What are you trying to prove?

I don't mean what you're working toward. I mean what you're trying to prove. That you're successful? That you're a good mom? That you're not who you used to be? That the people who doubted you were wrong?

Sometimes the goal is completely fine. The problem is the weight we've asked it to carry. In this episode we look at how a good goal can quietly turn into proof of our worth, and why we sometimes keep performing for people who aren't even watching anymore. We also go back to Matthew 3, where the Father called Jesus beloved before He had done a single public thing. Identity comes before achievement, not after it.

📖 Scriptures in this episode:

• Matthew 3:16–17: "This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased"
• Matthew 4:1–11: "If you are the Son of God…" (the enemy's "prove it")
• Genesis 11:4: Babel and "let us make a name for ourselves"
• 1 Samuel 15:24–30: Saul fears the people and asks to be honored before the elders
• Galatians 1:10: "Am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God?"

💭 Questions to sit with this week:

• What am I trying to prove?
• Am I building this because it's faithful, or because I need it to say something about me?
• Am I posting this because it's useful, or because I need to be seen?
• Am I chasing excellence, or am I chasing a name?
• If nobody knew I accomplished this, would I still want it?
• Whose applause am I imagining? Who do I want to regret underestimating me?
• Whose voice is still narrating my decisions from the back of my head?
• Why do I want this goal? (Then ask why again, and again.)
• What am I hoping this will prove about me?
• If this doesn't happen, what am I afraid it will mean about me?
• What would faithfulness look like here?

✨ Your faithful shift this week: Don't throw your goals away. Take the weight off them. Let success just be success, let failure be information instead of a verdict, and let your identity stay where it already belongs, in Christ.

🌿 The Wellness Store
What I use for energy, what I drink, and what I clean with all come from the same place. I use it for energy, hydration, hygiene, cleaning, health, and a whole lot more. If you're curious, I'd love to share more:
https://mymelaleuca.com/KendallAppleton

🎄 The Outdoor Services
Let somebody else get on the ladder this year. They hang Christmas lights, so reach out now if you want your house lit up. They're also doing irrigation blowouts before the freeze and hardscape work while it's cool, plus lawn, landscaping, and irrigation the rest of the year:
https://www.theoutdoorservices.com/

Next week: Every yes costs you something you don't get back, and most of us are spending them like they're free.

If this one hit close to home, share it with someone who needs to hear it and subscribe so you don't miss an episode. Keep making faithful shifts. 💛

You were fine. Then you looked sideways.

Comparison isn't only "she has something I want." It's loving your marriage until you see someone's anniversary reel. It's feeling good about your pace until someone your age hits a milestone first. In this episode we talk about the sneaky ways comparison sets deadlines God never gave you, moves the finish line called "enough," and hands us goals that were never ours. We also go back to the beach in John 21, where Jesus says to Peter, "What is that to you? You follow Me."

📖 Scriptures in this episode:

• John 21:15–22: Peter's restoration and "What is that to you? You follow Me."
• 1 Samuel 18:6–9: Saul, David, and the song that turned a win into a threat
• Galatians 6:4–5: Test your own work and carry your own load

💭 Questions to sit with this week:

• Was this goal born out of prayer, conviction, or something God placed in me, or did seeing it just make me want it?
• Is this inspiration or comparison? Does it make me curious and grateful, or does it make me look down on what I've already been given?
• Did God actually tell me something needs to change, or did someone else's life convince me mine wasn't enough?
• Am I where God has asked me to be?
• What has Jesus asked me to do?
• What would faithfulness look like here?

✨ Your faithful shift this week: Find one place you've been looking sideways. Instead of "why don't I have that," pray "God, thank You for what You're doing in their life," and then ask, "What have You asked me to do with mine?"

🌿 The Wellness Store
I use it every day for energy, hydration, hygiene, cleaning, and so much more. If you've wondered what I actually use, I'd love to show you:
https://mymelaleuca.com/KendallAppleton

🎄 The Outdoor Services
Book your Christmas light hanging early, before December sneaks up on you. They're also blowing out irrigation systems before the first freeze and taking on hardscape projects. Come spring, they handle all your lawn, landscaping, and irrigation needs:
https://www.theoutdoorservices.com/

Next week: What are you actually trying to prove, and who are you trying to prove it to?

