THANKS TO FACEBOOK, Twitter, Instagram, and other social media, we are now connected to friends and family worldwide. Some of those relationships are with people we’ve never met.
With one click we can like or share what we’ve seen, and if a phone call interrupts us, we’ve always got voice mail or the prepared text message that says, “Can’t talk right now.”
And we wonder why we are alone. (more…)
DEATH IS WHAT CHASES YOU up and down the corridors of your mind trying to get your full attention. (more…)
FORGIVENESS IS THE ONLY way to reconcile the negative feelings that occur when bad things happen.
In doing so, you wipe the slate clean, as if you are erasing the balance due to you and declaring the account between you and your offender “paid in full”. (more…)
YOU'VE UNDOUBTEDLY HEARD it said that perception is reality. Is this true or false? It is certainly true that my perception of whatever is my reality.
It is a small distortion of the truth, but to be more succinct, perception is only my opinion of reality.
My opinion is not necessarily accurate. It may be accurate, but my opinion, simply because I have one, does not guarantee accuracy. My thoughts, feelings, and experience may give me the impression that my perception is reality, but if so, my reality could easily change if my thoughts, feelings, and experience change.
What I am saying is that I do not know reality outside my opinion of reality, and to believe otherwise will kill off the possibility of ever accepting what is truly real.
If I am not open to the possibility that what I believe is only my opinion of what is truly real, I may also do a sufficient job of killing you off at the same time. I’ll give you an example. Read More...
UNTIL YOU BELIEVE that being good is not the goal for the life you really want, you will be in bondage.
Certainly you will suffer fewer consequences if you act “right” and the fear of natural consequences is most likely the primary motive behind “being good”, but as a strategy for life, it will never lead you to peace. Or rest.
It is a counterintuitive truth, I know, but so is much about what Jesus taught. Let me explain.
If you try to be good, you will look good out there and you may fit in. Or feel like a fraud.
If you work hard, the boss will say you are good, and you may feel significant and secure. Or feel like a hamster in a wheel.
If you are over-responsible for others, you will definitely be called good, even an angel on earth, and you may feel loved. Or used.
However, if you expect to get your needs met out there, you become a slave to “being good”. And doing.
I didn't understand this truth so the day after my encounter with Jesus and realizing I had lost my Bible—probably a decade before—I bought a new one. Reading it became the most important thing on my busy agenda because I needed to know why he loved me after revealing to me that he knew the real me.
He also said he wanted my life, but he left before he explained what that meant. All I knew is that I had some work to do, and as a typical Type-A personality, I was going to be ready for his return, which I expected in the next week or so.
Like other business ventures, I was intent on winning in this one. So, I focused on what seemed to be important to him, which was presented in his case against me—why I called myself Christian. Naturally, I focused on being good.
Using my best thinking, I enrolled in a Bible study at the church so I could learn how to be a Christian in which God could be proud to call me his own. Gaining knowledge would certainly help me win. And become a good person.
Then I would be prepared for whatever it was that he wanted my life for. (Not to mention how good I would look to him.)
When I reflect back to those early days and years of trying so hard to be good and do right, I stand in amazement at how God got me here, where I am telling you that being good is not the goal. Read More...
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