Biblical Life Skills: The Key to Living Your Best Life

Russ Ewell:

Welcome to the Deep Spirituality Podcast. I’m Russ Ewell and joining me today is Mike Query. We’ll say more about our roles and what we do in a little bit. But what we want to do at the very beginning is identify this particular podcast as the beginning of us diving deep into creating the podcast we started to create years ago and consistently delivering you content. The beginning of that content is our new series called The Best Life.

I’m going to let Mike explain more about that series in a little bit, but I want to start us off with the scripture from Proverbs 29:18, the modern English version, but you can also look at the King James version or a variety of other versions. But I like the King James or in this case, the modern English version because of the way it translates in this way. 

“Where there is no vision that people perish, but happy is he who keeps the teaching.”

The reality of the matter is we’re living at a time in America and around the world that can be confusing for many of us. And it’s important to be able to find clarity amongst the confusion. And one way to find clarity is to turn to the scriptures. We’re a podcast that believes the Bible is the complete Word of God. It is whole without error. We understand there are things that are mysterious that we don’t understand about it. But we believe that in the Word of God, we can find the vision that we need for our lives, both for the salvation of our lives; God sending Jesus Christ to die for our sins, resurrecting him so that we had an opportunity to live a new life. And then we also believe that we have a unique purpose individually, that God has a plan for all of our lives. The reason I mention this is the best life series is about growing. It’s about growing and never stop the pursuit of growth, regardless of our age. And we believe today that this launch can help people of all ages and we’ll talk more about that, but we won’t want to grow in our lives if we don’t have vision. If we don’t have a sense of, where is my going in life? What is my purpose in life? Even if I decide to be a Christian, what do I do then? How do I contribute to God’s purposes and God’s plan? These are questions that we should be asking all the time, every day. And these are visions that we should be pursuing all the time, every day.

And when we do it, it’s going to make us, as the King James Version says, and the Modern English Version says, it’s going to make us happy. A lot of times we’re chasing the happiness of pleasure. But the Bible says not only according to the book of Ecclesiastes, should we enjoy life and the pleasures of life, but we should have purpose because purpose endures in the good times and the bad times. Pleasure literally, generally only endures the good times, but purpose endures in the good times and the bad times, and so the best life is the life the Bible lays out for us. And we’re going to talk a lot about that today, but we want to get you to help us by subscribing and liking us on YouTube, wherever you decide to listen to your podcast, whether it’s Spotify or Apple or whoever you may decide to go to, to help us be able to build this podcast anew.

We’ll talk more about that as well. But I wanna bring Mike in to talk to you about the new Best Life series, and then I’ll add some more of what we’re talking about here at the beginning.

Mike Query 

Sure, so the name of the series is The Best Life, How God Gives Us The Skills We Need For An Impactful Life. And what this is gonna be is a series we’re gonna be launching this weekend. So if you’re listening to this on Friday, it’s gonna launch on Sunday. And it’s gonna go all the way through the end of April. And every week we’re gonna be releasing new devotionals and videos, podcasts as we go that over the course of the next couple months are gonna hit 20 different essential life skills that are gonna help you at pretty much any point in life. And essentially the idea is, like you said in the beginning, God helps us in our hearts and our characters at a spiritual level, and all that is gonna translate to growth in these areas. So whether you’re, you know, like myself, you struggle with time management and organization, you know, just have a hard time, you know, planning your schedule or getting your to-do list in order, if your character is weak in that area like me, or goal setting, you’re like, hey, planning, how do I just look ahead? Self-awareness, how do I even know what I need to work on? These are all essential skills that we need to develop and God can actually help us with that growth process. So the idea of this series is how can we, there’s gonna be 20 in total, and so that’s exciting. First of all, I didn’t even know there were 20 life skills. And then I look at them and I realize like, this is actually pretty exciting. Cause you know, I’ve looked at some areas I’m a little stronger in, some a little weaker in, but it’s led to a lot of good conversations. Because generally around here on the Deep Spirituality team, it’s kind of cool seeing how we all start to balance each other out a little bit in our relationships.

