ex-ceed

Putting Our Focus On Trial

2012-02-03T15:36:00.001+08:00

We are known for what we focus on—at least personally speaking. We spend time reading about, doing, acting and thinking on certain things; certain things get or have our attention.

Not all of this attentive time, though, reaps us the reward of value for effort. It helps us, long-term, to put our focus on trial; in order to ask, “What is this, or doing this, or focusing on this, returning to me and my life, in value?”

An Incisive Trial

As soon as we start asking such a question, on a regular basis, we begin to notice an opportunity; there is a lot of waste there that can be pruned.

Some things give us a little pleasure but they cost too much time, which crowds the important activities. Then there are those things we have to do but don’t necessarily want to do—no choice; we best get used to giving this area the attention it commands. Finally, there are things that serve no value and they only clutter our lives, like the e-mail subscriptions or social networking groups we’ve accumulated—those we hardly read or interact with.

Our focus can be split into those things that serve a need, those things we enjoy, and those things that are a plain waste of time; these latter things we need to strip clear.

An incisive trial, where we interrogate the various aspects of our focus, will reveal those things that add no value and no life.

An Uninvestigated Fact

Have you ever noticed that bulk mail (anything incoming and prevailing itself upon our focus) generally dissatisfies? It’s not addressed to us or our real focus and it misses the mark; it takes away from life. It would be better not even to look, not even to glance before clicking the delete button or, better still, to take a few seconds to patiently unsubscribe.

This is one of the reasons social networking is as much, still, a nemesis as it is true friend; there’s still so much distraction from the innate foci any one person has.

We may subconsciously wonder why we sit at our computers, embracing all the technology, and all the social media, and we are somehow still never more jaded, especially in hyper-stimulation.

Much of the focus invested in front of a computer screen, unless it is actually work, is a waste of time. We can play games and stalk our pages but in the end it won’t satisfy.

***

Putting our focus on trial is evaluating where we put our time and effort; some of which may be wasted. Wasted time equals wasted effort and it takes us further from life satisfaction; further from joy. The more focused our lives are the more empowered, and happier, we will be.

The Fear In Bravado

2012-02-02T16:38:00.006+08:00

Especially in men, but growing also within women, is the bravado of falsity revealing an unmanaged fear—as if flouting what is truthful about life will be an appropriate response. Of course, it isn’t and can never be.

We deny what we fear when, for varying reasons, the truth is too stark to be handled; we put on a brave front and pretend we are above it all.

Such a method seems to work okay until life blindsides us—and what’s found is even more denial through blame or unparalleled deflection onto things far removed from the source of the painful truth.

A Fact For Compassion

If bravado is a veneer covering fear in the light of truth, and we can see people who are, in this way, less-than-obviously fearful, we should understand and not fall for judging them as arrogant or proudly brash; though they may prove annoying.

We can see their weakness for what it is, even though they assert to hide it in a show of apparent valour. Compassion is a gift of grace to the pitiable person who, ironically, seems to require none of it. Those laughing at compassion may need it most.

Those that seek to present a persona of not caring are potentially prone to being caught unawares, and are more easily blindsided—from an aspect of hindsight.

Though this is folly, our unfettered compassion sees the terror in the unguarded moment that brings them unstuck. Though they might have prepared themselves for a better emotional position we try not to disparage them from quietly within ourselves; treating them with the grace we, ourselves, would expect.

Something For Ourselves

If we are given to any sense of bravado we best check what motivated it. Sure, sometimes it is generated from humour and in the banter of the moment. Other times, however, we may be managing an awkward social situation or avoiding a more truthful, honestly vulnerable response. We all have things to cover for. None of us is perfectly transparent.

Is the bravado intentional or a coping mechanism?

These are good questions to ask, if we want the best of life—for the best of life is found in the courage of honesty regarding our status, situations, and prospects; accepting past, present, and the considered future.

Is bravado a problem?

