. Transformation starts with the Holy Spirit re-connecting our spirit with Christ, progresses through a heart regenerated by His love and a mind renewed by beholding His glory, and finally ends in an incarnated Christ-like life. The imperative for transformation then is not more education, more willpower, more effort, or more external motivation (whether through fear, shame, or the approval of men) but rather more encounter with God (the only one who can truly change us).

And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. ~ 2 Corinthians 3:18 (ESV)

 Never stop growing

As long as we remain connected to the Vine, we will be undergoing spiritual growth. The moment we become satisfied with how much of God we have experienced, or the cost of losing our lives to gain His (pruning) is too much, is the moment we disconnect from Christ and begin to die. In this life, we are always on a journey of healing, growth, transformation and maturation. We cannot afford not to grow, both for our sake and for the sake of the world. The Father is looking for fruit and only mature trees bear fruit!

I am the true grapevine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch of mine that doesn’t produce fruit, and he prunes the branches that do bear fruit so they will produce even more. ~ John 15:1-2 (NLT)

 Be yourself - a facet of God that only you can display to the world

God only makes originals. The physical diversity displayed throughout God’s creation reflects the diversity of personality-gift-passions-strengths He also wants in His sons and daughters. Similarly, the abundant thriving life that we see in ecosystems with high diversity is what will happen in the body of Christ when we each uniquely and fully express who we were called to be! We believe that people must be absolutely free to be different from what we expect or prefer. We refuse to control or manipulate others into our preferred mold. We want to see every human fully embody their facet of God’s multi-faceted glory that He created them to display to the world.

He makes the whole body fit together perfectly. As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow, so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love. ~ Ephesians 4:16 (NLT)

The fight is in the head, but the treasure we fight for is in the heart, and we share the spoil with the hands

We fully subscribe to C.S. Lewis’s view that our desires are not too strong but too weak. We are on a constant mission to convert head knowledge about God, to heart knowledge of the Lover of our souls. We want to live lives of deep desire, fully alive to God, and dead to the trifling pleasures of this world. We want to move from commitment to a God-idea (theology), to instead be enthralled by a divine being who reveals Himself to us daily. Yes, we want sound doctrine (head). Yes, we also want a mission-focused church that meets the needs of the world (hands). But without the heart, we will either get insular believers puffed up with knowledge or burnt-out believers serving others out of duty. But when our hearts are set ablaze for God, we become laid-down lovers serving the world joyfully with hearts overflowing with the love of God!

Jesus replied, “The most important commandment is this: ‘Listen, O Israel! The Lord our God is the one and only Lord. And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.’ The second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ No other commandment is greater than these.” ~ Mark 12:29-31 (NLT)

 Joy is the atmosphere of heaven

Without the joy of God, life is hard and dry. There is a reason that oil is used as an analogy for joy. Joy lubricates the friction of life and makes us supple and resistant to the harsh environments we will encounter. Without joy, we won’t endure the hardships of life well. Where there is freedom, there is joy. Where there is fellowship, there is joy. Where there is God there is joy! If joy is missing, something is blocking the flow of heaven to earth – either the enemy has us in bondage or we have broken fellowship with God or each other. Jesus came to reconcile us to the Father, heal the broken-hearted and set the captives free. Our mandate is the same.

You will show me the way of life, granting me the joy of your presence and the pleasures of living with you forever. ~ Psalm 16:11 (NLT)

See more at authenticjoy.org!

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EVENT: Spiritual Formation 201

Spiritual Formation 101 was a resounding success!

Together, we explored:

  • How we practically become more mature.
  • How our upbringing affects our relationship with God.
  • What it means to be an adopted daughter/son of God.
  • Tangibly experiencing God’s love.
  • The role of vulnerability in building intimacy.
  • Practices that build intimacy with God.
  • Barriers to intimacy with God.
  • What is our true identity in Christ.

The insights gained as we discussed these topics were invaluable. However, just as valuable (or perhaps more so) was the opportunity these sessions presented for like-minded companionship on our faith journey. For a little while, we shared our lives open-heartedly with our fellow travellers. My heart is still awed when I relive some of the moments we shared. It was an unparalleled honour for me to facilitate this sacred experience.

Therefore, it is with great anticipation that I look forward to Spiritual Formation 201 starting January 10th 2022! Formation 101 focused on the awakening phase of our faith journey. Formation 201 will focus on the processing phase of our faith journey. Front and centre will be topics such as:

  • The purpose of pain.
  • Thriving versus surviving.
  • Working from rest.
  • True identity versus false identity.
  • Emotional resilience.
  • Discovering your calling/vocation.
  • Staying joyful in trials.
  • Confronting shame and facing fear.

