What the heck is Christian Life Coaching? Let’s start at the begining.

The life coaching industry was birthed in the 1980s. Since then it has grown every year like a well-watered garden. Why? Because people need a life purpose. They need help knowing what they want out of life. They are too close to their own lives and can’t see the proverbial forest through the trees. They get stuck in the same rat race day after day and know there is more to life, yet are unable to get themselves out of the quicksand that is pulling them down. What gives them hope, the belief that there must be more to life than the life they’re living? They see personal development and life coaching as a way to find answers, achieve goals and find more success in life.

Unlike business coaching, life coaching is intentionally holistic. It looks at the whole person, including their business. It digs into their hopes and dreams. What is holding them back. What’s driving them. What success looks like for them.

A small and growing segment of the coaching industry is Christian life coaching which is life coaching through the lens of Christ with a focus on Him.

Many women receive life coaching from others, but it is not Christ-focused and their hearts are yearning for the only person that can fulfill them, which is Christ. Also, women seeking coaching may worry about being drawn into the secular world, but need help knowing how to balance work and life, and don’t know that Christian life coaching is an option. Or they may be hesitant to engage a Christian life coach because they don’t know how it works.

In this article I will demystify Christian life coaching by sharing 25 things you need to know about it.

1) Purpose & Calling – Christian life coaching helps you embrace the best and most honorable purpose of a Christian’s life which is sharing Christ with others. How you fulfill that purpose is your calling and what that looks like for each person is different because God gave us all different gifts. Christian life coaching phone calls are intentionally centered around your purpose, uncovering what your calling looks like at this stage in your life using God’s Word to navigate you through this exciting journey.

2) Heart Focused – Christian life coaching is focused on your motivations as they are the root for your behaviors and actions. God knows the desire of your heart because He put it there and He gives you all you need to live out your purpose and calling. This heart focus helps you to give yourself grace and remember why you are doing what you’re doing, who you are and who you are doing it for. This focus gives hope and motivates you to keep going.

3) Dynamic – Every Christian life coaching phone call is exciting because the Holy Spirit is in the lead. While there is a structure to the calls, they may go in another direction as the Spirit leads. This dynamic Spirit-led focus helps you to keep growing and continue the hard, rewarding work of the Christian version of personal development, sanctification.

4) Perspective – These Christian life coaching phone calls reground you in the fact that you part of God’s plan not the other way around. Yes, you have goals and dreams, but these are a part of His larger plan, which provides great freedom and diverts you from our performance and self-reliance culture. 

5) Prayer – Christian life coaching—phone calls, homework and communication—is not accomplished without prayer. While a Christian life coach could lead you without God, we know how counterproductive and destructive that is.

6) Wisdom – Christian life coaches use the knowledge from their own experiences to guide their clients. Coaches can lead you because we have often been where you are and are now onto the next challenge. A good Christian life coach is always studying the Word and continuing to grow in Christ.

7) Honesty – Christian life coaches strive for the absence of any hypocrisy in our lives. We practice what we preach and have coaches ourselves. We admit when we are wrong or when we don’t know something. Integrity and authenticity are the pillars of our belief system.

8) Insight – During a Christian life coaching session your coach will bring to light things you don’t see. That you are too close to see. This will help you to leverage your gifts and use them in your calling. This insight also allows us to encourage you, challenge you and hold you accountable. 

9) Accountability– Christian life coaching has a large element of accountability to help you focus on your calling and the next steps to your dreams and goals. But you are not only accountable to your coach and yourself, your ultimate accountability is to God.

10) Holistic – Life is made up of smorgasbord of spiritual, mental, and physical health, friends, family, work, your own business, church etc. The common denominator for Christians, like you, is that they love Jesus. Christian life coaching does not compartmentalize secular work from Kingdom work. It looks at all you do as your ministry and contribution to your calling. It looks at you as one person.

11) Commitment – Christian life coaching calls focus on the critical nature of your calling in the Kingdom of God. You make a commitment before the relationship with the coach begins to be authentic and work in the areas where you need to with Christ. Calls are filled with laughter, tears and sometimes tension from accountability and being challenged. You commit to see things through.