***

Bravado can be a clue that we don’t fancy looking into ourselves; shut-off to Divine inquiry. But, the best person we can present to the world is our true, core selves, as much as we can.

Graphic Credit: John Rizzuto.

Calm In All Circumstances

2012-02-01T17:33:00.001+08:00

Preferring the order of faith, to deal with the challenges of the hour stoically, there is a capacity for calm in all circumstances—a vision, for some, of acting apart from themselves and detached from their trivial and stifling emotions.

If it is possible to pray and be thankful in all circumstances, it is also possible to be interminably calm. Such a state takes the presented moment entirely as it is—in truth—and it promises itself no scope for panic, self-consciousness, fear, or otherwise.

Even in the midst of inexplicable anxiety, it rises above and redeems strength from the Spirit beyond itself. All this is done by deliberate faith; an act of the will.

Calm Beyond Character

We’re often constrained by the shadow cast over our characters, either in limiting our personal capacity to experience calm, or in being tripped up in personality clashes—other people upsetting our focus and ability to draw calm.

Calm must get beyond these sorts of challenges. It must step beyond them to draw strength from the Spirit and, therefore, in that, be revived supernaturally by the Spirit. We must somehow get past the constraints of our typical humanity.

At some point we must decide for the mind of Christ—to leave what’s worldly behind in our wake; then calm clings to our situational persona and we can breathe.

An Acronym: Calm

Sometimes we find concepts easier when they are taken by acronym:

1. Clarity of thought and decision-making: the clearer and less distracted our thinking processes are, the calmer we can be. When we are calm and ordered for thought, decision-making is also made plain—wisdom, as each avails the moment, is not far away.

2. Act in alignment with objectives: if we know ourselves and what is important to us, keeping calm is about acting in alignment with those objectives. What should upset us if we know that becoming upset takes us away from our objectives?

3. Lament nothing in the moment: the best part of lament—the practice of experiencing sorrow—is held in reflection; when we have the time to gather our thoughts and process feelings. Lamenting anything in the moment, apart from genuine grief, is a waste of emotive energy, taking us full away from calm.

4. Maturity is the goal: the endpoint of calm is always maturity; both are synonymous with each other. When we add up calm moments we achieve one period of maturity. When such periods are added up our characters are being conformed to maturity.

***

Being calm provides many benefits. Even in tough circumstances it’s possible to remain calm. Staying calm will ensure the best is made of bad situations. Importantly, retaining calm empowers our next moment.

Life IS What It HAS Become

2012-01-31T17:23:00.003+08:00

Our lives have become what they were destined to become—that is the position we find ourselves in when we have truly found acceptance regarding what has become of us.

Finding such an acceptance is a state achieved in the realisation that, despite the pain of the past, including the regrets, which will have eternal validity, we are as happily contented as we can be given the circumstances of our pasts. This, obviously, is no easy destination to reach for the majority of us.

Destiny – A Fascinating Concept And One To Accept

The trigger word, destiny, has a plethora of usable detail about it. In the present context, we look back at the past from the results of our lives: our destiny to this point. We cannot argue that pain wasn’t our destiny any more than we can argue the triumphs weren’t also. Life encompasses the good and the bad.

Not accepting the outworking of our destinies—to this point in our lives—is synonymous to denial-of-self; an all-too-common state of refusing to be reconciled, in practice, to God. We might have accepted Christ, doctrinally, but we have not yet surrendered to him to the extent of allowing the Spirit to transform our lives in truth through courageous humility on our part.

This point of destiny, as it has occurred to us, is either welcomed or shunned.

There is every positive reason in welcoming destiny as it has unfolded, to all its fascinating options for the future, but there’s no logical reason in shunning it; what might provide short-term comfort provides no long-term solution. Denial-of-self can only harm us.

Accepting Life Right Here, Right Now

Life is what it has become. There is no point in wrangling with why. The ‘what’ is more relevant to the past, more worthy for the future, and a purposeful platform for now.

