Brandy M Miller - Loving Catholicism

Where is MY Abundance, Lord

I preach it, I teach it, and I believe it. Abundance is your birthright, not because some New Age guru said so, but because Christ told us, “I am come that they may have life, and may have it more abundantly.” – John 10:10

Yet lately, it’s looked to me as if my life is anything but abundant. Last night, I asked Him, “Where is MY abundance, Lord?”

Today, after attending Mass, I wrote a blog post expressing this frustration, the answers I found at Mass, and a conversation had with a non-Catholic friend because of that experience entitled, “Tired of Working Hard and Going Nowhere?“

Surrendering Everything to Him

I entered into prayer and I invited Christ to not just get into the boat of my life, but to direct me in where to cast my nets so that I might find MY abundant harvest as He once helped Simon Peter, Andrew, James, and John find theirs.

I told Him, “Lord, it’s your boat. It’s your ocean. They’re your fish. I surrender them all to you. Tell me where and when to cast your nets. I want only to do your will your way.”

I heard Him ask me, “Will you let me use your life as bait?”

I responded, “I offer my life to you. I will open it up and allow you to use it in whatever manner you need for me to let you use it. It isn’t my life, but yours. Do unto me according to your word.”

This is who I am. This is who I want to be. Entirely His, living for His sake. All of me. Not just the best parts of me.

Letting My Failures Lead the Way to Christ

I reflected on my conversation I’d had with my non-Catholic friend, Earth. It wasn’t my successes that opened the door to that conversation. It was my willingness to be open and honest with her about my own struggles and challenges and my failures to listen to Christ that opened that door.

It’s my willingness to admit that I fail the Lord all the time that makes people who aren’t Catholic willing to listen when I tell them the answers I find in the Mass, in confession, and in the Church’s teachings. They know it’s not coming from a place where I think I’m better than they are because of my walk with Christ. They know that I’m sharing it because it’s what worked and got me through each step of the way.

The truth is that in little ways and big ways, I’ve got little to show for my life’s efforts except my failures. That’s my abundance: an abundance of my failures. I’ve got a treasure trove of those to offer to any soul in need, along with the lessons I learned the hard way because of those failures.

Giving God Permission to Use My Failures

More than a dozen years ago, a priest at St. Joseph’s Parish in Elko, Nevada gave a homily about allowing Christ into the messiness of our lives. He talked about the fact that many times parishioners would call on him to bless their homes.

Yet they would have this one room or one area of their home where they did not want him to go, telling him, “Father, you can’t bless that area. It’s too messy.” They were literally refusing to allow the priest to bring Jesus into the middle of that mess.

Most of us tend to do that with the places and spaces in our lives where we’ve been hurt or done things we aren’t proud of doing. We shove those things into a kind of mental junk closet, lock the door, and hope that nobody ever finds the key. In fact, we bury the key because even we don’t want to go back and look at that incident anymore.

It’s too painful. Too filled with guilt and shame. If it’s a failure, it might remind us too much of the parts of ourselves that we don’t like. The parts of ourselves we find so hard to love.

If it’s a past incident of pain caused by the actions of another, we bury it because the pain of it is so great and we’ve got no idea where to begin stitching that part of ourselves back together again. Maybe we don’t even think it’s possible. We just want that part of our lives to stop existing, to stop hurting us.

We think if we shove it in that closet, we won’t have to look at it again. We won’t have to think about it. We won’t have to be reminded of the pain it causes us and we can go on with our lives.

But that’s not how the brain works. The subconscious mind does not know anything about time. Time does not exist for that part of us. Those past moments are as present to us as today’s. And those past memories do not stop trying to break loose from the closet where we’ve shoved them.

They come out at the worst possible moments, when our logic and reason are suspended and our emotions are activated. They spill out into our dreams, turning them into nightmares from which we can’t escape. They drive our decisions, destroy our relationships, and cause us to destroy ourselves in big ways and small.

Those hidden past pains become the weapons and instruments of the demons that latch onto our woundedness. They point to those things as proof that God doesn’t love us and God doesn’t care what happens to us and God can’t possibly want us because who could want someone who did that??

And those demons fuel our drinking habits, our drug addictions, our sexual immoralities, our depression, our anxiety, and all those things that keep us from being able to give and receive the love that God wants for us.

Only when we invite Christ into that closet and give Him permission to open it up and sort through the ugliness of it all can we find in those painful past moments the incredible gems of wisdom God wants to offer humanity through our story.

