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Welcome back to the Weird Souls Are We Podcast! Ep 9
We’re going to talk about:
- How to care for others, Christians and Non-Christians
- How to care for ourselves
What the show will look like In EP 10
we’ll talk about how to share all the things: time, talent, treasure, and truth
Are you a Weird Soul? Weird Souls live a Jesus-centered life in modern culture.
Got Questions? Leave a comment.
Transcript
hey weirdos welcome back to weird souls are we the podcast where we talk about how to live a Jesus centered life in a modern day world this is episode nine and today we’re going to be talking about care uh specifically how do we care for others especially Christians and non-christians and then also how do we care for ourselves so as I was doing the research for this episode I came across uh an interesting thing from the Mayo Clinic and it said on their website kindness has been shown to increase self-esteem empathy and compassion and
improve mood it can decrease blood pressure and cortisol a stress hormone which directly impacts stress levels people who give of themselves in a balanced way also tend to be healthier and live longer and I think that just perfectly sets up what we’re going to be talking about in this episode about how important it is not just to care for others but ourselves and figuring out a real Harmony behind that and you’ll hear me always use the word harmony over balance Harmony means helping everything find its spot in the right way with the
right levels versus balance is making sure everything’s equal and balance I just don’t think is possible in this life but Harmony I definitely think we can get to a place where our life is more harmonic with all the things we want to achieve and all the things we’re called to do as Christians where versus trying to get everything perfectly even all the time so we’re going to start talking about how do we care for other Christians uh you’ll see the example in the Bible especially with the New
Testament Church that they started first by caring for each other and that’s really what started drawing people into the church is that when you were a part of that community that Community took care of itself made sure everybody had what they needed at any given moment by caring and sharing with each other now Care and Share are very similar and I’m going to try and make a line because next week we’re going to talk more specifically about what and how to share with others uh but caring for other
Christians is a key step in our faith because it’s that care that shows the world the love of Jesus so in John 13 Jesus says a new command I give you love one another as I have loved you so you must love one another by this everyone will know that you are my disciples if you love one another and this is a command from Jesus that he wants us to do is to care SL love for each other and it’s the sadap love in this verse it’s not not the romantic or uh emotional tug it is the choice to put the interest of
somebody else above yourself and the beauty is in a faith community if you are caring fully for others if you’re loving a gape love um for somebody and they are doing that in return everyone will get their needs met even though you might not be taking care of yourself uh there is not just the fact that everybody’s getting their needs met but it’s we’re wired is that we operate best when we’re taking care of others and then we can trust that others are going to take care of us when your faith
community is operating fully in the agape love one another’s space so this does get a little bit more complicated when you start getting into larger Church worlds if your church is I’d say over 200 people this is when small groups become even more important because once you start getting larger it means that the church body can’t know everybody there’s science behind the fact that really somewhere around the 150 Mark is when we start losing track of people as humans I can know something about around 150 people and then I just
can’t keep track after that and so obviously those are not all super in-depth close relationships but just keeping track of around 150 200 people is really the max for people and so once your church starts getting over 200 it’s just not possible for everyone to know that everybody is always there and everybody Tak care of and people can start falling through the cracks so that’s when small groups become even more important because those are the people that are going to know how are you doing what’s going on in your life
do you have needs um do you have things that you’re trying to help with other people like it just becomes back into that agape love kind of thing that Jesus asked us to do so we want to make sure that you have a church family that you are uh caring for and that you are part of the Care process there we want to make sure that you’re a small group of people that this is basically your spiritual family where you are taking care of one another in that agape love kind of way but that’s not just the extent of what we’re called to do we’re
also called to care for other for we’re also called to care for all Christians not just the people in our small group not just the people at our church but anybody that is a part of the family of God so that also means the churches down the road that maybe you don’t agree on absolutely everything maybe you don’t don’t agree on absolutely everything uh down to the te but as long as you have that key belief in Jesus Christ Lord and Savior answer to Salvation and those non-negotiable pieces that make us
