The Purpose of life is a life of purpose.

I can remember the feeling so vividly-the emptiness, the yearning, the confusion, the lacking, and the depression. They all merged together, and the always seemed to present themselves at the worst possible times.

The simplest things, like getting out of bed in the morning felt so heavy. The best joys in life, like being with family and creating new connections, felt unsatisfactory. Things were hard and almost unbearable.

Back then I didn’t have a clue what was creating these feelings, or what I needed to do to change them.

It sounds like a cliche to say that one day something happened that changed my life forever, but it did. Everything transformed for me when I decided to focus on creating purpose in my life.

Life is an entire different experience when you know what’s guiding you.

What I’ve learned is that it is only when your mind, body, spirit and soul are in alignment can we truly reach satisfaction and fulfillment. We must find our purpose, our meaning that we desire. That doesn’t mean that the American dream must be forsaken, it only means that we must be pursuing it in harmony with purpose.

As I dug deeper to find my own purpose I discovered some truths:

We all have a purpose, one that provides meaning and direction for our lives. We may not have found it yet or we may have found it and have suppressed it but we all have one.

It is never too late. No matter your age, no matter of your past decisions, if you have only one day left to live, starting the journey will bring peace, satisfaction and fulfillment to your life.

Finding it requires a disciplined and detailed process. It is not something that it found by accident.

Purpose is not a job or a role. It is a guiding light, how you apply it to what you do is up to you.

Staying true to it is even more difficult that finding it. Family, friends and society in general are constantly causing to question it’s veracity and it’s value and your ability to live it. Don’t give in.

Fulfillment and satisfaction come from the journey not the achievement of our purpose. It is from tending to the journey that the fruits of satisfaction and fulfillment are harvested.

Living our life with meaning requires that we must be all in. Our mind, body, spirit and soul must be committed to our purpose. We must be aligned and balanced in our approach. We cannot get fit and stay fit if our spirit, soul and mind aren’t aligned towards the end. We cannot discover our purpose unless our mind, body, spirit and soul are committed to the task.

Purpose lies within and we must find it and the power that comes with it or be forever controlled y what lies without.

The time to begin is now. We need not wait for a life changing event to prompt action. Start from that feeling inside that says, “Is this all there is?”

Do it now cane live a life of harmony and peace.

, “Is this all there is”? Do it

Cowardly To Courageous

We often think humility is timidity, shyness, or even weakness. But we are wrong. The humility that God imparts to us take root in the soil of our souls, and as we water and fertilize it every faith, courage and conviction begin to grow in us. We become stronger because our confidence is in God not ourselves instead of having self-confidence we have. Godfidence.

Think about it: Jesus was not timid, shy, or weak, yet He was the humblest man ever to live. By grace, He wants to teach us how to live as humble citizens of His Kingdom.

God’s grace has a humbling power that will redirect your life. Humility is not weakness. Humility is placing yourself under grace, glory, love, and mission of God. It give you a supernatural ability to accomplish God’s mission. Happy are the humble, for God will do above and beyond all they think or imagine because the risen Lord Jesus will work mightily in them.

When the sum of who you are is found in all who Christ is, we become courageous. When we locate our hopes is what Jesus hopes for, we grow in conviction. When we give Jesus the broken pieces of our lives, we grow in completeness. Jesus’s courage, conviction, and completeness become ours.

In loving Jesus, we begin to love ourselves. This love for God and self catapults us to love others. This is the good life.

One Man, Two Lives

There were two men, one had courage, conviction, and completeness, the other who didn’t. One man was asked, “Do you know Jesus of Nazareth?” Not only did this man deny that he followed Jesus, despite being with Him daily for three years, but he denied that he knew Him three times, even cursing and swearing.

The other man followed Jesus with such love and allegiance that the chief Jewish council who exercised authority in civil and religious matters observed his boldness, wisdom, and power and recognized that he was a follower of Jesus. (Acts 4:13) Even under threats, this man would not deny Jesus. He said, “Whether it’s right in the sight of God for us to listen to you rather than to God, you decide; for we are unable to stop speaking about what we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:19-20)

One man denied knowing Jesus. Another man was unable to deny Jesus.

Ready for the plot twister? These man were actually the same person.

Before the resurrection of Jesus, apostle Peter denied being Jesus’s disciple. After the resurrection, he became the leader of Jesus’s followers. What happened to Peter to bring about this change? Jesus happened to him. He encountered the humbling grace of God, a grace that will remake you and take you deeper into God’s kingdom. God’s grace will turn a denier of the faith into a defender of the faith, a coward into a courageous leader.

Over the years of journeying with Jesus I have grown to love Peter. Peter gives me hope. At moments, he is loyal, dependable, and wise. At other moments he’s running from servant girls who question him about knowing Jesus. Sometimes he’s rebuking Jesus, and other times Jesus is rebuking him. Peter at times is brave enough to walk on water, and other his bravery is severely lacking. There is a little of Peter in all of us.

Being Spiritually Minded

There are three classes of people, or three ways that people relate to the Spirit of God:

1. The natural person is what everyone naturally is: deficient in the ability to understand the things of the Holy Spirit, which can only be spiritually discerned. To this person, spiritual things are foolish.