So this is me. Inviting God into the middle of that junk closet of my life. I’m calling on Him to help me sort through the mess of it all and help me put together the message that He wants the world to receive through my life’s story. I give God permission to use the abundant failures I’ve accumulated to bring abundance into the life of those who connect with me and Him an abundant harvest of souls on fire for Christ.

Your Invitation to Join Me

If you’re a faithful Catholic who wants others to come to know the love of Christ that you’ve found, I invite you to join me. My free course, Turning Problems into Prophets, will teach you where to get started.

If you’re either not Catholic or not on fire for Christ, I invite you to take my free course, Turning Problems into Profits, so I can show you how to leverage those past pains and failures to your financial advantage so you can taste the abundant life He has in mind for you.

Effective Evangelization: Winning Souls for Christ

I came back to the Catholic faith at the age of 28 and, by 32, God lit a fire in my heart for the faith. I wanted everyone to experience Christ’s love for themselves. But I struggled to win any souls for Christ. I didn’t have an effective strategy and I didn’t know where I was going wrong.

Focusing on the Wrong Things

Looking back, I can see where the problem was. I was focused on what I wanted for them. I wanted them to love Christ the way I’d learned to love Him. I wasn’t focused on helping them with what they wanted.

Overcoming The Five Biggest Challenges in Evangelizing

1. Not knowing what to focus on if not Christ

If you’d told me then that I was focused on the wrong thing, I’d have been shocked. Wasn’t the point to bring them to Christ?

The answer to this can be found in the Gospel of John Chapter 2 at the Wedding Feast at Cana. Watch as Mary effectively evangelizes the servants. She didn’t do this by focusing on Christ, but by focusing on the servant’s problems. She understood that those problems could be leveraged to lead them to Christ.

2. Not knowing how to steer the conversation to Christ

I’m sorry to say that in the beginning of my efforts to evangelize, I was so eager to share Christ with them that I shoehorned him in to every conversation I had because I didn’t know a better way to steer the conversation to Him.

Again, Mary provides us the example to use. After listening to the servant’s problems, she assures them that Christ can help them solve that problem. And then she leads the way.

3. Not knowing how to listen effectively to prospects.

As much as I thought I was focusing my efforts on Christ, when I look back at what I did, I realize that I approached evangelization too often with my own agenda firmly in mind. I knew what I wanted to achieve and I wasn’t listening to what they wanted or needed.

In 2016, when God first asked me to begin this ministry of teaching people to evangelize through entrepreneurship training, I threw a fit because it felt like God didn’t care about what I wanted. He wanted me to toss aside all my dreams to focus on His.

That afternoon, I went home and prayed the sorrowful mysteries of the Rosary as I struggled to follow Christ’s example and surrender my will to the will of the Father. When it came to the fifth Sorrowful Mystery, I put myself in the shoes of St. Peter.

He’d given up everything to follow Christ and now was forced to watch as every dream he’d sacrificed to attain was dying on that cross. But, without that Good Friday agony of witnessing His dreams dying on the cross, he would never have gotten to experience the glory and the joy of the Resurrection three days later on that Sunday morning.

I knew the Lord was giving me an important lesson. Until I was ready to put my dreams to death in the service of other people’s dreams, I was going to be too focused on what I wanted to actually achieve it. People don’t want to be used. They need to know that you care about what they want and are committed to helping them achieve it to the point of being willing to put their dreams ahead of your own.

Mary put the dreams of those servants and the hopes of that young married couple ahead of her own. She made those dreams and those hopes as precious to her as if they were her own, and did for them what she would have wanted someone to do for her own.

That’s why, when Christ challenged her by saying, “it is not yet my time” and asking, “Woman, what is this to us?” – effectively letting her know that if He did this for her, it was going to change the time table of the crucifixion and move it up – she stood her ground for them. She was willing to sacrifice the extra time with her son on Earth in order to help them.

That’s the kind of heart that got them willing to open up to her and trust in her in the first place. They knew she truly cared.

4. Being worried about losing credibility if I admitted I didn’t have all the answers.

Another thing that held me back during my early years of trying to evangelize was my concern that people would be less likely to listen to me if I admitted I didn’t have all the answers. I hesitated to admit to my messes because I was ashamed of them and the person I’d been before Christ came into my life.

Again, we can look to Mary for the example on this. She didn’t pretend to have all the answers or to be able to help them on her own power. She admitted that she had nothing she could do for them except to lead them to Christ.

