Live Wise: A Guidebook to Facing Life and Reality’s Complexities and Messiness with the Wisdom and Love of God

Summary: Every journey requires a guide. This episode is based on the book “Live Wise” which offers guidance to life’s journey. It is rooted in biblical wisdom. “Live Wise is a guidebook to living with God’s wisdom and love, offering hope and purpose to those who choose to believe. It not only addresses the search for truth and love, but acknowledges that human-made explanations of life often lead to chaos, confusion, and despair. As directed by God, Live Wise is a Jesus sourced how-to guidebook for facing life and reality’s complexities and messiness with the singularly valuable wisdom and love of God only found in God’s explanation of life and reality: Jesus and the Bible.

Welcome to the edition of Newsgram!

What does it really mean to live wisely? Is it about making smart decisions, or is it something deeper? Today, we’ll explore how Scott Curtis Meischen sees it—through faith, wisdom, and the guidance of God. Scott is an interesting man who wears many hats including teacher, consultant, Minister and author. He just wrote a book titled Live Wise. A title that I found intriguing because the way I interpret those words, to “Live Wise” means to think first, to keep an open mind and to live your life guided by wisdom, intentionality, and alignment with your values and hopefully those values lead you to fulfillment, peace, and purpose. In the context of Scott’s book, the concept of Living Wise, is closely tied to living in accordance with God’s wisdom and the teachings of Christianity. Here he is to explain all that for himself.

Scott Curtis Meischen – The joy of a life well lived is part of what I mean by live wise. And God calls us to live wise. He invites us to live wise. So the book is about how God instructed me and I’ve always enjoyed helping people. So this book is a product of my liking to help people. I always was like when I was employed, I always had the summer interns, even if they were assigned to another manager.

Eventually they migrated over to me because I really enjoyed that process of taking a young person and helping them. So this idea is my faith in Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior, and my love for caring, caring for people. 

The complete title of the book is Live Wise: A Guidebook to Facing Life’s Complexities with the Wisdom and Love of God and it was born out of a very stressful situation. It started with Scott being a single parent of three. 

Scott Curtis Meischen – I was working at a very competitive organization. The Federal Reserve, and I was an internal audit manager. So one of the challenges is you have to be right. So there’s a lot of pressure to come to the right conclusion. You’re asked a question, is this working right or not? And you have to set up to do all this testing. So under those conditions, my Christian faith matured. Stress in life will either make you better or bitter. But I’m a very strong believer, and I would not be sitting here without the help of God, the Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ, and God the Father. So this was what I developed to live wise in my life under the most stressful conditions.

I love how he puts that: stress can make you bitter or better—what a great quote! And I would add that it can do both. So let’s get into the core of this book. It is designed to be a guide and there is quite a bit of information here so to help lead you through these sometimes complex ideas, Scott has included a glossary at the front of the book and in it he defines all the different terms as well as acronyms like FSN—Faith Support Network, and GARP—Generally Accepted Reasoning Principles. That way, we’re all on the same page as we dive into the concepts. 

Scott Curtis Meischen – One of the things I’ve learned in life is that if you and I are to communicate well, then we need to know what we mean by right, or we need to know what if you want a word that is highly malleable, fair. What’s fair? OK, if you got 50 people in the room, you’re going to have 75 definitions of fair. OK, so to try and help people with the idea, just the idea, I put the acronyms and glossary in the front.

The heart of Live Wise lies is Scott’s belief that faith can help us tackle life’s messiness with grace and purpose 

Scott Curtis Meischen – Just skim it, get a feel for it. And then the first part of the book is what is called, I term, the salvation journey. And then the sanctification journey and the glorification journey. And those are divisions of someone who comes to faith in Jesus Christ as personal Lord and Savior. It’s called salvation. And that’s a point in time event. I don’t know the specific day. I know the period of time when I came to faith. Some people actually know that you’ll meet a lot of people who actually know that day, like C.S. Lewis, the great Christian apologist. He knows the exact day and location.

I put together some of the key takeaways for you and those include to first, Stop, Think, Believe and then Live Wise: Scott’s central message is to encourage you to take a moment and reflect on faith and the role it plays in making wise decisions.

He talks about Faith as a Lifelong Journey: Live Wise is designed to guide readers through the process of faith, helping them face life’s messiness with wisdom grounded in Christian beliefs.

