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Mark Eastman

What is True Love and What Does it Look Like?

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Life is Full of Difficulties, But Love Makes It Easier to Get Through Them

We all experience difficulties in life. Some are more severe than others. Sometimes these situations can suck us down into depression and we just want to hide under the covers and stay there.

This is how Naomi felt after their family moved because where they lived was experiencing a famine. Then after moving, her husband died. Her sons both married and then a few years later they died. This was a lot to handle.

Then Naomi heard that the famine was over. She still had family there…so she decided to move back. Her daughters-in-law decided to go with her. Naomi told them they would be better off staying there with their families. Ruth, one of the daughters-in-law was having none of it. She loved Naomi and was going with her.

Ruth told Naomi, “Wherever you go, I will go. Wherever you sleep, I will sleep. Your people will be my people. Your God will be my God. Where you die, I will die, and that is where I will be buried.” Ruth 1:1-18

Life is full of difficult decisions, but they are much easier when we have the support from people we love and that love us.

This is what true love looks like.

Too often, we associate love with romance and forget how much more it is. It is so much more than the romantic love. There are four types of love –

  • Affection – Affection covers an array of loves. The care of mother to baby is a picture of affection. It relies on the expected and the familiar. “Affection almost slinks or seeps through our lives. It lives with humble, un-dress, private things; soft slippers, old clothes, old jokes, the thump of a sleepy dog’s tail on the kitchen floor, the sound of a sewing-machine…”
  • Friendship – Friendship is the love dismissed. “To the Ancients, Friendship seemed the happiest and most fully human of all loves, the crown of life and the school of virtue. The modern world, in comparison, ignores it.”  Friendships have begun faith movements, developed entire areas of thought, and contributed to many projects from art to business.
  • Romantic – Different than friendship, lovers, “are always talking to one another about their love” and “are normally face to face, absorbed in each other.” There’s a reason Scripture teaches this bond of man and woman, from Genesis onward, is the picture of God’s love for the world, Christ for his bride, the church. When we discover afresh that romance is more deeply set than the drivel served up by our culture, then we will more rightly hold our spouse in the model of unconditional love.
  • Charity – This is our chief aim, the unconditional love of the Father given to us through his Son. Affection, friendship and romantic love are each the training ground for charity to grow. We are made to love and we are in want of it. If we play it safe, we are not living out the Gospel, but burying the coin in the safe ground, as the parable says. We are taught in the Scripture to love those who are broken, not for some vague humanitarian effort, but to make disciples of all nations, “baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19-20).

Jesus is love. He is what true love looks like.

After Naomi and Ruth got home, Ruth married Boaz, they had a son named Obed, who was the father of Jesse and Jesse was the father of David. This is the family of Jesus. The love that Naomi and Ruth shared changed their lives and the world’s.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.  It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. (1 Corinthians 13:4-7)

We come from a long line of Love. Go and share that love with everyone you can.

How To Manage Your Time and Prevent It from Becoming a Horror Story

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Self-employment is Scary Enough Without the Time Monster Chasing You

With this being Halloween season there are a lot of scary things out there. Managing your time as an entrepreneur doesn’t have to be one of them.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve discussed time management and how to keep it from being as complicated as rocket science. The first thing was being intentional and taking control of it.

The problem isn’t a lack of time…it’s a lack of self-control.

The second thing we discussed was getting your priorities in order and not letting the hot fires have control. It is easy to get distracted by all the things there are to do. Sometimes we need to fight hot fires, but it’s up to us to be clear on which fires are the priority.

It’s a matter of clarity before the fires even start.

My core values are a large part of my clarity of which fires are the most important and when. One of those core values is spending time wisely because there’s a limited amount. This is the third thing needed to be successful with managing time.

Depending on our abilities, desires and needs, we can make more money, make more friends, find more work, design new things, discover new ideas. Not that those things are easy, but they can be done.

With TIME…. you’ve got what you’ve got and there ain’t no more.

