LOVE IS FEARLESS is a lifestyle that embraces intentionally curating a personal narrative with a different MO because we recognize experiences of peace instead of anxiety and love instead of fear. Season Five is a journey through THE CURATED LIFE alphabet. We're making a map of these experiences in the Kingdom of God.   You’re in the right place if - 

• You’re aware of the dangers, risks, and threats in the world today but you don’t want your nervous system shaped by what you’re afraid of. You want your nervous system transformed by what you love–and what loves you.
• You’ve seen enough on social media or read a few new non-fiction bestsellers to notice that people with trustworthy credentials are starting new conversations. The “power through” and “pull yourselves up by your bootstraps” strategies many of us have relied on for ourselves and in our parenting–are part of the problem with our relationships, our mental health, and the distance we sense in our relationship with God. 
• You’re not lying to yourself any more about the risks of too much sugar, too many artificial ingredients, or too little sleep–and you’re willing to examine how you’re curating a life that builds a secure nervous system and safe relationships, not just a secure financial story or an admirable social media front. 

For too long, we've predicted our future based on our history instead of based on our God. A future dependent on measuring up depends on a lifestyle fueled by fear. Fear is the gas we self-generate. A future dependent on growing up into the identity God gives us (not based on our successes or failures) depends on a lifestyle fueled by love.  Love is a gift we receive from God and others.  In the Kingdom of God, we live from our identity not from our resume. When our history is touched by humility, our stories honor God instead of ourselves. Linger for a while in these TAKEAWAYS:

1. God doesn’t see us as beneficial based on our success according to worldly standards. God sees us as His children and He equips us to bring the kingdom to the empire, not the empire to the kingdom
2. My history is not my future if my personal narrative is set in the Kingdom of God.
3. We are going on a journey of transformation because we recognize that what we have become is not all we can be. The challenge isn’t simply becoming something different. The challenge is unbecoming all we were never meant to be and becoming all we are invited to be as a community that trusts God in a broken world.

We share wisdom from these friends and resources in this episode: John Lynch/John Lynch Speaks Kingdom, Grace, Judgment, Paradox, Outrage, and Vindication in the Parables of Jesus by Robert Farrar Capon LOVE IS FEARLESS is the voice of John 15 Academy and is a donor-supported podcast. Thank you for prayerfully considering becoming a ministry partner. Choose a one-time or monthly donation to share the good news that the Kingdom of God is at hand. It’s not just a tagline—together, there is great hope. Subscribe to Janet's newsletter, THE CURATED LIFE, at janetnewberry.com. Also, shop fun merch from the LOVE IS FEARLESS collection. Every purchase from this collection helps support our work with John 15 Academy.    New boost

In season five, we’re having conversations about the atmosphere we breathe in, the rhythms we create, and the relationships and ideas we trust—and how different these things are when we live loved instead of living afraid. You’re in the right place if - 

• You’re ready to create a lifestyle for yourself that builds a context for transformation instead of a context for conforming to the patterns of this world.
• You’re NOT ready to plant a flag in the land of losing, even though you’re NOT winning right now–at least not in the way the world describes victory. 
• You’re recognizing that when you orient your life around a personal identity based on what you have, what you do, and what other people think of you - you learn to navigate painful emotions in ways that write the next scenes of your life based on your pain instead of based on God’s presence in your pain.

In this episode, we're discovering that the place of grief is often where we discover our hearts' longings and our real values. Pain wants us to listen to fear instead of Love, but gratitude—not for the pain but for God's presence with us in the pain—is an antidote to fear. If you're experiencing grief in this chapter of your story, join Janet and Doug on this episode and linger in these TAKEAWAYS:

• Ebenezer is a Hebrew word that means “stone of help.” It has become synonymous with the idea of God reaching down to lend a helping hand to those most in need. In the Kingdom of God, we can set an Ebenezer stone in the parts of our story where things are not good because something’s missing–or because someone is missing. The stone can be a reminder of what we found in our grief that was heavy with value, not simply heavy with pain.
• GRATITUDE is a CONFESSION of trust in God's goodness. It is a way of moving from our sympathetic nervous system to our parasympathetic nervous system and holding God’s hand as He leads us to the playground of our mind.
• GENEROSITY is the fruit of living loved instead of afraid. 