Christians you’re still called to care for the church down the road even though you might not agree on absolutely everything as long as you get the essentials right which is believing in Jesus it’s the one and only son of God and that through him we can be saved uh then we’re still called to care for those Christians it might look differently than the people in our small group or church but we should still be trying as best we can to have a unified Body of Christ each of us have different roles each church has a different role
in the mission that Jesus sent us on some churches are going to be more focused on maybe helping homeless and uh maybe a we all have our bents in where we focus in our worship and how we express our faith um maybe some churches are more focused on foster care or on um poverty like food resourcing kind of stuff but we all have our space that we are focused on helping in the kingdom of God and we are all called to care in my current church we do a food program in the summertime and there is a lot of collaboration amongst the churches in
the area in order to help feed kids through the summer especially uh we also have a couple Network groups that we’re part of where multiple Faith organizations and churches get together to try and benefit our community collaboratively uh it can look like making sure we’re not having a food handout or a food me or a free meal on the same days of the week so that people can kind of go from one to the other and therefore we’re working together to support our community uh it can look like uh we all get
together and do a once a month kids program after school it’s not attached to anyone particular Church it is the faith community working together in order to see Jesus has come into people’s lives and so just because we have our church that’s doing our thing it doesn’t exempt us from trying to make sure the body of Christ uh both on our site and off our site is working together collaboratively in order to share and care for one another so those are really the three big spaces that we need to make sure that we’re caring for
one another in our church family in our small group uh faith family community and then um with the church as a whole really making people understand that we even though we might worship a little bit different or have certain things that we prioritize over each other as long as we have that same root focus on who Jesus is and what he did then we can be a unified front working to serve our community and make change that ultimately glorifies God and once we’re showing people this is what God wants for us this is the type of community God
wants this is how we care for each other and really showing them what we’re inviting people into then we can start caring for people outside of those communities because the reality is if what we are doing looks toxic and uninviting it doesn’t matter how much we take care of people outside of the church they’re not going to want to be a part of our hot mess Express so we’ve got to make sure that we are taking care of what we’re inviting people to as well as taking the care of the people that
we’re inviting to come into our spaces and I think ultimately caring for people outside of the church starts with remembering that they are made in the image of God they are God’s creation they are God’s children just as much as us even though they may not be living in that truth or accepting it at this moment it doesn’t change the fact that we believe they were created in the image of God and therefore are valuable because they are children of God and when we start with that understanding it
gives us more empathy and compassion for where people are at and why maybe they haven’t fully accepted their identity in Christ or started to step towards him uh it makes us less likely to jump on them as being wrong or trying to pick fights about why they should change and start doing life the way we say they should because the reality is we have to understand that it’s as much a choice for them as it is for us yes we’ve Chosen and we we know the truth but it’s still a choice and it needs to be their
choice as well us trying to scare them into a relationship with Jesus or us just telling them they’re wrong that is not how God asked us to enter into relationship with o with people that are outside of the family of God or how to share the good news and we’ll get into this a little bit more next uh on the next podcast episode when we talk about how to share with people but in First Peter 3 it says finally all of you should be of one mind sympathize with each other love each other as brothers and sisters be tender-hearted keep a
humble attitude don’t repent evil for evil don’t retaliate with insults when people insult you instead pay them back with a blessing that is what God has called you to do and He will grant you his Blessing uh so this scripture not only outlines how we’re supposed to treat each other within the church and that we’re to be unified and tenderhearted towards each other but it also points out that we’re not to be aggressive towards non-christians like that is not what’s going to make them want to listen to us
let alone join our community it says don’t retaliate insult for insult I would even say that I would even say that is leading us to understand we’re not supposed to start the insults either we’re not supposed to start with telling people they’re wrong or that they’re going to go to hell or things of that nature uh we’re to start with blessing and um giving them opportunity to ask us like okay why why do you believe this um and it’s when they ask that we we let them lead the conversation and we answer