Her willingness to be open and honest with them about her limitations didn’t stop them from trusting her. It showed them that she was just like them and so, when she said Christ could help them, they believed her and followed her to Christ.

She allowed them to see how Christ worked in her life which gave them hope He could work in theirs no matter how big their mess or how impossible their problem seemed to be.

5. Not knowing how to L.E.A.D. the conversation

I was trying to lead people to Christ, but I didn’t know how to L.E.A.D. the conversation. Nobody’d taught me the strategies required to get people to open up and listen.

Over time, God taught me that effective leadership begins with taking the L.E.A.D. in every conversation:

Listening to understand what people’s dreams, desires, hopes, problems, concerns, worries, and fears happen to be.

Empathizing with their situation and taking these things to heart as if they were your own.

Asking relevant questions to be sure that you fully understand their circumstances, their challenges, and so you can assess what you have to offer that will help them most.

Discipling your prospects by showing them the way forward.

That’s the exact strategy Mary employed to get the servants to open up to her so she could show them the way to Christ. She became a trusted mentor for them, helping them achieve their dreams, relieve their fears, and solve their problems.

She won those souls for Christ without coming across as judgmental or preachy. That reduced the friction and the frustration involved in evangelizing for both parties.

Learn to Turn Problems into Prophets

Get more help with effective evangelization strategies by enrolling in our free, self-paced online course, Turning Problems into Prophets. You’ll be empowered to tap into the power of your problems – and your story – to win souls for Christ.

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Loving Evangelization: Sharing the Good News with Friends

In my last post, 5 Tips for Effective Evangelization, I shared strategies I’ve learned over the years of my efforts to evangelize other people. One of those tips is to lean on your story. To illustrate the power of that strategy, I’m going to share with you a story.

Signing Up to Serve

The story begins in July of 2022 when I signed up to volunteer at St. Ann’s parish in Coppell, Texas during a Diocesan Conference. I didn’t expect anything more than that I would do a few hours work and then return home.

After my time of service finished, they offered evening Mass. I decided to attend. What happened next changed my life.

Receiving an Anointing of the Holy Spirit

Dr. Mary Healy spoke before Mass and stated that, “Before every new level of ministry, you need a new anointing.”

She and her team, which included a priest, then proceeded to call down the Holy Spirit on the crowd and to anoint us all that we might go out and spread the Good News to all the world. Before that day, I loved my faith, but when it came time to share the Good News, I approached it with hesitation.

I didn’t want to start fights or damage relationships. I’d gotten quite used to going along to get along.On August 1^st, I gathered up every ounce of courage I possessed and recorded a video entitled, “Abundance Is Your Birthright,” in which I shared what God taught me about abundance:

If you’re not receiving in abundance, it’s not because God doesn’t provide abundance for you. It’s because there’s something blocking the mechanisms that He designed to bring abundance to you and deliver abundance through you.

Evangelization: Daring to Share

It took a lot of courage for me to do what I did next, but I’m so grateful I did. I started sending that little video to select people on my email list. Among the list of people I selected to send it to, one of those was Joylynn M. Ross, the CEO and founder of Path To Publishing.

She also happened to be a business colleague of mine. I knew from many conversations that she believed in Christ but I also knew she wasn’t Catholic. I didn’t know how she’d receive what I sent to her. Would I anger her? Would she reject me?

With trembling fingers, I typed in this email, copied the link to the YouTube video I created, and hit the send button.

“I know that right now there are so many people worried about their money, about food shortages, and about their future.

That’s why I put together this short, five-minute video sharing a story from my own past. At a moment when I didn’t have the money for rent, I was facing eviction, and I didn’t know where we would go if the money didn’t turn up, I turned to God for help.

He didn’t send me money, but the message He sent me is worth sharing:

“Abundance is your birthright!”

If you don’t have access to all that you need and then some, it’s not because He doesn’t want you to have it. It’s because something is wrong with the system that brings abundance to you.

If you are looking for hope, if you need reassurance, if you’re worried about the future, I invite you to watch the video. If you’re doing well but you know someone who might need this message, please consider sharing it with them.

If you want to tap into the flow of abundance, but you’re experiencing some kind of blockage, I invite you to reach out to me and let me help you find the source of that blockage so we can remove it and you can enjoy the fruits of your inheritance.

Best wishes,

Brandy M. Miller

I didn’t know what, if anything, to expect from that effort.