In the Kingdom of God, we have the benefit of not being our own experts. There is an order to things. Wisdom takes the lead. We get to follow. And we get to choose who we follow - who influences us.    In this episode, Janet says, "Most of the conversations we have in our marriage are about something we’re reading, listening to, or noticing in the lives of people we trust to lead us. We share wisdom from these friends and influencers in this episode:  Dan Allender - Janet read a quote from this article in this episode. https://theallendercenter.org/2016/06/hidden-hope-lament/ Dr. Curt Thompson Dr. Todd Hall Jamie Winship LOVE IS FEARLESS is the voice of John 15 Academy and is a donor-supported podcast. Thank you for prayerfully considering becoming a ministry partner. Choose a one-time or monthly donation to share the good news that the Kingdom of God is at hand. It’s not just a tagline—together, there is great hope. Subscribe to Janet's newsletter, THE CURATED LIFE, at janetnewberry.com. Also, shop fun merch from the LOVE IS FEARLESS collection. Every purchase from this collection helps support our work with John 15 Academy. 

You’re in the right place if:

• You’re curious about FREEDOM because you want it but you’re not experiencing it.
• You’re afraid of FREEDOM because when you offer it to your kids, life seems to go off the rails and circumstances seem to get worse instead of better. Control seems to be a better option.
• You’ve heard the original good news of the gospel—that you’re not a sinner striving to become a saint, but a saint who sometimes sins—AND you’re wondering why you feel stuck in your old story instead of hopeful in your new life. 

In this episode, Doug and Janet are playing with putting these four words together like the four sides of a puzzle: freedom, connection, completeness, and maturity. This is the puzzle we’re discovering called LIFE in the KINGDOM.   Contrast those four sides of the puzzle: bondage, separateness, scarcity, and immaturity. This is the puzzle we’re walking out of called LIFE in the EMPIRE. Here's why it matters: When I believe in my completeness, my self-talk is generative, my desires are generous, and my relationships bear good fruit. When I believe in my lack, I tell myself a distorted self-story. My self-talk is critical. My desire is to control what you think of me and protect my image. I need to consume more, and I believe what I need to acquire is scarce--so I live in conflict with others. In the empires of this world, it is impossible for me to love you because I don't see myself truly. This episode is deep, wide, and practical. Linger in these takeaways and share this one with your friends.

• Freedom in Christ is most realized when the person reflecting me back to me sees me as complete instead of lacking.  
• Discovering how to persevere in struggle and recover from getting off course when I pursue the desires I follow, believing lies about myself, is a key part of my journey to wholeness and maturity. 
• JAMES 1:2-5 (NIV) Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. 

LOVE IS FEARLESS is the voice of John 15 Academy and is a donor-supported podcast. Thank you for prayerfully considering becoming a ministry partner. Choose a one-time or monthly donation to share the good news that the Kingdom of God is at hand. It’s not just a tagline—together, there is great hope. Subscribe to Janet's newsletter, THE CURATED LIFE, at janetnewberry.com. Also, shop fun merch from the LOVE IS FEARLESS collection, including T-shirts, hoodies, kitchen towels, posters, and more. Every purchase from this collection helps support our work with John 15 Academy.   

The kingdom of God offers us a different kind of energy than the empire of the world. The source of kingdom energy is God. His energy is love, and when we’re aware that we’re plugged into this power, we experience peace--not anxiety. Love energy is supernatural energy. That's one big reason why living loved feels so different from living afraid, so you’re in the right place if - 

• You’re tired of running on the fuel of fear and anxiety and you’re hungry for permission to believe in something more. 
• You enjoy hearing supernatural stories that empower you to believe in more than your natural eyes can see and your natural ears can hear. 
• You’re ready to live a life trusting that you are valuable and protected by the God of the Universe who is your Father - and who is inviting you into a love story of epic proportions because you are His child.

