The Christian Habits Podcast

On today’s episode of the Christian Habits Podcast, I interview Neil Anderson about gaining freedom in Christ. Neil Anderson is the author of many best-selling books including The Bondage Breaker and Victory Over the Darkness. He writes and speaks worldwide, helping people resolve personal and spiritual conflicts.

Here are just a few of the things we’ll be discussing on today’s podcast:

• What a stronghold is and how to break free from strongholds.
• The steps to freedom in Christ.
• Why it’s important to know who we are in Christ
• The difference between identifying ourselves as sinners saved by grace or saints who sin
• How unforgiveness affects us and why we need to forgive
• The importance of replacing lies with truth
• The importance of letting go of rebellion and submitting to God
• How the things we learn in childhood affect us.

Here are two tips I got from Neil’s podcast that I thought were super helpful:

1. Go through the Steps to Freedom in Christ that are in his books. Neil said that if you want information, you should read the book. If you want transformation, do the Steps to Freedom in Christ with God because we need an encounter with God if we want transformation.
2. Try reading through the “Who Am I in Christ” once a day for 30 days. Neil gave a great example on the podcast of a person who was transformed by doing this. Click here for a downloadable PDF: Who I Am in Christ

• Victory Over the Darkness
• Freedom from Fear
• The Bondage Breaker
• Freedom from Addiction
• A Way of Escape: Freedom from Sexual Strongholds
• Managing Your Anger
• How to Truth Journal

• Great free resources from Neil’s website
• Steps to Freedom in Christ

• To listen or subscribe on Apple Podcasts: click here
• To listen or subscribe on Android: click here
• To listen or subscribe on Stitcher: click here
• To listen or subscribe on Google Play: click here
• To listen or subscribe on Spotify: click here

The post Breaking Free from Strongholds with Neil Anderson appeared first on Barb Raveling.

How do you hold onto your faith when it seems like God has disappeared? Whether in struggle, illness, death, or failure, the presence of pain is often so overwhelming it can drown out God’s voice. On today’s episode of the Christian Habits Podcast, I visit with Michele Cushatt who offers hope and faith for times when life is so hard we can’t always feel God’s presence.

A three-time head and neck cancer survivor, Michele is a (reluctant) expert of trauma, pain and the deep human need for authentic connection. Michele shares her story on the podcast and also helps us with the following questions:

• Why doesn’t God take away the pain?
• What do you do on the days when the emotional and/or physical pain feels devastating?
• How do you deal with the doubts about your faith that often accompany relentless pain?
• How do you deal with the fairness issue–when it seems like everyone else has great lives and you’re stuck with this hard life?
• What final advice do you have for the person who is suffering?

Michele also discusses these questions and more in her new book, Relentless: The Unshakeable Presence of a God Who Never Leaves. Like the Old Testament story of Joshua’s altar of twelve stones, Relentless delivers twelve key biblical stories that demonstrate God’s unfailing presence.

Each chapter offers an invitation to identify a “stone” in your own life as tangible evidence of God’s nearness. With the turn of the last page, you will have discovered twelve markers of your own, an altar of memory to carry you through questions and losses, even ones yet to come.

• To listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts: click here
• To listen and subscribe on Android: click here
• To listen and subscribe on Stitcher: click here
• To listen and subscribe on Google Play: click here

The post How to Hold Onto Your Faith When Life Is Hard with Michele Cushatt appeared first on Barb Raveling.

A few weeks ago, I asked members of my Facebook page if they were afraid of failure. I was overwhelmed by the responses. It seems that I’m not the only one out there who fears failure! In today’s episode of the Christian Habits Podcast, we’ll talk about seven steps you can take to overcome fear of failure. But first let’s look at some of the things we’re afraid of.

Here are just a few of the examples Facebook readers gave of the areas where they were afraid of failure.

• Trying weight loss again after so many defeats.
• Messing up at work.
• Trying to be social and being or feeling rejected.
• Starting your own company and having it not work.
• Making decisions because you might make the wrong one.
• Deciding to resign and stay at home with the kids.
• Losing weight and then gaining it back.
• Raising kids.

There’s no end to the things we could come up with in the fear of failure arena. Let’s take a look at how to overcome fear of failure.