12) Success – For you, success looks different. Success is Kingdom-focused and not worldly-focused. You will achieve goals like making your desired monthly business income or breaking the chains of people-pleasing, which are to be celebrated. But your true enduring success comes from obeying God and honoring Him with your life.

13) Clarity – On any given day you have a million things going on in your life. Christian life coaching calls are an opportunity to stop, take a step back and see what you are doing. To help you answer the questions “How do I know what I want?”, “How do I know what the desire of my heart is?” through the lens of Christ.  Through the call, your homework, prayer, and time in the Word, your next step becomes clearer.

14) Persistent & Perseverance – To discover your calling, dreams and goals, God tells you to ask, seek, knock.  Christian life coaching ensures that you are doing this and helps you to persevere when things get hard or you feel discouraged. Your coach is on your side and in the ring cheering you on, working with God to prepare you for the next step, and celebrating the steps you have already taken.

15) Sustainment – You are allowed and encouraged to celebrate your successes on earth and be happy. Your Christian life coach also helps you to remember that God is the only One who sustains your joy, helping you keep your eyes on Him so you can see and celebrate all He is doing for and within you. 

16) Faith – The Christian life coaching relationship helps you to strengthen your faith through prayer, being in God’s Word, and Holy Spirit–led calls. Your coach gives you space to pause, reflect and remember all the prayers God has answered and how the path He took you on was much better than your planned path.  His past faithfulness fuels your resolve and commitment to your calling which demolishes fear.

17) Joy – All work and no play makes you a dull girl. Christian life coaching isn’t only about growth, but it’s balanced with joy. Your coach encourages you to enjoy your daily journey by also helping you to do things like play and celebrate more. I mean come on, how many festivals did they have in the Bible? A LOT!

18) Pacing – Many Christian life coaching clients are driven high-achievers who want to do more and step up for God. With this drive can come burnout and frustration from not meeting your own expectations. Coaching helps you give yourself grace and pace yourself. It also helps you to look at your own expectations and continually compare them to what God expects of you, while reminding you He is with you and He wants you to walk next to Him. And God is never in a hurry. 

19) Trust – One of the hardest things for women is to receive and embrace God’s love for them. To really trust Him with your life. Self-reliance sneaks in and tells you that you’re on your own. Christian life coaching helps you defeat these lies by bringing them to light and reminding you that what God is sending you out to do can’t be done without Him. If it could, what kind of testimony would that be?

20) So much more than personal development – While personal development consists of activities that develop a person’s capabilities and potential, facilitates employability, and enhances quality of life including the realization of dreams and aspirations, it is all self-focused. Christian life coaching is Christ-focused, which takes off the burden of doing all of this on your own. The sanctification process has one goal and that is to make you more like Christ, while personal development is to make you the best “you” you can be, which is very limiting without God.

21) Mindset Shift – Christian life coaching looks at life with Kingdom eyes and at the same time as an investment in that Kingdom. Everything you do has a higher purpose and is about loving God and loving people. Your coach will help to break the chains of the worldly beliefs that are counter to God.

22) Different perspective on Goals – While Christian life coaching calls are heart focused, they require the outpouring of the heart to be translated into action as you are reminded that you only control your effort, not the outcome. God gives you the resources you need to fulfill your calling and will multiply your efforts. In this way goals become not things to achieve but things you need to provide as He steers your efforts.

23) Victor – You have all you need in Christ. Christian life coaching does not endorse nor enable you to be a victim. Instead, it will teach you to be a victor by helping you choose God, see yourself as He sees you, enjoy God, and let Him protect you.

24) Personalized – Christian life coaching calls are based on the truth that God only made one of you. Due to that truth, your calls and everything about your coaching program is tailored to you. For coaching, one size doesn’t fit all.

25) Humility – Christian life coaching requires a lot of humility because your coach denies their own will to follow God’s. Part of this is in admitting that they may not be the right coach for you or that the coaching relationship needs to end. Christian life coaching is all about you as God’s child and the needs, wants and desires of the coach and their business isn’t the focus.

This is a sneak peak of what you need to know about Christian Life Coaching.

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