Self Respect eBook by: Kyle McMurray

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Moving Forward through Anxiety

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LFL E17 Rip Tides

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 5:29 — 3.6MB)

We are not here to talk religion, but we will talk about what it means to have a personal, daily walk with God. Our goal is to not waste your time and be under 5 minutes. Come! Join the discussion.

Show Notes

Rip Tides can be extremely dangerous but they can show us some very important reminders in life.

Our challenge is to know how to navigate the riptides in your life. The “how” is not a step by step process but a moment by moment relationship with the Holy Spirit.

How we handle riptides with other people who believe differently than we do, will be the difference in gaining a friend or driving away ministry opportunities.

We want to hear from you. podcast@kylemcmurray.com

LFL E16 Fear Not

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 7:34 — 4.9MB)

We are not here to talk religion, but we will talk about what it means to have a personal, daily walk with God. Our goal is to not waste your time and be under 5 minutes. Come! Join the discussion.

Show Notes

Fear Not: 365 Accounts of “Fear not” in the Bible.

1 account for each day in the year.

40 different calendars.

We need to be careful about how we look for and through the lens of fear. There are plenty of examples of fear and how to overcome them in the Bible.

Opposite of fear . . . is faith.

Whenever we feel fearful, look back and see where your faith was.

False Evidence of Appearing Real

We want to hear from you. podcast@kylemcmurray.com

LFL E15 What is Your Crack?

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 4:43 — 3.2MB)

We are not here to talk religion, but we will talk about what it means to have a personal, daily walk with God. Our goal is to not waste your time and be under 5 minutes. Come! Join the discussion.

Show Notes

We want to hear from you. podcast@kylemcmurray.com

Thankfully, God uses cracked pots! You do not need to be perfect for God to use you. In fact, those who you see that God’s using, they’ve learned to embrace their cracks.

My cracks and flaws are not my identity. They give me the chance to see true value.

Each one of us, YOU have unique, invaluable traits that no one else has been equipped with, but you. There are people that need to be shown the love of God, and you will be the only person who can show it to them because of your uniqueness.

Apparently the water was not getting to the flowers any other way, but through that crack.

It is our job to keep our eyes open to see the opportunities in our everyday life.

My Hope for you today is that you’re able to see them.

LFL E14 Nothing New Under the Sun

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 5:56 — 4.0MB)

We are not here to talk religion, but we will talk about what it means to have a personal, daily walk with God. Our goal is to not waste your time and be under 5 minutes. Come! Join the discussion.

Show Notes

We want to hear from you. podcast@kylemcmurray.com

Nothing New Under the Sun

Have you ever heard the statement “There is nothing new under the Sun”? Well, it comes from the Bible in Ecc 1:9 It says it plainly from a guy who was Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and Jeff Bezos (Bay-zose) rolled all into one. His name was King Solomon and he was one rich guy. He had everything he could ever want, and he famously said “there is nothing new under the sun”.

I guess once you realize this, the world could become a little boring. You may begin to see just the same things, over and over again. Life would become monotonous.

We often get into the habit of seeing the same thing over and over again in everyday life. We could even read scripture the same way time and time again and believe that it means just the same thing over and over again.

The culture in Rabbis they teach each other not to look at scripture the same way twice.

Our challenge is to look at the living, breathing, alive, word of God and let it speak instead of our memory trying to tell us what the scripture is trying to say.

I know you’ve heard me say this before, but the bible really is a cool place to find answers.

You see, in Genesis 2 There was this Garden of perfection called The Garden of Eden. Now I’m sure you’ve heard of it, but it was perfect. It had trees and flowers and all sorts of plants and food was abundant. In fact, there was one tree that produced eternal life and Adam was told he could eat from it. While he was surrounded with all of that perfection, he was told not to eat from one tree and if he did, he would surely die. Well, let’s face it, it wasn’t exactly like Adam knew what death was. He had no reference point of death. I guess we could say, he had no knowledge in the difference of Good and Evil, yet. You see, the tree that he was not supposed to eat from, was called The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

Then along came a spider and sat down… no that’s not right. In Genesis 3, the serpent came along and quite frankly, lied to Eve in saying you will become like God having this knowledge of Good and Evil. Which implied the accusation that God wanted to keep that away from Adam and Eve. Now, I hope by now all of us know that we were made after His image anyway. So the accusation is a lie because we’re already like God. But that’s a side note we can talk about another time.