with truth but we don’t aggressively go into somebody’s life and expect them to be interested in ours uh first Peter 3 goes on to talk about uh now who will want to harm you if you are eager to do good but even if you suffer for doing what is right God will reward you for it so don’t worry or be afraid of their threats uh again we start with goodness we start with kindness we start with caring for people and if there are always going to be people that are antagonistic against the truth and yes if they start being aggressive or
insulting towards us we just respond with kindness and blessing but we don’t antagonize we don’t start with aggressiveness we start with blessing we have to remember that they aren’t Christians they have not not said I want to live by the standard of life that Jesus lived so we can’t expect them to live by that standard we can’t be offended that they are living like somebody who doesn’t follow Jesus because they have not said they want to follow Jesus and we have to give them uh the grace and mercy through our
relationship with them to not hold them to something they haven’t said they want to and we have to go into these relationships understanding that we need to respect them and if we’re being respectful and honest with them most of the time people are going to be respectful and understanding towards you as well um I’ve had plenty of different types of relationships uh with people that are all sorts of different religions and stages of life and Christian versus non and even when I disagree with Christians on how life is
supposed to be when I am respectful and say you know what this is just not a way that I live my life or this is something that is offsetting to me so I’m going to remove myself from this situation they are understanding they are like okay that’s great then we will meet up at this time or we will re-engage in this way sometimes I have them say you know what that’s okay we can we can pull back on this so that we can continue what we’re doing currently because the reality is if you are respectful and
kind most people are going to be respectful and kind back and they’re going to work with you and meet you where you’re at if you work with them and meet them where they’re at and while this shouldn’t be like Earth shattering like that’s how every relationship is it’s found with caring for one another showing respect and kindness and building towards something together in that capacity and like Jesus said if you go and you do these things and they still want nothing to do with you don’t
force yourself on them Shake the Dust from your feet and move on because the reality is you aren’t going to save everyone you aren’t going to share the good news with everyone sometimes it’s because they just want nothing to do with the truth sometimes it’s because it’s just not you that they’re going to connect with and understand the truth in a way that is meaningful to them so you can’t be the one that carries the good news to everyone and you can’t be the one to save them at the end of the day
that’s between Jesus and that person you can be kind you can show them what following Jesus should look like and what that Community could be for them but at the end of the day that’s something that Jesus is going to do in their hearts not you and you have to be okay with that and just do what God has called you to do and so we want to make sure we’re caring for others um both Christians and non-christians but we also have to make sure we’re taking care of ourselves because the reality is even
Jesus needed to rest and remove himself from everything he was doing on Earth so if Jesus had to do it then you know we have to do it too we have to take care of ourselves there’s a couple different areas that we need to make sure that we’re constantly checking and saying okay am I still doing good in these areas so that I’m ready for whatever God has next for me one of the ways we need to make sure we’re taking care of ourselves is with our body this could be just eating healthy this could be working out this
could be um getting enough sleep all of these ways are ways that we make sure our body is equipped to support us as we’re doing the work God has called us to do uh if we are not able to move around if we’re not able to engage with people that we’re trying to build relationship with then our body has become a barrier to doing work for God so making sure that we are doing our best to keep our health where it needs to be having conversations with doctors uh this past year I really worked on getting my
health under control because I didn’t like that it was preventing me from engaging and doing what I needed to both for God both for my family um both for my future it was just getting to be where I was slowing down and I didn’t like it so I committed to getting my health under control and still not perfect constantly will be working on that but I’m definitely better than I was and I’m glad that I took that seriously and actually started getting healthy again another area we need to make sure that
we are constantly working on and making sure it stays healthy so that we’re ready for whatever God has next for us is our mind a part of it is having Clarity of mind and being able to focus and being able to track and keep track of what we’re doing and where we’re going if I’m constantly distracted and not able to focus on the people in front of me or the task at hand then I’m going to have barriers that I just can’t overcome and it will be a struggle for me to keep moving forward so figuring
out how to have a clear mind how to stay focused in the moment with the people you’re with in order to build relationship and care for one another is a key part of being able to take care of yourself and your mind mental health is another big key piece of of taking care of yourself uh I grew up with a therapist as a mom and so therapy has never been a big like we’ve never been apprehensive about therapy because it’s the same as a checkup with your physical doctor like why wouldn’t you be checking
