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John Hollandsworth.com

Wisdom for Life

  • Boundless Joy

    Boundless Joy

    What is your greatest joy? The question popped into my head while walking today, and instantly intrigued me. I started thinking of all the things that gave me joy— good food, back rubs, driving with the top down, listening to a waterfall, getting a new electronic gadget, and especially insulting lawyers. But it didn’t take…

  • We Don’t Need to Bring Anything to God

    We Don’t Need to Bring Anything to God

    We don’t need to bring anything to God. I know, I know. That’s engrained within us from childhood on, that God deserves our best, that we owe Him everything. I can still see the little drummer boy being sad because he didn’t have anything to give baby Jesus. And, like most bad ideas, this started…

  • God Doesn’t Grade You

    God Doesn’t Grade You

    I think one of the ways we get most messed up about how God relates to us is that we think that He is grades us. We see Him as up in heaven always looking down and judging how well we measure up. We imagine that He is always keeping track, keeping score, to see if we are…

  • Walking Through the Tough Times with God

    Walking Through the Tough Times with God

    So, have you ever been through a tough time? Every faced adversity? I thought so. As the saying goes, you have either been through a tough time, going through a tough time, or preparing to go through a tough time. So wherever you are now, here are ten steps to help you walk through any…

  • How to Grow Up to Be Captain Kirk

    How to Grow Up to Be Captain Kirk

    Who among us hasn’t watched a movie as a child and thought “When I grow up, I want to be just like they are!”  Usually, the main character has specific character traits that are worthy of respect, honor, study, and emulation The 2009 reboot motion picture Star Trek is no different. It shows its main…

  • Seven Steps to Living Your Personal Greatness

    Seven Steps to Living Your Personal Greatness

    There are some people who we regard as great, who we admire and respect, who seem to be almost superhuman. Whether it be the amazing strength and precision of a Serena Williams or the genius intelligence of an Albert Einstein, their accomplishments seem to transcend ordinary humans like you and me. But there is a…

  • Rest is God’s Blessing

    Rest is God’s Blessing

    Do you ever feel guilty about taking a break, just stopping to rest? There’s part of you that’s saying “I am so fried I just need to rest” but another part of you is saying “But there’s so much that still needs to be done” or “but this other person (coworker, friend, spouse) is still…

  • The Patience of a Rose

    The Patience of a Rose

    Does anyone ever think they are patient enough? I hear chuckles in the room, because I think we all can think of areas where we could use more patience. My biggest area is when I already see light at the end of the tunnel, a solution to a problem, but I realize it’s going to…

  • Faith: The Giant That Lives Within You

    Faith: The Giant That Lives Within You

    Faith and fear are always vying for our attention, with fear often seeming to shout the loudest. But in reality, faith is a giant that lives within us if we will just listen and trust.

  • You Don’t Need Perfect Apples to Bake a Perfect Pie

    You Don’t Need Perfect Apples to Bake a Perfect Pie

    How are great marriages and great pies alike? They both start with great (but not perfect) ingredients, and wind up with something truly amazing.

  • What Has Forged You?

    What Has Forged You?

    In the movie King Arthur: Legend of the Sword Arthur has to learn to fully face the pain that forged his character to fully wield the strength he possesses. We likewise have to look at what has forged us in order to wield the strength that we possess as well.

  • What Do You Deserve?

    What Do You Deserve?

    What we think and how we feel make a huge difference in how we experience our life. Looking at and upgrading what we think about what we deserve in life can radically change our future.

  • God Is Always On Time

    God Is Always On Time

    “A wizard is never late, nor is he early. He arrives precisely when he means to,” said Gandalf the Grey. Even as the impatient hobbits had to learn to trust Gandalf, we need to learn to trust in the perfect timing of God’s grace in our lives.

  • God Is Always Guiding

    God Is Always Guiding

    I love using my Google Maps iPhone app when I’m driving to someplace I’ve never been before.  Just think about all it does for me, from the second I start the car until I arrive at my destination: 1- It knows exactly how to get to my destination– I don’t have to worry about it.…

  • You’re not on your last page yet…

    You’re not on your last page yet…

    Do you ever find it hard to hope in God when it seems like you’ve hit a wall, a situation you can’t possibly win? When I feel that way I remember the last act of Star Wars VI: Return of the Jedi. For our beloved heroes all seems lost. Han & Leia are surrounded by stormtroopers, Luke…