The Answer to Prayers

That very next morning, Joylynn called me. The night before, she’d been tossing and turning in complete misery and confusion. She felt 100% clear on her calling, assignment, and purpose in life. She felt 100% confident she’d been operating in complete excellence while executing the tasks that needed doing in decent order and with integrity.

She felt something blocking her path to abundance but didn’t know what it was, she just knew it was something inside of her not outside of her. It felt so heavy.

She didn’t just pray that God help her figure it out. She demanded that He provide an answer in her inbox that next morning.

You can listen to her share her story here: https://youtu.be/FFB7KPhjpnI.

My act of obedience, of sharing a story about a moment when I turned to God because I couldn’t answer the challenge I faced and He answered me, became an answer to her prayers.

Psalm 145:10 – A Poignant Reminder

Before writing today’s post, I stopped to ask God what He wanted me to do. What did He want me to write?

The responsorial psalm for today’s Mass readings struck me. “Your friends make known, Lord, the glorious splendor of your kingdom.”

It’s pulled from Psalm 145:10 which says, “All your works praise you, Lord; your faithful people extol you.”

If I’m the Lord’s friend, how can I not make known the good things that He has done for me? How can I not sing His praises for all the great things that have come to me through Him?

Make a S.I.M.P.L.E. Invitation

As I explained in the blog post, “Planning for Success: A How-To Guide for Leaders,” the simpler we keep things for people, the more likely they are to get done. S.I.M.P.L.E. means “Show Implementation with Measurable, Practical, Literal Examples.”

In John 1:46, Philip made a S.I.M.P.L.E. invitation to Nathaniel that led him to Christ. He simply said, “Come and see.” And then he walked with Nathaniel, showing him the way to where he could find Christ.

That’s all we need to do. Just share our story and invite people to come and see. Christ will do the rest.

Bungling Things By Adding Unnecessary Complications

The invitation I made to Joylynn worked because it was S.I.M.P.L.E. As we worked together, the two of us became so excited by the results we were getting that we set up a website. We conceived a vision for a program that would help others tap into the flow of abundance.

In December of 2022, I hosted a webinar called “Abundance Now” that got 7 people – all protestant or “spiritual but not religious” listening in and gave me the chance to talk about my Catholic faith. Every single one of the people who joined that webinar stayed on for the full time – including one who registered a complaint that there was too much Jesus talk!

The funny thing is that she told me, during our discussion after the webinar, that the Holy Spirit told her to stay til the end despite the fact she didn’t want to hear about Jesus.

Nothing else went right with that program and – at the time – I didn’t understand why so I abandoned the project. I now know that the mistake I made with the program wasn’t the program itself. It was my mindset. I was trying to pour the old wine of money into the new wineskin God made for me with abundance, and doomed the project to failure as a result.

When your product is love – the secret to true abundance – adding money to the mix only complicates things and blocks the very flow of abundance you’re trying to break open. Love can never be a transaction. It must always be a free, voluntary, sacrificial gift.

Getting Back on Board with the Lord

Once I surrendered to Christ and put together the plan that led me to offer Turning Problems into Prophets, it became clear to me where Breaking Open Abundance fits into the picture and the purpose for which God led me to create it.

I’ll be revitalizing that program soon and will let you know when it’s ready and available for you. In the meanwhile, just know this:

Your stories about what God’s done for you in your life deserve to be told and shared. People need to hear that He has not forgotten them. Friends don’t withhold the Good News from friends. You never know whose prayers you might be answering by finding the courage to share.

Learn How to Share Your Story

Get strategic tips for evangelization and how to share your story in my free course, Turning Problems into Prophets.

Effective Evangelization: 5 Tips for Sharing the Good News

Effective evangelization doesn’t come without practice. I’ve been privileged to be part of God’s work evangelizing some of my friends and family members, bringing them either to Christ or back home to the faith. My husband is one of those individuals.

Effective Evangelization Mistakes

The miracle with my husband’s conversion isn’t that it took 18 years to happen. It’s that it happened at all.

Given the sheer number of mistakes and errors I made, the poor example I set, it’s a miracle that God could still intervene and open my husband’s eyes and heart to the faith. I offer these five tips based on what I learned from my humble efforts.

1. Let the Lord Lead the Way

“And began to proclaim: When you shall see the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God, and the priests of the race of Levi carrying it, rise you up also, and follow them as they go before:” – Joshua 3:3

It’s important to remember that your success is not going to come through hustling hard, being a genius, or being a really, really good person. You can be all of those things and fail.

