Hi, my name is Pete Gazzara. I want to welcome you today to the emotionally healthy leader

podcast. Today our title is, when life takes you a different direction. When life takes you a different

direction. And it's so appropriate to do this as we are in the Advent season, which is often a low point spiritually for many of us in our

Christian lives, especially for those of us in leadership. It sure was for me for many, many years.

It's just so easy to be sucked into just the demands and the pressures around us coming

from so many different directions, the anxiety that's in the air, the rushing around us coming from so many different directions.

The anxiety that's in the air, the rushing that's in the air just naturally gets inside of us.

And we find ourselves bewildered and carried by forces that appear to be out of our control.

And so our vision here is to become the culture that we want to see

around us. We actually live it and embody it first. So again, before I launch into this topic,

let me invite you to go to Emotionally Healthy.org slash church culture.

And it's a great e-book on six marks of a church culture that deeply changes lives.

It's the title of the e-book.

It takes about 15, 20-minute read.

But we want to embody those qualities in ourselves, things like integrity and leadership, a slowdown spirituality, healthy

community, et cetera, so that we can then offer that to all those around us, from our families

to our ministries, all those we influence. So again, it's emotionally healthy.org

slash church culture. Now, this podcast today comes out of a summary I did in a message after I preached a

series of messages from the book of Isaiah a number of years ago. And there was a controlling

illustration for me that I've come back to over and over again that I want to open this

podcast with. And it really summarizes the theme of when

life takes you in a different direction. It comes out of a book called Welcome to Holland,

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