Russ Ewell 

So Mike, maybe you can be thinking about one of the scriptures that sort of was a foundational scripture for you, and I’ll add a few other things to it, to what you’re saying while you look that up. One of the things I think that got us going on this, or got me going on this, because I actually put this together and then came to the team and said, hey, I think this is a huge need. Why is it a big need? Well, the reality of the matter is, and we’ll give you more of these resources as time goes on, that life skills in my mind and according to what I see in scripture are generally spiritual skills. And we’ll look at some scripture on that before we leave. And so we’re really talking about once a person decides to seek God or once a person decides to believe in God or once a person decides to walk with God, each of those, if you want to, stages is a way to look at your life and say, well, how am going to build my life? Now, me personally, and I guess it’s true of everybody at a young age. You were talking about yourself being low character. I don’t think very many people are high character in their 20s. I think there people who believe they are. But I think that everybody has these areas where they have to develop their life. And I don’t know many people who were at the age of 20 or so or 19 or whatever it be that had everything together. And the reality matter is if you look at the stages of life, they break down about like this. And if you want some, just some reflection time, if you’re driving right now, if you’re doing your laundry, if you’re just sitting back chilling and saying, hey, I want to listen to something spiritual. I want to listen to something that’s going to get me inspired about my relationship with God, zero to 10 years old. Those are the foundational learning and socialization skills and I don’t think anybody would look at a baby and say, you’re, you’re blowing it because you can’t do this. It’s a, it’s, it’s, it’s a skill that they, that you develop and it’s, you know, I remember a movie I used to like. haven’t watched it in years called what about Bob with Bill Murray and Richard Dreyfus, two of my favorites back in the day. He had this little thing that he said, baby steps, baby steps. And I’m not really good at it. I now call it spiritual incrementalism, being comfortable with taking the time it takes to develop. I was playing basketball growing up and one of the things is I was terrible at that game. I had to learn it and then I had to break all the skills down and practice them every day. And so technically I was way behind my peers, but in time I caught up because of the consistency. 

So zero to 10 years old is the foundation of learning and socialization. 10 to 20 years old is independence and identity formation. 20 to 30 years old is pretty much building a career and relationships. 30 to 40 years old is stability and growth. 40 to 50 years old, that’s midlife mastery and reinvention. Pretty cool idea and thought there. And 50 to 60 years old, it’s legacy and personal fulfillment. And 60 to 70 years old is wisdom and making a contribution. 70 to 80 years old is contentment and reflection. And 80 to 90 years old is graceful aging and legacy. What am I trying to say? The best life content we’re going to be giving you is not just about life skills. So don’t get that term wrong. It’s about whole life. It’s about stages of life. And it’s about being able to let our devotionals prompt you to say, hey, how am I doing? Why would we talk about this? In Ephesians 3:20 it says, 

“Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine according to his power that is at work within us. To Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever, amen.”

One of the things that I think we want to do is combine that first scripture with the second. The best life begins with vision. We talked about that with Proverbs 29 and 18. But having a vision isn’t powerful unless you have a spiritual imagination. What is a spiritual imagination? Let’s look at it again. Now to him who’s able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine. We are not going to be motivated to develop skills if we don’t have a vision and an imagination that are spiritual for what we believe God can do in our life and God wants to do in our life. This is real important, I think.

Because for me, I’m going to go back to the time when I was learning how to play hoops. I was terrible. I got in, I barely made a team in seventh grade. I got in and made mistake after mistake after mistake. People in the crowd were laughing at me because it was as though here’s this kid on the floor who doesn’t know how to play basketball. But for some reason I had this vision and this imagination of me playing in the NBA. Now I never got to the NBA, but what am I trying to say? If we lose our vision, if we lose our imagination spiritually, we’ll see no need to grow. And one of my concerns is that many of us out there, we don’t see a need to grow, we see a need to survive. Or we don’t see a need to grow, we see a need to find a way to escape the daily pain of life. And I’m telling you right now, when you open the scriptures, growth is what it’s about. In Philippians 2:13, this is the passion translation. 

“God will continually revitalize you, implanting within you the passion to do what pleases him.”

Listen to that. God will continually revitalize you and planting within you the passion to do what pleases him. That’s Philippians 2:13 and that’s in the passion. And then if you go to the New Living Translation, same verse, it says, 

“For God is working in you giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases Him.”