If you’d rather listen to this as an expanded podcast episode on the Christian Habits Podcast, click on the links below. Keep reading for the blog post version.

• To listen or subscribe on Apple Podcasts: click here
• To listen or subscribe on Android: click here
• To listen or subscribe on Stitcher: click here
• To listen or subscribe on Google Play: click here
• To listen or subscribe on Spotify: click here

How to Overcome Fear of Failure

We can’t fight something until we know what we’re fighting. Thus the first step in overcoming fear of failure is to ask yourself, “What am I most afraid of?” and “Why am I afraid of that?”

Naming your fear will help you take the next step which is to evaluate your fear.

Here’s an example: I’m afraid whenever I publish a new book. When I ask the question, “What am I most afraid of?” my answer is that I’m afraid someone will write a horrible review on Amazon berating me up and down for how terrible my book is.

When I ask the next question, “Why am I afraid of that,” I answer with “then no one else will buy my book” and “all of my friends and family will read the negative review and think I’m a loser.”

I’m not the only author with these fears, but there are many who don’t feel this way. I was talking to one very successful artist a few months ago and he told me that every time he finishes a painting he thinks its great and that everyone will love it. By the time I finish a book, I usually think it’s terrible and that everyone will hate it. This is probably the main reason I’m so bad at doing book launches – I’m afraid to put the new book out there.

Often our fears are shaped by our childhood. When I was young, I had two different experiences where I did something in a public way and got yelled at for not doing it perfectly enough. Thankfully, God has given us wonderful brains we can use to evaluate those things we believe and see if they’re true. This leads to the next step.

When we have a nameless fear it’s pretty easy to be convinced that what we fear will take place. But when we name it, we often realize that oh, that’s probably not going to happen. This is helpful. For example, when I tell myself there’s a less than 1% chance of my fear coming true, it’s easier to see that it’s ridiculous to worry about it. And easier to stop worrying.

Let’s see how this works with my publishing example: Is it true that no one else will buy my book if I have a terrible review for it? No, that’s not true unless 1) all of the reviews for the book are bad or 2) there aren’t enough good reviews to counteract the bad ones.

It’s also true that God is really in charge of all of this, not me, and my only responsibility is to do my best to write the book He wants me to write. The rest is up to Him.

Is it true that all of my ...

Do you ever feel like you have a million things to do, but you only have time and energy for about three things? Do you often ignore the important things in life because you’re too busy doing the million things in life? If so, you’re in the same boat as most of us. We’ve all experienced this at some point. The question is, “How do you stop feeling overwhelmed when you have a million things to do?”

We’ll be talking about that today in the Christian Habits Podcast (but I’ve also included a summary below if you don’t have time to listen to the podcast).

• To listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts: click here
• To listen and subscribe on Android: click here
• To listen and subscribe on Stitcher: click here
• To listen and subscribe on Google Play: click here

1. Do the important things first.

In Dr. Stephen Covey’s book First Things First, he gives an example of how to put a few big rocks and lots of little rocks and pebbles into a jar. If you start with the big rocks and fill in with the little rocks and pebbles, it works. But if you start with the pebbles and fill in with the big rocks, they don’t all fit.

In like manner, when we focus our lives on all the little details, we ignore the important things we need to do (the big rocks) and that completely stresses us out. We can avoid that by starting the day with this question: What are the three most important things I need to do today?

2. Don’t let others choose your important things.

Often we let other people answer that question for us. We’ll open an email and all of a sudden that email item is first on our list. We spend an hour working on it, ignoring our other to-dos, even though the email to-do wasn’t all that important.

Or we’ll get involved in projects and goals that aren’t important to us–all because someone else wants us to do them or we feel like we should do them.

Sometimes when we feel like we should do something, it’s legitimate. God wants us to do that thing too. But other times it’s not legitimate. It’s on our list only because others want it on our list or because experts tell us we should do that thing.

This happens on a daily basis, but it also happens on a monthly and yearly basis. If you look at your life, you may find all kinds of things in it that don’t belong there. Not because they’re bad things, but because we don’t have time to do them.

