Crisis, loss, and disappointment are all things most of us will experience in life. And in the midst of personal hell, I know it’s true—because I’ve lived it—that we can barely take the next step in front of us—like paying bills on time, having normal conversations, or even remembering to eat regular meals. Beyond hopelessness is despair, and that’s an even scarier place to live. I’ve been there too. So how in the world are we even supposed to say the word “hope,” let alone cultivate it in the midst of crisis. For some of us, life has taught us that there’s no point in getting our hopes up, because the disappointment that follows hurts even worse. And that’s valid. But that’s also not real hope. The question is, then, what is real hope in the midst of chaos? Joining us today to answer that question is New York Times bestselling author, and leader of leaders, pastor of the largest church in America, Craig Groeschel. And today, he’s going to teach us precisely how to hope in the dark. Buy the Book “I want to believe, I want to have hope, but…” Pastor and bestselling author Craig Groeschel hears these words often and has asked them himself. We want to know God, feel his presence, and trust that he hears our prayers, but in the midst of great pain, we may wonder if he really cares about us. Even when we have both hope and hurt, sometimes it’s the hurt that shouts the loudest. Can God be good when life is not In Hope in the Dark: Believing God Is Good When Life Is Not, Groeschel explores the story of the father who brought his demon-possessed son to Jesus, saying, “I believe! Help my unbelief!” In the man’s sincere plea, Jesus heard the tension in the man’s battle-scarred heart. He healed not only the boy but the father too, driving out the hopelessness that had overtaken him. He can do the same for us today. As Groeschel shares his pain surrounding the current health challenges of his daughter, he acknowledges the questions we may ask in our own deepest pain: “Where was God when I was being abused?” “Why was my child born with a disability?” “Why did the cancer come back?” “Why are all my friends married and I’m alone?” He invites us to wrestle with such questions as we ask God to honor our faith and heal our unbelief. In the middle of your profound pain, you long for authentic words of understanding and hope. You long to know that even in overwhelming reality, you can still believe that God is good. Rediscover a faith in the character, power, and presence of God. Even in the questions. Even now. Buy Hope in the Dark: Believing God Is Good When Life Is Not now. About Craig Groeschel Craig Groeschel is the founding and senior pastor of Life.Church. Meeting in multiple locations around the United States, and globally at Church Online, Life.Church is known for the innovative use of technology to spread the Gospel. With a passion for serving the Church and partnering to reach people for Christ, Life.Church develops and shares resources and applications with churches worldwide. Life.Church also developed YouVersion and the Bible App. Created to help increase access and engagement with the Bible, the Bible App has been installed on more than 250 million devices and in every country of the world. Craig and his wife, Amy, have six children and live in the Edmond, Oklahoma area where Life.Church began in 1996. He speaks frequently at conferences worldwide, hosts the Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast, and is a New York Times best-selling author. Review “Win Today” Click here to read the ratings, or even better, please leave me a rating and review on iTunes. Your rating will help the podcast get noticed and positioned on iTunes. What Listeners Are Saying… “So great to find a podcast that is both encouraging and challenging! It is professionally produced, yet still has an informal feel like I’m hanging out with Chris… And frankly, I’d love to hang out with him! I really appreciate his heart and have been able to apply many o...

Fear, guilt, shame, bitterness, and regret. Five deadly emotions that will lie to you about your identity, sink daggers of despair into your heart, and sabotage your relationships and your potential in life. What do most people do about the lingering effects of those five emotions in their lives? At least on my end, I surpassed them until it was too painful to do so any longer. And that wasn’t a good choice. Men and women all over the country unknowingly make decisions from a false identity created by fear, guilt, or shame. But they don’t know they’re doing it. So life sort of flat-lines and they think it’s just the way things are supposed to end-up. What if there was a way to reach way down to the root of those emotions, set healthy boundaries for our soul, and instead, change the trajectory of our lives simply by a change of heart? I believe it’s possible. Joining us today is Kimberly Miller. She’s the co-author of the brand-new book, Boundaries for Your Soul: How to Turn Your Overwhelming Thoughts and Feelings into Your Greatest Allies, and she’s going to guide you through a five-step process to transform these liabilities into powerful strengths. Buy the Book What if feelings like anger, sadness, and fear could improve your life for the better? In this practical, life-changing book, Christian counselors Alison Cook and Kimberly Miller describe their unique five-step process for bringing peace to overwhelming emotions and harmony to your inner world. Do you ever struggle to calm your competing internal "enemies"? Boundaries for Your Soul provides a Spirit-based plan for creating remarkable serenity within by helping you recognize that these often-overwhelming emotions are not your enemies; rather, they are helpers who have gone well beyond their roles, robbing you of deep-down joy and genuine connection with others. By compassionately guiding them to their proper functions, however, you can make them your greatest encouragers and allies. In Boundaries for Your Soul: How to Turn Your Overwhelming Thoughts and Feelings into Your Greatest Allies, Cook and Miller guide you through a five-step process for doing so, showing you how to introduce the Holy Spirit to your wayward emotions and transform your weaknesses into powerful strengths. Filled with anecdotes and wisdom from the authors' combined 25 years of study and clinical practice, Boundaries for the Soul leads listeners on a journey of personal discovery grounded in the Christian tradition. Additional helps include exercises and opportunities for personal reflection. Buy Boundaries for Your Soul: How to Turn Your Overwhelming Thoughts and Feelings into Your Greatest Allies now. Review “Win Today” Click here to read the ratings, or even better, please leave me a rating and review on iTunes. Your rating will help the podcast get noticed and positioned on iTunes. What Listeners Are Saying… “So great to find a podcast that is both encouraging and challenging! It is professionally produced, yet still has an informal feel like I’m hanging out with Chris… And frankly, I’d love to hang out with him! I really appreciate his heart and have been able to apply many of his topics in my life to help me grow professionally, physically, and relationally. A+!"

