Beauty in your life- change your thoughts for a positive outlook
Name the professional athletes you respect the most and why.
To be honest, I have never been a fan of any kind of sport.
The average professional athlete earns about 2.5 Million dollars a year.while the one who go out to save us and keep us free earn about 55,000 a year.
It is a serious disgrace, that this is happening. I’m not saying a military soldier should make 2.5 million dollars a year, but rather it should be averaged out.
We live in a world of great distraction, where multitasking is necessary. The results should have been predictable. People have trouble focusing and managing time. It’s hard to find people who know how to focus and manage time in the workplace or any other place, things hardly ever get done.
When we are unable to focus, we lack intention. Intention requires the mental direction to do something, like determining the preferred outcome of a goal. Intention is knowing what you want from an activity, it is the drive to focus and execute the activity that stems from us. There is no focus without directing your attention to one thing intensely – the one thing that we approach with purpose.
What changes can we make to put our dreams and goals into action? Everyone who has a strong desire to accomplish a goal must have the best intentions to succeed. You we become distracted this will never happen. We would all end up like chickens with our heads cut off. We need to put attention on our intentions. Gay Henrrick puts in like this, “What we place our attention on grows.”
Our ongoing commitment every morning should be to set for ourselves up for success. This requires focus and a commitment toward a conscious choice about how attention and time is distributed throughout the day.
Commitment to anything requires perseverance in the face of any obstacle that comes our way. It involves maintaining focus and having determination, even when progress is slow or difficulties come our way.
Commitment requires resilience – the ability to bounce back from setbacks and failures. Resilient people view challenges as opportunities to grow and learn, rather than giving up.
In a world where we are distracted by cell phones and social media, the world isn’t going to accomplish anything until we learn to pay attention to our intentions.
How do you relax?
Relaxation keeps our hearts healthier and improves brain function and memory.
I usually relax by listening to music and Hebrew worship music. I don’t know why, because it is not in English, but it eases my soul.
If I am in a public setting I relax by using deep breathing techniques. Or removing myself from the situation.
Maybe it’s not all about believing in God, it’s about trusting in Him. Even satan and his demons believe.
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and don’t lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight. Don’t be wise in your own eyes. Fear the Lord, and depart from evil. It will be healthy to your body, and nourishment to your bones” – Proverbs 3:5-8.
It’s hard not to give in to our own fears, thoughts, and feelings. And follow the advice in this scripture. The promises of God are “yes and Amen” but they are not always tangible or visible when we want them to be. Isaiah 55:8 tells us that God’s thoughts and ways are higher than ours. On the one hand, I can celebrate that, but on the other, it can be challenging because what the Lord is saying doesn’t look like what I want to hear or see.
All my life I have wanted to help people. I wanted to help people learn to cope with trauma in there lives in a healthy way. I wanted to work at a job doing this. I never understood why I hit roadblocks every time I tried to accomplish this. But it had never come to pass. It was something I thought I wouldn’t have to struggle about.
I’ve come to realize this isn’t where God wants to be. But I can help people who enter my life and with the odd jobs I’ve had throughout life. Which is where I’m pretty sure God wants me. But we’re times I think God didn’t care. Buy in the end through my prayers I know God has me right where He needs me. And that’s all I really care about is being able to serve God.
Satan was able to deceive Eve because her trust in God was misplaced, and he will gladly do the same to us of we allow him.
We need to trust God from the bottom of our hearts, and not try to figure out everything on our own. Listen for God’s voice in everything we do and everywhere we go, because He’s the only one who will keep us on track. Never assume we know it all. When we get in trouble run to God and away from satan. When we do this we can feel an overwhelming sense of peace. We only need to trust God.
Seeking wisdom during trials in life is something I wished I had known about a long time ago. I wish someone would have let me in this little secret if they knew about it.
This insight is in the Bible, in James, or Jacob depending on what translation you have. I’ll refer to it as Jacob because of my translation.
“But if any of you lacks wisdom let him ask God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach and it will be given to him. But let him ask in faith, without any doubting, for her who doubts is like a wave of the sea, driven by the wind and tossed. For that man shouldn’t think that he will receive anything from the Lord. He is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways” – Jacob 1:5-8
How can we gain wisdom for our trials?
Jacob encourages believers to ask for wisdom from God. Wisdom was not an intellectual thing, it was a spiritual thing. In Proverbs 9:10 it says “The beginning of wisdom is to fear the Lord.” And Psalm 14:1,
“ A fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God.’ They sin and do evil deeds. None of them does what is right.”
To be wise in this context essentially refers to being in obedience to God in our trials and even more. Allowing the trial we are in to mature us and make us into the image of Jesus.
Why do we seek wisdom when we are going through trials? Why not ask for strength, grace, or even deliverance?
We need wisdom so we will not waste the opportunities God is giving to us to mature. Wisdom helps us understand how to use our circumstances for our good and God’s glory.
