Meet Michael Craft

The Life I Had Learned to Live

I grew up in a dysfunctional, alcoholic home where I learned early to read the room, avoid conflict, and keep people happy. Those patterns followed me into adulthood, affecting my marriage, ministry, and just about every relationship I had.

I spent much of my life trying to manage what other people thought about me. I avoided difficult conversations, worried about disappointing people, and gave far too much weight to their opinions and reactions. I knew the Scriptures about living inside out by the Spirit. I had taught them for years. But I wasn't consistently experiencing the life I was teaching.

An Unexpected Discovery

In 2020, Melanie and I made a substantial investment in my personal growth. We had reached a point where we could both see how much my insecurity and fear were costing me, so I enrolled in a coaching program to begin addressing the patterns that had shaped so much of my life.

During that program, a guest facilitator introduced us to something called breathwork. I almost skipped the session. It sounded foreign to me, and I couldn't see any meaningful connection to what I was there to learn. But I participated, and as I followed the instructions, I was praying and asking the Holy Spirit for discernment.

Within a few minutes, something happened that caught me completely off guard. I began experiencing the kind of Peace I had usually known during my personal times of reading and meditating on Scripture. Inspiration and insight began flowing within me, and when the session ended, I was left with a question I hadn't considered before.

What is the connection between breath and spirit?

That question sent me back into my Hebrew and Greek studies, where I began recognizing something I had read countless times but never really connected. The Hebrew word ruach and the Greek word pneuma can both refer to spirit, breath, or wind, depending on the context.

I wasn't looking for a breathing technique. God had used an unexpected experience to draw my attention to something in Scripture that I had been overlooking. And the more I investigated, the more I began recognizing relationships between spirit, breath, and life that I had never considered before.

But there was a much more personal discovery developing alongside that investigation.

For most of my life, I had been familiar with the traditional spirit, soul, and body diagram. Spirit was represented by that little circle in the middle. I knew I had a spirit, but I had never really stopped to consider what it meant that I actually am a spirit person living through a physical body.

As I began giving greater value and weight to my spiritual identity, the Scriptures about walking in the Spirit, living in the Spirit, and being led by the Holy Spirit finally had a place to land in my everyday life.

My spirit was no longer just a circle in a diagram. It was my identity, something I could actually live from.

I began acknowledging the Holy Spirit's presence and the Father's Love with every breath I took. Instead of allowing everything happening around me to determine how I responded, I was learning to give greater weight to His presence within me. And I began naturally experiencing more love, rest, and peace.

The difference was becoming evident in everyday situations.

I remember a disagreement with another pastor who had a strong personality, the kind of man who would once have intimidated me into silence. We had different ideas about a joint church event, but instead of withdrawing or agreeing just to avoid the conflict, I stayed engaged. I listened, expressed what I thought, and we worked through our differences until we found common ground.

What amazed me afterward was realizing that I hadn't been afraid. He hadn't changed. But I had.

Learning What It Means to Love

As significant as those changes were, I was also discovering how much I still had to learn about Love.

For more than forty years, I had studied and taught the Love of God. And I genuinely loved Melanie. I worked, provided, served, and sacrificed for our family. But I was also keeping score, spending far too much time measuring what I wasn't receiving and waiting for her to change.

Around our fortieth wedding anniversary, Melanie told me through tears that she had given everything she knew to give. Right in the middle of that conversation, I sensed the Holy Spirit quietly ask me a question.

"Have you given all that you possibly could give?"

I knew the answer immediately.

No.

After all those years of studying and teaching Love, I was coming face to face with something I hadn't recognized. Knowing about Love wasn't necessarily an accurate measure of how well I was loving.

It wasn't that I hadn't loved Melanie. I had. But I had also spent far too much time focusing on what I wanted from her instead of learning how to give Love in the ways she could actually experience it.

That began changing as I learned to receive the Father's Love and give more freely, without keeping score or waiting for Melanie to go first. And I'm still learning.

Looking back, I can see that the transformation has been about far more than overcoming insecurity or learning how to remain peaceful when life becomes difficult.

I'm learning to live from who I really am, receiving the Father's Love and allowing that Love to shape how I respond to the people and circumstances around me.

The difference has been a transformed life, and it's changing what the people around me experience as well.

Why I Created Life by Design

Since 1978, I've approached Scripture looking for the patterns that reveal how God designed life to work. In 2024, I began writing Breath of Life, and the investigation that followed brought together discoveries I had been making for years. That work developed into what I call Inner Man Architecture.

But I didn't set out to develop an architecture. I wanted to understand how life works so I could actually live the life Scripture describes.

And that's why I created Life by Design.

I want to help people discover who they really are, understand how God originally designed human life to work, and begin experiencing the difference those discoveries can make in their everyday lives.

Through my books, teaching, and practical learning, I want to make these discoveries accessible so you can recognize God's original design in your own life.

My work is rooted in Scripture and my relationship with God. You don't have to understand Inner Man Architecture or share all my convictions to begin exploring what that design means for you.

A Little More About Me

Melanie and I have been married for more than forty years. We've raised three sons and are enjoying being grandparents.

My professional background includes broadcasting, decades of teaching and speaking, and more than seventeen years leading a local church and its preschool and childcare center. I'm also a graduate of Coach Training Alliance, an ICF-accredited school for life coaching.

My writing includes Breath of Life, Becoming Love, Navigating Conflict Through Rest, and Inner Man Architecture.

Discover How Life Works. Live by Design.