What I Learned This Week: When the Words We Use Start Leading Us
What if the soundtrack you’ve been repeating lately isn’t telling the full truth — and the first step toward healthier leadership is paying attention to the words you keep saying?
Spies and Jammed Signals
An enemy force doesn’t have to block an important message in order to render it useless. The enemy merely needs to create enough noise in the environment to distract the recipient for a while. In buying time with distraction, the enemy is able to carry out an attack and be gone before the message is acted upon.
Does this hit close to home for you? It does for me.
Resolved
How about you stop playing the games and go ahead with no New Year’s resolutions this time? It will save some time, energy, and feelings of guilt when you abandon them a few weeks later. However, if you are resolved to make intentional changes to life in the coming year, here are several real-life resolutions that will bring about lasting impact to both you, your family, and the world around you.
What I Learned This Week: When I Deferred Instead of Dealt With It
What if the thing weighing on you most right now isn’t complicated at all — it’s just waiting for you to embrace the awkward and deal with it?
Precious Metals Soaring
As a Jesus follower, your posture toward money, wealth, and material possessions is one of the most important factors in your aim for a vibrant walk with Jesus. That statement might seem a little jarring, but God’s Word repeatedly returns to money matters to determine the health of your heart.
Good, Better, Best
Friend, you have been waiting. You have been longing for the fulfillment of what is promised. Your anticipation has been building. The wait can seem long and the pressure of the building anticipation intense.
But the celebration on the other side of the anticipation will be oh so worth it!
The long-anticipated Savior of the world has come! We celebrate the end of the waiting on Christmas! Death is defeated and the silence is no more! Allow the built-up pressure of your anticipation to burst forth into rejoicing!
Keeping Christ in Christmas
It would be silly to say that every year Christmas sneaks up on the world, but in a weird way it does. Every year. Every single year. Oh, not the celebration of Christmas, but the reality of Christmas seems to sneak up every year. Even in the church it can feel like the underlying reality of God coming as man gets lost in the production of a wonderful Christmas seasonal celebration. Undoubtedly the world is struggling with a broad secularistic move. And it can easily be argued that the church is as well. However, you can lead your family towards keeping Christ in Christmas this year and every year.
What I Learned This Week: When “We’ll Get to It” Becomes the Problem
What if what you need right now isn’t a better system or more clarity — but the courage to commit to the one action you already know needs to happen?
You’re Pardoned
You and I should be devoted to a merit-based application of justice that holds the guilty accountable (Is. 1:17) and avoids partiality (Deut. 10:17). We should personally abide by these precepts, and we should expect the same of our elected leaders.
How to Disagree Well
Disagreement can be and is highly constructive for a team. Healthy disagreement can help spur creative solutions, prevent big time mistakes, and push better decision-making across the board. Too often, disagreement is seen as disloyalty, or destructive to the team. And done wrongly it can certainly harm the spirit of the team. It can easily escalate into something far more and unintended. There is a way to disagree well when you find yourself in an environment that fosters healthy conflict. It can be scary at first, but when done well it will make everyone better.
You’re Fired
Competing forces will contend for the place of authority in your life. You cannot serve two masters (Matt. 6:24). Romans 13 encourages you to subject yourself to the authorities of this world, but to do so mindful of Who has the ultimate authority. Our guiding passage as The Equipped community, 2 Timothy 3:16-17, reminds us it is the authority of scripture that holds highest priority in our life. It is that authority to which we ultimately and resolutely yield.
Pipe Bomb Suspect Arrested
Is there something long unresolved you need to be free of? Your God is slow to anger (Ps. 103:8) and ready to forgive (Ps. 86:5). Don’t carry it any longer.
Create a Category
What categories are you creating in that powerful God-fashioned brain of yours? What things are your Reticular Activating System learning to flag and highlight for you? In addition to Kia Souls, Costco plaids, and John Deere mowers, are you meditating on things that feed your soul or rob your joy?
Leading Change
Change is an inevitable part of life and creation. God knit together an incredible creation that can adapt and grow throughout its life. It is amazing to see it in action. We don’t have to be afraid of change, but we should have an idea about how to handle it well.
National Guard Shooting in D.C.
Two innocent young people serving their country were tragically gunned down. That is the reality of this story. There are many competing narratives aimed at pointing blame in one direction or another, but the most important point for The Equipped community is to acknowledge those who have been harmed and are grieving, and to look for ways to come to their aid.
Send over End
We want to accomplish a solution for suffering when God’s plan all along has been to send His power through us into that suffering.
To be candid, at first blush this sounds like an awful trade! Who in their right mind would want to shift from aiming at solutions to aiming at association with the problem? On a human plane, this is a laughable proposition.
But when Jesus chose to associate with our sin and suffering, it proved to be the very mechanism by which our redemption was secured, and we are called to follow His example!
Illegal Orders and Sedition
As for you as a Jesus follower, there will be every temptation to take a default position in favor of whichever political official you are more naturally inclined. Instead, proactively decide to walk out Proverbs 18:17. As always, remember to aim for flourishing and ask yourself how to personally achieve an impact toward that end.
Can a Mother Take Her Child to Church?
The United States Supreme Court has clearly and unmistakably established parents’ right to freely exercise their religion, including the right to “direct the religious upbringing of their children.” Nonetheless, a Maine district court has issued a custody order prohibiting a mother from taking her daughter to church. In December 2024, the court prohibited Emily Bickford, the parent with primary custody, from bringing her daughter, Ava, to Calvary Chapel in Westbrook, Maine.
The Difficult Realities of Marriage: Part 8
Looking inwardly before blaming outwardly is vital. Are you holding a grudge over a past issue, or disagreement? Are you trying to make your spouse an “idealized” version that is impossible to attain? Are you making your spouse responsible for your own joy, satisfaction, and comfort? Above all other things, love each other well. The model for your love is Christ Himself and His self-sacrifice on the cross.
Face to Face
We as Jesus followers should strive for civility and endeavor to love our enemies as ourselves (Matt. 5:44). It is easy to interpret that command as an admonition to avoid disagreement, but in fact we are called to embrace the refining process of weighing various perspectives (Pr. 18:17, Pr. 27:17, Pr. 11:14). Taken together, those three passages encourage us to hear both sides, to onboard a variety of counsel, and then to submit to the refining input of others.