Encourage Your Hopes, Not Your Fears

9 January, 20194 January, 2019Marissa

I’m not really big on New Year’s resolutions, but people talk about them enough that the idea is something I think about. And so January has become a time for thinking about what happened last year, what I’d like to change in this next year, and how I plan to “show up” for my life.

Part of this focus in the new year comes along with participating in 30 days of yoga. I’ve been doing this Yoga With Adrienne program every January since 2015 and it’s a wonderful way to check in with yourself, get healthy, and focus on becoming a person who can serve others wholeheartedly. In addition to this, I happened upon an interesting blog post titled “Intentions Not Resolutions.”

“I no longer make New Year’s resolutions – they’re too easy to give up on after week one and only become a source of guilt. … Instead, a few years ago, I began starting my New Years by choosing a word to inspire the kind of intentional living I wanted to focus on for the year.” — Jen of E.C.B.C

I’d sort of tried this last year when I discovered a site called My Intent that makes bracelets with a custom word on them. I couldn’t pick one word, though, and ended up with a bracelet that says “Balance” and “Connect.” I rarely wear it any more, though those two concepts still resonate deeply.

Encourage Your Hopes, Not Your Fears | LikeAnAnchor.com — Photo credit: MarrCreative via Lightstock

I’ve been thinking for a while now that if I made a new bracelet it would say “fearless.” What with working through my breakup and (finally) getting counseling for the anxiety I’ve been living with for 15+ years, 2018 was a year that I realized that 1) I have a lot of fears, and 2) I don’t have to let them control me.

There’s another bracelet that I picked up last year at an art festival that says, “Encourage your hopes, not your fears.” I’ve been wearing that one a lot. It’s the perfect message to combat my anxiety, which generally pushes hopes aside behind all the things that could go wrong because of all the things that I’m sure are wrong with me. But if I spend all my time turned inward thinking about my fears, then I’m just encouraging my anxiety to take over.

If, on the other hand, I encourage my hopes it changes things. And if I can learn to do that more consistently it might drastically change things. I hope I can keep growing this blog to reach and encourage more people. I hope that I’ll stop sabotaging myself because I’m scared of dealing with everything that might come with being a successful blogger and author. I hope I can climb out of my own head more often and connect with others (including God) in a deeper way.

My intention for 2019 isn’t just one word, but I do have one. I’m going to encourage my hopes, not my fears.

What about you? Did you set any intentions or resolutions for the New Year?

How To Tell If An INFJ Likes You

7 January, 201913 November, 2019Marissa

INFJs have a reputation for being mysterious creatures. If you’re trying to figure out what an INFJ is really thinking, that reputation is somewhat justified. And judging by the number of people online asking, “How can I tell if an INFJ likes me?” it can be very difficult to figure out if an INFJ is attracted to you, especially in a romantic sense.

How To Tell If An INFJ Likes You | LikeAnAnchor.com — Photo credit: Yuriy Bogdanov via Unsplash

Even though the whole “otherworldly INFJ” thing has been blown way out of proportion in internet descriptions of the type, there are some things about INFJs that just don’t make sense to most other people. Since INFJs are the rarest type, our minds are wired to think in a fundamentally different (not better) way than the majority of the world’s population.

As a type which uses Extroverted Feeling to make decisions, INFJs are very interested in maintaining harmony in the outer world. This tends to make them very agreeable people. In groups, we can be friendly and sociable with just about everyone. However, we’re also introverts who spend a lot of time inside our own minds. We’re often reserved, private individuals, leaving many people confused about how we actually feel. In addition, many (though not all) INFJs struggle with varying levels of social anxiety and shyness which makes it even harder for us to make it clear when we like someone.

The following list of ways to tell if an INFJ likes you isn’t going to be 100% true of every INFJ. However, it does reflect general trends in the way many INFJs say that they act and think when they like someone. Read more →

Am I Using God’s Truth To Hurt Others Or To Help Them?

5 January, 20194 January, 2019Marissa

Last week we talked about the fact that speaking the truth in today’s culture can offend people. That’s something we were warned about in scripture — the world will hate us like they hated Jesus and preaching the cross is “foolishness to those who are perishing” (John 15:18-22; 1 Cor. 1:18).

But what about in the church? God’s intention is that there be peace and unity in His church, but we’ve all experienced times when that’s not the case. People in the church fight and bicker. They offend each other. They split church groups. And most would tell you that they’re speaking the truth and the other person is the one at fault.

