Faith and Freedom

Savvy Saturdays - 2/22/20

Faith and Freedom

Hello friends,

Greetings from Austin!

This past week has been a difficult but good week. God deepened a lot of convictions in my heart, such as how I want to serve brothers in Christs, my coworkers, and my ministry, which allowed for a clearer direction in where He is guiding me in this life.

Though there are still lots of uncertainties, I hope to press on as I continue to set that foundation of understanding how He views me and live out His promises for me!

In fact, I'm learning that faith is hard to commit to when it comes to living out His promises.

Sure, I believe in Jesus, that He was a real being (fully man yet fully God), and I believe God's Word has a lot of truth to say, but one aspect of faith I find difficult is internalizing and embodying faith.

It's one thing to say you know the characteristics of God and how He sees you:

• a child of God

• an inheritor of His kingdom

• a new creation

• a temple of the Holy Spirit

It's another thing to actually live in freedom with that knowledge.

I've been challenging myself as I meditate over those truths:

• What does it mean to be a child of God and find security in my identity in it?
  

• What does it mean to be a new creation, no longer living in the trauma and dwelling in the past sins, but living with the shackles of guilt and shame removed?
  

• What does it mean to be a temple of the Holy Spirit, cultivating and strengthening both physically, mentally, and spiritually our body to be at our best position to worship God?

These are just a fraction of the many questions I am trying to ask myself as I'm confronted by God's truth, and I hope as I work through each part of the Gospel, I will be more liberated serve and love others.

Anyways there's still a lot to figure out in this life, and I'm excited about the process even as I face the ups and downs. I hope that as y'all work through things in life, y'all will also be able to ask these questions and attempt to understand God's truth not through the head, but through the heart.

Thanks for reading my thoughts, hope y'all continue to run that race in life, and I'll see y'all in the next update!

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Weekly Collections

Faith

• How Do I Let Go of Anger over Past Wrongs? - Ask Pastor John Podcast
  

• Why You Should Seek God When You Feel Lonely - Crossway
  

• Can Sickness Be Better Than Health? - DesiringGod

Entrepreneurship

• Costco Capitalism - Bryan Lehrer
  An interesting take on how Costco and its stakeholders build a structurally 'fair' company
  

• Lessons from Tesla's Approach to Innovation - Harvard Business Review
  
  Innovation capital consists of four factors:

1. Who you are (innovation-specific human capital) — your capacity for forward thinking, creative problem-solving, and persuasion

2. Who you know (innovation-specific social capital) — your social connections with people who have valuable resources for innovation

3. What you’ve done (innovation-specific reputation capital) — your track record and reputation for innovation

4. The things you do to generate attention and credibility for yourself and your ideas (what we call impression amplifiers). Politicians with political capital can get others to join them in pursuing their objectives; in a similar fashion, business leaders with innovation capital can attract the resources needed for innovation to flourish.

Productivity

• An Astronaut's Guide to Mental Models - FS Blog
  

• 95%-ile isn't that good - Danluu

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Verse of the Week

“For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.”
- Galatians 1:10 ESV

Challenging Quote

"If you don't have the balls to say it twice, don't say it once"
- anonymous