What’s that mean? That means that God not only wants us to be able to walk with Him, become a Christian and have our life be transformed, but He wants to see us transformed every day because not only does He have a plan for our salvation, He has a plan for our purpose in life. And so I want people to understand really well and I hope that our team will be able to deliver on all this, but developing a skill at whatever stage in life you are is part of you delivering on your vision. And so it’s not gonna work. Like none of the content’s gonna be useful unless you sit down and say, what do I wanna do? So let’s say you’re a middle schooler and you say, you know what? I want to make the wrestling team. All right? You look at the skills we’ll provide you and you’ll be able to identify, hey, here’s the two or three I probably should focus on if I’m going to be good at wrestling. Let’s say you want to be able to get your grades up in high school. Well, you go through the skills. You don’t worry about how many there are. Who cares how many there are? You’re looking for the ones that you know, hey, if I do these skills, then I’m going to be okay. When I was in high school and we had to be at practice at five or six in the morning before school,I had to develop a skill. It was getting up in the morning when I didn’t want to get up.

You know how I developed that skill? I got a very loud alarm clock that did not allow me to sleep. And I kept it far enough away that by the time I got to it, had to have woke, I had to have woken up because I’d walked a mile to get to the thing. What I’m saying is these are things that oftentimes we don’t think about. Many times people spend a lot of time being super discouraged because they feel like their life is full of regrets and mistakes. have regrets and mistakes and sins and problems and issues all the time. But at my latter days or late decades of life, what I believe is God still wants me to grow. At your middle decades of life, I think God still wants you to grow, And I think that everybody out there can get excited. Whether you’re sitting there saying, I’m behind my peers in academics or in job or in how much money I make or I’m behind them spiritually. The skills that we’ll be talking about are the ones you want to grab ahold of and you know what’s funny a lot of times we lean into the things we’re already good at the way to get the best life and what’s the best life the best life is a lot like Martin Luther King said Martin Luther King speaking years ago decades ago said look that it’s it’s sort of the drum major mindset and if you’re a street sweeper sweep streets like Michelangelo he basically said your life and your unique gifts you do the best with those gifts you can do and that’s the best life. You don’t spend your time sitting around comparing yourself to someone else. Someone else’s destiny may be to be you got that baseball jersey behind you there, Mike number four, is that it? Malina? I don’t even know who that is. I don’t even know who that is, but no, I’d probably play for the Cardinals though, knowing you, but you know, he’s not Al K. Lyon from the Detroit Tigers, that’s for sure. Anyway, you have a love for baseball, right? And you have an interest in baseball and you know maybe you wanted to play baseball maybe you wanted to be great at baseball maybe it motivated you some I know you’re a very good guitar player there was a vision behind all of that and every little thing you did and I think all of our folks out there we want them to get that sense that there’s not a goal I can’t reach that God puts on my heart as long as I’m willing to develop those qualities of character and fruits of the Spirit that allow me to do it. And so that’s one of the things that I had on my mind, some scriptures I on my mind. Do you have any scriptures that you have on your mind that kind of make this crystal clear to you?

Mike Query 

Yeah, yeah, one of the ones that stood out to me was Romans 5:3, it says, 

“Not only so, but we glory in our sufferings because we know that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance, character, and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”

And I think, you mentioned pleasure earlier and like you mentioned those two things, guitar and baseball. So two things I like, right? One, with guitar, something I really liked, and you’re absolutely right, the vision of me being John Mayer, when I was a kid it was more Eddie Vedder from Pearl Jam. That sustained me, and so I pushed through the calluses, I pushed through the awkwardness of I can’t move my fingers around, and then it felt amazing when you can do it, right? And I’m not amazing, but I got enough talent to kind of keep getting there, right? But baseball is an interesting one too, because I love baseball a lot. You know, I reached a point where my talent, it wasn’t super high in that, meaning like, you know, I can’t just naturally go out there and do all these amazing feats. So I got to point I was scared of ground balls coming at me. I loved the feeling of being third base and like gunning it across the diamond, you know, getting the guy out at first. But man, when those come screaming at you, like I would just, I couldn’t get the fear out of my blood. You know, I was like, ah. And so what happened was after middle school, going into high school. I saw you know, I wanted to I was like should I try out should I try out and I started seeing everybody going like man these guys they got the gear those the balls like screaming, you know, I’ve never seen anyone pitch that fast before, know, and I freaked out and I was like, I’m not gonna do it. So I ended up doing wrestling which was a whole different, set me on another path and you know because tryouts were a can do some push-ups alright you’re in you know, I was like sweet and that built my character in other ways, but I think those two examples taught me you need the vision, absolutely. But with baseball, my vision, the talent and whatever I had emotionally in the vision wasn’t enough to push through where I needed to grow in my character, right? And I think where the scripture helped me is, man, God, He does a lot in our lives to help us grow in our character, to help us become persevering, like the ability to not quit, right? We get stronger and then hope, you know, and I think like hope of what I could become, what I can do with my life. And I totally have a negative view with this stuff a lot. I get negative on myself. I get like, I feel like I failed. 