In this episode, Janet tells a supernatural love story, and Doug reminds us that the way things are in our world is not the way things can be in the kingdom. God is making all things new—and that’s His provision. He protects the vulnerable and writes a new story that's impossible without Him.   Dare to imagine a supernatural love story with God as you listen to this episode and linger in these TAKEAWAYS:

• Don’t simply pray for broken relationships to be healed. Pray for God’s power to bring forth a new relationship to enjoy where broken has been something you’ve lived with for too long. 
• Empowered means “giving someone the authority or power to do something” or “making someone stronger and more confident.” Being empowered in the Kingdom of God is very different from being empowered in the systems that exist in our world today because the roots of these systems were built before Jesus gave us a new heart, a new covenant, and ushered in a new kingdom.
• The energy in the kingdom of God primarily protects the vulnerable and provides the priceless. As followers of Jesus, we have this power, too. We are empowered and can empower others - with love, not fear.

Janet and Doug talk about these resources in this episode: Episode #72 - Anxiety, Depression, and the Energy LOVE Offers The Heart Of Man It’s not just a tagline—together, there is great hope. Subscribe to Janet's newsletter, THE CURATED LIFE, at janetnewberry.com. Also, shop fun merch from the LOVE IS FEARLESS collection, including t-shirts, hoodies, kitchen towels, posters, and more. Every purchase from this collection helps support our work with John 15 Academy.

This episode could be titled: Tomato Plants, Polar Bears, and Humans - that’s going to make more sense as we get farther into our conversation, but you're in the right place if: 

• You need more than relief - you need a new story.
• Sometimes, your imagination runs wild with love instead of fear.
• You have ever dared to consider this idea - Jesus didn’t come to train a few followers in a new message who then went out and changed the world. Jesus changed the world and sent out followers who embodied that change because they had trusted and experienced it in their lives.

Everything changes in the Kingdom! Romans 12:2 tells us, "Stop imitating the ideals and opinions of the culture around you, but be inwardly transformed by the Holy Spirit through a total reformation of how you think. This will empower you to discern God's will as you live a beautiful life, satisfying and perfect in his eyes. (TPT) The dreams we have in the empire of the world are not the kind of dreams God created us to imagine and enjoy - because the kingdom of God is at hand - so why would He give us worldly dreams? You're in the right place if you're imagining something more than a way to cope with the systems of this world. Join Janet and Doug in a new, mind-stretching episode and linger in these TAKEAWAYS:

• The gospel is bigger than we thought - a new identity, a new family, and a new kingdom.
• How did we become convinced that helping people cope is the best we can hope for?
• Are we dreaming empire dreams or kingdom dreams?

Listen to the interview we talked about with Susie Larson and Jamie Winship here - HEARING FROM GOD It’s not just a tagline - together, there is great hope. Subscribe to Janet's newsletter, THE CURATED LIFE at janetnewberry.com. Also, shop fun merch from the LOVE IS FEARLESS collection to find t-shirts, hoodies, kitchen towels, posters, and more. Every purchase from this collection helps support our work with John 15 Academy.

We’re recording this episode one month after the end of the holiday season - and as much as we all get excited about Christmas parties and family gatherings…most of the families we talk to are still navigating some confusing and maybe some painful relationship struggles that have carried over into the new year. You’re in the right place if - 

• You come from a good family but your family relationships are some of the most challenging - or maybe most painful. You want to be a good family member and do the right thing but honestly, sometimes, family is the place where there are more accusers than defenders. 
• The conversations in your family of origin haven’t changed over time because the people in your family haven’t changed. The most emotionally unstable person gets to be in charge - or have the most influence. People still choose sides as a way of self-protecting or self-promoting. When you think about it, your good family has as many things in common with a gang as it does with an alliance.
• You’re hungry for people who can help you heal instead of simply winning an argument or being the star of the show at family reunions. You’re more excited about being transformed than being conformed to the patterns of your childhood that taught you to live afraid in the first place.