Expect to come away from this journey with insights and tools to feed your spiritual growth for years to come. More than that, expect to receive an impartation that will bring you closer to Christ and multiply your fruitfulness for the kingdom!

Once again sessions will be held via Zoom, interactive, experiential, and Spirit-led. We would be honoured for you to join us. And it’s FREE 🙂 Please click here to register: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1p3pe9eCm9_ZZYWNH7rfiutfNcCT_NeUmK4g0bUNH-L0/edit?usp=sharing

Joyfully,

Copyright 2021, Matik Nicholls. All rights reserved.
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ZOOM EVENT: Spiritual Formation 101

If you are longing for deeper intimacy, greater clarity and more fruitfulness in your walk with God then sign up for Spiritual Formation 101. We take a journey of discovery together for 8 weeks starting October 18th.

We will explore topics such as:

  • What is spiritual maturity?
  • The 3 phases of spiritual maturity.
  • Examining the Christ model of maturity.
  • Principles for spiritual growth.
  • Processes for spiritual growth.
  • Habits for spiritual growth.
  • Barriers and enablers for spiritual growth.

Sessions will be interactive, experiential and Spirit-led.

Click here to register: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1E4P3w2ba4sqomgaTUIuHomcFYt59zNvupYCVOw-H5as/edit?usp=sharing

Copyright 2021, Matik Nicholls. All rights reserved.

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How To Achieve Spiritual Growth Part 1

My parents brought me up without religion. Their thinking was that we would choose our own religion when my sister and I grew up. We didn’t go to church. We didn’t say any prayers. When I was 17, many of my Roman Catholic friends began attending Confirmation classes. So, following the crowd, I started attending Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA) classes in order to convert to Catholicism. It was in these classes that Jesus first attracted me. The fire was ignited but my life did not change much. I carried on like many teenagers of my time. I was a diligent student and an avid party-goer. But my soul longed for more. I began searching for more.

My search eventually led me to a non-denominational Pentecostal-type church where I made a commitment to serve Jesus more fully. I became a born-again Christian at age 21. My life changed dramatically as I conformed to the values and performance culture of my new tribe. I read the bible from cover to cover. I stopped partying, stopped listening to secular music and initiated a demanding schedule of church activities. Things progressed as expected. I got married. We had a son. I progressed in my career. I taught Sunday School. I looked successful on the outside but on the inside, my soul was screaming, “Is this all there was to life?” And then there was the issue of a growing dichotomy between my external religiosity and my internal depravity. Then one day the water surged over the dam of my artificial life, and I pressed the eject button. I turned my back on church and religion and plowed headlong into hedonism.

Many years later, after the sweetness of sin had long turned sour, I cried out to God for help. He answered with a loving community of believers who loved me in my mess (and what a mess it was). I began the long road to recovery.  By this time, I had wreaked much havoc and there were many repairs and reparations to be made. But, slowly my life became better as Jesus changed me from the inside out.

A critical moment came one morning as I stood praying in my living room. Suddenly, I felt the tangible love of God surround me. I felt wave after wave of unbelievable mercy, life-giving forgiveness and unconditional love, wash over my body and cleanse my soul completely. I stood there weeping. I do not know how long it lasted but that morning changed my life forever. The transformation that took place and is still taking place since that day is real and exponential. As I encountered Jesus daily, I began to experience all the fruits of the Spirit like never before. Authentic joy is found in the face of Jesus Christ my friends!

The point of my story is to illustrate two foundational principles for spiritual growth:

  1. Only Jesus transforms. Not religion. Only a real face to face relationship with Jesus. Sure, anyone can change their behaviour and manage their sin but only Jesus can change our desires – change us from the inside out. John 15:4-6 (ESV) says:  “4 Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. 5 I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.” It is the abiding connection with Jesus that transforms us.
  2. We change more through relationships than through information. We have been fooled into a left-brained approach to spiritual formation. We have been told that if we study our bibles and attend to our church sermons we will grow. These are helpful, but what really transforms us is loving relationships and strong bonds with people and with God. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 11:1 (ESV) “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.”

Do you know how old I was when I had that encounter with Jesus? Thirty-nine! I spent a heck of a lot of time and energy trying to achieve spiritual growth through methods that just cannot deliver. In this series on spiritual growth, I’m going to share everything that I’ve learned over the years so you don’t have to go down any of the dead-ends that I did. Stay tuned!