2. Then there is the spiritual person, or one who is spiritually minded, in other words one in whom the veil is removed, the spirit reborn, and the mind of Christ activated.

3. Thirdly, we have a carnal or worldly person. This is the spiritual person who has failed to grow and mature. They have legal access to the mind of Christ but are overcome by worldly influence. They are likened to being “infants in Christ’ who cannot handle solid food. (Corinthians 2:14-31)

Imagine if our population consisted of people who didn’t grow up but remained as infants. Our species would be endangered. Who would become parents for the next generation? Where would we obtain the teachers to train and disciple new believers? Who would go into combat and lead the fight against evil?

For my first thirty-five years of my life, I had little if any, perimeter of protection around my thought life. Evil strongholds in my mental city. I was lacking a true compass, to guide me out of darkness and into light. Following my conversion to personal faith in Christ the hidden and secret wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 2:7) impacted my soul and to this very day, it continues to release God’s life transforming Word into my life.

How You Can Be Spiritually Minded?

The mind of Christ is the ability, through the Holy Spirit, to understand the thoughts of God. That is what it means to be spiritually minded. It consists of spiritual truths taught by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is every believer’s personal tutor.

Our responsibility is to show up for the lessons!

Jesus said that He made known to His disciples, everything that He heard from His Father, because He took time to listen to the Spirit. The Son of Man needed to appropriate the “mind of God” as to the specifics of His mission and the details of His ministry assignments.

If Jesus needed to set aside time for prayer, study, and reflection, how much more do we?

Jesus said to His followers, “I still have many things today to you but you cannot bear them now.” When the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all the truth, for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak, and He will declare to you the things that are to come.

He will glorify Me, for He will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that He will take what is mine and declare it to you. (John 16: 12-15)

Another way to define the “mind of Christ” what the Spirit is taking from Jesus and making known to us.

We are faced with crossroads in our lives regularly. The fork in the road branches into two. We use the metaphor to describe those times when we must make a decision in life. Naturally, there are both major and miner decisions in life. The minor ones occur daily and are still important, for if we choose wrongly in the so called minor, on a daily basis, they will eventually have a major impact.

What path of thought and meditation will I choose to follow each day? The end goal is simply not positive thinking, but obedience to Christ. We were predestined to be ‘conformed’ into His image. (Romans 8:29)

We are cautioned about being conformed to the pattern of this earthly world and the way to avoid that is renewing of the mind. (Romans 12:2) But the end game is all about obedience. A renewed mind is better able to discern the Will of God, making daily choices that glorify God.

In my opinion ‘fork in the road’ is found in Deuteronomy 11:26-28. “I’ve brought you today to the crossroad of Blessing and Curse. The Blessing: if you listen obediently to the commands of God… The Curse: if you don’t pay attention to the commands of God.”

The word “curse” doesn’t garner much usage in our vocabulary, but “blessing” is and what it looks and feels like to be blessed.

The bottom line is obedience to Christ, just like His bottom line was obedience to His Father. It’s all about the Man who first loved us and became obedient unto death for our sake. Every thought that seeks to build a contrary agenda in my mind, If We will endeavor, by God’s grace, to corral it into captivity to the obedience of Christ. We have to choose to love Him with our whole heart, soul, mind, and strength. That’s a daily choice. That’s how I choose to think.

Exchange The Enemy’s Lies For God’s Truths

The universal downfall of an can be attributed to the fact that they have “exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather that the “Creator.”(Romans 1:25) The antidote to this dilemma is to reverse course or take the other fork, namely- to exchange the lie for the truth of God.

It’s really pretty on paper. In real life it gets complicated and messy- this due, exercise of dismantling the negative strongholds and establishing a positive fortress of God’s Word to occupy our mind.

Negative thoughts become actions, which becomes habits, which become a stronghold. In contrast, thinking on God’s Word becomes positive action, which becomes a Godly habit, which becomes a fortress called the mind of Christ.

Mind Over Matter: The Most Important Factor Of Humanity

“Thinking: The Talking Of The Soul With Itself.” Plato

Humans are cognitive beings. Everything we do, and everything we feel originates in our mind as thoughts. The thoughts for perspectives and influence our decisions. Decisions then lead us to or prevent us from action. The pattern of thoughts we choose to entertain and focus on, the shape and quality of our lives. Given the power and importance of the mind, why are preventable mental health measures not a major point of focus in culture? Throughout our lifetimes, we experience an infinite amount of physical and emotional states including love, loss, pain, pleasure, addiction, depression, violence, insecurity, etc. Based on these experiences, we learn he to suppress, cope, express, and/or share our emotions with others the best way we know how. Developing the skill set to learn how to focus and be aware of how we process or interpret information and respond accordingly, empowers us to have control over our emotional states instead of being led by them. Better communication within the self will improve how we communicate with each other.

Mental and emotional health through self-awareness are essential to living the most successful, fulfilling life. American culture had taken strides to promote physical health with the hope of preventing life threatening diseases and conditions. The same preventive measures need to be taken with mental health.

