Success – Two Options – What’s Your Choice?

Everyone wants to be successful. If we were to stop 1,000 people on any street anywhere and ask them the question, “Do you want to be successful?” Chances are, if they are honest, 100% of them would say “Yes.” The desire to matter is in every human. But if we were to follow up with the question “What is success for you? How do you define it” we would get a hodge-podge of answers that would predominately be either immeasurable or amorphous. Things like “To Be happy” or “To have a lot of money” or “To be famous!” Meaningless non-answers. And if we asked a third question, “What are you doing every day to become successful by your definition?” the answers would be even more vague. The problem is that, while...

Some Facts – A Question – Now the Answer!

Since the end of WWII, 1946, the US has been the richest and most powerful nation in the world. We have achieved a level of material abundance that is unprecedented in world history. The poorest of our poor would be considered very rich indeed by way over half the peoples of the world who, by the way, earn less than $500 per year. We have conveniences and luxuries that 75% of the rest of the world only dream about and yet…as a nation our material prosperity has not proven to be the providence of happiness that it was promised to be, and hoped for, by our parents and grandparents and theirs. In fact, by all measures we as a nation are less happy with our lives than those who lived a hundred years ago All our “stuff” has not created a happy people and more...

The High Cost and Source of Discontent!

If I had to choose just one overarching quality or attitude toward life to have and to hold as the constant practice most beneficial to having a great life experience it would be – contentment. I have written in previous posts about contentment,  proposing that contentment is found in a choice we make based on an accurate understanding of God’s goodness, sovereignty, and plan for us, rather than a group of circumstances that occur at a given time. Contentment, or the lack thereof is a constant choice we make as we perceive what we believe to be reality about our sufficient state in life moment by moment. You and I choose contentment – or not. When we choose not we are by definition discontent. Discontented people are not happy people, they can’t be. Discontent...

The Race of Life – Tactics 5 and 6 “Lean Forward and Run Through the Tape!”

As we learn to respond to our Trainer in using Tactics 1-4 to avoid the snares and distractions of our opposer  by applying His opposite exercises, we enter the final phases of the race, the sprint to the tape! To finish well we will need the last two Tactics but, before we move on, let’s review the snares and entanglements used by our opposer and look at our Trainer’s opposite exercises. As we run we encounter the snares of: 1) Unbelief. 2) Complacency and compromise. 3) Self-righteousness. 4) The fear of, or desire for, the approval of Man. 5) Love of sensual or fleshly pleasure. 6) A worldly mindset or paradigm of life. 7) Self confidence. Hubris or arrogance. 9) Distracting and ungodly thoughts. Our Trainer uses the exercises of: 1) Faith in God and His Word. 2) The...