She was sitting beside the Dean’s office when I walked by.
“How are you today?” I didn’t really expect a reply, but she surprised me.
“I’m waiting to see the Dean.”
“That doesn’t sound good. What’s going on?”
She described a fight she started, and described her background of getting into fights.
“I don’t want to keep getting into fights,but I don’t know how to stop. When I’m angry everything I’ve learned at counseling just goes out the window.” Tears welled up in her deep brown eyes. “I want to change, but I don’t know how.”
Oh wow. I can totally relate to that frustration. What about you?
Change is hard, isn’t it? And any time we introduce a habit in our life that falls in the general category of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness or self-control, you’d better believe there will be a fight.
Those are called fruit of the Spirit because it takes the power of God living inside us to help us replace our natural reactions with these.
Change isn’t easy, but it is worth pursuing.
You know what else is hard to do? Trusting God with what is going on right now, today, in our lives.
It seems easier to trust Him with our salvation than to believe that He acts in our everyday lives as part of that salvation. It seems easier to believe that He died on the cross to pay for our collective sins than to believe that this same act offers forgiveness for the ugly sins that I’m stumbling over today.
The hope that God offers, the hope He created us for, leads us to trust Him, and trusting Him gives us peace and stability in this crazy, broken world.
The hope that God offers is grounded in who He is, which has a direct impact on the way we view God, ourselves, and the world around us.
Fear keeps us in survival mode, but walking in the hope we are created for is life-giving and refreshing. How does that sound? Like a change for the better, right?
Truths to Stand On is a PDF I’ve developed to help you start walking in the hope God offers by describing ways these four characteristics of God can impact the way you live.
God’s Love *God’s Presence * God’s Provision *God’s Protection
To receive Truths to Stand On, simply fill out the form on the sidebar of this post. If you are already a subscriber, please email me at erinulerich@gmail.com or comment below and I will send you the PDF right away.
And my friend in front of the Dean’s office? With time, a teachable heart, and a stready stream of truth in her life, she could step out of the survival mode she is stuck in and begin walking in the hope she was made for.
Soul Care gets to the heart of who we are and what we believe. And it’s important, because we aren’t just bodies that need rest and food. We are whole people, made up of mind, body, and soul, and each part of us needs attention.
Soul Care is connected to our badass because what we believe guides the way we live. Without taking care of our souls, our badass becomes a blustery take-it-or-leave-it, I’m-on-my-own attitude. But it’s really hard to sustain courage, strength and resolve based on our own bluster.
When life takes the wind out of my sails and I’m left thinking Wait, what just happened here? the state of my soul guides my actions.
This subject takes some thinking over, especially if we aren’t used to paying attention to the care of our soul. To help with this, I’ve included the transcript of the video below the video.
I would love your feedback on this section of Back to Badass: Living Life with Courage, Strength, and Resolve.
In this series we’ve talked about taking care of our body through getting enough sleep, eating healthy, and exercise. The fourth area of getting back to badass focuses on taking care of our soul.
I have found in my journey that when I spend time learning about God and about His love for me, it helps me feel balanced, it fuels my fight for hope, and it gives me a foundation for my badass.
Fighting for hope is a trait we share across the globe and have shared through the centuries. No matter how dark our world gets people cling to hope.
I believe that we are drawn to hope, our hearts crave hope, because we were created by the God of hope. He made us for hope, He gave us the ability to hope, and He is the source of lasting hope. And lasting hope is what we need as we push against the darkness in our lives. Lasting hope is bigger than we are because it is grounded in God’s nature and character.
If He created us for hope, it makes sense to get to know Him and find out more about the hope He can give.
How does this connect with getting back to badass? Remember our definition: Badass is a feeling of courage, strength, and resolve. Soul care gives us a foundation for that feeling. Feelings change so easily and our circumstances can change in a heartbeat. And that makes it difficult to hold on to that feeling of courage, strength, and resolve. But the more I learn about God and His love for me – His love that never changes – it gives me steady footing.
If lasting hope is grounded in God’s nature and character, then we can experience this hope by getting to know Him. We come face to face with Him in His Word. Through the pages of the Bible we read what He says about who He is, who we are, and how much He wants to be in relationship with us.
In Soul care, two of the most important questions we can ask ourselves are:
How do I view God? and How do I believe God views me?
We live much of our live based on the answers to these questions.
For a large portion of my life I thought God was distant, disappointed in me, and loved me because He had to. I got the picture that Jesus was a reluctant Savior. As a result, I alternated between feeling like I could never measure up, so why try, and working hard doing good things to try to earn God’s love.
This yo-yo-ing back and forth was exhausting. I finally hit a point where I asked myself, Is what I believe about God accurate or am I just repeating what others have said through the years? So I started looking in the Bible for the words and phrases God uses to describe who He is, and the words and phrases He uses to describe what He thinks about me.
The Bible is more than a book. It is God’s words, saying this is Who I am, this is how much I love you, and this is what I’ve made you for.
And what I’ve found is that God loves me fiercely and wants His best for me. And, at the same time, sometimes His best comes through difficult times. But in those difficult times He is with me and He gives me the courage, strength, and resolve to keep going.
We tend to define God’s love based on our circumstances. If things are good, God must love me, if things are bad, He must be mad at me. But the difficult times are times when we can run toward God and toward His truth and find our courage, strength, and resolve in Him.
Badass rooted in God doesn’t waver with circumstance. Because He is steady, we can rest our feet firmly on Him. Because He is steady, we can believe beautiful truths like : I am loved because God loves me. I am not alone because God is with me. I have worth because God made me for purpose.
Finding my worth in Him gives me courage to do big, scary things. And when darkness does close in, having my hope in God gives me the resolve to keep on going.
Soul care helps us walk in courage, strength, and resolve in spite of our circumstances and in spite of how we might feel.
The Action Point for today is to answer those two important questions:
How do you view God and How you do believe He views you?
The answers to those questions really do shape our lives.
I would love to know your thoughts on soul care. Do you have books or resources that help you in this area?