This work does not depend on you. It depends on Him. Let Him lead the way. Let Him direct your steps and clear your path.

Allow God to leverage what your instincts tell you to hide: your faults, your failings, your weaknesses, and your mistakes to His strategic advantage. It’s hard, but it’s necessary to humble yourself and allow all the parts of your past to be used.

2. Keep Your Ego Out of This

It’s not about how good or how worthy you are, but about how Great and Worthy God is. The moment that you allow your ego to take over, you will end up tripping over your own feet. Love flees in the face of ego, and love is what is needed most for this work to be done.

3. Lean on Your Story

The story of how God worked in your life to conquer the giants you couldn’t will do the heavy lifting in the conversion process. You don’t need to be an expert or have all the knowledge. All you need to know is your own story and what God has done and continues to do in your life.

4. Become Comfortable with Your Imperfections

Don’t think you need to wait until you’ve got everything together. Don’t think you can only do this work when your life is where you want it to be. Don’t think you need to be perfect to do this work.

You’re never going to have it all together. Your life is never going to be exactly where you want it to be. You’re not God, so you’re also never going to be perfect.

God needs your honesty and your humanity, not your perfection. He doesn’t need your life to have everything together. He needs your mess. He doesn’t need you to be perfect. He will perfect you.

5. Be Patient, Be Obedient, and Wait on God’s Timing

The first conversion that must take place before He can help you convert someone is your own. God will take the prayers you’re offering on their behalf and use them to refine you into the person you must become to lead those you pray for to Christ.

The more obedient you can be to the Lord while you’re waiting, the quicker God can work through you to answer the prayers you’re offering. But ultimately, the timing belongs to God. He alone knows when the other person is going to be ready to open up to receive Him.

At one point, while waiting on my husband’s conversion, I asked God why He takes so long. His response? “Because what I build, I build for eternity. If I built it at the speed you want it built, it would not last.”

Learn Effective Evangelization Strategies with Turning Problems into Prophets

If you’d like more detailed strategies, we offer a free course, Turning Problems into Prophets, to help you get the steps you need to share your story and turn the problems in your life into tools for effective evangelization.

Planning for Success: A How-To Guide for Leaders

“For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down to count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it?” – Luke 14:28

When you’re creating a ministry, it’s important to start by envisioning what success looks like for your ministry. What are you going to get out of all the work you’re doing? How will that impact the world?

Establishing Loving Catholicism’s Vision

At Loving Catholicism, our vision is to reclaim the world for Christ. It’s a big vision, but we know that when the world is reclaimed for Christ, love will reign supreme, peace will be found, and everyone will be filled with hope and joy. In other words, we will all experience Heaven on Earth as promised in the Our Father. The vision of reclaiming the world for Christ is the reason for Loving Catholicism’s existence.

Determining the Mission

A vision without a mission is a dream without a plan. It’s not enough to have the vision. You must determine what it is – specifically – that you’re going to do to make that vision a reality.

The Mission of Loving Catholicism

At Loving Catholicism, we know that the key to reclaiming the world for Christ is to first equip Catholic families to share the Good News in a post-Christian society. Our mission, because of that vision, is to equip Catholic families to share the Good News in a post-Christian society.

Creating Your Measure of Mission Success

How will you know that you’re succeeding in your mission? What will you use to measure it?

Making the Mission S.I.M.P.L.E.

Complicated missions remain unfulfilled. People get overwhelmed and don’t know how to move forward. They start acting S.T.U.P.I.D. (Slow To Understand, Process, Implement, and Digest) because their brains can’t find a starting point.

This is why it’s important to break that big mission down into something that we can use to Show Implementation with Measurable, Practical Literal Examples. That’s what S.I.M.P.L.E. means.

The S.I.M.P.L.E. Picture of Success for Loving Catholicism

We will know we are successful in our mission when we see a 25% monthly growth in our long-term highly engaged Prophet Makers members.

