The Daily CHEW™
Moving God’s Love from Head to Heart for Christian Professionals
My word for the year was simplify. I lowered client-facing hours. I got back to the gym. I increased family time. I went all-in on helping Christian high performers get the love of God from head to heart. Essentialism and I became close friends again. I was, by any honest measure, finally practicing what I have been preaching for years about staying in the most important part of the role.
Then my attorney made a suggestion that complicated everything. We have five team members. She told me to split the company into three LLCs — Christian counseling and life coaching in one entity, bespoke executive coaching in a second, and our productized services like Call & Design and Hiring & Integration in a third. Three LLCs. Three email addresses (right after I finally got down to one). Three QuickBooks. Three of everything.
My first reaction was that the year’s theme had just blown up.
Then, sitting with it, I realized nothing had actually changed. The work is the same. The mission is the same. The all-in focus on the love of God moving from head to heart is the same. Only the way the work is being presented has changed — into three clean expressions instead of one tangled one.
This is what I am learning. There are times when being flexible means looking at a scenario from a perspective so different from your own that, at first, it feels like the opposite of what you committed to. The work is to get out of your own head long enough to see the good in what looked like a mess — and then jump to gratitude, rejoice in the complexity, pray and ask God for wisdom, and watch how He is sharpening a plan you thought was already solid.
I am seeing real good from what felt at first like complication. I see how to accomplish the vision better than I would have without the suggestion. But I had to get around my own rigidity first.
“Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the LORD that will stand.” — Proverbs 19:21, ESV. God does not protect my plan when His purpose is bigger than my plan. Scripture reveals that the leader who clings to the shape of his vision can miss the wisdom of the One refining it. Trust that God’s love is wise enough to complicate a clean plan when the complication serves the call.
Here is the question for this Friday: If I really believed God’s love is wise enough to refine a plan I thought was already solid — even by introducing what looks like complexity — how would that change the way I respond to the unexpected suggestion in front of me this week?
One move before the weekend: Name one place this season where something has felt like it blew up your plan. Ask three questions in order: What in this is genuinely good? What is God refining in me by it? What is the next faithful step? Write the answers in one paragraph. If this is the only thing I do from this CHEW today, it is enough.
With you on the journey,
Ryan
Forward this to the person who came to mind while you were reading.
If you had to put this into one sentence for today, what would you say God is inviting you to rest in or return to?
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