Joyfully,

Copyright 2021, Matik Nicholls. All rights reserved.

If you haven’t yet, check out our FREE Spiritual Growth Foundation Course in which we cover the four foundational principles for spiritual growth and much more! In addition to on-demand videos which you can watch at your leisure, there are downloadable handouts for those who prefer written content.

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Finally, It’s Here! Authentic Joy Online Courses!

Have you ever asked yourself any of these questions:

How do I achieve spiritual growth?

How do I measure spiritual growth?

How do I maintain spiritual growth?

How do I increase spiritual growth?

How do I become spiritually mature?

How do I know if I am spiritually mature?

How do I grow in spiritual maturity?

Well, we have been working feverishly behind the scenes to provide these answers to you in the most affordable and succinct way possible.

Over the past few months, we have spent some time clarifying our mission and improving our value-offering to you.

What’s our mission you ask?

To promote, accelerate and support your spiritual growth.

This is what gets us out of bed in the morning! Sooooo, I am super excited to launch a new Authentic Joy offering – online courses to support your spiritual growth!

We have two tiers of courses available at the moment:

I really hope these courses are a catalyst for your growth in Christ. I have put what I’ve learned from my life successes and my life failures into these online resources. I pray that it blesses you.

Joyfully,

Copyright 2021, Matik Nicholls. All rights reserved.

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ANNOUNCING Transformation + Coaching Institute

Announcing the launch of Transformation + Coaching Institute (pronounced Transformation Plus)!

My amazing wife, Tricia Celestin-Nicholls, is now a professional coach y’all! Tricia has been coaching people for eighteen years now, but I have watched her grow to a whole new level as she refined her craft over the last four years while pursuing certification.

While Tricia has a lot of experience and is well equipped with the tools and techniques of her profession, what I personally think is the best thing about what she offers is that she coaches in partnership with Jesus. The Holy Spirit is the ultimate Helper and that’s what coaching is all about – helping you on your journey of spiritual growth!

Behind the scenes, Authentic Joy has been undergoing an overhaul. God has been refining us and focusing us on bringing greater value to our online community. First, we added Bible Study Plans to our offering. Today, we are launching our coaching offering. Next, we will be rolling out a series of online courses. All of this is in line with our core purpose – to support the spiritual growth of our community. We are believing God for exponential growth in your life!

So, check out the Transformation + Coaching Institute or contact Tricia at celestintricia@gmail.com to book a FREE 30-minute exploratory session!

Stay tuned for more resources in the weeks to come!

Joyfully,

Copyright 2021, Matik Nicholls.
All rights reserved.

To receive more content like this in your inbox please subscribe to www.authenticjoy.org.

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My Best Advice for 2021

OK here’s my best advice for 2021. Ready for it?

DO LESS

In 2020, COVID-19 reset the planet and for many of us it should have been a wake-up call to the reality of the hurried and exhausted lives we were living. I am currently listening to The Power of Vulnerability by Dr. Brene Brown and totally enjoying it. She manages to share powerful truths in a way that is both funny and thought-provoking. Highly recommended! She discusses 10 guideposts for wholehearted living and one of them is “cultivating play and rest and letting go of exhaustion as a status symbol and productivity as self-worth”. I found this to be a powerful guide to a better quality of life. But what struck a deeper chord with me was how much more relevant this is in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. It was as if we simply refused to shut down, so the universe hit Ctrl-Alt-Delete and forced us to end all our tasks. Then the universe said, “Your move.”

Unfazed, we replied, “Pffft. We re-launch all our tasks aaaand we add the Zoom upgrade on top of that. So there!”

I believe the universe is now shaking its head and saying, “Puny humans.”

Suffice to say, I don’t think we’ve gotten the message. We are addicts. Addicted to busyness and distraction. Brene has already called us out on one of the ingredients that can keep us addicted to lives of busyness and distraction:

  • A lack of self-worth. We are constantly trying to produce enough to gain the approval of others and justify our existence to ourselves.

I would proffer a second:

  • Pain avoidance. Keeping busy is just another means of avoiding the internal demons that haunt our souls when things get quiet. We haven’t faced them, and we don’t want to. So, we keep busy.

The point is our exhausting pace of life is just a symptom of our brokenness or incompleteness. This is not an indictment. This is just the reality of being human. We all have brokenness that needs healing. We each have our unique brand of fractures and some of us are further along the path to healing than others but none of us are issue-free. We do have a choice though… a significant and powerful choice: will we continue as we are or press into the work of inner healing?

