Guarantees

There are risk in everything about life. From the products you buy, to the food you eat, to the people you love, risks are everywhere. Yet you can not live without any of them. There are no guarantees except the guarantee that if you do without any of them then you will wither away. 

Never worry, we never go through things in life alone even when we think we are. We have our cheerleaders in life who are silent, those who speak up occasionally and those who cheer us through each and every step of the way. Then we have Jesus in our life that is there for us no matter what. What is important is to remember that they are there and to appreciate their presence.

When you finally hit the right path in life you know it. You feel it in the core of your soul. It wasn't easy getting there, the path ahead is still not going to be easy but the path will be well worth it. Why? It matters who is on the path with you and where you are going. It is about both the journey itself and the destination and making all of it count because your lives count. Living and loving all the while.

Something I've learned, that trials are not always about you and making you stronger, though they can make you stronger. Trials may also be about the other party who is being given an opportunity to make better choices to go down the narrow path to the narrow gate. 

Shhh, it's not a secret to listen to your intuition. If you really listen and "hear" what your are being told, it isn't your "intuition" after all, it is really the Holy Spirit. You can't hear him if your own voice is too loud. That feeling you get is the Spirit using your body to clue you in so you can stop and listen.  It's okay to take small moments and really listen, the cost is not nearly as much as it might cost you if you do not listen. Listening is not so much an art as it is a choice, what action will you choose to do - to listen or to ignore?

Only with real love does a person flourish and blossom. Without the warmth of love, the inside of a person dies just like a seed. Without light and the right temperature a seed growing is dwarfed, its possibilities to grow are limited. The best way to start receiving love is to give it first. Seek and ye shall find-Give love and you will find love but you have to give it before you get it. That is what makes it unconditional love because you gave it first. If you "expect" love in return, then the love you thought you gave was never a gift - it was something with strings attached.

As we go through the day we are presented with many choices. Choices we have control over and then those that are dependent upon the choices of others. If we are attempting to change our lives then it will not change if we keep make the same choices (headed down the wide path to the wide gate.) it is hard to do but we should really be... taking the narrow path to the narrow gate where there are more limited choices to make and really, it is not so dependent upon the choices of others because we've already decided upon the hard choices. In order to know which path to take just remember to pray for discernment, wisdom, and clarity. It really takes all three to make the right decision, not just "any" decision. God gave us free will to have the lives we want but happiness is not the same as joy. Happiness is rather fleeting, like our moods. Joy is that peace you feel when no matter what could go wrong in a day, it doesn't matter, your life is in a good place, your faith is strong, you have high hopes for all of your days, and you have God's gift of love in your life. It is your perspective to choose how you live your life. Now, take ownership of your life and use the tools at hand to choose well for your life.

Fear is like a reverse, it pulls you backwards instead of propelling you forward. Even standing in one place is good as long as you don't move backwards. If you start down the reverse path, you better stop and figure out what you are doing wrong. It is not only bad for you but you just never know who is watching you ...and perhaps making the same mistake. Turn fear into excitement about moving forward, instead make it a journey. You never know who you will meet or what you will do that will change your life forever. Or perhaps even realizing what you will miss if you never took that chance. Fear is an escape for opportunity.

We do not become more than we are on our own, God builds us. Think of it like God's basic training, then there is another level training and another, etc. The better you get, the more you are challenged the better you become. One does not become more for themselves alone because we are all part of the body of Christ, each part needing the other to work. If one part aches another steps in and helps out a little. If we hoard those gifts, then we will never see our true rewards.

This one is sort of heavy and quite poignant to my own life right now - the discernment of choices - paths to follow.  Just because someone else chooses a path does not mean that you have to follow suit.  It might be better to take the higher harder road.  It is the one not often taken - this is the path of virtue with God.  The other choice ahead is the one of loneliness, the path of suffering without the support of God - this is the wide path that leads to the wide gate.  I prefer the narrow path to the narrow gate and while I know it is not the easy path - nothing ever worth anything ever came easy. Start the path of choice making with a decision to pray for discernment and wisdom about what to do.  God will lend his hand in telling you what choices to make. Trust and have faith in Him.

We do not always know when challenges come our way but we can prepare for them and anticipate them, recognize the signs that we need to see. This requires a special gift to discern what is really happening at the time and I can tell you that practice in "seeing" helps a lot. Practice makes us stronger and the more we are tested the more we know that we are God's soldiers in training for the bigger fight. All the way through we just keep leaning on Him to get us through the "challenge." 

I heard a new definition for a "lie" and that is what is called "perspective adjustment." It's okay to go down the path as long as it does not involve a perspective adjustment or "lie". What this means is that when you choose a side and inevitably you will have to choose, choose with wisdom and discernment. Wisdom and discernment are gifts, it takes practice and it is perfectly okay to make mistakes and likely that too will be the case. Why? Because we are humans and sometimes we just do not see things quite so clearly. How to address all this and avoid dilemmas you ask? Pray - just pray about everything and you'll never go wrong. Have faith and trust in prayer.

How does one show love - by doing. Doing/Showing is active not a passive feeling or action. Loving means doing because you can't show love by keeping it in your head or keeping it in your heart. If love isn't shared then it isn't love, it's just a thought needing to be acted upon. Bad thing about that thought of love is that if it stays a thought then it means you never gave love which also means that you never receive love either. If we do not "do" love with people then what is it that we are doing with God?

He gives us exactly what we need when we need it. The rest doesn't really matter. What we don't have now we grow into because if we started out soaring right out of the nest we wouldn't have enough energy to make the duration. The goal for the duration is to make it through the pearly gates. Until we get there we just keep learning, accepting and being thankful for the gifts we are given along the way.

I think it is important to remember who is in control, who provides security in our lives. Really, we are in control of nothing of significance and everything significant is a gift or blessing of some sort - it is grace at work. The more we realize that we are not to live of ourselves but for Him the sooner we will figure out that is better to live in the world than to be of the world in a false sense of living (security).

We often say that odd saying "the gift of giving" and it isn't the easiest saying to understand. It is a gift to be able to give is what it is really saying. The ability to give to another is a gift in and of itself. When you realize that the "gift" is a gift from God then it has that much more significance. For we would not have that gift if it were not for God's grace. We must act responsibly and continue giving as he would give. For what we give eventually comes back to us - be it good or bad...

Living the story of David is not easy but I certainly can appreciate his courage and strength. David counted on his Father being bigger than Goliath even though Goliath thought he was bigger than David. No wonder it only took a little pea size rock to knock Goliath off. Goliath misjudged the size of his opponent.

I'm finding my life that I'm having to reach within and find new ground that I've never experienced before.  I'm finding that this ground is unfamiliar territory. Somehow I think that God is raising the bar to help me learn how to experience new challenges in life. The only way to get better is to jump higher and find new boundaries. God knows my limits better than I do which means I just have to trust that He is going to be there to catch me. How about you, is your faith that strong? Does it go that high? If the bar isn't being raised in your life, maybe you need to see why it is stuck.

Hope is the promise of Jesus to walk beside us and carry our burdens all the time. More often than not we wander away and he is the steadfast one in the journey. The farther away we are, the more lost we feel. The closer we get to him, the more confident and assured we feel the promise of his Hope. Again, there were no exceptions given to hope, just like faith and love, there are no exceptions. Remember though that the greatest of these is love. Embrace the love, find security in Him.