Our highly engaged members:

Post daily in the private online community
Respond daily to other members in the community
Share the Turning Problems into Prophets course at least once a week with other Catholic families
Make monthly contributions of time, talent, or treasure to building the membership
Have created at least one offer to post on our site
Are active in promoting their offer to non-Catholics at least once a week

Steps Needed to Achieve Our Definition of Success

People must learn about our website
They must discover our Turning Problems into Prophets course.
They must sign up for our Turning Problems into Prophets course.
They must complete the Turning Problems into Prophets course.
They must enroll in the Prophet Makers membership.
They must create a Prophet Maker offer.
They must allow us to list their Prophet Maker offer on our website.
They must post daily in the private online community
They must respond to others daily in the private online community
They must share the Turning Problems into Prophets course once a week
They must promote their Prophet Maker offer to others once a week
They must contribute a monthly love offering

Creating Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to Help Us Achieve Success

Number of people exposed to our website
Number of people exposed to our course
Number of people signed up for our course
Number of course completions
Number of Prophet Maker enrollments
Number of Prophet Maker offers created
Number of Prophet Maker offers listed
Number of daily posts made
Number of daily responses made
Number of times per week the course was shared
Number of times per week their Prophet Maker offer was promoted to non-Catholics.
Number of months a love offering was made

This is how we plan for success. I hope you found this post helpful.

Making a Strategic Pivot

When I first launched Loving Catholicism, my goal was to provide free catechetical instruction to Directors of Religious Education programs so that they wouldn’t feel the need to charge for such instruction. I did this when someone I’d developed a relationship with was told it would cost them $120 to join the Church’s RCIA program.

I understood that Church’s financial challenges and I didn’t blame them for needing to fund the program, but I wanted to give them a better alternative. So I spent a few weeks developing a simple training program to explain the Catholic faith and then I submitted my work to two different priests and over 100 Directors of Religious Education programs across the country.

The Challenges My Program Faced

The priests stated they didn’t see any problems with the program, but they also didn’t see a need for it in their parish. They didn’t help me when I asked them to refer the program to the Bishop. Perhaps they didn’t have time.

I wrote to the Bishop, but his office never responded. I got back one rather snarky reply from a Director of Religious Education in which I was asked what my credentials were before they would even look at the program, stating I could be just “some random Catholic with a lot of knowledge.”

Which, to be fair, is an apt description of who I am. Just a random Catholic with a lot of knowledge. But that doesn’t stop me from being given the same Great Commission that much more learned individuals than I received at our baptism.

The Challenge for a Lay Catholic

The problem is that, without approval from a Bishop, it’s an ex-communicable offense to publish anything that proposes to teach on matters of Catholic faith or morals. My content could not get past the gatekeepers, and so it languished, unable to be of use to anyone.

I understand the logic of the policy. There’s a real need to safeguard Catholic teaching, which is why we have the Magisterium and the Papacy. We want to be sure that what we’re handing on to others is authentic and true to the teachings of Christ and the Apostles.

The challenge: What could I do to fulfill the mission that God laid on me to teach people how to evangelize by teaching them entrepreneurship skills without going against the Church’s teachings?

Focusing on What I Can Do, Rather Than What I Can’t

It took time for God to help me work through this and realize that I didn’t need to teach the Catholic faith to be able to teach people the skills for evangelization. They’re going to face the same hurdle I do: they’re not degreed theologians, priests, deacons, or religious. They’re just “random Catholics with a lot of knowledge” trying to pass on their faith to those around them.

And they don’t need to be. They can refer their prospects to the nearest Catholic Church for proper catechesis while they focus on building the relationship and answering what questions they can about living for Christ in a post-Christian world.

Every Business and Ministry Faces Pivot Points

Sometimes the strategy you choose doesn’t work. You step out into the market place of ideas for how to solve certain problems you see and you meet resistance to your initial concept. People you expected to buy don’t. They pass your offer by like it’s nothing.

Sometimes the rules change or the technology changes and you must make a decision about how to adjust to the new environment in which your business or ministry exists.

At that point in time, you have three options:

Quit and abandon your mission.
Keep pushing forward and allow your progress to be delayed by the obstacles.
Alter your strategy.

I chose to alter my strategy, so I could move forward with the work God asked me to do for him without violating the Church’s teachings to do so.

How to Formulate a Pivot Strategy

These are the steps I’ve found work best for creating a pivot strategy:

Check your alignment. Is what you’re doing in line with your assignment from Christ? If not, get in alignment with His assignment.
Listen to your critics. They’ll tell you what the weaknesses are with your current strategy. How can you either strengthen your position or create a strategy where your weakness is an asset instead of a liability?
Evaluate your current obstacles. What can you do to eliminate those or work around them?
Don’t overcomplicate things. When you add too many steps to the process or make things too complex, you’re going to find your brain stalls out trying to figure out how to get it all done. Every extra thing you add to the process adds a new place where things can break down and go wrong. Remember this: Complexity makes people S.T.U.P.I.D. (Slow to Understand, Process, Implement, and Digest). You fix S.T.U.P.I.D. with S.I.M.P.L.E.
Use a S.I.M.P.L.E. strategy: Show implementation with measurable, practical, and literal examples. In other words – find a way to use your story to show how things can be implemented and the measurable, practical outcomes that can be achieved with the literal examples you provide.