Here are 5 reasons why so many struggle with this –

  1. Trying to do too many things
  2. Lack of focus
  3. Not saying NO!
  4. Trying to do it all by myself
  5. Procrastination

(You can get more details about these reasons here)

God has given each of us this TIME to spend and He has given us the right amount for everything, Ecclesiastes 3. It’s up to us to spend it wisely!

With time being such a valuable commodity, it’s critically important to spend it wisely.

What is Worth Your Time? Not, “what your time is worth”. This changes the perspective of how we spend our time. What things are most important for me to spend time doing. Is it a call from one of my kids, serving a customer by solving a problem, spending some time with a dying friend or doing some work for the church?

Once time is gone you can never get it back. Don’t waste the little that you have.

This isn’t to say that time doesn’t have a monetary value…because it does. It scared me a little when determined what my time was worth.

Based on my target revenue goal the year I determined that…

my time is worth…$2.23 per minute.

Remembering this gives me a heightened sense of focus.

What spending your time wisely looks like can only be determined by you.

Like most things, we make time management scarier than it really is. Don’t be afraid of the time monster. Just face it down and show it whose boss.

You’ve got this!

The Untapped Power of the Mind is the One Thing That Keeps Most of Us Stuck

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But the Mind Can’t Do It Alone…it Requires Action as Well

Why is it that we doubt what we know? There are countless examples of the power of the human mind, yet we think… “this power only works for other people, doesn’t apply to me”.

Not only is this lack of belief directed at ourselves, ultimately it shows our lack of trust in God.

In Mark 10:46-52, there’s an example of the power of belief and acting on that belief.

The blind Bartimaeus is sitting along the road begging for money as Jesus goes by, he begins shouting. The people told him to be quiet. He shouted for Jesus to help him even more.

Jesus told him to come to Him.

He got up and went to Jesus.

Jesus asked him what he wanted. He said, “I want to see again.”

Jesus said, “Go. You are healed because you believed.”

This is the power of believing and acting on those beliefs.

Too often people find themselves in a bad situation like Bartimaeus and give in and give up. They feel angry, hurt, defeated or afraid and just stay there. It’s okay to have these feelings…just not to stay there. We can fight the pain, or we can accept it, learn from it and move forward like Antoinette Bosco.

During her eventful life, Antoinette “Toni” Bosco had plenty of reasons to feel abandoned by God. A mentally ill mother, heavy responsibilities early in life, a disastrous arranged marriage, the death of three of her seven children – the list is a painful one. But, instead of turning her back on God, she decided to embrace Him even more.

She attributed much of her ability to cope in these difficult life situations to her Italian father who came to America as a young man. He taught her, “To be good to people, to help people, never be cruel and never be angry.”

There was a point of suffering when she just wanted to pull the covers up over her head and hide from the world. She was telling herself; I just can’t get up anymore. Then she heard another voice…

If you think you can’t or you think you can…you’re right.

“I would not have gotten through my life without my faith. I do believe that the Lord Jesus is with me all the time.”

Bosco has learned that you never know what’s going to come next in life, but no matter what, it is essential to keep the faith.

“I know every day my prayer is “Be with me and let me know that You are with me,’” she said. “So far that has sustained me.”

Use the power of your mind, given to you by your Creator and start moving forward to fulfill your life.

Why is it so Hard to Decide Which Thing is More Important Than Another?

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Too Often, Prioritizing Comes Down to What the Hottest Fire Is

What should I do first? There are so many things to choose from. What makes one thing more important?

Today we’ll talk priorities.

I’ve spent the last couple of weeks discussing how we make managing our time more complicated than it needs to be and how if we’re intentional we can manage it better.

This is no different than any decisions we make. We have the power. We can choose.

But this is the hard part. It makes us responsible. If it doesn’t work out…it’s our fault. We’re to blame.

Don’t kid yourself…your choices are always your fault. Just own it, make the best choices you can and keep moving forward.

Making these kinds of decisions ultimately comes down to who you are. You need to get clear about this and prioritize accordingly.

It comes down to deciding what your big rocks are.

Growing in your faith? Spending more time with your family? Serving your customers better? Paying off debt? Taking better care of yourself physically and mentally? Helping with community projects?

All good things…

But there’s a limited space in your time jar and only so many rocks will fit.

