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Can Suffering Bring Any Joy or Happiness?

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suffering

How to find God in the midst of pain and hurt.

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Contrary to what might be expected, I look back on experiences that at the time seemed especially desolating and painful with particular satisfaction. Indeed, I can say with complete truthfulness that everything I have learned in my 75 years in this world, everything that has truly enhanced and enlightened my existence, has been through affliction and not through happiness, whether pursued or attained. In other words, if it ever were to be possible to eliminate affliction from our earthly existence by means of some drug or other medical mumbo jumbo…the result would not be to make life delectable, but to make it too banal and trivial to be endurable. This, of course, is what the Cross signifies. And it is the Cross, more than anything else, that has called me inexorably to Christ. -Malcolm Muggeridge

What God does in our pain and suffering.

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How to Survive a Challenging Season

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leadership challenges

All of us have lived through a challenging season. You might be in one now, just coming out of one or waiting for yours to happen. (Only the truly pessimistic of us are really waiting, but you get the idea.)

They can happen when we least expect it: a disruption in our career or finances, a child that is hard to parent, a spouse who all of a sudden becomes distant, a sickness we didn’t expect or plan for, or simply life not going as we planned.

Challenges.

They are relational, financial, spiritual, emotional, and physical.

They know no limits. Challenges have no heart, so they aren’t worried about you and your survival.

Here are some questions I ask myself as I’m going through a challenging season:

3 questions to ask during a challenging season.

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  1. What is God trying to teach me in this season? It is easy to get angry in a challenging season and blame the person you think caused the it. You may be right, but doing that will not help you for very long. Eventually that will exhaust you, and you’ll still be in a challenging season. So take a day, be angry, and then wake up tomorrow and start looking forward. By asking this question you begin to get to what God is trying to do, which is helpful because it takes our eyes off ourselves. God does not waste experiences and moments. He uses them for his glory and our good.
  2. What is God preparing me for by having me in this season? Because God doesn’t waste moments, what we walk through today is helpful for tomorrow. Begin looking forward, looking and asking God for what He is doing.
  3. What is God’s invitation to me in this season? This question comes from Jim Cofield in The Relational Soul: Moving from False Self to Deep Connection. This has been a powerful reminder to me in moments of pain and hurt.
How to survive a challenging season.

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In his book Leadership Pain: The Classroom for Growth, Samuel Chand lists five things we know about God or learn through difficult seasons:

  1. God never abandons us, even when we can’t sense his presence.
  2. Our faith and character are developed most powerfully in times of adversity.
  3. God sometimes delivers us from pain, but more often he delivers us through it.
  4. Life’s most defining moments are usually painful experiences.
  5. We do not grow in those moments by default.
5 promises of God to you in a challenging season.

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What Others are Saying about Breathing Room

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Breathing-Room

My book Breathing Room: Stressing Less & Living More came out yesterday, and the response so far has been overwhelming and encouraging.

My hope is that this book helps people to stop settling for a life that is tired, busy, in debt, holding on to past hurt and in many cases settling in life, and instead they would live the life that God calls them to. The life that God has for them. One that is not tired but full of life. One that is not busy but purposeful and intentional. One that is not in debt but controlling their money. And instead of allowing their past to control them, they are able to see their past redeemed to move forward into a new future.

I wanted to share what some other leaders and authors had to say about the book:

“You can’t underestimate how critical mental, emotional, physical and spiritual health – or as Josh calls it, Breathing Room – is in the success of a leader. Josh gives an honest account of what led him to dramatically change his life, busts the life-balance myth, and provides practical steps to help others turn that same corner.  I’ve been there too, and finding “breathing room” can change everything.” –Carey Nieuwhof, Lead Pastor, Connexus Church

“While there may be no such thing as a stress-free life, the stress-dominated life has almost become the norm in our modern-day culture. In his new book Breathing Room, Josh Reich exposes the most common sources of crippling stress and lays out a game plan for conquering the beast that so easily robs our joy and sabotages our walk with Jesus.” –Larry Osborne, author and pastor, North Coast Church