3. Eliminate the things that don’t belong on your list.

Sometimes we’re overwhelmed because we’re procrastinating or not managing our time well, but other times we’re overwhelmed because we really do have too much on our plate. We’re trying to fit too many huge rocks into that quart-sized jar.

When that happens we need to take a close look at our lives and visit with God about what to keep and what to eliminate. If you need help with this, I have a chapter on reducing overwhelm in my Freedom from Procrastination Bible study.

4. Don’t let the little things distract you.

This happened to me when I was writing this blog post/podcast. I had the outline all ready and turned on my computer to start typing. Then I thought, I wonder if I’ve ever written on this topic before? So I did a search, and sure enough, I had a blog post on it. I started reading it, wondered if that outline was better, and before I knew it, 15 minutes was wasted.

This happens to me all the time, and I’m guessing it does to you too! We have so many options for distraction these days, it’s not even funny. Since a whole post could be written on how to focus, I won’t go into that here. Just be aware that this is something to think about and keep reeling yourself back in when you find yourself being distracted.

5. Go to God for help.

Last but not least, we need to go to God for help.

Earlier this week, I was sitting at a restaurant in the Denver airport having a cup of coffee and journaling. I’d already sanitized my hands, checked the news for Montana (6 cases), and was wondering if I should sanitize my hands again since I’d just picked up the cream pitcher to pour cream in my coffee. As I took all these unusual precautions, I thought of you guys and wondered, How are you doing with coronavirus anxiety?

Note: My fork is on my journal so it doesn’t pick up germs from the table!

Are you in a frenzy? Taking precautions but not super anxious? Or are you blowing the whole thing off and living life as usual?

No matter which camp you fall into, we’re all affected by Covid-19. Either we’re in immediate danger of the virus itself, someone we love is in danger, or we’re affected by all the closures.

It’s no longer life as usual.

On today’s episode of the Christian Habits Podcast, we’ll be talking about six tips for letting go of coronavirus anxiety, stress, and boredom. These are the tips we’ll be discussing:

(We’ll go into these more in depth on the podcast. Scroll down to see how to listen to the podcast.)

1. Stay away from the news as much as possible (at least if you tend to be a worrier).
2. Visit with God about the things you read.
3. Renew when necessary.
4. Plan your day.
5. Place your trust in God–not fun, safety, health, or being in control.
6. Every time you catch yourself being worried, bored, or stressed, pray for the person you’re worried about, thank God for five different things, or do something for someone who needs help.

I’ll also be doing 3-5 minute Facebook lives for the next few weeks on Monday through Friday (and maybe Saturday) beginning Monday, March 23 at 11:00 EST. You can find these on my Facebook author page.

I think if you click the like and follow button, notices of these FB lives will appear in your notifications (you can turn the notifications off if you don’t want to be notified). You can also catch the replay of these later by going to my Facebook page and looking in the posts for that day or clicking on videos on that page.

During the FB Lives, we’ll be going through Philippians and discussing things like:

• Finding peace in the midst of chaos
• Not beating ourselves up when we’re not handling things well
• Persevering (and tips) for handling things better
• Loving each other
• Growth vs. grumpy
• Getting along with each other in close quarters (both in parenting and marriage)
• How to stop coping with food and internet
• How new trials such as coronavirus quarantine and potential illness affect our walk with God, our attitude, and our habits
• An antidote to worry
• How to dwell on the good

At the beginning of each Facebook Live, I’ll let you know if I have any openings for coaching that day – and then you can leave a comment on the video if you’d like to coach. These coaching calls can be used for help with things like marriage, parenting, fear, anxiety, and procrastination. (I won’t be doing any weight loss coaching during those calls.) I’ll probably only have 5-6 openings each week but I’m hoping I can help a few of you at least.

I’ll also include a daily challenge at the end of each Facebook Live based on the topic for that day. Hope to see you Monday morning on Facebook!

To listen to today’s podcast, click on the links below:

• To listen or subscribe on Apple Podcasts: click here
• To listen or subscribe on Android: click here
• To listen or subscribe on Stitcher: click here
• To listen or subscribe on Google Play: click here
• To listen or subscribe on Spotify: click here

The post Coronavirus Anxiety, Stress, and Boredom: 6 Tips + Facebook Live appeared first on Barb Raveling.