up on your mental health as well and so that has been a common uh thing in my family I didn’t do a ton of it growing up because I always joke that I was in therapy uh for the first 30 years of my life life because my mom was constantly doing therapy stuff with us especially as kids but uh even now that I’m married and everything me and my husband are committed to we have therap we do therapy as a family um our kids have therapists I have a therapist my husband has a therapist we’ve a marriage therapist and we go through different
consistencies with them um for a while we were doing a lot of marriage therapy and a little bit of one-on-one we’ve kind of switched over and felt like okay let’s focus on some of our individual things and we do checkups with our marriage therapists but therapy is going to give you tools to address the areas of life that you struggle with it’s going to give you coping skills it’s going to help you with your emotional intelligence it’s going to do all those things to help you engage with people
better and be able to be healthy in your mind as you move forward uh so if you’ve never gone to therapy I recommend everybody just doing a check-in and saying hey are there blind spots in my life that maybe I could do better with or going to therapy and realizing like oh what I thought was normal is not necessarily a healthy normal and working on those spaces but I highly recommend everybody just regularly do checkups with mental health uh professionals so that you can keep healthy for yourself and that way be able to be healthy for
others as well and then the final area of personal care and health is our spirit so we want to make make sure that our spirit our soul the the person the part of us that’s going to continue on into the new body that we are taking care of that and building up our spirit to be able to handle um sharing with others and caring for others and following God and and continually building up just that spiritual part of our life and that happens through uh our quiet time with God it happens through journaling it happens through all of
these spaces is that let us pause and just say am I still tracking with God am I still doing what I need to do in order to develop my relationship with him and thus flow out into other spaces and with other relationships and so making sure we’re caring for oursel in all of these ways helps us continue to uh fill up our buckets so that we are caring for others through an overflow and not from a dry well basically uh if you haven’t checked any the other podcast episodes go ahead and check them out we go through a lot
of the different types of self-care spiritual care um all of those things kind of build up to this moment where we are now pouring out into other people’s lives from a filled up bucket vers is very dry spaces that we just don’t have anything left to give and then you hear about burnout and all that kind of stuff so um this is this is a bit of a ways in because now we’re hitting into relationship with other people and not just about our personal spaces so make sure that you’re filling up personally
so that you can care for each other because we don’t want you burning out and drying out and just quitting on everything because it’s too much so uh if you’ve been around weird souls for a while you know I like practical application I like inspiring and helping you understand ways and spaces and areas that you can grow in but I also want to leave you with some ideas on how to actually do that so how do we care for ourselves and how do we care for others the reality is typically you’re either
going to be really good about caring for other people or you’re going to be really good about taking care of yourself and that can be for a whole lot of different reasons that that’s a reality but the challenge that I’m going to leave you with is to pick the other thing so if you’re like I feel like I’m really good about taking care of myself staying healthy being spiritually filled up all of those kinds of things then maybe now it’s time to pour out a little bit into the lives of others and find
ways that you can care for other people if on the reverse you’re like I take care of people all the time I love taking care of people but you’re a little bit dry on the inside because you pour out pour out pour out and you aren’t really spending enough time filling yourself back up so that you can care from a place of Plenty rather than a place of dryness so maybe that’s the area that you need to focus more on is taking care of yourself better whichever when you feel like I do really good on
this naturally I want you to try and focus this next week or so on picking the opposite area and one of the things my therapist has me do every now and then um actually a lot because I’ve got a lot of spinning plates when it comes to relationships and caring for people and I’m always really bad about the care for myself piece but sometimes she’ll just be like okay let’s see where your your wheel of care is and we write all the different relationships that I have going on at the moment and then we draw
lines and arrows on where is care coming from is it all out is it like out and in is it all in um and really identifying like okay how much am I pouring out versus how much am I taking in and if that’s not super balanced I might need to focus on taking care of myself or maybe it is time for me to start pushing myself towards others so maybe identifying some of the different relationships you have and how those are pouring in and out will give you a better understanding of where to focus more of your energy um to make sure