Prior to this series most of my views of college, the reason I mentioned that a lot is because I viewed it with a lot of regret. Like I’m just like, man, like why did I bloat so much at a beautiful campus? Why did I not make use of that time? But I think what was cool about these scriptures and looking through all these things is going, hey, God’s still developing that in me now.

And this is all part of his story. And those were all part of like, me getting to where I am now and made me more grateful for how I got here. And, Hey, maybe some of that suffering of academic probation was part of me developing some urgency. And then when I got my first job out of college, uh, you know, I was a phone support. So it was, uh, it was, you know, hello, thank you for calling. How can I help you? Right? Like brutal, man, like 40, 50 calls a day.

Russ Ewell 

I’m laughing because I think some of the listeners out there are going, what’s the phone support?

Mike Query 

Yeah, right. Like, is that the name of your AI bot? But like, you know, I had to be right at my desk at seven. I lived in San Jose at the drive to Menlo Park.So, you know, that could be maybe 45 minutes or if just so you know what the commute was and you know on your computer you have to clock in. There’s a little bar when it was red it meant you’re off, if it was green you’re on right and so if that thing was red like one minute two minutes past, you know, you get a little talking to. You have to go to the bathroom, you got to press the button. It turns red, the timer starts. So it was brutal right. I got pretty good at waking up on time because I needed a paycheck, you know? And these things were like turning points and God developed me in my character. So I just kind of realized my perspective can be off about this stuff a lot when I get unspiritual, when I think about comparing myself and thinking I should be here when I’m here instead. When I look at God like using my life and using the people in my life to produce something in me, it was a lot more inspiring then so it just made me really excited about getting through the journey of all these different traits and skills we’re tackling in the series. I think there’s something for everybody.

Russ Ewell 

You know, it’s interesting because the research that I know I did on social and emotional learning in particular, and we’ll have some of these links available to you on the podcast, we’ll have some of these links available to you in the future devotionals we have, is that that’s just one of the challenges in the educational system and the life system that we have. I think it’s that way around the world. I mean, a lot of people learn, all of us learn math, we learn English, we learn history or social studies, whatever it may be called. But very rarely do you go into a class that you learn, how do I grow as a human being? I’m not saying that that’s the purpose of education, but it used to be, if you go back decades and decades and decades back, you’d find grandparents and parents were teaching kids these basic skills. If you go back to the agricultural times, I mean, we’re going way back now, the beginning of the country, the founding of the country, when we were a more agricultural-based than industrial-based country, you know, people were learning how to take care of the animals on the farm. They were learning how to plant. Believe it or not, in those days, those were life skills. And part of it, too, was small towns in those areas, your social life was built around your family and your extended family. Now in an era of mobility, a lot of those things that naturally taught us how to live are kind of fragmented and broken apart. 

I think that’s one of the reasons why God gives us the church. The purpose of the church, I never understood this when I studied to become a Christian, the purpose of the church is not to have people become Christians and go to church. A lot of people, like myself who was an agnostic, think that’s what church is about. But church is actually a holistic development of the whole person. It is holistic development. It’s developing the whole person. It’s being able to not only help us spiritually, but it’s being able to help us socially, emotionally, intellectually. Some people don’t believe that Christianity is an intellectual faith, but the reality of the matter is the intellectual ability we have, John 8:31-32, is about being freed from our insecurities, being freed from our fears and the willingness to explore and to search out and take on subject matter that maybe we wouldn’t have taken on before. I know that being a Christian has helped me intellectually. What I’m trying to say for everybody out there, and what you’re talking about, Mike, is I went through the same thing you went through, being late for class and having difficulties socially and emotionally all through college and beyond. I don’t feel like I grew up in any way, shape or form until I was in my 30s. Like, I feel like if I look back, I go, I was so immature. I was given too much responsibility before I could handle it.

