Your Spirit By Design: Spiritual Resilience in Daily Life - Episode 1

Ever felt torn between the demands of daily life and your spiritual commitments? In our latest episode, I share my own struggles and the profound lessons learned from the Bible and the Book of Mormon. I’ll show you how to metaphorically put on your armor of righteousness to stand firm in your beliefs and bolster your spirituality amidst life's chaos. This Episode is the introduction to the new version of this podcast as I transition from "Todd Talks Design Your Best Life" to "Your Spirit by Design." 

Reflecting on the changes I felt prompted to make because let's face it, this world is not making it easy to maintain your spirituality.  I am reminded of my transformative year spent in Afghanistan, which inspired my book "Fire and Ice," I'll share invaluable insights and lessons learned along the way. As a fellow student of life, I'm not a prophet and my goal is to offer you authentic, accessible guidance on spiritual growth. Whether you’re struggling to keep up with church attendance or seeking spiritual strength throughout the week, this episode and all episodes after this is crafted to support and encourage you on your journey to a stronger testimony of Jesus Christ.

Come join me in helping you design your spiritual life!

Fire And Ice Spritual Growth Book
Fire in my soul as I grew spiritually & Ice in my veins teaching Afghans to fly - Join the adventure

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Chapters

• 0:00 Spiritual Guidance and Empowerment
• 16:14 Spiritual Life Design and Growth

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

For the last few years, I've done an episode and greeted you with the words Welcome to Todd Talks, where I help you design your best life. However, I've found that I need to change, I need to take a new path, a new direction, and so, from now until the foreseeable future, as I continue to record episodes, I am focusing on a more poignant and stricter set of guidelines and rules, changing the name, as it were. From now on, instead of Todd Talks, design your Best Life this is going to be your spirit by design helping you maintain your spirituality in this crazy, chaotic world that's only getting worse. You see, as I have thought about it and focused on it, trying to be very general and help you design the life you desire in every aspect of your life, is overly broad. Some episodes did not apply to you or appeal to you, and so, in focusing on one area your spirituality really the reason behind my doing this is because my change of work, you've probably noticed I have not published an episode in probably seven months, and the reason behind that is because I'm gone a lot. And the reason behind that is because I'm gone a lot and as I focused on what do I need, it made me think about what you need as well In this chaotic world. What has suffered, what has suffered, has been the spirituality of man and woman and child. I've only been able to make it to church about one in every five or six weeks with my job working for an airline, and I'm finding that I have to maintain my spirituality, maintain my spirituality and my testimony, my centeredness on the gospel of Jesus Christ, and doing so it requires focus, it requires action, it can't just be one of thought, and in thinking about that I realized that many of you probably go through similar things. You have similar needs.

Speaker 1: 2:52

It's very easy in this world to let go and let the spiritual things slide or push them off until tomorrow or next week and very quickly, things like anger, frustration and all the many different things that pull us in just and push us down and drive us into the ground emotionally, spiritually, figuratively, drive us into the ground emotionally, spiritually, figuratively, physically. You know, when your spirit gets weak and tired, your whole body gets weak and tired. And so I decided that with my amazing wit and my desire to help okay, I just tell a lot of stories and I have a lot of advice that you can either take or not take, and that's kind of the whole point behind this right Is I believe that the Lord has blessed me with an eye to be able to see, an ear to hear, an ear to hear, and a knowledge to be able to grant you some ideas and things that can help you in your daily life. I'm not a prophet, I'm not anything special. I am just another brother struggling through the daily life, trying to maintain my spirituality in a world that is trying to drive us all to the brink, trying to bring us down and make us think, make you think that you're not worth it, make you think that there's nothing good or positive. But that's my job Now to show you the other side, that even if you can't make it to church, or if you can make it to church but just need strength throughout the week, that there's someplace you can go to listen and give you a few ideas, maybe things that will help you and increase your ability to withstand the fiery darts, the temptations, etc. You know, just the other day I was studying and reading and thinking about Captain Moroni. He absolutely is my favorite in the Book of Mormon and I know some of you that listen to this may not be part of my faith, but that's okay. The stories and ideas will help. I believe in Jesus Christ and my goal is to help you to strengthen your testimony of Jesus Christ.

Speaker 1: 5:48

And because of the turmoil that was going on in Moroni's time, he rent his coat and wrote on it in memory of our God, our religion and freedom, our peace, our wives and our children. These are the things that we need to remember, are important because they're always being trying to be taken away In terms of equity, in terms of the government. They're always trying to take these things from us if we let them. Not necessarily the government, but people want power. Satan uses people to try to push, essentially, slavery upon all of us, and the goal of this podcast really is so that we can figuratively, like Moroni, fasten on our headplate, breastplate, shields gird on our armor, take our pole known as the title of liberty and bow ourself to the earth and pray mightily unto God for the blessing of liberty to rest upon our brethren, so, as long as a band of Christians remain to possess the land, a band of Christians that take upon themselves the name of Christ.

Speaker 1: 7:18

And you know when Moroni did this, my favorite part, my favorite verse. After this. It says Behold, the people came running together with their arms gird about their loins, rending their garments in token or as covenant that they would not forsake the Lord, their God, or in other words, if they should transgress the commandments of God or fall into transgression. Now, that struck me because each of us, essentially, if we consider ourselves Christians, essentially if we consider ourselves Christians need to be willing to stand up for that. We need to make this covenant with the Lord that, no matter what chaos is going on in our lives, that we are willing to throw on our armor of righteousness and step forward.

