After all these years I’ve been lied to and I’ve been lying to myself. While I do my due diligence I also use other data to back up what I want to say. However, it’s still important for you to read and look for things yourself. Even when I was a college professor I still told my students to go read for themselves, and don’t just rely on my notes. Although I try to be as thorough as possible, I may miss something or because I know the information I may leave something out they needed to know, possibly later on for the exam. If you go to church, I think the same is true when you’re listening to the preacher. Personal Disclaimer: If you don’t have a pastor or a spiritual leader that tells you to go read for yourself, you need to exit stage left and right. In case you’re still reading and you’re about to shut down, please don’t do that. Although I talk about biblical principles, I’m not here to push my beliefs on you. You will read several principles, ideas, and examples with a Christian lens. I don’t categorize myself as a “Christian Life Coach”. That’s just part of who I am. Consider this example, you have general book publishing companies that will publish any genre, and then you have Christian book publishing companies that only focus on scripture-based or Christian-focused books.
The more I dive deep into my own spiritual journey and into the industry of transformational coaching, my awareness is heightened to the correlations between the two. I wanted to say this moving forward because there are people who question my relationship with God based on some of the things I teach. I’m not looking for any agreements. Take what lands with you and discard the rest. It is my hope that through whatever I share, you gain some sort of insight that makes you say “hmm”.
Now that we have that foundation, let’s get into it.
I’m realizing that entrepreneurship is the biggest faith movement I’ve ever experienced. I heard one of my mentors say this and she has been saying it for probably about a decade now. According to her, she discovered this for herself during a large business conference where she was delivering the keynote. This was well before the boss babe, girlboss movement we see today. My money mindset coach said her version of entrepreneurship being the largest “faith tester” for her. Intellectually I understood this but it didn’t hit me until I went through my own devotional time. I was like “oh crap it really is”. Later that day I was listening to something from my own coach where she said that being an entrepreneur requires a different level of faith compared to being an employee. I know that sounds harsh or perhaps disrespectful at first but it does make sense.
NOTE:(I’m not telling anyone that they need to leave their jobs but stick with me.)
Let’s focus on finances as an example. When I was a teacher in the K-12 system the check came every two weeks and I never questioned if it was going to show up as long as I was employed. The same is true when I became a college professor with the check now coming in once a month. It was a struggle at first going from bi-weekly to monthly, but I adapted. I knew that regardless of whatever was happening at work, the financial resources were always going to be there. I know you may be thinking about what happened in 2020 and beyond as that period of time proved that nothing was safe for the majority of the population. However, there were still people maintaining and making income. But let’s keep it general, many of us just knew that payday was coming on the 1st, 15th or whatever your designated date.
As an employee, the other type of faith I had was praying that my students would behave, that they do well on my exams, that I get an article published into a journal or that my presentation be accepted to a conference. However, those didn’t take THAT much faith because overall, my security and finances weren’t impacted and I pretty much knew that things would work out. Entering into this entrepreneur space for real this time, I’m realizing that I’ve been trying to operate as a career professional, an employee instead of an entrepreneur and CEO. This has been a challenging transition but even if you’re not an entrepreneur I still want you to continue reading. I think you’ll be able to relate to what I’m about to share in other areas of your life.
Growing up in church I used to hear that God won’t put more on you than you can bear. I myself have quoted this through songs and as a plea to God in prayer. The statement sounds good in theory and when you first hear it, it sounds true. God loves us so He will NOT put more on us than we can bear and whatever we’re going through we can handle the load or carry the burden but if it gets too much God will save us from the trouble. Now, I’m writing to you now from the perspective of having read several Bible translations and Biblical Commentary during my morning devotional time but prior to that I wholeheartedly believed this statement was true.
Consider this – If you haven’t achieved certain goals or cracked your personal glass ceiling it COULD be that you’ve been subconsciously operating from a victim mentality. Or maybe it’s just me. This was my personal revelation. When I would say that God won’t put more on me than I can bear and if it feels like things aren’t working out then I cry to God to save me. Fix It Jesus. But this isn’t how God works.
NOTE: (This may be the time you say Universe…it’s up to you.)
I’m not a Bible scholar but if you’re not going to take the time to go and read through scriptures and look up commentary and see what other people are talking about as it relates to certain scriptures then take what I’m saying for face value. However, I do encourage you to research for yourself.
I’m a natural problem-solver and I like to fix things and situations for other people. I believe God made me this way and it’s one of my superpowers. However, after my study time, I realized that when I would say God won’t put more on me than I can bear, that’s like saying “ whatever I’m going through I can handle it because He put it on me for a reason.” I also realized that sometimes our strengths or superpowers can be our Kryptonite.
Here’s the truth I discovered from the lie I was taught and continued to tell myself. God doesn’t put us in situations for “US” to fix it. Otherwise we wouldn’t need Him. When God said He wouldn’t put more on us than we can bear, that statement has been taken out of context. I invite you to have your own Bible study and research these scriptures for yourself. The actual scripture where this statement lives is in 1 Corinthians 10:13 and it talks about temptation. Paraphrasing – God would not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear but when you are tempted he will provide a way of escape or a way out so that you can stand up under it. That is so different from He won’t put more (struggle or hardship) on me than I can bear. In fact, we’re meant to “suffer” especially those of us who follow Christ Jesus.