  • Make a Gratitude List for your Love

    Make a Gratitude List for your Love

      Here’s a fun project for you to do today that’s guaranteed to make a difference in your life: Make a gratitude list for your love. Now, I don’t mean a list of fifty ways to leave your lover, but rather a list of all the ways your life has changed for the better because of someone special…

  • God Loves Us

    God Loves Us

    I thought a lot about what I would write about for Easter. I thought about so many theological things I could say. I’ve read whole books just on the topic of Easter. But I felt led to not talk about what Easter means to me theologically, and simply say what Easter means to me personally.…

  • Unfold Your Wings

    Unfold Your Wings

    A butterfly learns patience. It spends what seems like a dark eternity in a cocoon. One day, its world opens up, it feels the warm sunlight once again, and these strange but beautiful new parts of itself (what are they called? wings?) start to slowly unfold. Once they are fully unfolded, the butterfly can finally take…

  • Look for Grace

    Look for Grace

    I truly believe that God is wanting to bless our lives every day in a multitude of ways both big and small. I believe he wants to give each of us huge amazing miracles that blow us away and change our lives forever. And I believe He is equally eager to sprinkle our lives liberally with sweet everyday…

  • What Colors Are You Painting With?

    What Colors Are You Painting With?

    Let’s imagine that you want to paint a picture of a bowl of blueberries. You just happen to be a skilled artist with a new blank canvas, so you’re all ready to go. But you look down and to your dismay you see that the only paint colors you have are black, red, and yellow. Now…

  • Create Simple Beauty

    Create Simple Beauty

    I was sitting in the lobby of Disney’s Boardwalk Inn, thinking about what I should write, and a cast member (what Disney calls their employees) approached a couch next to me, took a seat pillow that had gotten shifted by someone sitting there yesterday, and placed it back where it belonged. That simple act is one of the…

  • What Would You Do if You KNEW You Would Fail

    What Would You Do if You KNEW You Would Fail

    I was listening to a terrific interview with author Elizabeth Gilbert yesterday. She was talking about her long journey as a writer and the commitment to learning her craft that it took. When she was fifteen years old she made a conscious decision that her life purpose was to be a writer. She finished her…

  • Go to Your Happy Place

    Go to Your Happy Place

    As I’m typing these words, I am in “The Happiest Place on Earth“— the place that brings me more joy than perhaps anyplace else on this planet— Disney World. But when I say “Go to your happy place”— I’m not talking about spending a small fortune to see a cartoon mouse. I’m talking about going…

  • Be the Person Your Dog Knows You Are

    You may have heard the phrase “Be the person your dog thinks you are.” I would like to take that a step farther, and tell you to be the person your dog KNOWS you are. Since dogs give us such unconditional love and acceptance, we think “oh, they don’t know about all my failures and…

  • You Don’t Have to Earn Your Life

    One of the most moving scenes in modern cinema is the closing scene of Saving Private Ryan. Tom Hanks is dying, and in his last words he pulls young Private Ryan to his face and whispers “Earn this… Earn it.” And as the camera dissolves we see Ryan, now an old man, staring down at the…

  • Write Your Own Story

    In the 1998 movie The Truman Show Jim Carrey thought he had a great life and that we was in control. What he gradually discovers is that his entire life had been part of a giant reality show, and all the things he took for granted as being true were really just part of someone…

  • Don’t Pray Like a T Rex!

    What do I mean by “Don’t Pray Like a T-Rex?” Everybody knows all the jokes about t-rexes and their tiny arms, and how limited they are because of them. In a famous cartoon a t-rex asks another “How much do you love me?” and the other one tries to spread apart their arms and gets the…

  • Try the Door

    A classic experiment in animal behavior goes something like this: You have a lab rat that has to push a handle to get food. After a while, you rig the handle so that the rat gets an electric shock when he tries to touch it. After a few days, you can take the shock away, but the rat…

  • Roses Don’t Need Rules

    You don’t need to give a rose a rulebook. You don’t need to teach a tulip. You don’t even need to coach a carnation. Why? Because it’s natural for flowers to be beautiful. It’s wired into their deepest being. No rules, no teaching, no coaching of any kind needed in my garden. Now, there’s some things flowers need to…

  • Be Truly Helpful

    Here’s your project for today: Be truly helpful to one person. Not your run of the mill, everyday politeness and the I’m doing what a normal person would do kind of helpful, but a deep, thoughtful, get down in your gut and bring up your best kind of helpful. Why is that your project? First,…

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