Speaker 1: 8:26

How does this look in the real world? How does it look today? How do you do this in your day-to-day activities? Well, one of the ways that I've focused on it has been prayer. You know I make sure it has been prayer. You know I make sure that Tiffany and I pray together every night. There are some nights when I'm flying in the middle of the night and can't do it, but I call every night to make sure that we as a couple pray together, because I know that that's one of the ways that we can be strengthened and that the Lord will bless us in our marriage, in our union, to stand against the fiery darts that come from the adversary, because he doesn't want us to stand together, he doesn't want us to be happy and to be Christians okay. So prayer is probably your greatest asset.

Speaker 1: 9:23

You know, in the 18th chapter of Luke there's a good parable that Christ taught. He said, and he spake a parable unto them to this end, that men ought always to pray and not to faint. Saying there was in a city a judge which feared not God, neither regarded man. And there was a widow in that city and she came unto him saying Avenge me of mine adversary. And he would not for a while. But afterward he said unto himself Though I fear not God, nor regard man, yet because this widow troubleth me, I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me. And the Lord said Hear what the unjust judge saith. And shall not God avenge his own Elect, which cry day and night unto him, though he bear long with them. I tell you that he will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth? And he spake this parable unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous and despised others.

Speaker 1: 10:25

Verse 9 is very interesting. The parable talks about those that believe themselves righteous and yet despised others. You know, we can have a false sense of righteousness. Humility lets us know that though we strive to do what is right and strive to follow the commandments, we are not perfect and we are going to fail. Humility allows us to love others when they sin, when they do negative or bad things towards us. It allows us to forgive. I think that's part of the parable that Christ was saying. Teaching us was that when he comes and judges in righteousness he is looking to find, are we going to be of sound mind? Are we going to be the type of people that are willing to acknowledge our weaknesses, ask for forgiveness, while also acknowledging others have weaknesses, but praying for strength, that's a whole other topic.

Speaker 1: 11:45

Right, but today I just wanted to talk about prayer. You know the Lord in this parable. He talked about the fact that an unjust judge helped the widow because she bothered him. Now the Lord, heavenly Father, doesn't get bothered by our prayers. How much more willing is he to help those of us that go to him in prayer willingly and not just throw up a quick I wanted to say Hail Mary, but that's probably not very nice towards the Catholic Church, but not just throwing up a very quick rote prayer that we say all the time.

Speaker 1: 12:29

I've been trying lately to really think about holding a conversation with the Lord when I pray, and I honestly think that my prayers are better when I really focus on not just repeating the same thing I've said over and over. Wouldn't that get boring if someone was talking to you and they said the same thing every single time and then they didn't stop to listen to you? How do you think the Lord feels when you just throw out a quick, trite prayer and then repeating the same thing without actually giving any substance to it? So I've tried to give a little more substance. Yes, we'll have the quick prayers sometimes, and sometimes I do like to throw a little humor in there, because I think the Lord has a sense of humor, because he's our Father, right, and we're praying to our Father in heaven. So he wants to hear about us. He knows us, but he wants us to show him who we are, talk to him. So, tiffany and I we've been trying to pray together every night, even when I'm not able to be there, and I think it's important.

Speaker 1: 13:59

I'd say the Lord thinks it's important and he is always willing to answer, not always in the way that we think. You know, there's a great country song where it talks about that. He thanks God for unanswered prayers. It's not that his prayers went unanswered, they just weren't answered in the way that he thought, because the Lord's answers are much better than what we ask for. Sometimes. He's a much deeper thinker. He's much, much more involved in our lives than we give him credit for, if we allow him.

Speaker 1: 14:41

I've made it a point throughout my life and I'm a sinner. I've sinned, we've all sinned, but I know that I've sinned and I know I'm not perfect. But I've made a point of trying to listen when the Lord's talking to me. Where should I go, what should I do? And I act on it. Because that is the key, the point of this podcast, one of the factors, I guess you would say, in design your spiritual life, spirit by design to survive this chaotic world. One of the key factors is going to be do you act on the personal revelation, if you want to call it intuition, if you want to call it guidance, however you want to term it the personal guidance that the Lord, the Spirit gives you, are you willing to act on it? Because when you act on it, he's willing to give you more. When you don't act on it, he gives you less. So this may be a little droll and not as exciting of a talk as I sometimes give on here, but I wanted to jump off this new series being a little more serious.

Speaker 1: 16:14

I'll get to fun and jokes and everything else throughout this new version of the podcast. I'll get there, but I still am me and I'll still talk the way I talk. I still give advice and I still will show up to help you design the life you deserve and the life you deserve and the life you desire. And in this case, now I'm going to teach you or work with you so that you can design the spiritual life you desire, help you develop a connection with deity. Like I said, I'm not perfect. I'm not a prophet. I'm just a student that loves to help, and so, as I study and learn, I will share with you those things that I learned.

Speaker 1: 17:08

You know I went through an entire year when I was in Afghanistan and I wrote a book about my year there where I told the adventures that I went through and the spiritual things that I learned and I wrote a book about it and it's called Fire and Ice. It's available on Amazon. Just search up my name Fire and Ice or just write my name, todd Andrewson A-N-D-R-E-W-S-E-N name, todd Andrewson A-N-D-R-E-W-S-E-N, and you'll be able to find it. If you want to learn about that time period in my life where I grew a lot spiritually and had a lot of crazy flying adventures, so that is an option.

Speaker 1: 17:53

But I take the things that I've learned throughout my life, but I take the things that I've learned throughout my life and I try to digest them and put them out there in a way that you can understand, a way that you can benefit. So I hope you like the new version. I hope that you gain something from it. This is no longer Todd Talks Design your Best Life. This is your spirit by design, and I hope that you will continue to listen, thank you.