Once you’ve gotten your pivot strategy created, it’s time to implement. Test it in the marketplace.

You may need to go through this process several times before you find one that works, but pray over it and keep going. Remember: If God is with you, no one can stand against you.

Get Help Formulating a Pivot Strategy in Our Prophet Makers Community

If you need help formulating a pivot strategy that capitalizes on your strengths, minimizes your weaknesses, and allows you to move forward with the the assignment God’s given you, sign up for our Prophet Makers free membership and become part of our Prophet Makers community.

Embracing the Messiness of My Life

This morning on the way to confession, God and I engaged in a little tête-à-tête regarding my present circumstances and the mission he assigned my husband and I eight years ago.

I spent eight years fighting him on this mission, overlooking the obvious solutions to the challenges I faced, because – as God pointed out to me – I wanted to wait until I measured up to the world’s vision of success: millions of dollars in the bank and millions of admiring fans. Instead, God commissioned me to do this work and then allowed me to become homeless with little to no money to show for all my efforts.

A Question That Haunted Me

At one point, when I told my mother about the ministry God called me to do, to teach people how to take the same business skills required to build a successful business and use them to engage in evangelization – she asked me a question that cut me to the core. “How is anyone to take your business training seriously when you don’t have money to show them?”

When I look back at the last eight years, I think that’s the real question I kept asking myself. What makes me qualified to do this work? Like our stuttering friend, Moses, I essentially told God, “You’ve got the wrong girl! Don’t you know I’m a walking financial disaster? Nobody’s going to take me seriously.”

And every failure I met in trying to get the ministry up and running only further entrenched me in that fear that I wasn’t enough. I wasn’t good enough. I wasn’t credible enough. I hadn’t done enough. I hadn’t proven myself worthy.

Struggling to Value Myself Beyond the Money

I struggled to write this blog post. I struggled to admit to myself how much it hurts and how much of a failure I feel because I’ve ended up where I am.

Her question cuts me to the core because it reduces my accomplishments to rubble, and my worth along with it. In a society that values people by the money they make, few people see the person beyond their bottom line.

But then God shared with me why He allowed me to become homeless in the first place: He wants to use me to break people free of that mindset. To show them that they are worth far more than the money they make.

To take away their excuses and prove to them that no matter how bad the situation in which they find themselves, if they follow His instructions, He will equip them with everything needed to do what He’s assigned them to do.

Their worth is not measured in dollars and cents but in the blood of Christ which He shed for them to ransom them from captivity. Their value is not set by the monetary system but by Christ. And the same thing is true about me.

It’s Not About Me and How Good I Am

As I spoke with God, He pointed out to me my real problem: making myself and my circumstances the focal point of the ministry. He reminded me that the work He’s asked me to do isn’t about me and how good I am.

It’s about how great He is and how He can raise up the meek and the lowly regardless of their circumstances if they but place their trust in Him. It’s about reminding people that His power is not limited by our finances. He can turn our empty stone jugs into the best wine if we but do whatever He tells us to do.

That’s why He wants me to start it right where I am and not to be ashamed but to step out in faith and allow His perfection to cover my imperfections. He reminded me that those who turn to me for help will emulate my example. If I let money be the reason I didn’t do what He asked me to do, they’ll let the money be the reason they didn’t respond to Him either.

The Model of the Manger

Christ didn’t choose to enter the world in a fancy hotel or a palace, but in a manger. A messy, dingy, dusty, dirty impoverished manger where animals fed.

Nobody expected the King of Kings to be born there. Had His birth taken place in a palace or a fancy hotel instead, the messy, dingy, dusty, dirty and poverty-ridden shepherds would never have dared to approach Him. They would have been too intimidated by the polished appearance of perfection so far beyond their grasp.

My call is to minister to those Catholic families whom society has forgotten, neglected, and dismissed as worthless because of their empty bank accounts. To show them how to find the incredible wealth that God placed inside their heads and their hearts.

I’m to help them understand the irreplaceable value that they bring to the world whenever they open up their lives and allow the goodness of God’s work in their lives to be shared. Then, He can use them as a vessel of His love and His grace in the world.

