business – Mark Joseph Ministries

Today is the Feast Day of St. Mark the Evangelist, a favorite of mine for obvious reasons. St. Mark was one of the four writers of the Gospels. Among other things, he’s quoted as saying, “For what shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul”. How true. In doing a little research, I found a Prayer to St. Mark:

O, Glorious St. Mark
through the grace
of God, our Father,
you became a great Evangelist,
preaching the
Good News of Christ.
May you help us to know Him
well so that we may faithfully
live our lives as followers of
Christ.
Amen.

Today also marks the 5-year anniversary of when I first began posting these blogs. With roughly 1,600 on our email list, every Wednesday I send out a note of roughly 600 words. Although the topics vary, they most often have to do with real life issues, relating them back to our faith. Over five years, this is my 260^th post, most of it being original content.

Beginning with my conversion experience in March 2006 and based on my journey to date, I continue to believe that in understanding and internalizing the unconditional love and forgiveness of Jesus Christ that:

The unimaginable is achievable,
We can live Heaven here on earth,
There’s a path to peace, joy, and fulfillment.

As expressed in my book, online course, my talks, videos, and these blogs, I also believe that God made you and me for greatness, putting each of us individually on this earth with a specific purpose, with unique gifts and talents.

I launched this blog right before my book came out. Having aspirations of sharing my message (really God’s message) with as many as possible, I was doing a fair amount of speaking, mostly local, and promoting myself and the ministry. We created an online course and promoted that too. Then COVID hit and we lost momentum.

Something else happened over that time. I’m five years older, now sixty, and my priorities have shifted. With expanded responsibilities at work, I’m quite busy, including travel. Since the beginning, the writing and speaking have been done on the weekends and the older I get, the more I don’t want to be running in my off-time. Instead, I prefer hanging out with Cyndi and doing the things we enjoy on weekends.

In discerning this, a couple questions come to mind. Is this about me or the message? Where can my greatest impact be? At Franciscan University of Steubenville, I have the privilege of leading a team of 30, in addition to being responsible for the 10 partner organizations that put on our conferences across North America. What if my efforts exclusively went towards them? What would the impact be, especially with our exponential reach? Understanding that these things aren’t mutually exclusive, where is God calling me?

There’s a time for everything. Life is made of decisions, and we can only say “no” if we have a stronger “yes”. All this to say that as a standard, we are going to begin posting once a month instead of every week. Given the time it takes to prepare each blog, I think it’s the right decision. My priorities (not the message but the means) have shifted and I feel God calling me in a slightly different direction. That doesn’t mean that we won’t be posting something else periodically, but our original content will be coming out monthly.

I want to thank you for being on this journey with me. Your support is so appreciated. I know I’m biased but I don’t believe there’s a more important message to share. In fact, I am convicted that if more people knew the love of Christ, that we’d live in a much better country and world. Please pray for me as I do for you. We are experiencing very challenging times and clearly Jesus is the only answer.

Btw, all my past blogs are on the website at https://markjosephministries.com/blog/. We have an online course as well as my book. If desirous and you have a financial issue, just email me and we’re happy to discount or provide them for free. Lastly, I’m happy to give the occasional talk or do a Parish Mission, especially locally.

In closing, I want to thank two people. First, I couldn’t do any of this (website, blog posts, videos, etc.) without Mary Kate Cuccari, who’s the creative genius and designer behind the scenes. If you ever have the need, I’d recommend MK in a heartbeat. My wife Cyndi has always supported all of my endeavors, including this ministry. My best friend, I thank God for her every day. Thanks Babe!!!

As always, please email me at [email protected] with questions, concerns, comments, or prayer requests.

God Bless you on your Path to Peace, Joy, and Fulfillment!!!

Remember…God made you for Greatness!!!

Mark Joseph

If you’re paying attention today, especially related to politics (no…this isn’t a political blog), so many people are so angry. Whether related to politics or not, it seems that we’re less tolerant than in the past. Common decency is much less prevalent. Many of us were taught, “if you have nothing nice to say, then say nothing at all”. That approach appears to be a thing of the past.

It seems that not only does everyone have an opinion about everything, but that they are very eager to share it and with no filter as related to who the audience may be. It used to be that our rights stopped when they negatively impacted another. Today you’d think that it’s our right to insult anyone we want.

It’s a Problem for Me

I’ve noticed an anger building in me over the last several months. I’ve told myself that it’s a result of my frustration with how things are being done (or not done). It manifests itself in me yelling at the television while watching political commentary (nope…I won’t tell you which side I’m yelling at) or being critical of leadership to others, whether in the Church or the secular world.

In prayer recently, I very clearly sensed that the Lord said to me, “lose the anger; your heart is hardening, which is not of Me”. Wow!!! That smacked me between the eyes. Before that very moment, I hadn’t thought of myself as being angry and as such, hadn’t considered what else may be going on within me.

Where is all the anger coming from?

I discerned that the anger stemmed from ego and pride, things that I thought that I had in fairly good check. You see, in my mind I had better ideas and solutions than those being exercised by others. It not being practical to share my ideas with the people from the institutions or organizations I was angry with because they’re not in my immediate sphere, it’s not like I was rejected, attacked, or offended personally in any way. I just thought my ideas were better and that they were exhibiting poor judgement in doing otherwise. And I was angry about it.

If you’ve had a chance to review my website or read my free eBook , you know that one of my primary themes is the healthy self-love we attain by understanding and internalizing God’s unconditional love. And you further know that the person who knows such love is very comfortable with who she is, made in God’s image and likeness….to do great things. That person is not bothered by others’ thoughts or opinions, but instead is accepting (not necessarily agreeing or endorsing) of what they have to say. Not suffering from an inflated ego or pride, he doesn’t have to be invested in always proving himself right. Nor does he get angry over such things.

I had let pride creep back into my life. Ever so subtle, my ego (which stands for “edge God out”) had swelled. They being my most challenging sins from my past, I was somewhat shaken, to be honest, to the degree to which they resurfaced. Satan was at work and I didn’t see it coming.

You may have other theories as to why you sometimes get angry. I’d love for you to share them with me at [email protected].

How to Overcome Anger

Here’s my experience. When I live from that place of God’s unconditional love (knowing that God made me with special gifts and put me on this earth for a purpose, all according to His plan, which includes wanting me to be happy) for me, the anger doesn’t exist. Neither does it when I’m practicing surrender, gratitude, humility, and love.

We Have a Great God

The good news is that we have a great God Who forgives all. He loves us unconditionally. He’s there for all of us all the time. He knows that we’re going to fall down. He’s always there to pick us back up. It was anger for me, caused by ego and pride. What is it for you? Take it to our Lord. He doesn’t disappoint.

God Bless you on your journey to Peace, Joy, and Fulfillment!!!