Deciding what’s urgent, important or not is hard. Too much of the time we find ourselves fighting fires. Too often, this comes from a lack of preparation.

Most of us are aware of the time management quadrant which uses the idea of sorting things into the 4 different areas.

  • Quadrant 1 is fire-fighting (urgent & important). This is easily recognized and where most of us spend way too much time. This is the get down to the core action of, if the house is on fire and the phones ringing…do we answer the phone or get the kids out of the house? The problem is we should have spent more on important rather than urgent and maybe we could have prevented the fire.
  • Quadrant 2 is quality time (important & not urgent). This is the area where we should focus. It’s where we get the most return on our investment of time and energy. It’s also the hardest because there’s no immediate rush like there is when fighting fires.
  • Quadrant 3 is distractions (urgent & not important). We can fill this quadrant with an endless list of small and trivial tasks convincing ourselves that they are important, because they probably are. The things in this quadrant require less time and energy than the ‘really’ important tasks. The question is, are you doing them because they’re important…or because it feels good to check thing off the list?
  • Quadrant 4 is time-wasters (not important & not urgent). The things in this quadrant are the things of least importance. These things serve no direct purpose in accomplishing the important things in your life. You want to avoid wasting time on these things.

While this is a great plan, it still comes down to who you are and what your priorities are.

This is the hardest part.

A lack of planning and preparation is what leads to the fires starting. This doesn’t mean that there aren’t going to be times when someone throws a match into your plans, and you have to stop what you’re doing and fight the fire.

The better prepared we are the less hot the fire will be and the quicker it can be put out.

Hot fires are a good way to get burned.

Don’t get burned by your time management. Know who you are and what your priorities are and put in the biggest rock first.

It’s Time for “Hot Chocolatey Mornings and Toasted Marshmallow Evenings”

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This is a Great Perspective for the Season of Autumn

Some people like the season of autumn…some not so much. Some people find the shortening of the days and the cooler weather depressing.

An example of this is the lady that noticed her husband becoming grumpy as the days got shorter and overcast. She noticed his mood was sulky and sullen and he was continuously pouting. It had been raining the last two days and she noticed him just standing there looking through the window.

She realized that if something didn’t change, she was going to have to do something. That’s when she determined that if it was still raining tomorrow, she would have to let him back inside.

We all have seasons that we like better than others. Some like the warm sunny days of summer. Others like the new beginning of the spring. Of course, there are those of us that like the slowing down that comes with the cold days of winter. And don’t forget the beautiful colors of the leaves in autumn.

Everything needs a season and there’s a season for everything.

Seasons are part of God’s plan as shown to us in Ecclesiastes 3:1-8.

Christopher Robin gave Winnie the Pooh a calendar as a way to track the days, weeks, months and seasons. The calendar stopped at each season, which lead Pooh, Piglet, Eeyore, Rabbit and Owl to explore the world around them and noticing the changes. Among them: the water in the pond becomes hard and slick to skate on when it gets cold in the winter and becomes refreshing and fun to swim in when it gets warm in the summer.

As is typical of Winnie the Pooh, he found the positives rather than the negatives in the changing of the seasons. This is evident in his statement about autumn.

“It’s the first day of autumn! A time of hot chocolatey mornings, and toasty marshmallow evenings, and, best of all, leaping into leaves!”

Every season of the year and life has good and bad things about them. It’s up to us to choose which we’re going to focus on in each season.

We would all be happier if we looked at the seasons and everything else in life more like Winnie the Pooh.

Everything is always moving and changing.

The changing of the seasons is a way to physically see the movement of time.

It’s up to you to decide what your seasonal focus will be on.

You Can Choose to Manage Your Time Better or Not…it’s Up to You

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Be Intentional About the Actions You Take to Fight Against the Time Monster

Last week I wrote about how we tend to make time management more complicated than it needs to be. Making things more difficult than needed is just human nature. Those of us that are self-employed seem to take this to a whole different level. It doesn’t have to be this way.

Like everything in life, we have choices. Time management is no different.