Your family matters because those relationships formed your identity - whether it is the identity that God imprinted in your DNA or not. If you’re being intentional about learning to live loved instead of afraid at this season of your life right now, learning to live afraid was what you learned first in your family of origin.  The Curated Life alphabet will give you some new landmarks to put on your daily map - so you can build a life and a community that will impact and influence you with the love that reminds you who God says you are. Listen in as Doug and Janet talk about "family conversations" in the kingdom of God and linger in these TAKEAWAYS:

• Conversations will either transform us or conform us to the patterns of this world. Conversations are culture carriers. We learn who we are and what we value in the words we hear and speak - and the patterns we develop for how we exchange words with each other - or the patterns for how we avoid exchanging words with each other. 
• Safe, generative, deep conversations are one of the most defining signposts in a culture of love - and shallow conversations riddled with guilt, shame, bullying, sarcasm, and dismissive accusations are possibly the most recognizable negative cycles in a culture of fear.
• Conversations will either transform the world around us or conform the world around us. It is not the world that generates our conversations. It is our conversations that generate our world. 

In this episode, we suggest listening to others have safe, generative, deep conversations as part of your Curated Life. Susie Larson and Jamie Winship have some of the most transformative conversations we've heard. A few suggestions include -  Discovering Your True Self As You Fight Your Fears Believing What's True This LOVE IS FEARLESS episode with John Lynch shares the power of PERMISSION in a Curated Life. Why Love Is The Only Weapon Against Self-Sabotage Janet's book includes questions that build generative conversations. Education By Design, Not Default - How Brave Love Creates Fearless Learning   Doug read a selection from Jamie Winship's book Living Fearless to help you experience the difference between generative and formulaic conversations.  Share today's episode with a friend and then share your considerations and questions with each other in a safe, generative, deep conversation. Together, there is great hope.

B stands for BEAUTY in THE CURATED LIFE alphabet because we're letting God be our narrative therapist and He is helping us draw a map out of the land of fear stories into the land of love stories. If you missed episode #128, "B is for BEAUTY," check it out! Our guest in this episode is Joshua Gordon. Josh is a lay pastor, husband, dad to five kids, business owner, and author of Antidote For My Anxiety. He writes honestly and openly about his journey of faith, and how Jesus brings change in areas of struggle, frustration, and difficulty. Join us in a new conversation about beauty where we invite you to trust these life-giving truths - 

• Beauty gives me a great sense of honor.
• Beauty can transport us. It can lift our eyes from whatever mess we’re in.
• Beauty is hope - and the sense of hope reminds me, “That’s Jesus!”

  Joshua's book begins with “I have big feelings, and they are a target.” Isn't that where so many of our stories begin? Or where our stories get stuck? Today's conversation invites you to linger in these TAKEAWAYS:

• My feelings of stress, fear, etc... are signal flags indicating areas where Jesus needs my cooperation to further heal my heart.
• A vibrant, passionate relationship with Jesus (i.e., one where he has earned my trust... and I have risked giving it) most often grows in deeply uncomfortable circumstances.
• Jesus is my Antidote. I need to go back to Him again and again. And again.

RUN! Don't dawdle to Lazarusbooks.com to buy your own copy of Antidote For My Anxiety and follow Josh on IG @joshuahgordon. We predict you'll go back and buy more copies for friends and family, too. It’s not just a tagline - together, there is great hope. Subscribe to Janet's newsletter, THE CURATED LIFE at janetnewberry.com. Also, shop fun merch from the LOVE IS FEARLESS collection to find t-shirts, hoodies, kitchen towels, posters, and more. Every purchase from this collection helps support our work with John 15 Academy. 

You’re in the right place if - 

• You’re wondering why you’ve checked off all the boxes on the roadmap to success but you’re still struggling - with your habits, your finances, your spouse, or your emotions. 
• You’re wondering why you keep getting sucked into the same destructive cycles in your story even if you’re really smart. 
• You’re beginning to recognize that your relational assets are as important in your story as any other assets.

