 If you're anything like me, you're constantly and consistently trying to figure out how to be more intentional about the way you live your life. I think that's a good thing. In my experience, there are so many things that vibe for our tension, affection, action, and reaction. Life seems pretty straightforward and simple in some ways, and yet in other ways we feel cluttered and confused and we just want to get back to the things that matter. So this week I've been reading this book by John Eldridge called Get Your Life Back. This is in an ad, it's just a book I've been reading that's been really helping me. Today I want to share five things or practices from this book that'll help you get your life back. You don't want to miss this. But first I just want to give a huge shout out to everyone on the Daily Disciple Club on Patreon. So by signing up to the club on Patreon, you support me on a monthly basis and it's my dream and goal and mission and just really my life motivation at this point to do this full time and to glorify God in what I'm making with Daily Disciple. So if you want to help me do that, sign up to become a club member on Patreon dailydisciple.ca slash club and you can sign up on there. It would be an absolutely amazing thing. I'll get a notification on my phone when you do and believe me, I'll be doing a happy dance. So thank you so much now on to the video. So the first idea is this concept of benevolent attachment. I don't want to lose you here. It simply means to be intentional about detaching yourself from the weight of the world. Easier said than done, I know. But John in this book talks about the fact that we are entangled in the affairs of the world. That we are so attached to what others think or what's going on next week or in the conversation that we had a couple hours ago, it fills us like junk fills a drawer. We weren't designed to carry everything all the time. We weren't designed to care about everything all the time. When we try our body, mind and soul pay the price of lugging around this extra baggage. In Matthew 11 28 it says this, come to me all who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. This is Jesus speaking. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am gentle and lowly in heart and you will find rest for your souls for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Here's something you can do. Take a couple minutes every single day and reorient your heart towards God. Give him everything. John Eldridge actually created an app for this exact purpose. This isn't sponsored once again, but I've just found great benefit in prayerfully letting go of things throughout the day. The second practice to getting your life back is simply unplugging. We make excuses why we can't do this. All I need to answer these important emails or these important texts, but you got to understand the weight that this is putting on you. We weren't designed to experience these kind of notifications every 30 seconds. The buzz in our pocket where we feel we're just impulse to answer whatever is going on immediately weighs heavy on us. It stirs up irritation, frustration, FOMO, fear of missing out, discontentment, all the above. We just need to unplug. Look through your phone. See what is absolutely essential to your life. I just did this yesterday. It was so beneficial. Delete all the apps that you don't need. Mute the notifications that aren't essential and select times throughout your day that you're going to turn your phone off a couple of periods of time where your phone will be turned off for extended periods of time. That's so important. Make sure you unplug. The third thing is kindness towards ourself. A couple of weeks ago I set aside some time to do some major planning and strategy for daily disciple. As I got deeper into the session I got extremely irritated and frustrated just because I wasn't really producing the types and meaningful ideas that I was anticipating or expecting to create. As I put it around the studio I just became more and more incensed at myself for not creating more meaningful concepts or coming up with more meaningful direction. Meaningful according to my own expectation. You get angry at yourself. But listen friends. God is gentle. God is kind. Your expectations do not always align with God's expectations of you. Practice letting go. Stepping away from that project. Stepping away from that assignment or task. That stuff can wait. Right now we want to practice kindness. So the fourth idea or concept and practice that John Eldridge encourages to get your life back is this idea of surrendering the self-life. What is the self-life? It is just a life oriented around self. It leads us to dark and jealous places. He gives the example of the brother of the prodigal son who sees his brother coming back after being gone for a significant amount of time, comes back and now he's being celebrated and he gets super jealous and frustrated and angry. And we can often be this kind of brother of the prodigal. We get angry. We get frustrated at other people's successes. And we are very self-focused to see how we can move ourselves along instead of other focused or God focused. But our call is to abandon the self-life. So how do we do that? Well, one practical and meaningful way to do this is to pray for others, for their healing, for their successes, for their joys, for their peace. Let God reorient your heart from just what is inside you to a gentle awareness of other people in your life. The fifth thing to get your life back as John Eldridge proposes is doing fairly simple things throughout your day. Ask yourself probing questions like how much weight am I putting on this project? Am I enjoying talking to my sister? Are there other affections and things pulling my attention right now? Do I feel I need to respond to every message or text or email as soon as it comes? So for me, a telltale sign is if I am cutting off conversations with my family prematurely in order to get back to my more important things, I know I've gone too far. In those situations, I'm really letting something else rule my life and it's not God. So a big piece of this is finding those questions, those barometers that you can look at to see if you're truly getting your life back or if you're letting other things rule your life. Well, that's all I have to say. Thank you so much for watching this video. If you like this video, you probably like the book too. This is John Eldridge's Get Your Life Back book and you can pick it up. Thank you so much for watching. I've probably already said that already and subscribe because I'm putting out new videos every single Thursday. Once again, to all those who are a part of the Daily Disciple Club on Patreon, thank you so much. So much. I'm so thankful for you every single day and I'll see you next time. Bye, guys.