The three things that I said need to be used to successfully manage time were…

  • Intentionality
  • Prioritization
  • Spending time wisely

Today’s focus is INTENTIONALITY

Being intentional is a conscious design or purpose about your choices and actions. It is deciding what you’re going to do and doing it.

Why is it that we will be on time to meetings with other people, but not with ourselves?

If I have a day full of meetings and appointments, I will be on time to all of them. But if I fill my day with tasks and projects that don’t involve anyone but me, I’ll be running late shortly after getting started?

Think about it like this…Why is it that we can make it to the airport in plenty of time for our flight or not dare be late to our child’s wedding, but won’t set down and get to work on that project that needs to be worked on?

How we choose to spend our time is going to vary for each of us. What we spend it on is not the issue. Being intentional about it is.

The problem is not a lack of time, it’s a lack of control

This does not mean that it’s easy. There is a time monster that will eat up all your time if you let it. He will gobble it up as soon as it’s available and not leave anything but crumbs.

We have to intentionally confront this monster. Closing your eyes and putting your hands over your ears doesn’t make him any less real. He’s out there and he likes the taste of time.

The intentional, continuous, focus of small actions over time will bring the monster down. The process, known as the “snowball effect”, is the accumulation of small things added to small things until they become a big thing, like a snowball rolling down a hill.

An intentional snowball is the best weapon when dealing with a big hairy time monster.

It feels like there’s not enough time to do everything. I would argue that we’ve been given enough time to do everything we should. The problem is that we’re trying to do too much.

We’ve been given enough time to do everything we are supposed to. God built the world and everything in it in six days. We’ve been given those same six days to build our lives. Granted, building the world is a lot…we just need to remember that we’re not God.

God was intentional about what He was making. We need to treat our mission the same way.

You can do anything you want. You just can’t do everything you want.

Being aware of time and watching the clock also requires intentionality. Time is the most valuable commodity we have. You’ve heard the saying “time is money”. I would argue that time is MORE than money.

Money is a form of exchange for a service or product. We have some control over how fast our money goes…not so with time.

There is a limited amount of time.

Time is continually moving. There is no stopping or slowing it to get more done. If we spend a dollar, we can go make more. Once time is spent…there’s no getting any more.

Managing time requires intentionality. You can’t just wish it to happen. You have to decide to fight the monster and pick up the snowball.

What You Treasure the Most is Where Your Focus Will Be

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Lack of Clarity About This Comes with a High Price Tag

Most of us have heard the story about the rich man unwilling to sell his possessions and give the money to the poor. Mark 10:17-27 This story often leads people to a misunderstanding of what God is asking of us. It’s not that God is against us being wealthy.

It’s about what’s most important to us.

This man’s focus was on his worldly wealth, not God. He had kept all the rules and regulations. But Jesus knew where his heart was. That’s why He tested him with this.

There are plenty of examples of wealthy people doing God’s work that aren’t asked to give up their worldly possessions.

It’s about where our focus is. Is it on the world or God?

Having spent our lives in the world it only makes sense that the world would be our point of reference.

Being rich is so much more than just monetary. Rich is also having a high value or quality. Being well supplied or endowed. This sounds a lot like something God would want us to have and would give us. He has given each of us a high value and qualities. It’s up to us to be focused and spend them wisely.

Having possessions isn’t limited to worldly possessions. Possessions are things possessed. We have been given so much more than just worldly things. We can possess skills, abilities, talents, insight, understanding, thoughts, ideas, etc. It’s our responsibility to use these possessions in the way the Giver intended.

The cost to being unclear about what we should be focused on first and foremost is expensive…just ask the rich young ruler.

We live in a time where we have more things clamoring for our attention than any other time in history. So many of these noisy things just pull our focus away from what’s matters most.

Like talking pants.

Everybody needs pants that tell them when they aren’t zipped up. Right? How novel. It is easy to be pulled away from the things most important. Don’t get me wrong…there are a lot of really fun and interesting gadgets and gizmos out there, and there’s nothing wrong with gadgets and gizmos. We just need to be clear about what our focus is on.

We can choose where our focus will be.

What will you focus on?

Why Do We Make Managing Time as Complicated as Rocket Science?