In season five, we’re committed to helping you embrace a primary goal of living loved instead of simply measuring up. Trying to measure up makes us afraid of not measuring up. Living loved often helps us experience success without the artificial ingredient of fear.    The Curated Life alphabet is going to give you some new landmarks to put on your daily map - so you can build a life and a community that will offer you the love that doesn’t leave you empty inside. When you're living loved, loving others happens naturally.   Doug and Janet start some fiesty new conversations, tell us why BEAUTY is vital in a living loved story, and leave us with these TAKEAWAYS - 

• The love of God is a source of comfort and challenge. We need both to help us heal and grow.
• Beauty is a reliable source of comfort. Comfort is what we need to feel safe - and when we feel steady, we naturally move out into the world and embrace the challenges that help us grow. 
• Beauty is a reliable source of challenge. Beauty challenges me to trust that I am who God says I am. I am the beneficiary of his gifts of beauty - and I am created in his image, so my heart will experience deep satisfaction when I bring beauty to the world the way he does.

It’s not just a tagline - together, there is great hope. Subscribe to Janet's newsletter, THE CURATED LIFE at janetnewberry.com. Also, shop fun merch from the LOVE IS FEARLESS collection to find t-shirts, hoodies, kitchen towels, posters, and more. Every purchase from this collection helps support our work with John 15 Academy. 

We're fresh into a new season titled The Curated Life - A Fresh Take On Living Loved and we're circling back to this vital question: What if you create a lifestyle for yourself that builds a context for transformation instead of a context for conforming to the patterns of this world?  Here’s what we’ve discovered - The more an environment is about being perfect or measuring up to a standard, the more people hold their breath, judge each other, and hide their issues. Environments that focus on “being good” are cultures of fear and fear brings out the worst in us. Fear writes our stories with rhythms and habits that we are ashamed of, and then we curate a life while we’re trying to deal with our shame.    The more an environment is about being whom God created you to be, the more people breathe easy, love each other, and drag their issues into the light to ask for help. Environments that focus on identity are cultures of love and love brings out the best in us. Love writes our stories with different accessories, rhythms, and habits that transform us instead of conforming us - and shame is never a part of a transformation story.  Listen as we talk about Taco Bell, living in a small town, adverse childhood experiences, beneficial life experiences, and why curating a life of life-giving affections can heal your nervous system and help you discover the power to move past your addictions.  We laugh a lot in this episode and we leave you with these powerful TAKEAWAYS:

• Oftentimes, what makes systems thrive is what makes people sick. Give yourself permission to choose what’s good for you, not simply what a system convinces you is “good.” Life is designed to be a collection of experiences and relationships that transform us, not simply a systematized means to a predetermined end.
• When you look at how you’ve spent your time at the end of each day, ask yourself, “Am I okay with the things that are influencing my nervous system, my body, my thoughts, and my relationships?” 
• "The information you consume each day is the soil from which your future thoughts are grown. Nobody stumbles into a well-lived life. It has to be cultivated. Reflection and review are critical." (James Clear, author of Atomic Habits)

It’s not just a tagline - together, there is great hope. Subscribe to Janet's newsletter, THE CURATED LIFE at janetnewberry.com. Also, shop fun merch from the LOVE IS FEARLESS collection to find t-shirts, hoodies, kitchen towels, posters, and more. Every purchase from this collection helps support our work with John 15 Academy.