The world and satan will have us to believe that we should go through trials based on our feelings. The emotional rollercoaster that most people get on when trials come into their lives. But God has a purpose for our trials.
In 1 Corinthians 10:13, God promises this:
“No temptation has taken you except what is common to man. God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted above what you are able, but will with the temptation also make the way to escape, that you may be able to endure it.”
God will not remove the trial, but he will provide a way out if we seek His wisdom.
It’s good to remember that it is possible to miss God’s purpose for our trials. It is possible to fail trials and to get further away from God instead of being more mature. Anyone can have anxiety instead of peace, or even become bitter instead of forgiving. But it’s important to strengthen ourselves during trials and not become maimed in them,
For years I kept going through what seemed like the same trials over and over. Because I kept failing to focus on their purpose and what God was trying to do to help me grow.
God’s purpose as we face trials is always to help us grow in Him and to make us humble, and stronger warriors for Him.
To gain wisdom in any trial we must pray through it
We are all so ready to go to people, or self-help books, but never ready to go to God. It’s doesn’t say “Let him ask books or other people, it says “Let him ask God.”
Some of us are prone to rely on our own wisdom or the wisdom of others than God’s wisdom. We are fast to search the Internet. Only God can give us guidance and complete peace in our hearts.
If you had to give up one word that you use regularly, what would it be?
Words are by far the most powerful tool we have at our disposal as human beings. The ability we have to communicate complex ideas through words.
If I could give up one word it would be “but.” using the word ‘but” negates what you said before it. -” I want to call a friend but I’m too tired.”
Are you holding a grudge? About?
Holding onto a grudge can destroy your life. I learned this the hard way.
In held on to grudges for years and it cost me my health, physical as well as mental.
Holding onto a grudge only hurt you, not the other person. It’s like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.
Living in a chronic state of tension affects your body’s repair mechanisms. It increases inflammation and affects the stress hormone called cortisol. Unforgiveness affects the nervous system.
Think about it this way:
Your brain doesn’t know what is real and what’s imagined. When you replay in your mind an experience you had years or months ago your body reacts as if you’re having the same experience over and over again.
People tend to hold onto grudges because it gives them a of control -that if we don’t forget an offense, it won’t ever happen again.
Our ego wants to sink its teeth into blaming negativity and tension, but holding a grudge won’t give you any control over the situation.
I held a grudge against my mother for years, do you think she cared at all about what she did? Nope not one care. I was only hurting myself by doing it.
What do you turn to when you see the world in despair? When your faith is in despair by listening to the news or hearing someone talk about the evil all around us. Its hard not to join in the fear everyone is feeling.
We all process the tragedy of the world – the footprints of evil differently. I choose to filter it through faith because without faith in God, there is little or no hope.
Choosing faith and hope over despair doesn’t answer the hard questions, but it brings some peace to our troubled hearts.
The Lord is faithful and does not change. This is the rock we need to hold onto when the world seems upside down. God is our refuge where our grief-stricken souls can find comfort.
“The Lord is my rock, my fortress, my deliverer, in whom I take refuge” – Psalm 18:2
“Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadows of the Almighty. I will say to the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress, my God in whom I trust” – Psalm 91:1-2
We must maintain a positive focus instead of a troubled heart of worry, The Bible points us to have faith and hold onto hope. Even in despair.
Real hope looks to God believing that He will never abandon us. God’s presence through the Holy Spirit brings comfort. Faith and hope keep us from drifting into despair.
We may not be capable of understanding the big questions of “why are things happening,” but during the upheaval, we can lean into the Lord and hold onto hope.
When we despair over the tragedies of the world, the Lord can help us find rest and peace.
Share a story about the furthest you’ve ever traveled from home.
The furthest I’ve ever traveled from home was San Antonio Texas. It was for a trip for a veteran organization I was volunteering for.
For the most part it was meetings, but a 5 day road trip turned into 10 because one of the people I went with got sick.
“If you had faith like a grain of mustard seed, you would tell this sycamore tree, Be uprooted and planted in the sea, and it will obey you – Luke 17:6 (Messianic).
Faith is simply believing and acting on the words and integrity of another. Faith in God is to believe and act on what He says in His Word, the Bible.
The Words of Jesus in the Gospel of Mark advise us to have faith in God:
“Truly tell, you, if anyone says to this mountain, Go, throw yourself into the sea, and does not doubt in their heart but believes that what they say will happen, it will be done for them – Mark 11:22-23
Jesus is saying in essence, Have a God kind of faith. Don’t put your faith in your own faith, or the faith of other people, or the mountains, or in anything that you expect to happen because of your faith. Put your faith in God, because it’s your faith in Him that will accomplish the moving of mountains. You can’t speak to the mountain and expect it to move unless you are connected to God. Apart from Him, you don’t have the power to complete such monumental tasks.
Believing in God means believing in His Word. For faith to work, you believe, confess, and act upon what the Word of God says about your situation.
From Pity to Praise