What I’m saying is, in the Garden of Eden we unplugged our source of eternal life from trusting God and we started trusting our knowledge of Good and Evil. That tree, The Forbidden one, became our source. Now we depend more on our knowledge than we do our faith.

When we read scripture the same old way that we always have, we are depending on our knowledge… of good. This is the knowledge of good.

Let me ask you a question. You have the Tree of Life. what does it produce? Yes, eternal life. You have that other tree, what does it produce? Knowledge?

Well, let me ask it a different way. What’s the opposite of knowledge? Okay, some not so nice descriptive words of the lack of knowledge.

What’s the opposite of life? I think we’ve just discovered why God was trying to prohibit us from eating from that tree. As it turns out, what He says is true, “we will surely die”.

We can choose to read scripture while we depend on the source of the Tree of Knowledge and continue to see things the same way. How many of you have heard the statement “If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get the same thing over and over again”. So if you don’t that’s the definition of insanity. Doing the same thing over and over again, and expect a different result.

The culture in Rabbis they teach each other not to look at scripture the same way twice.

Our challenge today, is to look at the living, breathing, alive, word of God and let it speak, instead of our memory trying to tell us what the scripture is trying to say.

As you read today, listen. Listen and see if there are new ways of seeing scripture today. You may be surprised what you’ll find.

LFL E13 Fear and Superstition

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 6:00 — 4.2MB)

We are not here to talk religion, but we will talk about what it means to have a personal, daily walk with God. Our goal is to not waste your time and be under 5 minutes. Come! Join the discussion.

Show Notes

We want to hear from you. podcast@kylemcmurray.com

Fear and Superstition

I guess there are significant landmarks in podcasting and this must be another one. We hit one a couple of episodes back with double digits. This one is special too, but this one is topical. There can’t be a better time for us to talk about Fear and Superstition than Episode 13.

To give you some background, I wasn’t raised in a Christ following home. Wasn’t their fault, they just didn’t know. In addition to that, my earthly birthday falls on Halloween. When I was a kid, I thought everyone was dressing up for my birthday but that is an entirely different issue.

But in addition to that, later on in life, it prompted me to ask some deep seated questions about my place in creation. Halloween means Hallow’s eve, or the night before, what the Catholic faith celebrates as All Saints day. I grew up thinking that Halloween was evil so I must be evil. Look, I’m not saying that I believe it now. I thought that I was born to be evil just because of what a calendar said.

Now I can’t bring myself to celebrate anything that glamorizes fear.

It matters what you pay attention to. You only have so much attention. So whatever you pay attention towards, it will shape you.

When I was younger, I was also superstitious. I crossed my fingers for everything, I wouldn’t walk under ladders, I would be extra careful around mirrors, I wouldn’t say anything about the Bell Witch, I would stay clear of Black Cats, not to mention Episode #13!!!!

Could Stevie Wonder be right? “When you believe in things that you don’t understand, and you suffer?

Well, I’ve found that Mr. Wonder is right. Superstition ain’t the way. But many of us believe in varying degrees of superstition.

At its root, superstition is just being hopeful for a specific outcome. What if I want the XYZ team to beat the ABC team and I’m wearing my glasses upside down? Well if they actually win, some people may make the connection of me wearing my glasses upside down, towards their victory.

But you know, we treat God the same way. Now there can be hundreds of examples of what I mean by that and some of them can sound very religious.

All I’m saying is that we can easily get into a habit of trying to manipulate God and expecting Him to give us what we want.

Of course we want good things in our life. But are we in search of only the good things, or the One who gives them?

If my children come to me only when they want something, it’s much different than when we get a chance to talk on a regular basis, there is a relationship there.

When the relationship is there, we don’t have to ask for very much. We learn to trust that it will be provided because we are loved.

Usually God Isn’t concerned about the mortgage or the water bill being paid as much as you are. Things like, should I turn left or turn right, should I quit my job, do I have a relationship with this person. All of those things, we get superstitious about.

God usually wants to talk to you about something that’s far more important than any of those things. He wants to talk to you, about you. Not what you need to fix, or how you can be better. He wants to tell you how much you are loved, no matter what you do. How valuable you are to him. How excited He gets every time you want to talk with Him.

I know it may feel a little weird to sit and hear how much you are loved. You may even ask yourself “What is that going to accomplish?” You will be amazed at the change that will happen through a genuine conversation.

If you’ve never done that, it may sound pretty strange to you. Some people may even think that talking to God is a little crazy. But I can assure you, it’s very real. And you may already be able to hear Him and not be able to identify that it is Him.