Learn With Purpose & Take Action

This post is a part of the Make A Change Monday series.

Learn more about Make A Change Monday here. 

Recently, our church has been exploring a series they are calling Stuck. It’s interesting how in line with my life this series is right now. In so many ways, I have felt stuck, without momentum. The past few years of my life have had one constant: change. Lately though, things have felt a bit stagnate and a bit uninspired.

Day in, day out doing pretty much the same thing will do that to you! To fill my time, I would read and wander and think of great ideas and make great plans for great things I was going to do to make my life and the lives of my family more fulfilling and more exciting.

The problem is, I wasn’t doing anything to bring those plans and those dreams to reality. In fact, I had my hands and my head in so many different ideas and concepts and directions that it would have been virtually impossible for me to focus on any one thing at a time even if I wanted to!

Basically what I did was fill my head with a ton of knowledge that did nothing but take up space. Trivia. Nothing but useless trivia. Good for a party, bad for forward movement.

Something my pastor said during this series really convicted me though:

“Knowledge and learning help us get unstuck and grow us only when we’re intentional about applying what we learn in the daily living of our lives.“-My Pastor

This described what I’ve been doing so perfectly it’s as if he wrote the words and strung them together just for me (for those of you that are religious…I call this a “God thing” 😉 ) . My faith and many other areas of my life had hit a patch of quicksand and instead of taking action, I was simply spinning my wheels.

This doesn’t mean that we don’t have to learn algebra in high school because we’re not planning to be an accountant. It doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t care about the issues facing our country because we’re not now, nor do we ever plan to be, a politician. There’s knowledge for the greater good that is necessary and purposeful in it’s own right without being directly applicable to our day to day living.

I’m talking about the stuff you learn that you think one day you’ll do something with. The stuff you put in your “read later” file and never read. The crafts you buy supplies for that never get made. The book you started 5 years ago that never got written.

If you are going to take the time to learn something, see it through!

Learn with purpose and take action. 

I love this quote from Seth Godin: “Ideas in secret die. They need light and air or they starve to death. “

A common thread among those who struggle with finances is the inability to take action and make change in their lives. Many of them know what they should do and know what they need to do, but are either too  paralyzed with fear or simply too set in their ways to do it. 

This week, take the leap of faith and take action!