What keeps us from flourishing in life is a neglect of the inner life of the soul. It’s the engine where everything starts…and stops. And more and more today, this neglect is driven by our ambition to accomplish something big outside ourselves. We live in a society that pressures us to achieve professionally, socially, and through the constant acquisition of things, status, and titles. The trouble is that this rat-race to achieve is a never-ending ride. You can’t get off this train without a major interruption of mindset, shift of priorities, and a willingness to make a choice to change. Today, you’re going to learn how to flourish in this very competitive, demanding culture and even redefine greatness. Buy the Book What keeps us from flourishing in our spiritual lives is a neglect of the inner life of the soul. And more and more today, this neglect is driven by our ambition to accomplish something big outside ourselves. We live in a society that pressures us to achieve professionally, socially, and through the constant acquisition of material possessions. Drawing on a wide range of sources including scripture, church history, psychology, and neuroscience, as well as a rich variety of stories from his own life, Ken Shigematsu demonstrates how the gospel redeems our desires and reorders our lives. He offers fresh perspective on how certain spiritual practices help orient our lives so that our souls can flourish in the midst of a demanding, competitive society. And he concludes with a liberating and counter-cultural definition of true greatness. Survival Guide for the Soul: How to Flourish Spiritually in a World that Pressures Us to Achieve will appeal to anyone who longs to experience a deeper relationship with Christ in the midst of the daily pressures to succeed, as well as to those on the borderlands of faith seeking to transcend the human tendency to define ourselves by our production and success. Discussion questions available in the audiobook companion PDF download. BuySurvival Guide for the Soul: How to Flourish Spiritually in a World that Pressures Us to Achievek now. About Ken Shigematsu Ken Shigematsu is senior pastor of Tenth Church (www.tenth.ca) in Vancouver, British Columbia, one of the largest and most diverse city-center churches in Canada. Before entering pastoral ministry, he worked for the Sony Corporation in Tokyo, Japan. The intense work schedule at Sony led him to explore personal disciplines that could bring order to his life, from those of his samurai ancestors to St. Benedict's rule for Christian communities. His first book, God in My Everything: How an Ancient Rhythm Helps Busy People Enjoy God (Zondervan, 2013) describes how a personal rule, or spiritual rhythm, can support the growth of a God-filled life. An international bestseller, it was selected as the Word Guild 2014 Christian Living book of the year and received honorable mention for the Grace Irwin Prize, Canada's largest literary award for Christian writers. Ken's second book, Survival Guide for the Soul: How to Flourish Spiritually in a World that Pressures Us to Achieve (Zondervan, 2018) examines how specific spiritual practices reorder our lives and focus our priorities. The lessons of scripture and church history are backed with recent research in psychology and neuroscience to support the vision of a well-ordered, spiritually dynamic life. Ken lives in Vancouver, Canada with his wife Sakiko and their son Joey. Proceeds from his writing support the work of World Vision and similar organizations around the world. He invites readers to join him on Twitter @KenShigematsu. Review “Win Today” Click here to read the ratings, or even better, please leave me a rating and review on iTunes. Your rating will help the podcast get noticed and positioned on iTunes. What Listeners Are Saying… “So great to find a podcast that is both encouraging and challenging! It is professionally produced,

You and I have one life to live. But few of us step into manifesting the full expression of who we were designed to be. Why? Because of the fear that being seen and heard for who we really are will result in rejection; rejection not because of what we have or haven't done, but rejection of our very personhood. You see, it's one thing to feel as though you've not done enough. But it's a greater tragedy to feel as though you aren’t enough. Allow me to paint a picture in this week's bonus episode.