Here are other scriptures if you want to go read through them:
Hebrews 12:4- 12 talks about following Christ is to suffer.
Matthew 11:29 talks about a call to carry a certain cross.
Matthew 16:24 in the Amplified version says that God never meant for us to bear anything because that is why we know Jesus. A lot of this information came from the Rural Reformission by Roger Upton in 2012.
There is a difference between trying to carry a burden that you’re not meant to carry and feeling overwhelmed. In my Bible, the Joyce Meyer Battlefield of Mind version; there’s a story of a lady who lost her husband, her son and her daughter in a matter of two weeks. Even though she felt this amount of pressure and weight she would tell the people around her that no matter how deep she went through the waters she was still able to touch the riverbed without feeling like she was drowning. She knew God was with her based on the scripture Isaiah 4:32. I had to take the time to break down what it meant to have a “burden” and being overwhelmed.
We won’t be overwhelmed and whatever we’re facing won’t take over us. We’ll always have peace and we’ve already been declared the victor. Now going along with that I was reminded of a book I read and a sermon that I listened to by Bishop TD Jakes. I know some people have their thoughts about him but sometimes you take what you need to hear and leave the rest. His book Crushing was instrumental for me when I read it about 4 years ago. Now that I’m looking back, I remember thinking that “did you really think you could ask God for growth and expansion without feeling the weight or ‘pain’ of that?”
I’ll give you a practical way to think about this. Let’s say you want to expand and increase your wealth. You want to have more impact, influence and income or insert whatever you’re wanting. Regardless of what it is you want to grow in some capacity. When we look at nature, how do we expect something to grow if it’s not going to be planted in the ground? The first step in planting is doing something to cause the foundation to be broken up. When you plant something you know that it’s going to grow and you expect it to come to life. But, if it still looks the same after a few days, do you start digging it up to see if the seed is still there or yelling at the ground that it’s not moving fast enough? NO!
I know all about farm life and or gardening from my grandfather. Growth requires patience. It’s the same process in life and similar to what TD Jakes was saying in his book.
You have to dig up the old dirt, (sometimes throwing out the old dirt), plant the seed, then you cover it up. The seed in a sense is in the soil, suffocating. While the seed may not “feel” this, we do when we’re being buried underneath our struggles and trials. It’s part of the process we want to avoid, which is impossible in the growth cycle. Have you ever watched a seed grow into a plant? It looks like a painful process. Things are shooting out from every side, fighting through soil at both ends and stretching beyond the original container, the seed. Then a plant emerges. We like that part. However, it doesn’t stay this way. More suffering for the plant comes with pruning or more bruising comes if we want to turn the fruit into something else. Refer to John 14 where it talks about Jesus being the Master Gardener.
So in real life when we’re expecting to grow things but there is a tremendous amount of weight that the seed (us) have to endure. But, what if we’re not meant to carry the weight of the soil, the burden of our lives? What if we’re supposed to rely on something greater than us? For some reason when it involves Christianity many of us think that we’re supposed to have this easy life even though not too long ago we just went through Easter and the Resurrection. That wasn’t a pretty sight yet, we glossed over that sometimes forgetting that being bruised and buried was part of the package. If Jesus had to suffer for His expansion, why do we think we get a pass? Or, why do we think that we have the ability to endure this suffering on our own. Jesus cried out to His Father too.
It was a wake up call for me. There was something in my subconscious that’s been causing me to act like a victim even though I’ve gone through a “crushing” before. I thought experiencing the death of my mother and grandfather three-weeks apart was it! Not so.
You can listen to the full version on my YouTube Channel
Here are the main points:
- Stop trying to handle situations that you’re not meant to handle
- Stop using trials and moments of suffering as an excuse not to go after your true desires
- Check to see if you’ve been living below the life you deserve because you’ve been acting like a victim to your circumstances. (Remember, this is not about situations with real victims, you know the difference.)
- Expect that suffering and crushing is part of the journey and know that there is a force greater than us who will guide us through until we get to the other side. I also want to note that you don’t have to “look like ” the suffering you’re encountering once you stop trying to handle it on your own.
- If you don’t want to experience any growing pains, pruning, crushing etc, stop asking for growth, expansion and increase.
References Scriptures:
- 1 Corinthian 10:13
- Hebrews 12:4-12
- Matthew 11:29
- Isaiah 53:6
- Isaiah 43:2; 18-19
NOTE – whenever you’re ready- here are more ways you can drastically increase abundance (impact, influence and income) in every area of your life:
- Let’s have a Curious Connection Call –
- Grab a copy of my book Embracing Grit for Greatness to see how you can make the shift to Courage over Clarity to achieve your goals and transform your life.
- Watch this video from my vidcast Ep. 8 here