“Josh Reich’s book Breathing Room is truly a breathe of fresh air.  You will appreciate Josh’s authenticity and vulnerability as he shares his personal journey to try to find breathing room in his own life.  This is the kind of book that is hard to pick up because you know you are going to be challenged to make life-altering changes, but it will be hard to put down because you know those changes are going to lead you to discovering the abundant life that Jesus desires for all of us.” –Brian Bloye, senior pastor, West Ridge Church, co-author, It’s Personal: Surviving and Thriving on the Journey of Church Planting

“In Breathing Room, Josh Reich opens up with us about his journey of recovery from addiction and compulsions that kept him from living the abundant life that Jesus has in mind for us. All of us can identify with his struggles. Hopefully some of us can also learn from his many practical suggestions and insights.” -Reggie McNeal, author, A Work of Heart: Understanding How God Shapes Spiritual Leaders, Missional Leadership Specialist, Leadership Network

“Ministry is hard work. It’s spiritually draining, emotionally taxing, and intellectually exhausting. Josh opens his heart and shares the pain most leaders carry but reveal to no one. It becomes the secret burden we endure until something breaks. Breathing Room will reveal the warning signs that we’re headed towards a crash, but gives us hope that healthy living is possible for those of us in church work.” –Bob Franquiz, Senior Pastor, Calvary Fellowship, Miramar, FL; Founder, Church Ninja

“Josh Reich is a man of influence, integrity, and a leader of leaders. I have walked along side Josh and personally watched him live out what he preaches. I commend to you Breathing Room and encourage you to learn from Josh’s wise words.” -Brian Howard, Acts 29 West Network Director, Executive Director of Context Coaching Inc.

I hope Breathing Room: Stressing Less & Living More helps you, and I’d love to hear your story of how you change through reading the book and live the life of meaning that God has for you after you do.

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Be a Leader, not a Jerk

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book

One of the sad things that has happened in recent years, especially in the reformed camp of church planting is that pastors and bloggers have become known for being jerks. We have watchdog bloggers, people who are constantly pointing out mistakes in people, creating more and more lines among Christians instead of working together.

Fewer pastors are known as winsome and gracious and more known for being jerks.

4 Ways to Stop Being a Jerk

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If you want to stop any movement, kill any church from having influence in a city, stop any influence you may have long-term with other leaders, be a jerk.

That isn’t the kind of person people follow for a long time. You may get by for a period of time based off of skill, charisma or simply connections, but eventually your colors (in this case, being a jerk) show up.

Leaders should be winsome & gracious, not jerks.

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Here are a few ways to remind yourself as a leader to stay on track and be winsome and gracious:

  1. Remember your brokenness. The fastest way to become a jerk is to think you have it all together, are beyond sin or can’t fall. Remember your weaknesses, your need for Jesus and that you don’t know it all. Because the jerks online tend to be about pointing sin out in others, this is a hard thing to remember, but crucial. You cannot be gracious without experiencing grace.
  2. Spend time with people and read people outside of your tribe. They don’t need to be on your reading lists all the time, but read some business books, some books by those you don’t agree with theologically to learn from them. There should be some discomfort when you read instead of always just nodding your head. While you need to be cautious here, but if you are a leader of a church, your theology should be strong enough to be challenged. Also, those books will also tell you what some of the people who show up to hear you preach think and that can be helpful sermon prep. Otherwise, you end up answering questions no one is asking.
  3. Have some friends who can tell you when you are being a jerk and taking the wrong stand. Whether this is your spouse, an elder, another pastor or blogger, but you need a friend to tell you, “you are being a jerk on that, let it go.” Historically, pastors are terrible friends. We don’t know how to do anything or talk about anything other than church, so we get lost in our world of what other pastors are doing, the latest theology debate, what the blogs are raging about and most people we talk to could care less.
  4. Take the right stands, but not all of them. A mentor told me once, “be careful the hills you choose to die on because you will die on all those hills and you can’t die that often.” Every issue doesn’t deserve a response from you. Every heresy you see online, some can be let go. That person who spouts out bad marriage advice on Facebook in your church, eventually they are seen for who they are. You can let it go. Someone else can step in. Sometimes though, you need to step up and say something, but when you do, be gracious and winsome.
Be careful the hills you choose to die on because you will die on all those hills