you’re you’ve got a good flow back and forth with your relationships so if you feel like okay I do really good on taking care of myself but I’m not really opening up and caring for others some things you could try is having a Hospitality moment in your week so whether that’s hey I’m going to invite somebody over for coffee or maybe you’re going to take a big jump and invite people over for dinner uh we were trying to do like twice a month we’d have people over for dinner uh it faded off
during the summer and bringing kids into the house and all the chaos that goes with that but we were like the other day my husband’s like we really need to start having people over again so that’s on our list is inviting people back over into our house for dinner because you just get to know people at a different level when you invite them into your house uh another way you can care for others is to go the Second Mile uh this is a Bible verse reference but basically it’s this concept that if you have to do
something for someone or they ask you to do something for them see how you can do what they what you’re supposed to do or what they ask and then some so an example is at our workplace you know we have a little s and um we’re supposed to all do our own dishes not everybody necessarily does that or at least maybe they do it and they forget maybe they set it to soak and then they forget about it or different things like that but a way to go the second mile is when you’re cleaning your dishes you clean whatever
else is in the sink and that just helps out everybody cares for that person cares for the rest of the staff all of that kind of thing maybe it is giving an over and above tip to somebody we’ve heard of those situations where um servers get surprised by having a tip that maybe they didn’t deserve because they were having a bad day or maybe it made up for a lot of other bad moments a bad tables in their day but that can be a way to go the Second Mile uh maybe it’s mowing your neighbor’s lawn when you go to Bone
yours our neighbors actually been doing this for us because we didn’t have all the money right when we move moved in to buy a large Mower and my husband’s been doing a lot of mowing with a very tiny mower for the size of our yard but our neighbor every now and then when he’s outo he’ll do that for us and that’s that’s just been a really nice thing that he’s been doing for us to help and it’s been him going the extra mile but really it’s just starting to take notice of where are opportunities that you can
just care for people in a way that maybe they weren’t expecting or even in a way they didn’t necessarily deserve but just a way to show them that life with Jesus is different and you don’t have to worry about taking care of yourself because you trust God and you trust the other Christians in your community to help take care of you so you can take care of others now if you struggle with taking care of yourself uh some things that I typically try to do that help me just be a better me so that I can do well with
others uh I always try and make sure that I have a block of time that I can just do whatever I want without any guilt so um I used to have before I was a parent I had a full day where I could kind of just call the shots and do whatever made me feel more alive made me just filled me up and made me feel like okay I’m rested and I can go into my next day uh it’s more difficult now that I have kids but I do try and have a couple hours a week my husband’s really great about that because he doesn’t want
me being grumpy but we try to make sure I have some time where it’s like okay I don’t have to answer questions I don’t have to think about stuff I don’t have to do anything that is tasky have to get and it’s just time for me to enjoy doing something that I enjoy doing um for a while it was rock climbing but we you know we moved and it just I just haven’t gotten back into that routine but uh podcast this is kind of part of my taking care of myself writing um sometimes it’s doing crafty stuff
although not as much anymore but just all these different creative things are ways that I fill up but make sure you find something that you can you know schedule a couple hours and just enjoy doing something that you enjoy for the sake of enjoying it and that’s one way that you can help fill yourself up maybe for you you’re more extroverted and you need to be around people more so schedule time to go out to lunch or coffee with friends and just spend time hanging out and encouraging each other maybe that’s a way that you feel like
you’re filling up and caring for yourself maybe having a quiet time in the mornings and space where you can just sit with God before your day starts maybe that’s an important piece of care for you and you need to figure out how to make sure that happens regularly but whatever it is make sure you put it on your calendar and you’re committing to it on a regular basis so that you can be filling up and taking care of yourself so that you’re prepared to overflow and care for the people in your life
hopefully all of these things kind of gave you more of an understanding of how we care for people in the different ways and the different relationships that we have and ways to care for yourself next time we’re going to be talking about sharing and these are both very tightly uh woven together in some ways but sharing is more about how do we take what we have and be open-handed with it with other people but that’s next time I hope you have a couple ideas on where you can take a next step and grow and
what you’re going to do in the next couple weeks make sure to share comment I’d love to know what you’re going to do and how you’re going to do it maybe you’ll Inspire somebody else but for now thanks for joining me hit that like And subscribe so you never miss an episode and we will see you next time weirdos
