Hope Through Courageous Living
Hope Through Courageous Living
Using Your Joy To Find Ways To Help Other People
How are you doing? I hope you’re doing well, and finding frequent moments of joy and wonder. My life is pretty full of joy right now. I’m thankful for all of God’s blessings. I’m also finding great joy by experimenting with living courageously. This isn’t to say that I’ve been living timidly up to now! But I’m deciding that this year is one where I’m going to purposefully choose to not listen to voices of fear that swirl around inside me. Voices that say, “Who do you think you are?” or “Nobody cares about what you have to say.”
Now when I hear those voices of fear I say, “I’m God’s beloved, created uniquely and filled with purpose. My life experiences have equipped me with perspectives that can bring life, love, and hope to other people.”
(I maybe don’t use all those words…but that’s my general sentiment these days.)
I’m letting go of worrying about what other people think about me. I’m letting go of trying to prove that I’m a person of value that other people should be interested in. These two things have held me back from being truly free to operate courageously, living out of my joy, and intentionally offering goodness into the world.
And, as a result, I’m finding that my life has been injected with a tremendous amount of excitement about what’s ahead…some may call that hope. I do.
First Step
This Hope Coach newsletter was the first step in living courageously—giving myself a weekly assignment to write authentically, creatively, and with excellence. The whole goal is to offer practical ways for you to access hope in your own life. Is it working?
Second Step
The next step was the creation of my new podcast Saving My Faith. And I’m having a blast! Over the years, I’ve interviewed several hundred people, whether for my work in radio or writing books or feature stories for magazines. And now I’m choosing people that I find fascinating and brilliant and insightful and asking them to spend a little bit of time chatting about our spiritual lives and how we can hang onto our faith, in spite of negative or painful experiences we might’ve had in church.
My first interview—I hope you get to listen to it—is with a therapist and author who I met through narrating the audiobook for his outstanding new book, Attached To God. I divided my conversation with Krispin into two parts:
Click to hear Part One: Seeing God As Healer
And click to hear Part Two: Coming Home To Where You’re Loved
You can also listen to my podcast anywhere you normally listen to podcasts (like Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher, etc) - and please like & subscribe! It’s super helpful when you interact, as it helps other people to be more likely to find it. I’ve got some really interesting conversations lined up…. I can’t wait.
Please Know This…
I want you to know I’m not doing any of this to inspire admiration, but to inspire you to action, to find ways that you can live out the hope that you have, and put it out into a world that so desperately needs it.
Friend, you are God’s beloved, created uniquely and filled with purpose. Your life experiences have equipped you with perspectives that can bring life, love, and hope to other people.
One More Thing
The Hope Coach and my podcast are reader-supported. I’m super grateful you are taking the time to read, listen, and share the things you find the most meaningful. My intention is to always make them available for free, but if you’d like to support my work, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. When you click, you’ll be presented with a few options. Thank you, in advance!
I wish I could adequately express how much you have encouraged me when I doubted myself. I have just shouldered the role of GRANDMOTHER to 2 teeanagers, both raised subliminally Catholic, NOT OVERTLY, and I'm overtly protestant. Your encouragement opened a couple of doors that I didn't even recognize as "doors", let alone the fact that they were closed ...GOD is definitely using you as an "instrument" of His peace so my " advice" is to keep "listening" to that "still, small voice" and our God will SHOUT OUT what He wants you to do! And I, for one, personally appreciate your love and dedication!
I wrote a song in 1996 when the Lord gave it to me up in the state of Washington. It's called HEAL OUR LAND. ITS A PRAYER.
All the nations are on a collision course with their Maker. Heal Our Land, a prayer of repentance was recorded by me a few years later. It was a great burden for yrs. To get the song out. So when I had a sight on REVERBNATION...till last year, I gave it to anyone to listen to or to record if they were a singer. Gave away the background track.
If you google Songbirdcindy - Cindy Tilkens Jennings, on you tube... Heal Our Land... you can hear it. At the end... past the credits...after music stops is a message.