Life is a process of becoming more aware of yourself and others. As you do, you become more effective at life and work. As you pay attention to those around you, you notice different types of people.

Understanding things like what drives them, how they communicate, how they contribute, what they need, and what can be their downfall, will help you as you relate to them.

In addition, it may be helpful to see examples from the Bible, key verses, and a word to remember.

Everyone is different, and...

One morning I sat down to spend time with God.

Sometimes I make a specific appointment with him and other times I don’t. I’ve found that he’s flexible and can always see me on a whim. I don’t know how he does this with such a full schedule, but I’m grateful.

Our time didn’t start off well. Yeah, I showed up, which is an accomplishment because half the time we make plans, I ditch. But here, now, something was off. We didn’t have the usual...

Sometimes when I drop our children off at Sunday school, I wonder what’s really going on. Don’t get me wrong – it’s a great church with a great children’s program. There are whimsical characters painted on the walls, shelves full of toys, boxes of crafts, reams of Bible curriculum. There is a check-in and check-out process so parents leave with the right child.

And there are lots of people who love our kids – from the director of the program to the shift...

Last time we talked about the benefits of creating a role and outcome statement for employees. Now let's talk about how to do it. Only 60% of U.S. employees strongly agree that they know what is expected of them at work, which leaves 40% guessing and the engagement level plummeting.

At my day job at EnergyCAP, Inc., we’ve created role and outcome statements for every employee, which are accessible to the entire company. Like I said, doing so has yielded big benefits for our employees,...

A few years ago, the Barna Group released results from a multiple year survey involving 3,000 self-described Christians. The survey was about spiritual gifts. Although it’s clear from the Bible that spiritual gifts matter deeply to the health of the Church, the survey revealed four troubling statistics.

28% Think They're Empty-Handed

For example, 1 Corinthians 12 says twice that spiritual gifts are given to each believer, but 28% said they didn’t have a spiritual gift....

Jesus said, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled" (Matthew 5:6).

What does it mean to be filled by God? It begins with hunger.

I've been praying before, and suddenly, everything disappeared. All that mattered was what he said, what he promised. All that mattered was what he did, what he was doing. All that mattered was God.

I was at once like the dark, barren world before it was made, still formless and empty and void. Then slowly and surely...

Someone once asked me what difference Jesus Christ makes. It’s a good question. We should be able to see Christ in his followers. Unfortunately sometimes we don’t. Sometimes Christians act far from the person of Jesus we see in the Bible. And they repel others from the magnificent, passionate, and revolutionary Jesus. I’m sure I have at times.

But let’s not forget that it’s a process. We don’t grow into Jesus and become a new creation fused of Christ and us...

You may know that I’m a life coach and I use various personality assessments in my work. Some people think personality assessments are chiefly self-centered activities, driving us to sit around all day pondering ourselves, “Here’s what I think about me, what do you think about me?” And therefore, they should be avoided.

But I have a different opinion. I think all activities can be self-centered.

Even the act of helping people, which at first sounds nobly altruistic,...

At a recent “Strengths Bag Lunch,” employees of EnergyCAP, Inc. (ECI) discussed how to get better at “Responsibility.” The entire company has taken the CliftonStrengths assessment, which measures 34 areas of talent. The idea is to help people to develop their top areas of talent into strengths, and then utilize their strengths to achieve their outcomes.

This simple approach yields great results. Studies show that when folks are able to do what they do best every day,...

I read the story of a man who was accused of a crime he didn’t commit, and because he didn’t have fancy lawyers, he went to prison.

He spent 19 years there, and although he didn’t do what they say he did, he decided to make the most of it. He learned to speak Spanish and play seven instruments and earned a college degree.

He came up for parole four times, and even though he learned to do these civilized things and behaved well, they weren’t good enough reasons for the...