But I think what we have to do is not be so, dare I say, Western in our thinking and ask ourselves the question, well, what’s the goal? Was the goal for us to be perfect at age 15? Was the goal for us to be accomplished at age 21? Was the goal for us to be superior at age 25? I’ve read some historians who say that most people who began to do great things start them at 25, meaning they begin to be involved in that field or that area. It doesn’t mean that they, you know, blow it out. In America, particularly, I think our society is very fixated on the fact that you should do something amazing when you’re young. It’s one of the reasons why, and you knew I was going to get him in this podcast. It’s one of the reasons why I like Bruce Springsteen and I like Bob Dylan. Be honest, I never liked their music coming up. I didn’t. I didn’t think either one of them was a great singer. I thought that the great singers were, you know, Marvin Gaye and Diana Ross and people like that. I thought those were the great singers of my youth, when I was a little kid. And then on similar people on and on. But what I think is compelling about these guys is their capacity to reinvent themselves and grow and grow with each generation of their life.

It’s why Bruce Springsteen’s still writing music today. That’s what’s amazing. And then I recently was able to finally watch the movie, the Bob Dylan movie, A Complete Unknown. And I loved that thing. I loved it. Know what mean? Well, it’s a little, the guy’s getting going the year I was born. I mean, it’s like, you know, it was back there a good bit. But what I looked at when I watched it was a person who was growing right in front of us. And a lot of times in society, we don’t reward growth, we will reward accomplishment. And so we can bring that into Christianity where we don’t celebrate growth, we only celebrate accomplishment. And I have a controlling perfectionistic part of me that comes from dysfunction and assortment of other things. And what I’ve learned is I often times am dissatisfied because I’m seeking perfection, instead of celebrating excellence in progress. So these are some of the things we want our listeners to know: this is the beginning of the journey. This podcast is the beginning of the journey. It’s not at all the end of the journey. This is meant to be a bit of a introduction or set of introductions, things that we’re gonna break up and put out there, little snippets that you can grab off YouTube or you can listen to the whole thing. Again, we really want you to stay with us on this and give us feedback; email us and let us know on each time we put a new skill out, each time you put a new devotional out, let us know what you want more of. Let us know what you don’t like, not because you’re being negative, because you want to guide us to be able to better meet your needs and help us too with the podcast, cause it’s a big pursuit to consistently do these. That’s why we weren’t consistently doing them and we’re delivering you different kinds of content, because we all have a lot of other things we have to do.

But it’s become clear listening to you guys out there, and it’s also become clear with the number of listeners who listen to the podcast that we need to do it consistently. And so we’re going to do that. And this is the beginning of it. The best life. Let me leave you with this scripture, Psalm 32:8-9. 

“The Lord says, I will guide you along the best pathway for your life. I will advise you and watch over you. Do not be like a senseless horse or mule that needs a bit and bridle to keep it under control.”

You know what God is saying? He’s saying to me– Now I know myself, I don’t trust God. I want to take control. You know, Dolly Parton had that song or somebody did? Carrie Underwood, Jesus Take the Wheel, you know? And I’m like, nah, Jesus, you’re a passenger. I got the wheel. And that’s one of my great challenges. Here’s the thing I’ve learned in my life. My best life is going to come when I actually trust Him to guide me. When I trust His love, when I trust His guidance, and when I don’t fear the unknown, and I don’t fear breaking free from maybe what everybody else is doing. If you’re out there today and you’re feeling like, hey, I’m not where I want to be, welcome to the club. This is going to be a great series for you. If you’re out there and you think I’m exactly where I want to be, but I’m starting to feel stuck, this is exactly where you want to be.

If you’re young and you’re a middle schooler or you’re a teenager and you’re saying, hey, I’m having problems in this area, please take a look at our content that’ll come out because it really will help you whether you’re 12 or you’re 50 or you’re 70 or you’re 80. And we’ll be getting in all this more. Thank you for listening to us. It’s been great for Mike and I to have you along. Remember to subscribe to our podcast so you can subscribe on YouTube as well.

And remember as well to give us a rating if you can. We’d prefer you give us a, you know, whatever, a five star rating because what it’ll do is it’ll help the content we’re putting out there to get to more people. And here’s my view. There’s so many voices out there right now talking about so many things. We want to make sure we have a podcast out there that the central thing it talks about is the power of God through the word of God to change our lives and to give us the best life. Thanks for listening. And please, keep up with our best life content.