Chris Grainger: 1:01

Welcome to the Lion Within Us, a podcast serving Christian men who are hungry to be the leaders God intends you to be. I'm your host, chris Granger, let's jump in. All right, fellas, it's your fun Friday. I'm excited to be here with you. Let's get right into it. Okay? So look, scripture of the Week this week is John 3, verse 30,. Okay, he must increase, but I must decrease. Love that little verse, guys.

Chris Grainger: 1:23

Go back two episodes in your feed to the spiritual kickoff. We unpack that one ad link to give you some insights on how you can simplify and apply it to your life. Okay, we do this again Monday through Friday, within our line within us community, the line withinus. Go, get your get started today with us. You can click over, you can see directly how you can start your daily spiritual kickoff experience. Okay, all right, now we had Jason Woodard on for our last episode. Just a good guy. Love the conversation with Jason. Fun times, just hearing how he has taken the call for his life to really bring his faith into his career. And we just unpack that. What does that look like? You know, practically speaking, how does he bring that directly into the work that he does as an executive inside manufacturing and you think about manufacturing. That's not really a path that you would think of so far. As you know, I need to go evangelize there, but I'm telling you it truly is. The reality is to wherever we find ourselves employed. That is your mission field, and Jason just did a really good job of unpacking that and giving us some insights on how to apply that to our profession. All right, so thank you, jason, for that.

Chris Grainger: 2:37

Now for the fun Friday. We always do a health, wealth and a self tip. Again, health is how do we build stronger minds and bodies? Wealth is how do we be the best stewards of our finances and our careers possible? And self is we got to improve as being husbands and fathers. So what can we do to amp that up? Okay, all right.

Chris Grainger: 2:56

So for the health tip, think about the idea of a mindset minute. Now, this came to me doing some research for this episode. So, instead of trying to add more and more things to your list of getting healthy, challenge yourself to actually subtract one thing that's cluttering your mind or draining your energy. It could just be a simple thing to think about Sit down on the phone for five minutes, just sit it down. Just just don't let it be a distraction, or you know, you've heard me tell this before you know treat your phone like a toddler, put it to bed. Just put it to bed and just breathe. Just be in the moment where you're at. Because if you start clearing away those distractions, your mental clarity is going to increase and also, as that mental clarity increases, so does your overall peace. So this all helps you grow to be a disciple, but it takes intentionality. So a mindset type of minute approach is very intentional. It's not something that's just going to happen by happenstance. No, we're going to have to lean into this. Okay, all right.

Chris Grainger: 4:06

Now wealth tip. Think about how you can time with your time at work. So maybe it's towards the end of the day, last five, 10 minutes of your workday. How about you take some time to pray over your work, pray over your coworkers, pray over your customers, pray over your vendors, pray over your projects, whatever you may have, and this deliberately ask God to guide you and use your role. Whatever role you find yourself in, from the CEO to the janitor, anywhere in between how can you use your role? How would he like for you to use your role? Rather, for his purpose. This should be a fun little habit. This could be a daily thing. So you know, it's not just about checking boxes and getting stuff done. It's like how can I get stuff done that you want me to do? And it's inviting him into our workplace in a very meaningful way. So just take that minute and be still, be quiet. Maybe it's at your desk or maybe you're in the car before on a sales call, whatever, wherever you find yourself. All right, god, how can, how can I honor and glorify you in this moment here? How can you utilize me, how do you want to, to utilize the resources and tools that you've given me to help others grow to know you? I'm telling you you start doing that. Things start changing.

Chris Grainger: 5:26

All right, now for the self-tip family decrease day. I didn't say increase, I said decrease. I know the scripture says he must increase. There you go, decrease. So pick a weekend and for that weekend, intentionally do less. Okay, no phones, no chores, just time with one another. Maybe you need to walk, maybe you need to go for a hike or go play a game, or just go out to a nice meal and just share a meal together. But if we can decrease these distractions, you're making room for God's presence. See how that works. And if you do that, man, your relationship's just going to grow. Things are just going to get better. You're going to show your family directly that they are the priority in your life. You got God and you got them right. They need to see that. So that family decrease day it could be a fun way to try it out. All right, that's your health, wealth, self fellas right there, that mindset minute in the health, the wealth is tithing, your time at work, inviting God in, and that self tip is that family decrease day. See if you try that, see how that serves you.

Chris Grainger: 6:37

Okay, now for the book of the week. I got this book. Now for the book of the week. I got this book. A mentor gave me this book or referred me to this book. It says Finding a Job you Can Love by Ralph Madison and Arthur Miller.

