Seeing, Praising, Connecting

When someone asks you how you’re doing, do you reply, “Surviving”? Or maybe, “Getting by”? Or how about, “Meh?”

I made my grand appearance from my mother’s womb wearing a label, even before they slapped a wristband on me. This label said, “Christian,” and as if I were a pillow with that “Do Not Remove” label, I was serious about keeping it.

Throughout my Christian upbringing, if you asked me how I was doing, my response would always be something like, “Doing great!” Liar. “God is good!” Not how I felt. “It’s a beautiful day!” Oh brother.

As a “Christian” teenager, I began to engage in activities that were not Christian at all. I tried to stop, but they had a stranglehold on me. I knew what I was doing was wrong, and my rather accurate picture of myself as a guilty hypocrite shoved me into a dark closet of depression. I began to sense an emotional cloud over my head, and it just wouldn’t go away no matter what I did. That cloud rained on my sense of purpose, eventually drowning it in a murky pool of moldy, desperate helplessness. I remember lying on my bed in the middle of the day, my biggest goal to merely survive the next twenty-four hours, preferably by sleeping.

Then God stepped in. I won’t repeat the story here, as you can read all about it in my first book, “I’ve Lost Control: And So Can You.” But the upshot is that, when I let him, God climbed into the car of my life, placed his foot on the accelerator, and began a process of taking me from more and more emptiness, failure, and depression, to more and more purpose, victory, and joy.

How did God accelerate joy in my life? By showing me:

• The astonishing and transforming power of seeing him more clearly

• The jaw-dropping and transforming power of praising him

• The miraculous and transforming power of connecting
  

My goal is to share these concepts with you in my books, in my social media, in this blog, and most importantly, in real life. If you are responding to the How are you question with “surviving,” “getting by,” or “meh,” I want to connect with you. Connected, we can accelerate joy and leave “just surviving” in the dust!