Level-up with me. How many of you feel as if you take one step forward in life only to fall back two—or ten—steps? You struggle and push through one obstacle and then discover an even larger one looming right ahead of you. It’s intimidating, isn’t it? I’ve been there. We’ve talked about my journey a lot here on the show. But what if our strategy to deal with the storms of life was off, not because we’re doing anything wrong tactically, but because we’re looking in the wrong direction. I know that probably confused you. But stay with me. What I’m getting at is that our perspective in trouble often dictates how we navigate through the trouble. So today, we’re going to tackle that very subject with Samuel Rodriguez. He’s a respected communicator around the world, but most notably, is a senior advisor to the President of the United States. He’s walked through storms to say the least. And today, he’s going to show all of us how to do it better! Buy the Book Based on the story (see Acts 27-28) of the Apostle Paul's near catastrophic shipwreck, this is a call to individuals to "shake off" problems and disasters in life and move forward to new health and wholeness. To everyone on the ship with the Apostle Paul, it looked like a certain disaster. But as Paul predicted, everyone did survive--even though they made it to safety only by grasping "broken pieces of wood." In his unique way, Rodriguez compellingly explains that "God makes wonderful things in our life come from our broken pieces. Because of Christ in our life, we have the power to shake off fear, rejection, and failure--just like Paul later shook off the viper that should have killed him." Buy Shake Free: How to Deal with the Storms, Shipwrecks, and Snakes in Your Life now. About Samuel Rodriguez Samuel Rodriguez is the President of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference (NHCLC), the world’s largest Hispanic Christian organization serving as a representative voice for the more than 100 million Hispanic Evangelicals assembled in over 40,118 U.S. churches and over 450,000 churches spread throughout the Spanish-speaking diaspora. Rodriguez has been among many lists of influencers in America, which have recognized his impact across the religious and Latino communities, including: “40 People Who Radically Changed The World” – Charisma Magazine 2015 “101 Most Influential Leaders” – Latino Leaders Magazine 2015 and 2016 “Top 100 Christian Leaders in America” – Newsmax 2018 “2013 TIME nomination as 100 most influential people in the world – TIME 2013 “10 White & Brown MLKs of Our Time” – Black Christian News 2013 No. 1 bestselling author of “Be Light” – L.A. Times 2016 Rodriguez was also prominently featured in the April 15, 2013 TIME cover story, The Latino Reformation. Additionally, a number of outlets have deemed Rodriguez as one of America’s leading Christian and Latino voices and as the leader of the Latino Evangelical movement, including CNN, Fox, NBC Telemundo, The Wall Street Journal, The San Francisco Chronicle and Charisma Magazine, to name a few. Review “Win Today” Click here to read the ratings, or even better, please leave me a rating and review on iTunes. Your rating will help the podcast get noticed and positioned on iTunes. What Listeners Are Saying… “So great to find a podcast that is both encouraging and challenging! It is professionally produced, yet still has an informal feel like I’m hanging out with Chris… And frankly, I’d love to hang out with him! I really appreciate his heart and have been able to apply many of his topics in my life to help me grow professionally, physically, and relationally. A+!"