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How to be a Better Writer

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blogger

Recently, I watched the author platform conference online. This was a series of interviews with authors, bloggers, marketers and other experts to help writers, speakers and bloggers be as effective as possible.

Below are the lessons from each interview that I watched:

Jonah Berger

  1. Create a connection with your book. Give something to people so that they make a concrete connection to what you are saying. At book events, he gave out tissues with the word Contagious: Why Things Catch On on them for his book and made the connection of “wouldn’t your like your ideas to be as contagious as the cold?”

Chris Brogan

  1. Be married to the outcome more than you are to the idea. This will allow you to enjoy the content you create.
  2. When it comes to branding, people think about people. The person sticks in the mind of people if you know who the person is.

Chad Cannon

  1. Books that sell come from authors that hustle.
  2. An author needs to provide value to the audience outside of their book.

Chris Ducker

  1. Writing a book is not like writing a blog post. Editing is by far the hardest part of writing a book.
  2. Just be you. Your readers and listeners will know if you are being real or not.

John Lee Dumas

  1. Failures happen when people don’t listen to their intuition. Successes happen when we do listen to our intuition.

Carmine Gallo

  1. Ideas are the currency of the 21st century and you are only as successful as your ideas.
  2. Most speakers fail because they don’t have their message down, they don’t know their story.
  3. The difference between a great speaker and a good speaker is the great speaker is always looking to improve.
  4. The 3 components to any great presentation: Emotional, novel and memorable.

Jeff Goins

  1. Activity always follows identity.
  2. Offline relationships still do matter in the midst of our social media worlds.

Chris Guillebeau

  1. A lot of people can launch a book well, but successful authors need to think about how to make it successful in 3, 6, and 12 months.

Derek Halpern

  1. The best way to promote yourself is to help others, to give a benefit to someone else.
  2. Content is not just about what you say, but how you say it.

Michael Hyatt

  1. Know your audience, who they are, what their needs are, and what questions they have.

There was some incredibly helpful things in these videos.

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Questions Every Blogger & Writer MUST Answer

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blogger

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about why every leader and pastor should blog. If you decide to blog, here are a couple of things you need to think through:

  1. Why. Most people struggle with what to blog about, more on that in a minute. Why are you blogging? Why is it worth your time? If your goal with blogging is to build a platform to write a book, that’s a poor reason. Do you want to help people? Serve people? Get better at writing? Be famous? It is important to have a stated goal when it comes to your blog. Not everyone should blog. If you don’t have a compelling reason to start blogging, once the fad of it wears off, you will quit.
  2. What. This is the content. For me, I blog about things I find interesting and helpful. I blog about leadership, books, preaching, family, marriage, NFL, fantasy football, crossfit. Things I like. I assume that there are others out there who are interested in what I am interested in and so far, that seems to be the case. I will share things I think will be helpful to my readers and my church, things I’m learning, things I want to rant about, things about my kids and Katie. Some blogs are focused on one topic, which is great if that’s what you want to do. You should have a focus though, a grid that helps you decide what you do and don’t blog about.
  3. How often. This right here is one reason most blogs fail. They don’t blog enough. You can read about how to design a blog, what plug-ins to use, how to connect it to social media (and you should do all this). If you don’t blog on a regular basis, your blog will not get off the ground. I probably blog too much, but that’s my choice. Some blog 3 times a week or everyday. The point is, your readers need to know how often you will blog. People will tire of checking back on your blog for new information and it isn’t there, they will give up. I would say someone should start blogging when they can do it 3 times a week.