And then there is Trust and Commitment to Growth: Your Personal growth and gaining a deeper understanding of God’s love is an ongoing process. In fact he likens it to running a marathon.

Scott Curtis Meischen – Marathons are inherently difficult. Life is inherently difficult. But if you prepare, it’s actually both a challenge and a celebration. And you learn to enjoy the process of the run, even when it gets challenging. And you run your own race. You’re not trying to run the other guy, our girls race, you know, ladies race. You run your race. And that’s called pace. You run at your pace. And if you have to walk some walk, you know, but and that’s, that’s the same, the sanctification part of the journey. Once you come to faith, you have to realize that the world does not like Christian values. And so you’re going to run into some difficulties.

Yes the world is full of discrimination of all sorts. I like to think we are living in a more enlightened age. I mean there has been some progress when it comes to promoting inclusion, understanding, and respect for diverse cultures, religions, genders, and identities. But discrimination, intolerance, and polarization still persist. To find the light through it all Scott has put this guidebook together, He says his faith was crucial in navigating his life’s challenges and it inspired him to write this guide for others to help them on their journey. Remember those takeaways I mentioned earlier? 

Scott Curtis Meischen – Stop. Think. Believe. Live wise. Okay. And so the first thing I would say is in this flood of media. You can become numb. You can become overwhelmed by it. And so you just one of the ways we cope when we get overwhelmed is we tune out. You start just limiting what you’re paying attention to. And so what I’m asking, would it challenge or encourage or challenge? Even I use that word in a friendly way, just to stop and give God a chance. And with it with an attitude of let me think about it, approach God with not a skepticism. Just to seek understanding. So that’s the first step. And when you understand something, it doesn’t necessarily mean you agree with it.

So he says keep an open mind, give God a chance, read the Gospel of John and then pray. 

Scott Curtis Meischen – First to stop, then go with just a discovery, an attitude of discovery, read the Gospel of John in the message and then pray. Prayer is just talking to God. That’s what prayer is in its most fundamental way. And you’re praying, you’re talking to the person that God is both God that created you and loves you more than anyone. So God loves you the best, but you have to give God the opportunity to love you

He also says to get the most out of your time spent reading and praying to be sure and journal about it, write down all the things you feel and don’t hold back. If you have a dispute with God, write that down too. It’s important to be honest about how you feel.

Scott Curtis Mieschen – And then write that down here, and then go back, though, after you’ve prayed about it, and write what additional insights God will bring to your mind. And if you let him, he will.

And if you are so inclined, let us know how it all works out. 

And that brings us to the end of today’s episode of Newsgram. We’ve learned a lot from Scott today about what it means to ‘Live Wise’—facing life’s complexities with the wisdom and love of God.  What does living wise mean to you? Take time to reflect on your faith—whatever it may be—and see how it guides your decisions. 

If you want to explore more of Scott’s insights, pick up his book, Live Wise: A Guidebook to Facing Life’s Complexities with the Wisdom and Love of God. It’s available now,

Scott Curtis Meischen – You can go to ScottMeischen dot com. And that’s my author website.

And in case you are wondering how to spell that…

Scott Curtis Meischen –  It’s German by heritage. And so it’s M as in Michael, E, I, S, C, H, E, N. And it’s just pronounced like saying my shin, like on your leg. But you just say it quickly, my shin.

Until next time, remember: stop, think, believe, and live wise. And that will do it for this edition of Newsgram from webtalkradio.com.

Scott Curtis Meischen  was recently a guest on both the Talking books show with JT Crowley and Books on Air with Suzanne Harris. Tune in to hear more about his work and message.

Be sure and subscribe to the Newsgram audio podcast so you don’t miss a single author spotlight. 

Every journey requires a guide so author Scott Curtis Mieschen has put together a guide to navigating life’s journey with God’s wisdom and love. 

It’s called Live Wise: A Guidebook to Facing Life and Reality’s Complexities and Messiness with the Wisdom and Love of God

Rooted in biblical teachings, Live Wise will help you discover how faith can guide you through stress, confusion, and uncertainty. 

If you’re struggling with life’s complexities, find clarity, strength, and peace on your journey through life with Live Wise, Available now at Amazon.com