What is the standard for your life? Is it what people say about you? How much money you have — or don’t have? Your status or political views? Whatever it is, your standard impacts everything you do. In this day and age, there are so many things vying for our attention that it’s easy to lose focus of what standard we as Christians should be measuring ourselves against. This week’s Publishing Secrets guest, Josh Khachadourian, challenges us to examine the standards and motives on which we base our lives. Josh has a message that’s specifically aimed at a male audience, but his advice on leadership and pushing past the fear of failure applies to everyone. Let Josh motivate you to set Jesus as your standard and to pursue the calling He has placed on your life.
In this episode, you’ll also hear:
As an entrepreneur, Josh Khachadourian has a lot of experience with leadership in the business sphere. Several years ago, this experience helped inspire his book, The Standard: Discovering Jesus as the Standard for Masculinity, as it gave him a fresh perspective on the person of Jesus.
“I was looking at the life of Jesus, but this time I was looking with a new lens,” he recalls. “I was looking through the lens of not just the miracles, not just seeing Jesus as the Son of God, but I was really examining His life, His methods, His operating principles, His EQ. And I was looking at him through the lens of leadership that I've been privileged to walk down.”
Through conversations with fellow Christian men, Josh realized that many struggled to see Jesus as relevant and accessible in their daily lives. So he wrote The Standard as a resource to help people — especially men — understand and experience Jesus as a real man who modeled how we as humans should live, without separating Him from His divinity.
One major issue Josh addresses in the book is the fear of failure. “We’re created for dominion,” he says. “It’s in our DNA.” According to Josh, this spiritual need to accomplish great things is what drives people to build, create, and conquer mountains. “They’re searching for God,” he explains. “They’re searching to be reunited with the way they were created.”
Unfortunately, many people end up suppressing this desire because they’re afraid. They worry about what others will think if they go after their dreams and fail to achieve them. As a result, they end up frustrated, because they know they aren’t living up to their God-given potential. Going after our dreams and being vulnerable about our struggles can be incredibly scary, but it’s necessary if we’re going to live the life God created us for.
Another important theme of Josh’s book is exploring the different attributes of Jesus as the standard for masculinity. Although Josh believes anyone, regardless of gender, can and should learn from Jesus’ example, he writes especially to encourage and inspire Christian men to become leaders according to the model set by Jesus.
In Josh’s experience, the church often emphasizes Jesus’ softer, nurturing side, while placing less importance on His more traditionally masculine traits. “We’ve highlighted Him so much as the Lamb that we’ve lost sight of the Lion,” Josh says.
Josh’s book covers six characteristics of Jesus that set an example for Christian men:
In each section, Josh includes not only examples from Jesus’ life, but also practical applications for those lessons. For example, referencing 1 Corinthians 3:12-15, he argues that everyone is building something spiritually — the question is, what are you building and why, and is it what God wants you to build?
“I don't necessarily believe that wood, hay, and stubble is necessarily bad,” he adds. “You can build really good things with wood. You can build structures, you can build things that can last. But the scariest part for me is, was I called to do that?” As we learn to follow the example of Jesus, we must also learn to examine our motivations and discern whether our actions align with God’s plan for our lives.
Most authors experience some level of fear and hesitation when it comes to putting their work out into the world. Even sharing your writing with a family member or friend requires you to be vulnerable and can feel like you’re taking a huge step outside your comfort zone.
For Josh, much of that fear manifested as perfectionism. “I do love to do things with excellence, so if I'm going to do it, I want to do it the right way,” he says. “But when it crosses over into perfectionism, that's really the fear of failure. That’s what I was scared of: ‘What are people going to think? What are they going to say? I’ll tweak some more.’ And you can get stuck in an endless cycle of tweaking and never releasing.”
Despite his fear and perfectionism, however, Josh knew that the message he’d been given was important and that he needed to release it. He views it as giving God a return on His investment — he’d been entrusted with the message, and it was his responsibility to share it with the people who needed to hear it.
So Josh pushed through the fear, and God opened doors for him to publish the book — and he continues to hear from people whose lives have been positively impacted by the book. “I was just obedient with what the Lord told me to do,” he observes. “I released it, and now it's off me. It's out there.”
If your fear of failure and of what others will think is holding you back from sharing the message God has given you, Josh says the key is commitment. If you are committed to obeying God’s call, you’ll be able to conquer fear and keep going even when you don’t feel like it.
So many of us have amazing ideas of what we’d like to accomplish. But if you never actually start writing — or if you start but never finish — all those ideas will never come to fruition.
“You're either committed to your excuses, or you're committed to finishing and completing the vision,” Josh says in closing. “And when you do [finish], you will take dominion in life.”
BIO:
Josh Khachadourian is a husband, father, leader, coach and host of the 'Raising The Standard' podcast. Josh has spent the last 15 years ascending the corporate ladder in a Fortune 500 company where he focused on building high performing teams and developing best in class leaders.
Josh has encountered and observed the pressures today's men are facing. Most men are grappling for identity and struggling through challenges in life without a plan. Jesus provides a plan and sets a standard that is relatively unknown to the modern Christian man.
Josh has made it his mission to show men everywhere that Jesus is accessible, relatable, real and relevant. His breakout best seller 'The Standard' has been challenging, changing and calling men to raise the standard in their lives. The four areas that all men must take dominion in are their faith, fitness, family life and finances. Josh helps men that feel the call to expand and prosper in all areas. You can connect with Josh, read his blog and be the first to hear about new podcast episodes at www.standard59.com
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