Chris Grainger: 6:48

This book was written in 1982. Okay, so this was written literally the year after I was born and I thought it was so interesting because you know we talked about you know Jason talked about Jordan Rainer. I love stuff Jordan's done so far as the sacredness of secular work. And again, that book came out last. This book came out in 1982 and literally was all over so many dissimilar points, the salient points that Jordan was making so far as understanding why is there a divide between Sunday and Monday? You know? Why do we feel like there's a divide there? And then, what are the gifts that God's given us with in our life and how can I understand how to utilize those for what God desires? I'm just telling you it's a really great book resource and also it has inside of it, inside the book itself, it has some areas where you can write in. You can do your own assessments and reflections.

Chris Grainger: 7:47

So maybe if you're in a season of life where just work's not going that great, you're not passionate about it, you're just literally finding that you're checking boxes, you don't see a path forward, you don't know where to go next. This could be a really good resource. Again, it's 40 years old, okay, or 42 years old, 43 years old by the time this comes out, but that's okay. So many of these types of resources are in many ways timeless because they're referencing God's word and we all know that that's living and breathing and it's not going to turn void. So hopefully you enjoyed that. Guys. Go check that book out. And again, if you want to get an idea of how to build your library, thelionwithinus slash book you have every one of the books that we've every week. We we reference the book of the week. Guarantee You'll find some good reading right there to add to your personal library.

Chris Grainger: 8:40

Okay, so now for our dad jokes this week. Let's get right to those. Dad joke. Number one why can't a nose be 12 inches long? Huh, I can't do that, because if it was, if it was 12 inches, it'd be a foot. Alright, there you go. Number two why did the belt get arrested? Because it was holding up a pair of pants. So let us know which one. Number one or number two? I think both of these got a pretty good eye roll chance for you this week. Why can't a nose be 12 inches long? Because then it'd be a foot. Why did the belt get arrested? It was holding up a pair of pants. Let us know which one you like, fellas. Number one or number two.

Chris Grainger: 9:16

And again, if you have a dad joke that you think we should use support at the line within that us, send it, dad Joe, in. If we use it, we'll give you a shout out on the show. We'll also give you some free hookups just for helping us out? How about that? Okay? So the question of the week this week? Okay.

Chris Grainger: 9:35

So the question of the week this week, guys, is do you think you can climb while serving? That whole idea of climbing and serving they're really counterintuitive, they don't really go together. So we challenge you this week, we want to challenge your thinking, we want to take you back to what Christ has called us to do as servants, as those who serve others. And if you're stuck in your career, if you find like this in your career, you don't know which way to go next, could it be that you're trying to climb instead of focusing on serving? Because if you're trying to climb instead of serve, you likely are going to miss opportunities to honor and glorify God, and that's what we want to help you avoid.

Chris Grainger: 10:16

All right, and if you need further help with stuff like this, our discipleship masterminds are the place to go to have these types of reflective, truthful, transparent conversations, feedback, questions. This is what we do every weekend, week out at the Lion Within Us. So head over to the lion withinus, start your subscription, get go ahead and get plugged into our discipleship mastermind. Maybe you want to come to our summit leadership development, where you can have more direct, even deeper engagement around the topics that matter to most of you. Okay, so again, the lion withinus is how you find all these resources. Again, check out our Bible studies on the Bible, on the Bible app. All those studies out there gets a great way for you to get engaged and plugged in. We have a Christian leader assessment, we have our weekly roar, we have our community, we have our live events. There's tons and tons of way to get plugged in, to get connected with the lion within us, and it's all found at thelionwithinus. So give us a rating and review, guys. That would help big time. Thank you so much for listening. We'll see you next week and just remember to keep on leashing the lion within.

Chris Grainger: 11:27

I don't know about you, but I used to find Mondays really rough. I would find myself trying to reset for work, trying to get my bearing on the family calendar, trying to find time for my own spiritual growth and development, and often I found myself overwhelmed or just flatly ignoring aspects of my life that I know are meaningful to me. What I learned was that if I had immediate access to important and impactful spiritual topics and reflections to start my week well. After the allure of a Sunday sermon has passed, I would set my whole week up to be more meaningful and for the opportunity to make a true impact.

Chris Grainger: 12:09

If you think that getting such a boost would help your week to get started on the right foot, we would love for you to sign up for the Weekly roar, which is our newsletter that is produced by the lion within us. Each week will deliver a powerful reflection and practical steps to help you apply scripture with clarity and purpose, all being rooted in light and truth. So in just a few minutes, we hope to arm you with insights for living out biblical leadership with confidence and strength, and maybe even have a little extra bounce in your step. If that sounds useful, head over to thelionwithinus slash ROAR to sign up today. That's thelionwithinus slash RO? R to get your weekly roar today.