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When in Reality, It’s as Simple as One, Two, Three

I’ve shared before about some of the great discussions we have in our masterclass. This week’s was no different.

The question that got the gears in my head spinning was this –

When self-employed and working from home, how does one schedule time and determine boundaries?

Now, is this a great question or what. How does one do this?

When working from home it’s easy to be sidetracked by all the things that need done, like – yard work, gardening, vacuuming, washing the dishes, repair projects, laundry, changing the oil in the car, checking out social media, researching new and better computer programs, emailing old friends… You get the point! All the things on this list are worthwhile and important things that need to be done.

There were some great answers from of the group.

  • I work when my wife is gone to work. When she gets home, I stop working and spend time with her.
  • I have an office space that is only accessed by going through the garage, up some stairs and through the attic.
  • I start my day at 8:00 just as if I was going to an office.

The key to managing time is intentionality!

Having been self-employed for most of the past forty years I have a head start on most of the people in this group. But believe me I understand. I’ve struggled with this for years and just began to figure out over the past 8-10 years.

My figuring it out took a big step forward with a wakeup call from God. He got my attention with a board upside the head, literally. This incident persuaded me to step back and look at things differently. I got a more well-rounded, big picture view of life and it helped me to see things differently.

I’m a workaholic and love what I do. Now I look at my whole life, all the different aspects of it, as my employment. This a word that is typically connected to a job, but that’s not completely accurate. Being employed is – the active use of or engagement in services. Being engaged in activity. I see employment as more than just a job.

The freedom perceived as a part of self-employment is the one thing that most often prevents these ventures from succeeding.

One of the biggest issues with self-employment is lack of boundaries. It’s like kids when they first move out of their parent’s home. There’s a newfound freedom. Nobody is looking over their shoulder telling them to get up and go to class or to not stay out late so they can get up and go to work.

Most people have been raised with some kind of structure. Working for someone else is the same thing. When we become self-employed it’s like moving out for the first time. There’s no boss preventing me from washing the dishes or mowing the yard.

This new freedom leads to an uncertain, unclear understanding of what we should do, when we should do it and in what order.

There are three things that need to be present if you are going to be successful in self-employment. –

  • Intentionality – Be intentional about what you spend your time on. Why is it that we won’t be late to a meeting with other people, but will blow off meeting with ourselves? We’ve been given enough time to do everything we should…just not everything we want.
  • Prioritization – This one can be tough. What makes one thing more important than another. This is where being crystal on who you are, who you’re going to help and how you’re going to help them comes in.
  • Spending time wisely – Time is limited. It is the most valuable commodity you have. It’s up to you to decide how much you’re going to spend and what you’re going to spend it on.

The SELF in self-employment means “the buck stops here”. It’s up to me to manage my time…no one else. Our human nature is to make things more complicated than they are or need to be.

Managing time doesn’t have to be rocket science. Intentionally prioritizing how you spend your time is all it takes.

Check back, we will break these down more in the coming weeks.

Open Your Eyes and Ears…You Don’t Want to Miss Out

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Use Your Observances and Experiences to Build a Better You

You know how children’s curiosity is on the go nonstop. It’s runs wide open with no parameters. This is why as adults we have to keep them from touching a hot stove or chasing a ball into the street without looking.

On the other side, experience is a great education tool. Once you burn your finger you understand why not to touch that hot stove.

The 15th century proverb, children should be seen and not heard, originated in religious culture and was a part of that learning process. This was an effort to teach children to respect others, especially adults.

In Mark 10:13-15, Jesus tells His followers to not stop the children from coming to Him. This was an uncommon thing. At that time in history children were seen as non-persons until they became adults. They were to not be heard or seen.

Children shouldn’t be ignored or treated as adults…they’re children. They should be encouraged to be children.

As we grow up, we forget to keep this children’s eagerness to learn. We become stuck in the rut of life with our heads down shoveling our way forward.

We never look up to see God’s wonders that are all around us.

I see our relationship with God like a child’s relationship with an adult. He knows a lot more about things than I do. At the same time, He wants me to open my eyes and ears to the world around me. He loves it when I come to Him and ask Him questions.