Blogging takes work, it is a job in many ways. You will spend hours writing, working on ideas, finding pictures for posts, responding to comments, looking for links to share and doing it all over again.

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Why a Leader Should Blog

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I often get asked by other pastors if they should have a blog. After all, it seems like any pastor who is doing anything has a blog. Whether that is true or not, it feels that way. Also, many pastors hope to write a book one day and a blog is a natural first step.

I’ve been blogging for 8 years now and I believe that a pastor should blog. Here are 4 ways to know if you should:

  1. You feel like you have something to say. If you don’t feel like you have something to say or you are starting a blog because every other pastor in your network has a blog, you shouldn’t start one. Don’t look to fill a void in the blog world, there probably isn’t one. Just write about the things you are passionate about. When I write something, I ask myself, “Do I want to know about this?” That for me is the question. If I’m interested in a topic, I assume others will be as well. Don’t try to talk about something you don’t care about or aren’t passionate about.
  2. You like to write. I’ve asked writers about their rhythm and schedule and many writers love to write. I’ve met some that have told me, “I write because someone pays me and I have a deadline.” If that’s you, don’t blog. Stick to books. I tried to make on of our leaders blog because I thought it would be helpful and it was a disaster. He hated it and I stopped trying to force him. It has to be something you want to do.
  3. It is a great way to shepherd and lead your church or organization. This is the reason I have continued blogging. I love to preach, read books, prep sermons and develop leaders. Blogging is an opportunity for me to shepherd and lead my church outside of Sunday morning. I can post more ideas about my sermon, talk about things I didn’t have time for in my sermon, pass on great articles and helpful resources. This is why pastors should blog. If you don’t, I believe you are missing a great leadership and shepherding opportunity.
  4. It is work. But it is work. Keeping up a blog takes time. A friend of mine recently told me that he had his highest traffic ever and said it was because he posted regularly. If you want to grow a blog, you have to write regularly. If you don’t, your readers won’t know when there is new content and won’t come back. The best way to grow a blog is to be helpful and write good content. Look at any of the blogs with the most traffic and usually those 2 things are true. Get into some kind of rhythm that works for you in terms of writing and stick to it.
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9 Reasons to Celebrate Valentine’s Day Every Week

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valentine's day

Recently, I was with a group of women and they were talking excitedly about going out for Valentine’s Day. When they asked me what Josh and I were doing, and I said we weren’t doing anything special that day because we don’t really celebrate Valentine’s Day.

They all looked at me with a look that said, “Poor thing.”

Why a weekly date night matters so much.

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The reality for us is that we don’t celebrate Valentine’s Day on Feb. 14th because 7 years ago, we began having a weekly date night, so Valentine’s day is less important to us.

As a funny way to answer the question, Josh and I came up 9 reasons we don’t celebrate it and instead celebrate it every week with a date night (some are his and some are mine).

Here you go:

Vomit. Someone is bound to throw up (ie. our daughter last night) and ruin your plans.

What to do when kids wreck your date night.

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Action. You will get more action if you celebrate Valentine’s day every week instead of once a year. Scientifically proven fact.

Little planning. Valentine’s day takes little planning. Roses, a card someone else wrote that you signed. Plan ahead and have a great date night.

Expensive. Everything is more expensive on Valentine’s Day. Everything.

Not enough. Celebrating valentine’s day, having a date night once a month or three times a year is not enough for your marriage.

T & A. You will get more of this with a weekly date night.

Irresistible. You will be irresistible to your spouse with a weekly date night. Also, find out what scent they like and wear that.

Never let your underwear drawer go more than a year without updating, keep it interesting (that’s just free advice and has nothing to do with Valentine’s Day but we needed another letter).

Everyone else is out on Valentine’s day. Plan a weekly date night and avoid the crowd.

So what do you do for a weekly date night? It doesn’t even have to be expensive. Here are some of our rules for date night and some ideas on how to do date night at home.