Gift Number Eight

Ever meet a perfect person?

Me either.

The closest I come is what I read and know to be true about Jesus.

What I love about spending time with Him is how often it shifts the way I think and feel about everything else so much. Problems shrink from mountains down to molehills. And I often learn a little bit - maybe some days just a spec’s worth about how to be a little more resilient.

And really - that’s what all of these gifts are; nuggets of truth that I hope will brighten your day a bit. They’re all pretty powerful in my experience - at least I rely on them every day.

Can I confess something? When I was first starting out in my walk - a few decades ago - I really believed that for something to really change my life, it had to be BIG, and EXCITING, and ooooh so powerful. But who hasn’t tried to make some substantial positive change in their lives - only to falter or fall.

If you think about it though - big huge changes are pretty rare - and that’s not how we learn most things. Your career - you learned at the pace of one day at a time. Even the big things like marriage and parenting, we at least think about it for a while and then plan, and prepare. I don’t know anyone who opened their door to see their future spouse or child - on the doorstep.

Small is incredibly powerful. Get a spec of dust on your shoe - and you’ll never know it. Get one near or in your eye - and everything stops.

So today’s gift is the gift of the Nudge. The Nudge is the secret sauce to my self-discipline. I take the goal I want to achieve - and I reduce it down to the tiniest possible bit. I want to spend time with Jesus every single day, so I started with 15 seconds. An amount so small - it’s incredibly easy to achieve. Difficult to NOT achieve in fact. It was a long time ago when I set that goal - and it’s evolved into a full-blown rock-solid habit of growing my walk daily.

There’s a reason we plant tomato seeds - not full-blown tomato plants laden with tomatoes.

What good thing do you want more of in your life? Start as small as possible - and grow with that habit and it’ll feel stressless, fulfilling, hopeful - and hey - you’ll be so successful at it right away! This is a fair bit better than trying a little harder (again maybe) to do a lot better and/or different - which can too easily turn into an unsustainable goal as soon as something unexpected comes up.

I think Nudging is something that Jesus is so good at. He woos us closer to Him, reveals Himself to us and with masterful skill teaches us to follow Him better than we’d ever imagined.

Nudging is one of my favorite topics - so if you want to talk more about this - give me a shout. We’ll grab a cup of coffee and let Jesus inspire us completely to walk with Him every day.