Obedience, Not Perfection, Is Required

I don’t need to be perfect to do the work God asked me to do. I don’t need to have everything in order or to know everything. God will supply all of my needs. All I need to do in order to find success is to trust Him and obey. The rest is in His hands.

Eight years ago, in early May of 2016, I heard Christ telling me to come follow Him and He would make me a fisher of men. I felt, along with St. Peter, the frustration after all my hard work spent trying to catch my living failed.

However, unlike St. Peter, I refused to listen when Christ told me to cast my nets out into the deep. I simply kept grumbling and complaining that I’d worked hard and caught nothing. Today, I’m choosing to listen. I’m choosing to cast my net out into the other side of the boat and to trust that if I do as He tells me to do, the catch will be abundant.

Sound Familiar?

If this article sounds familiar, if you think you’re being called to do something by Christ but you’ve been allowing your bank account to be the thing that’s holding you back, I encourage you to place your trust in Him.

Sign up for our free course, Turning Problems into Prophets, and I’ll guide you through the skills you need to learn in order to engage in effective evangelization while learning the skills needed to build a successful business.

If, after you take the course, you feel you need more support or want to join a community of other individuals on the same journey, join our free Prophet Makers private online membership. We’ll work together to get you up and running, ready to play your part in bringing the love of Christ to humanity as you share the Good News.

Answering Christ’s Call to Share the Good News in a Post-Christian Society

Answering Christ's call to share the Good News of His love, embodied in the crucifixion.

Answering Christ’s call to share the Good News might seem tough in our post-Christian society. The Olympic opening ceremony mocking the Last Supper, the announcement by Prince Charles of England that the Church of England would no longer call itself a Church, Canada and many other Western countries punish Christians for sharing their faith. Faith-based discrimination claims rose in 2022 from a previous high of 2,000 to over 14,000.

It can be tough to find opportunities for sharing the Good News about Christ’s love, but only because we overlook the value of our problems.

Answering Christ’s Call Using Our Problems

Our problems provide us a common denominator, a shared battle ground, to leverage in opening the door to being able to witness to Christ’s awesome power.

All we need to do is tap into the rich vein of problems we’ve faced in our lives where we were powerless to solve it and were forced to cry out to God for help and support.

Then, we can share the way that God came to our aid and made things happen that were beyond our power – or the power of any human being – to do. That’s it. No need to argue. No need to have all the answers. We rely on Christ to do the heavy lifting. All we do is plant the seed.

Everyone Faces Problems

Everyone – even God – faces problems. God’s got roughly 8 billion of them by last count, if all we’re counting are the people He created.

Those problems give us a common bond with those who face those problems now but don’t yet know how to solve them. They allow us room to minister to those individuals and share with them the reason for our hope.

We become the trusted mentor who can help guide them past the problems that seem so far beyond their capability to solve when everything else they’ve tried failed them. Like the woman who bled for 12 years, we may not be able to solve her problem ourselves, but we can bring her to the One with the power to make the bleeding stop.

The Most Effective Problems to Use: Those That Required God’s Help to Solve

When your goal is to start a business, you use the problem that cost you the most time, money, energy, and effort to solve. That’s where your greatest opportunities lie. When your goal is to bring people to Christ, you start instead with the problem that you knew was impossible for any human being to solve. The one that forced you to your knees in search of help and led you to develop that trust and confidence in Christ you hold today.

That story will speak most clearly to the person facing that problem that seems so far beyond them to solve. It will get their attention and give them hope that all is not lost. Turning Problems into Prophets, our free online self-paced course, will teach you the steps to outlining your testimony so you can lead them from where they are to where you are today.

You don’t have to be a natural storyteller. You don’t have to have experience writing. I’ll give you a step-by-step blueprint you can use to create a compelling story. You’ll be equipped to tell your story in any situation with ease so you can become a beacon of light for those who wander in darkness and a sign pointing the way to wisdom for those who seek it. Get help answering Christ’s call by taking our free course now and get on your way to success in storytelling.

Answering Christ’s Call to Share the Good News Is Even More Important Now than Ever

What society doesn’t realize is that in rejecting Christ, they reject the eternal wellspring of divine love. Human love simply can’t replace Him.

And with that rejection of the ultimate source of love comes a whole slew of mental health ailments. That’s why addictions, suicide, depression, and anxiety are all skyrocketing. It all reflects a growing number of individuals who feel unloved and unlovable.

We’ve got the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven. We’ve got the remedy they need. We must be sure we share that with them. Society rests on our success.