We need to open our eyes and ears.

I approach my relationship with God as a mentor/advisor. Someone to ask questions of and get advice from, to help me build the best me. Too many people’s relationship with God is like children in biblical times. They try not to be seen or heard. This isn’t what God wants. He wants a relationship with us.

Pastor Lee shared some examples of billboards that show us God’s human side.  Here are a few –

  • “Come over to my house before the game on Sunday” …God
  • “You know that “Love Your Neighbor” thing? I meant that” …God
  • “Loved the wedding. Don’t forget to invite me to the marriage” …God
  • “Keep using my name in vain and I’ll make rush hour longer” …God

Recently my niece Hannah was having a chat with God while on her way to work. As she was asking if He was hearing her, she saw the small end of a rainbow. Okay she thought…is He hearing me or is this my imagination? Then the rainbow got longer. As she continued the conversation, it continued to get longer until it became a full rainbow.

Oh, but God didn’t stop there. Before He was finished there were two complete rainbows, one above the other so bright that she said they were the most brilliant and bight rainbows she had ever seen.

But this story doesn’t end there…

Hannah shared this with Pastor Lee and what do you know. He was looking at the same rain bow at the same time.

Open your eyes and ears…you don’t want to miss out.

The Most Important Question Always Seems to be the Last One Asked

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That’s Because the Answer to the “How Question” is Going to Require Work

Last week I listened to a Belay, One Next Step podcast interview with David Horsager. David is the CEO of Trust Edge Leadership Institute and best-selling author of The Trusted Leader, The 8 Pillars of Trust. In this interview they discussed these 8 pillars and how to become a more trustworthy leader.

Everything of value is built on trust. You’ll pay more for a trusted brand, to follow a trusted leader or buy from a trusted salesperson.

Trust is the single most important trait of great leaders, organizations and brands.

These 8 foundational pillars of genuine success are:

1. Clarity: People trust the clear and mistrust the ambiguous.

2. Compassion: People put faith in those who care beyond themselves.

3. Character: People notice those who do what is right over what is easy.

4. Competency: People have confidence in those who stay fresh, relevant, and capable.

5. Commitment: People believe in those who stand through adversity.

6. Connection: People want to follow, buy from, and be around friends.

7. Contribution: People immediately respond to results.

8. Consistency: People love to see the little things done consistently.

As they went through these pillars David pointed out a simple three question process for putting these pillars into action. These questions are what helped David to lose 52 lbs. in five months and keep it off.

Here are the three most important questions to ask:

“Number one. “Okay. We want that thing.” How, how? Okay. Second question, way more important. It is, how? The third is the most important of all. It is, how?”

I’ve written several times about the importance of asking questions and the lack them being asked. I believe all questions are important and that they all work together to point to the desired results.

  • Who is that thing going to be done for?
  • What is that thing that I want or need to do?
  • When does that thing need to be done?
  • Where is that thing going to be done?
  • Why should that thing be done?
  • How am I going to do that thing?

Without answering the how question it won’t get done.

The how question needs to be actionable and one that we can be held accountable to.

Here is what David said about it,

“My weight, everybody told me, “All you got to do is eat less, exercise more.” That was not clear enough. Okay. So I said, “Okay, how am I going to take in less calories?” Okay. Boom, boom, boom, boom. How, how, how, how. Until one of them was, “I’m not going to drink a calorie on a plane.” I can look at it. “Okay. Fresca instead of Coke.” I was drinking Cokes, bad. So now you sit next to me. I never, almost never have a calorie on a plane, unless I put a little cream in my coffee. So the how is something you can act on today or tomorrow. “I want to sell more.” “Okay. How are you going to do that?” “I’m going to call more people.” “Okay, great. How are you going to do that?” Basically, I’m just going to call more people.” “No, you’re not. You had that opportunity yesterday. How are you going to call more people?” “Well, I got to get a list.” “Okay. Now, how are you going to get a list?” “Okay. I’m going to do this.” Okay. “By tomorrow at 10:00 AM.”

It’s time from me to answer my how questions.

How will you answer yours?