I believe that this is the gift of 2020 to humanity – a wake-up call to action. We got a glimpse of ourselves in the mirror and having seen the truth we are faced with a choice. The question is do we want to be more? Will we choose to be more? Enter, the second part of my advice:

BE MORE

I always remember a powerful perspective that I heard from Dr. Ruth Haley Barton that went something like this, “A powerful yes, enables you to say no.” She explained that in the work of doing less we need to be able to say no to things, even good things, and what gives us that power to say no is a strong yes to something else. Perhaps we are asked to attend a social event for work but it’s the same night as we promised to watch a movie with our daughter. Usually, we rationalize that we can always do the movie another time or we have to show up to get a chance at that promotion or maybe we tragically try to do both. But if we have a powerful yes to the kind of parent we want to be, or the kind of relationship we want to have with our children, then saying no to the social event is really saying YES to something bigger!

I want to leave you with some powerful things to say YES to and reasons to do less in 2021. I have found these to be useful in my life. Perhaps one or two will resonate with you:

  1. Doing less is an act of faith. Saying no to some activities or responsibilities is saying YES to a life of supernatural productivity. When the Israelites observed the Sabbath in the desert for 40 years, they had to believe that every Friday (or whatever day before Sabbath) God would supernaturally send more manna than usual and that it would keep for the next day unlike all the other days of the week when it would become full of maggots. Saying no to work was saying, “YES God I believe in Your provision!” Later on, they had to believe that God would take care of the survival of their businesses that would close for Sabbath while the competition remained open. The same can be said of us today. If we choose to do less (even observe a Sabbath, like I do) in obedience to God’s call to rest, then we enter into a beautifully supernatural faith-walk with God as He steps in to do more with less than we could do working ourselves ragged. I have seen this at work in my life and I know you will too if you try it.
  2. Doing less is an act of obedience to your call. The most important call on our lives is not what God has called us to do but who God has called us to be. If we have a big YES for living a life fully authentic to who God has called us to be then saying no to anything that is less than that, no matter how attractive, is easy. It is also a much more joyful way to live. Doing things that just aren’t who we are to please people or help a friend out or to get ahead socially or financially is draaaaining. We can fool ourselves into thinking it is a stepping stone to what we really want to do but it isn’t.
  3. Doing less is a commitment to a higher quality of work/worship. The work we do is an act of worship. It is glorifying God with the talents, personality and time He has given us. If we have a big YES to the quality of our worship through our work, then we will sacrifice quantity for quality. We all know what it feels like to be rushing from project to project and meeting to meeting always giving just enough of our attention and effort to move it along but never enough to be truly creative or extraordinary. Wouldn’t it be more God-honouring (not to mention personally fulfilling) to do our best work? To do work that is truly meaningful and transformative?
  4. Doing less is a commitment to a higher quality of relationships/life. All relationships require investing time to build connection and intimacy. Setting aside dedicated time to invest in the people closest to us and being present with them is a big YES to a more fulfilling life. They say the quality of our life is the sum of the quality of our relationships. We all know this is true. Just like we know that we cannot build meaningful relationships if we never have time to take our spouse to dinner, or play board games with the kids, or just listen to our direct reports without simultaneously checking emails or text-messaging. No to constant busyness is a big YES to better relationships.
  5. Doing less is a commitment to spiritual growth. I have read many books about seeking God and one of the things all the authors agree on is that busyness and distraction are the enemies of spiritual growth. Saying no to a life of constant busyness and distraction is saying a big YES to more of God and more of God in us. Some of the things that require us to be fully present and undistracted are: practicing gratitude, reviewing our day with God, two-way prayer (as opposed to rattling off a monologue without waiting for a response), meditating on scripture. Getting away from the noise of life and getting with God is a prerequisite for becoming present to the places in our lives that need His touch and direction and bringing them into His Presence for guidance, redemption and restoration. You may think that you have too much to do to spend time in ’wasted’ activity like prayer for more than 15 minutes but you will be surprised at the impact you will have on your world when you spend more time with God. Try it and see!

In summary:

MORE BEING, LESS DOING

Copyright 2021, Matik Nicholls.
All rights reserved.

To receive more content like this in your inbox and to receive a free e-copy of my book, The Primacy of The Voice of God – Elevating the Word of God to Its Rightful Position, please subscribe to www.authenticjoy.org.