There are empowering materials that promote mental and emotional awareness, usually labeled “self-help,” that have stereotypically categorized those who see knowledge in this area as “weak” individuals.

Organized Religions is another Avenue with empowering information available. Because you basically have a do’s and don’t list you have to live by. And you live those do’s and dont’s to a tee. Some religions won’t allow you do drink coffee or carbonated drinks. But, not necessarily for those who choose to be nondenominational.

I know a family that their religion doesn’t approve of drinking coffee and refuse to help them in anyway because of this.

Mental health should take precedence over the physical. Until one’s head is in the right place, the body never can be.

A healthy self-esteem requires self- awareness. Self-awareness helps us understand the meanings we associate to actions and events in the world.

Example: Two of my cousin as well as I were diagnosed with Bladder Cancer. We were all told the prognosis was death. One cousin passed away, the other so sure he was going to die soon. So his is living a life of depression and physical pain. While I chose to not listen to the Physician and chose that and I wasn’t going to die. I kept the faith and asked for prayer when I needed it, and got right with God. That was 10 ten years ago. I have had many cancer checks and there is no sign I’ve ever had cancer.

I keep telling my mind that the doctor was wrong. That I was not ready to die. I was still needed. And God is the Greatest Physician there is. There were only one of two reasons why I was healed, Mind over matter or God healed me! I think it was a little of both.

People seem to just want a band-aid on everything, every illness. But we have to find the root cause. In order to find it. We also accept things people or doctors say as truth, but it reality the truth in the way we live and the creator of the Universe.

Don’t Be Afraid Of Yourself.

It happens all too often, people are afraid of themselves or being themselves. I’ve seen too many people put on false faces because they were afraid of either being judged or treated differently based on who they may really be.

Sadly, I lived this way for far too long. Because of my experiences through-out my life. I was afraid of showing my true self.

I am not one to judge or treat anyone for being somebody they are not, I’ve been through hell and back in my life. I’ve been that person and I know how it feels. I’ve tried to be someone else too. The thing is, being yourself is only natural and trying to be anything else isn’t. I believe people can change. I changed so I feel other people can do it too, if they try. People can change for a variety of reasons. However the message I want to convey is not to be afraid of just being yourself.

Something to accept, regardless of whoever you are, is that at some point throughout your life you will get judged. It might be family or even a complete stranger, but know that literally everyone else around you also get judged by someone.

I won’t deny just last week I judged a person for her beliefs, and what she was wearing. We get judged by who our friends are, and a variety of other things. I immediately realize when I judge someone because, I’m sure people judge me the same way.

Being yourself isn’t always going to be easy. I get that. Sometimes being yourself makes it harder to either make friends or get to know other people. But you won’t truly find happiness and peace until you stop caring about what others think. Stop worrying about what others think about you, their opinion does not matter. Start being the you that is you.

Thinking Out Of The Box. What Does That Mean?

Thinking outside of the box is supposed to mean confronting problems in atypical ways, thinking creatively and freely, and encouraging frequent challenges to the status quo. Outside-the-box thinking , in other words is constructive nonconformity behavior. This is a behavior that deviated from organizational norms or common expectations, to the benefit of the organization.

Out of the box behavior is rarer than many think.

While the urge to get outside the box is strong there are people who are pushing people into conformity.

Here’s how we can nurture the ability to look at things differently and encourage constructive nonconformity:

1. Question the status quo regularly. Make nonconformity the expected conversation. Ask Why? How might we? And what if? Put apparent conflicting issues side by side and begin to solve for them.

How To Identify Your Gift

A Gift Is Not A Talent.

Everyone has a gift, but not every person recognizes what his or her gift is. Being able to identifying is the key to fulfilling the unique purpose of your life.

However, don’t confuse a gift with talent. Anyone can learn a talent, but a gift is something you’re born with.

Think of it this way: can any person take singing lessons to improve their voice? Yes, they can develop a singing talent . But can anyone sing like Whitney Houston? No. Whitney’s voice was her gift, and no one else no matter how many lessons they take and how dedicated they are to furthering their talent Will sing quite like her.

If you’re not sure what your gift is, ask yourself these three questions:

1. What can I do that I’m best at, with little effort on my part?

2. What is the one thing that other people associate with me?

3. I’ve listened to others connect this gift with me, so how have I used it?

Write down your answers and think about what you find. When you identify your gift, you now have the opportunity to live your richest life. The success you experience will be connected to that gift, but you have to figure out the most valuable way to use it.

Find Yourself And Reflect.

If your gift is writing how can you use it in the most valuable way? Your way might not be in writing fiction it could be motivational writing instead. Or, if your gift is listening, think of all the ways you could use it to benefit the most people.

To live your most fulfilling life, identify your gift by asking yourself the questions above.

What did you find?

When I began to become curious about my gift. I would share my life experiences with various people and many would say I was called to be a bridge for others.

A bridge is inherently symbolic of common and union, whether it be between Heaven and earth or two distant realms. For this reason it can be seen as the connection between God and Man. It may be the passage to reality, or merely a symbol for travel and crossing.

I have been invited to speak in a tent revival in September to talk about my experiences and what brought me to where I am today. Maybe be a bridge for someone who needs it.