If this one landed somewhere real, share it with a friend who needs it and subscribe so you don't miss an episode. Keep making faithful shifts. 💛

Last week you named the thing. This week Kendall asks you to look at the direction you're actually moving — because your life isn't built by what you intend to do, it's built by what you repeatedly do. Using Haggai's "consider your ways," Martha's kitchen in Luke 10, and a three-year thought experiment that gets uncomfortable fast, this episode is a gut-check on the gap between your stated priorities and your practiced ones. Not shame — information. And one small, repeated choice that could start bending your trajectory.

Scriptures Referenced:

• Galatians 6:7, 9 — "Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap" / "Let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up"
• Haggai 1:5–7 — "Consider your ways" (planted much, harvested little; wages earned into a bag with holes)
• Luke 10:38–42 — Martha and Mary ("Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary")

Questions From the Episode:

The Three-Year Question (the core exercise):

• If nothing changes for three years, where does this take me?
• If I keep spending this way — where am I?
• If I keep treating my marriage this way — where are we?
• If I keep giving my phone this much of my attention — what does that do to me?
• If I keep saying yes at this rate — what does my capacity look like?
• If I keep avoiding this one conversation — what happens to this relationship?
• If I keep relating to God exactly the way I am right now — what kind of roots am I actually growing?

Now Flip It:

• What small, repeated choice could start bending that trajectory?

The Inventory (eight areas to "consider your ways" through):

• Calendar: Where are you chronically overcommitted? What keeps getting bumped because everything else feels more urgent? Do the people you say matter most actually get meaningful access to you, or the leftovers?
• Money: What does it repeatedly make possible? Are your spending patterns building the financial life you say you want, or is Future You constantly footing the bill for decisions Today You made?
• Attention: Where does your attention keep going? When someone you love is talking, where's your mind? When you're praying, how long before your brain wanders off?
• Relationships: Who's actually getting the healthiest version of you, and who's getting whatever's left at 9pm? Are there relationships you say matter deeply that have quietly gone on autopilot?
• Habits: What do you do without thinking?
• Rest: Do you actually believe it's necessary, or do you treat it like a reward you'll collect once everything else is finished? When exactly is everything finished?
• Spiritual rhythms: Are you abiding, or is prayer mostly an emergency response system you activate when things go sideways?
• Commitments: How much of your life did you intentionally choose, and how much did you just agree to without ever deciding whether it belonged?

Your Faithful Shift This Week:

• What do I say I want? What am I actually, repeatedly choosing? Where's that trajectory taking me? And finally — what would faithfulness look like here?

Links:

• Join The Shift Collective: www.faithfulshift.com
• The Wellness Store: https://mymelaleuca.com/KendallAppleton

Sometimes the problem isn't that we don't know what God's asking of us — it's that we don't like the answer. In this Season 3 opener, Kendall walks through Jonah, the rich young ruler, and James 1 to draw the line between genuinely not knowing and dressing disobedience up as discernment. If something's been surfacing for months and you keep praying for more clarity instead of taking the next step, this one's for you. Four questions to help you sort it out, and the courage to actually move.

Scriptures Referenced:

• Jonah 4 (Jonah quoting God's words back at Him)
• Exodus 34:6 — "gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love"
• Mark 10:17–22 — The Rich Young Ruler ("Jesus looked at him and loved him," v. 21)
• James 1:22–24 — "Be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves"

Questions From the Episode:

The Four Questions to Sort It Out:

1. Has Scripture already spoken clearly on this?
2. Does the same conviction keep coming back?
3. Am I genuinely seeking wisdom, or hoping someone hands me permission to do what I already wanted?
4. If I couldn't get one more piece of information — ever — what would I already know to do?

The core question of the season: What would faithfulness look like here?

The main challenge question: What's the shift you already know you need to make?

Links:

• Join The Shift Collective: www.faithfulshift.com
• The Wellness Store: https://mymelaleuca.com/KendallAppleton

This is it — the last episode of this season, and I've been sitting on this news for weeks.

In this episode, I share:

• Two new callings I've stepped into: Kansas State Representative for Celebrate Recovery, and Campus Discipleship Leader at my church
• Why Faithful Shift is taking a two-month break — and why it's not a goodbye, it's a pruning season (I'll be writing and recording behind the scenes so we come back strong)
• Two things launching from Faithful Shift: a Designed on Purpose 1:1 coaching session, and The Shift Collective — a membership community for women done trying to grow alone, opening September 1 with a founding-member rate
• A quick overview of the Whole-Life Stewardship framework — the wheel with Christ at the center and seven areas we're called to steward around it
• A deep dive into Philippians 1:3-11 — Paul's prayer for the Philippian church, written from a prison cell, and the promise that carried me into this whole season: "He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion."