Welcome to Season Five! We're calling this season "The Curated Life - A Fresh Take on Living Loved" because we’re all at a real fork in the road. It’s a brand new year. Which direction will you go? How will you curate your story?   We only have two choices and it’s often not what we think. We’re not looking at a new year, hoping that more good choices and less bad choices will finally tip the scales in our favor. No matter what our culture keeps telling us, conforming to the patterns of this world will never lead us to the deepest desires of our hearts. Even if you're tempted to pursue the traditional resolutions of more exercise and less overeating, you're not going to wake up one day excited to get out of bed and embrace the day if the best you've got to guide you is a list of how many minutes you need to keep your heart rate up and how many calories is your limit.  The new life we're invited to celebrate because of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus won’t fit in the patterns of this world because the patterns of this world teach us how to live and move and succeed and fail in a culture of fear, not a culture of love.  Join Janet and Doug and they begin a season of community-wide storywork and an invitation for you to risk a relationship with God as your narrative therapist. This year's challenge for all of us is to embrace our stories as curators and cartographers, combining theological and neurological discoveries with personal life experiences to create a map out of fear stories into the land of love stories.  Listen now and linger in these TAKEAWAYS:

• The CURATED LIFE alphabet teaches you to read the label on the culture in your home, your child’s school, your church, and your community so you can recognize artificial ingredients that are teaching us all to live a life Jesus set us free from. We don’t need to look too closely to see the catastrophic impact on our stories.
• The CURATED LIFE alphabet is also a list of essential ingredients for participating with God as your own narrative therapist to build a culture of love. These ingredients offer fresh energy, connection, and safety that automatically clean out and restock the pantry of your habits, rhythms, and routines. 
• The CURATED LIFE alphabet is not a list of laws, resolutions, and rules. The alphabet is about the atmosphere you breathe in, the rhythms you create, and the relationships and ideas you trust. 

It’s not just a tagline - together, there is great hope. Subscribe to Janet's newsletter, THE CURATED LIFE at janetnewberry.com. Also, shop fun merch from the LOVE IS FEARLESS collection to find t-shirts, hoodies, kitchen towels, posters, and more. Every purchase from this collection helps support our work with John 15 Academy. 

We're starting a new conversation about helping our children live loved instead of afraid. You're in the right place if: 

• Your child is experiencing a lot of success - but your relationship with your child is struggling. The distance between you keeps getting bigger and bigger - and you’re more convinced than ever that putting one foot in front of the other on the familiar path you’ve been walking is going to offer any relief. Your relationship needs something transformative.
• Your child is rebelling. They’re getting in trouble at school and stay in trouble at home. You’ve tried punishment. You’ve tried second chances and third chances and more chances than you can count and there’s not enough chances, it seems, to change the outcome. You need more than relief. You need help.
• Your home is beyond busy. Honestly, it feels like chaos. Some days, you wonder if staying busy has become a coping mechanism because when you’re not rushing from one activity to another, you notice that everyone’s just going through the motions but not really alive. It’s painful…so you sign up for one more vacation, one more sport, one more private lesson. This is the good life, right? Who has time to wonder? Go, team!

Listen in as Doug and Janet share three practical ideas that help children build a secure nervous system even while experiencing insecure circumstances.  Help us celebrate 25 episodes in 2023 with these TAKEAWAYS - 

1. John 15 Academy needs your support. We’re helping more and more parents experience more and more security in their relationships with God and others. When parents’ stories move from insecure to secure, our children have great hope. Please prayerfully consider donating generously to John 15 Academy.
2. Our kids need safe relationships with secure adults who are courageous enough to say, “Stop. Don’t go that way anymore. Walk this way.” at the same time they’re saying, “Haven’t you done this enough by yourself?”
3. We help families find their narrative. We look together at their story and find the subplots that are written in fear instead of love. Together, we move through the steps of asking God to speak truth to the lies we’re telling ourselves because we’re afraid - and then we help parents and children learn to follow the voice of Love. We help children build more than success stories - we help children build secure stories. 

Together, there is great hope.

• Reach out if you're hungry to participate with love instead of fear in your own story. We'd love to walk with you beyond the fork in the road. Email [email protected] or [email protected]. 
• Follow this link to contribute to John 15 Academy's end-of-year giving campaign and help Doug and Janet meet the 2023 goal of $20,000.
• Visit this link for LOVE IS FEARLESS merch.
• Sign up for Janet's newsletter by visiting janetnewberry.com.