We always have a responsibility to follow God faithfully and to speak about His truth. And we must always try to do that in a way that points people toward Him instead of pushing them away. However, we won’t always be able to present the gospel in a way that appeals to the world. Jesus preached truth perfectly and people still turned away (John 6:64-67). Within the church, though, we should be able to talk about the truth without hurting each other. So how do we do that?

You’re Not Here For You

Near the middle of his letter to the Ephesians, Paul addresses the question of how the people in God’s church should relate to one another. He talks about different roles Christ set up in the church (apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, and teachers) and why (“for the perfection of the saints, to the work of serving, to the building up of the body of Christ”). The goal in all this is to “attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God.” We’re not to be immature Christians any more, easily swayed by new doctrines or tricky, wicked men (Eph. 4:11-14). Read more →

2018 On My Blog: Top 10 Lists

2 January, 201931 December, 2018Marissa

Once again the Gregorian calendar advances by one year. Sticking with tradition, I spent New Year’s Eve with my cousin and sister and now I’m using my first post of the new year to share my blogging highlights from last year.

This has been a big year for my blog. It’s got a name now, for one thing, since we went from marissabaker.wordpress.com to LikeAnAnchor.com. The number of visitors is holding pretty steady from last year, though it did go up a little.

One of my big goals for this upcoming year is to continue growing my blog, but that’s a subject for another post. Today’s post is about looking back on the most popular posts of 2018 and celebrating all you lovely people who’ve been reading my work.

Posts With The Most Traffic

All of the top posts this year are about INFJs, which isn’t really surprising. I was kinda surprised that my ENFP-INFJ relationships post is the most popular of all my posts, though. I guess I’ll put that on the list of good things that came out of my (now ended) relationship.

Dating Your Mirror: ENFP and INFJ Relationships (published 11/11/2017)
INFJ User Guide (published 6/20/2016)
Religion and the INFJ (published 10/17/2016)
Want To Date An INFJ? Here’s 15 Things We’d Like You To Know (published 9/18/2018)
The Vanishing INFJ (published 11/28/2016)
INFJ Dark Side (published 3/31/2014)
The INFJ Stare (published 8/5/2013)
Living With INFJ Guilt And Overcoming Cycles of Shame (published 11/13/2018)
The Single INFJ (published 4/18/2018)
How To Be Friends With An INFJ (published 10/13/2014)

How To Host An Introverted New Year’s Party

Step One: Decline all invitations to traditional New Year’s parties.

Step Two: Find a small number of people you enjoy being around and who will get along well with each other. Read more →

The Fear of Causing Offense

29 December, 20185 June, 2020Marissa

How did offending someone suddenly become a cardinal sin? People today think they have a right to never be offended, and when they do get offended they also feel offended that you dared offend them.

Google defines offended as “resentful or annoyed, typically as a result of a perceived insult.” When you offend someone, you cause them “to feel upset, annoyed, or resentful.” Offense is “annoyance or resentment brought about by a perceived insult or disregard for oneself or one’s standards or principles.”

Just a little bit of thought on this subject should make it obvious that offenses can happen any time people disagree, which actually happens quite a bit. Our standards, principles, and ideas are not identical and when that’s the case it’s easy to perceive an insult. Plus, even when we don’t disagree, miscommunication can cause resentment and annoyance. It’s impossible to live in a society of humans without being offended, which naturally leads to a question of why certain people’s “right” to not be offended should make it okay for them to offend others.

But what does this have to do with Christians? Surely this is more of a social-political debate for people like Jordan Peterson and Cathy Newman. Isn’t our job as Christians to just love people in an inoffensive way? I’m actually going to argue that it is not.

Is It Sinful To Cause Offense?

There’s a passage in the gospels that, when you read it in the King James version, seems to support the idea that causing offense is a sinful thing to do. In Matthew’s gospel it reads like this:

But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea. Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh! (Matt. 18:6-7, KJV)

This isn’t the best translation, though, at least for modern times. The Greek word has little to do with an annoyance or resentment caused by insult. Instead, it matches a definition for offense which is fast passing out of use in English — “a breach of a law or rule; an illegal act.”

When Jesus says woe to those who cause offense, He’s speaking of those who cause others to offend against God. Read more →

Author: Marissa