If you only take one thing from this episode: the good work in your life isn't yours to finish. God began it, God carries it, God completes it — which means you're free to rest.

Thank you for an incredible season. I love you guys. I'm rooting for you.

Show notes / links

• 🌳 The free Whole-Life Check-In, The Shift Collective founding-member rate, and the Designed on Purpose coaching session — everything's linked at www.faithfulshift.com
• 📖 Scripture referenced: Philippians 1:3-11

"God is not asking you to become a different person. He's asking you to become a more surrendered version of the person He created you to be."

We made it to the final episode of Designed on Purpose — and this week we answer the question the whole series has been building toward: Now what?

You know your strengths. You've stared down some blind spots. You understand your wiring better than you did three weeks ago. So what do you actually do with all of it?

The answer is stewardship — and stewardship changes everything. This week we talk about what it looks like to appreciate your design without worshiping it, develop your strengths without depending on them, and grow toward Christlikeness without losing what makes you uniquely you.

Plus, the Designed on Purpose Coaching Session is officially open. Details below!

In this episode:

• Why comparing your wiring to someone else's makes you ineffective, not just miserable (Romans 12)
• Why Jesus doesn't fit into any personality framework — and what that reveals about who we're actually becoming like (Romans 8:29, Galatians 5)
• The difference between stewarding a weakness and excusing it
• Why your strengths aren't something to downplay (Romans 12:6, 1 Corinthians 12)
• The Parable of the Talents — and the quiet danger of playing it safe (Matthew 25)
• The Four Postures of Faithful Stewardship: Appreciate it. Develop it. Stretch it. Surrender it.
• What it means to be God's workmanship — His poem — created on purpose, for a purpose (Ephesians 2:10)

A question to sit with this week:
What has God entrusted to me that I'm not yet stewarding faithfully?

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Designed on Purpose Coaching Session — a 90-minute, one-on-one session covering your Enneagram, Myers-Briggs, APEST, and Working Genius, with a named growth edge, a 30-day action plan, and a personal written summary after the session. Sessions open August 1st — grab your spot now.
• Free Energy + Wiring Guide — yours when you join the newsletter, and a great starting point before your coaching session.

👉 Sign up for the Designed on Purpose Coaching Session or the newsletter at www.faithfulshift.com

The most dangerous blind spot isn't the one you have. It's the one you're unwilling to look at.

Here's what makes blind spots so sneaky: they almost never hide in your weaknesses. They hide right next to your greatest strengths. Confidence tips into arrogance. Discernment sharpens into criticism. Drive curdles into performance. The very thing God uses most in you becomes the very thing that trips you — and you're the last one to see it.

In Episode 2 of Designed on Purpose, I'm telling on myself: the pattern someone named in my leadership that I had a full defense ready for before they finished the sentence, the blind spot underneath my Enneagram 3 that took me years to face, and why feedback so often feels like an attack. We'll sit with Peter, Jonah, Martha, and Moses, ask the one question that changed how I think about growth — where am I least like Jesus? — and land on the most courageous prayer you can pray: God, show me what I can't see.

If someone's ever told you something about yourself that you swore wasn't true, and two years later realized they were right — this one's for you.

🎁 Free Energy + Wiring Guide: Small Faithful Shifts Can Change Your Life. Sign up for The Shift newsletter and it comes straight to your inbox — check your email and click confirm so it doesn't land in junk.

Jesus didn't die so you could become the healthiest version of your Enneagram type. He died so you could become more like Him.

I love personality assessments. The Enneagram, Myers-Briggs, Working Genius, APEST, StrengthsFinder, spiritual gifts inventories — I've taken all of them, probably twice. But somewhere between "this helps me understand myself" and "this explains why I don't have to change," we cross a line. A tool becomes a label. A label becomes an identity. And an identity becomes a cage.

In Episode 1 of the Designed on Purpose series, I'm getting honest about the low APEST score I used to dodge obedience, the Enneagram 3 tendencies I called "just how I am," and the Working Genius moment that changed how I see people. We'll talk about what assessments can actually do, what they can't, and the difference between self-awareness that ends in self-protection and self-awareness that ends in surrender.

If you've ever used a personality type to explain away something God might be asking you to change — this one's for you. Grab your coffee.

🎁 Free Energy + Wiring Guide: Small Faithful Shifts Can Change Your Life. Sign up for The Shift newsletter and it lands in your inbox — just check your email and click confirm so it doesn't get stuck in junk.