What if today, you realized that a misconception about yourself has been driving your day-to-day existence? And as a result, you’ve not been seeing yourself and the world around you as it really is. Would you be frustrated? Quickly motivated to discover the issue and re-direct the course of your life? I really believe a misconception is one of the most dangerous threats in life. And the biggest misconception a lot of people live with is about who they really are, their identity outside of their performance, and the role and identity of Who God is in their lives. Perhaps what you’ve really been searching for through hard work, performance, and just flat-out striving is much simpler than you think. And what if that one misconception about your life could change the trajectory of your life forever? Joining me today is Chad Norris. He’s the lead pastor of Bridgeway Church in Greenville, South Carolina, and author of two books, including Mama Jane's Secret: Walking In Deep Friendship with God. Buy Chad's Books Mama Jane was a hero! A rock of faith and tenacity, of hope and love, and Chad Norris’ paternal grandmother. She spent her life modeling Christ, loving God and others and four generations of her family have been eternally impacted because of it. It’s here that we uncover a great secret - that Jesus came to reconnect us to Father, to restore relationship with his children. Building deep friendship with God starts with shifting our perceptions of who God says He is and who He says we are - the journey of sonship. For too long those of us who call ourselves Christians have grown numb to the truth that we are heirs to an eternal Kingdom. It is time to awaken and build a friendship with the one who has loved us since before we were ever born. It is time to truly know our Father, the King. He’s awakening His children to something extraordinary, something that’s been there waiting for us all along. He’s ready for us to accept our inheritance, to choose love over fear, to live without offense or excuses, to walk in the identity of son and daughter. He is ready to unleash all the blessings of Heaven in our lives. But, He is waiting on us. Buy Mama Jane's Secret: Walking In Deep Friendship with God now. Demonstrating humor, candor, and personal vulnerability, this Southern Baptist preacher offers an entertaining, non-religious look at the Holy Spirit. He shares transparently, recounting his own history of depression and panic attacks until Jesus rescued him and showed him how to do the works of the Father. As Norris explains, “I had no paradigm for that.” Then he challenges readers to engage with the supernatural. Even though Jesus said we will do even greater things than he did, we don't. Norris's engaging narrative style lowers readers' defenses and opens their minds to the idea that these “greater things” are more attainable than they think. Because we are loved more than we imagine, says Norris, we are more capable of doing the Father's works than we have ever considered. Buy Signs, Wonders and a Baptist Preacher: How Jesus Flipped My World Upside Down now. About Chad Norris Chad Norris is the Lead Pastor of Bridgeway Church in Greenville, SC. Chad has traveled for years bringing to the church a message of Father’s love and the simple truth that we have the ability to build deep friendship with God. Chad’s passion is to know Father and to introduce others to the concept that He is kind and good and desires to be connected to His kids. Father wants His family back. Chad brings a humor and vulnerability to messages that reflect his own intimacy with Father and his love of the Word. Bridgeway Church is a family that honors the Word of God and the power of Holy Spirit. Chad and his wife Wendy are Bulldogs, both graduates of the University of Georgia. Chad also has a Masters of Divinity from Beeson Divinity School and is currently working toward a Doctorate at Regent University.

Honor is the art of stewarding relationships well. Business is all about relationships, and every day at work presents us with a choice: Will we fight for fear-free connections with our team members, employees, vendors, and customers for the sake of our mutual success? Or will we default into self-protection and self-serving and participate in a relational culture of disconnection? This is the choice between honor and dishonor, and it flows from our hearts and our core beliefs about people. This week, Bob Hasson and Danny Silk lay out a pathway for living with a heart of honor in business, from receiving your identity to investing in healthy relationships and taking the lead in building honoring culture in your company or organization. Buy the Book Honor is the art of stewarding relationships well. Business is all about relationships, and every day at work presents us with a choice: Will we fight for fear-free connections with our team members, employees, vendors, and customers for the sake of our mutual success? Or will we default into self-protection and self-serving and participate in a relational culture of disconnection? This is the choice between honor and dishonor, and it flows from our hearts and our core beliefs about people. The Business of Honor: Restoring the Heart of Business, Bob Hasson and Danny Silk lay out a pathway for living with a heart of honor in business, from receiving your identity to investing in healthy relationships and taking the lead in building honoring culture in your company or organization. Buy The Business of Honor: Restoring the Heart of Business now! About Danny Silk & Bob Hasson Danny Silk serves on the Senior Leadership Team of both Bethel Church in Redding, CA and Jesus Culture in Sacramento, CA. He is the President and Co-Founder of Loving on Purpose a ministry to families and communities worldwide. Danny is also the author of four books: Culture of Honor, Loving our Kids on Purpose, Powerful and Free and the top selling Keep Your Love On. Danny and Sheri married in 1984 and have three children and three grandchildren. Bob Hasson is a businessman and leadership consultant. His greatest passion is strengthening leaders and their organizations, with specific focus on developing sound organizational structure, fiscal responsibility, and dynamic relationships on leadership teams. He is both the Founder and CEO of R.M Hasson Painting Contractors, Inc. For over thirty years, he has been active as a consultant and board member for churches, ministries, nonprofits, and school boards. Since 2012, he has traveled around the world with Danny Silk as a speaker and consultant for Loving on Purpose. He has been married for thirty years to his wife, Lauren, and they have four children. Review “Win Today” Click here to read the ratings, or even better, please leave me a rating and review on iTunes. Your rating will help the podcast get noticed and positioned on iTunes. What Listeners Are Saying… “So great to find a podcast that is both encouraging and challenging! It is professionally produced, yet still has an informal feel like I’m hanging out with Chris… And frankly, I’d love to hang out with him! I really appreciate his heart and have been able to apply many of his topics in my life to help me grow professionally, physically, and relationally. A+!"