Is what I think important to anyone but myself?

It is not what one does, nor is it what one says, it is what a person thinks that makes them who they are. BUT, what one thinks determines what he will say or do....and we DO WHAT WE VALUE! An oxymoron you say!!!! I believe the Apostle Paul understood the human mind very well. He admonishes us to think on things that are true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, etc. Do we truly practice this in our life? Are we more concerned about the latest fashion and if my appearance is desireable, or am I careful that in looking my best I do not place myself as a stumbling block to others? Do we find it easier to talk about our favorite sports team, the newest movie out or the lastest happening in Hollywood than to think or talked about things that will make us a better person and help us to have a greater influence for good? All of us enjoy entertainment. After a long day of work there is nothing better than being with friends, reading a good book, listening to good music, snacking on popcorn and laughing at the antics of Don Knotts, or the Waltons and John Boy. But if entertainment, a way of escape or just plain laziness of thinking constructively and inwardly is where we are, it will be seen or heard by those around you, because what the heart thinketh, the mouth speaketh! What we think on, will characterize our actions and actions speak louder than words. How do we want to be characterized? THINK ABOUT IT!!!!

Do we learn from past mistakes??????

For some of us (like me..............) it is much harder. Now for someone like my husband who thinks of every possible senario and predicts the future, pretty much one time and he has it down. But from my side of the world, it seems to take more hard knocks for my brain to avoid a reoccurance of a previous pain. I have asked myself
many times, "why?" As a child I remember telling myself after a severe consequence for wrong doing was administered, "never again"!!!! But we humans have a way of forgetting all too quickly when once the darkness is gone and the sunshine appears just how black the night can be. It seems impossible, when the sun is shining so brightly, it could ever be dark again. So it is with mistakes and blunders we make. At the time, we kick ourselves, think about how to avoid anything that even resembles the likes of it in the future and feel good about having conquered....but the one thing we forget is our ability to make the conscious choice to avoid it in the future. IT WILL NOT, JUST NOT HAPPEN!!!!! There is no special potion that we can take, nor a ritual we can perform and certainly not a mystical feeling we can receive from God that will no longer require that choice. It requires thinking, working and understanding ourselves to avoid any reoccurence of painful mistakes."Lord, with your help I will do my best to understand how to carefully make those conscious choices that reflect your Image".

Presenting ourselves a living sacrifice......

Webster tells us that sacrifice is "an intentional loss of one thing to gain another". My husband has reminded me many times that words mean something and unless we determine what a writer means by his use of words, we cannot hope to understand the message. When I first read the word sacrifice I think of something really difficult. A very hard thing to do or give up. But in looking at this verse in Romans more carefully, I realize his admonition to us is simply that if we say we truly love Jesus, then it is only reasonable that we will want to present ourselves in such a manner that we reflect the true character of Christ. How do we do that? By giving up ourselves, our desires, our false pretense of happiness.....Jesus told us "Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and all these things shall be added unto you".

A confession is good for the soul!

How many times have you heard that statement! I have pondered it many times and wondered just what the person really meant by it. Just recently that statement has brought new meaning to my life. As a child I vividly remember thinking that if I confessed to an act of disobedience or an offense I knew would produce severe consequences that just maybe there would be some leniency in the severity of punishment. There are times when people use false confessions to cover another act of indescretion. These examples of confessions cannot be contributed to positive forces on our soul or heart. But in learning and working to understand myself, I have found that when I see an area of my life which needs special attention and work, it helps me so much to confess it not only to God, who already knows, but to my spouse, my dear friends who trust my heart, or someone who I may have affected by something I've done or said which stemmed from the problem. I have now made myself not only accountable to God, but to the people around me. Confessions of a fault is not an easy route to take, but I find myself looking for a better road once that route has been embarked upon.

I truly believe in Jesus, we are renewed day by day by making progress in our continual commitment to living a victorious life. For those who do so transfer their love from temporal things to eternal things, from visible things to invisible things, and from fleshly things to the eternal perspective of one day I am going to stand before God and any excuse I think I might have will be judged in the light of my knowledge of truth. This my friend convinces me that confessions are good for the soul!

HOPE

A devotional I read recently, noted that human beings are born with two diseases: LIFE, from which we die: and HOPE, which says the first disease is not terminal. Hope is something that is definately a very real part of our being. Whether it is for trival aspects of life or it becomes the very structure of our lives. As an only child, I was a dreamer. I imagined playmates, brothers, sisters etc. As I grew older I still tended to dream big, "hope" for things that seemed incredulous, take risks. I am thankful that Jesus and influential people in my life helped me to understand the real Hope. Is it wrong to hope for things? No! The question I believe is whether hope is self-deception, the ultimate cruelty of a cruel and tricky universe, or whether it is just possibly the inprint of reality. Jesus responds to that question. In essence Jesus tells us, to hope with all that is in you, dream your dreams, and imagine your most incredulous imaginations. Where your hopes and your dreams and your imagination leave off, the Love of my heavenly Father only begins. "For eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that LOVE HIM" THAT IS MY HOPE! (I COR 2:9)(excerpts from Brennan Manning)