Accepting life as it is, right here and right now, is still not easy in many circumstances, but so long as it is our goal—that we keep repetitively coming back to it—there is fervent reason for peace to abide within us and, therefore, hope.

To all intents and purposes, we all require a certain quantity of healing with regard to our pasts, with acceptance as our goal.

The moments of truly being at peace with life as it has become us are the snapshots of salvation that are bequeathed to us as the result of our grappling with awkward truths in courage, which acquiescence in humility. Real peace comes when we accept honest truth.

***

Truly the most blessed life has come to peace about itself. Salvation, in the practical sense, has been realised when one life has seen a vision of what it can become, from a platform of where it currently is. Peace, hope, and joy envelop the soul at home in itself.

Finding Emotional Rest

2012-01-29T19:42:00.003+08:00

“Figure out what rests your emotions and do it without judgment.”

~Elisabeth Kübler-Ross & David Kessler

Particularly pertaining to experiences of grief and adjustment, the need to escape the heightened rollercoaster emotions every now and again is real. Grief, being a process with no certain path or endpoint, needs such a relief valve—to take a necessary rest from the unsustainable burden.

But such a rest cannot take place unless we are prepared to leave the status quo as it is—even for a short time.

Times When Life Needs Stability

When we are most prone to the weakness of our emotions, perhaps because of grief or adjustment, however small or insignificant these may be, life is best taken in simplicity. Stability and constancy work best.

Times like commencing new jobs or establishing new relationships put extra emotional strain on us and this can lead to more overall duress.

Finding emotional rest can be as simple as putting one foot in front of the other; just continuing life as it is and changing as little as possible. Sometimes endurance is just simply that—to keep on keeping on. A stable-as-possible platform helps.

Postponing Important Decisions

An extension to finding stability is the key task of reducing stress by postponing important decisions, and even delaying some decisions we would like to make that would be burdensome.

There should be no pressure to deal in pros and cons during arduous times; we do so only if it’s absolutely necessary. Few things in life are really that important, but if they are we should attend to them as decisively as possible, without thought for regret later.

Forgiving Irrational Behaviour

This is the most difficult thing for a lot of people: to protect themselves against their own self-judgments.

When our emotions hold sway over our rational minds, causing quick shifts in mood and awkward imbalances in our equilibrium, life is disconcerting. We quickly hop into ourselves, castigating behaviour for the benefit of hindsight. There is a mix of regret, guilt, or even shame to deal with.

Difficult times like these we need to be extra gentle with ourselves, as The Desiderata recommends.

Where logic escapes, and we fight the inevitable urge to amend our emotions, the internal struggle between head and heart abounds in us at large. It is a cesspool that only complicates our already heightened stress levels.

When we don’t know where to turn, we are trapped into turning however we can—that, itself, is a trap. Making decisions without the aid of a calm and ordered mind is a recipe for even more distress.

Engaging In Enjoyable Activities

Whatever the stressors are is less important than what we might engage in for a moment’s relief. As the quote at top suggests, we should make the effort to relax—as ironic as that sounds—so we can enjoy it.

We are sure to want to back out of enjoyable activities when we are susceptible emotionally and, therefore, we ought to push gently through temptations of guilt, judgment, and apathy, etc. We need to act ourselves into thinking: I can enjoy this.

***

Finding emotional rest is about a moment’s self-designed space, taken when our emotions have drained us. It’s agreeing to be gentle with ourselves.

Living the ‘This Is Me’ Dream

2012-01-28T16:43:00.002+08:00

“The greatest insult to ourselves: Is when we hide from this world. Let go. Say, ‘Hello everybody, this is me, how are you?’”

~Paul Hewson (a.k.a. Bono)

There are portions of living and portions of dying—and all between—in this life. Living an abundant life at all times, on the other hand, is a lie, for we all shrink from the world at some point or other, due to self-consciousness, unexplained anxiety, or a sensible grief-induced depression, etc.

In darkness and in the light, we are blessed most when we exhibit our current selves, truly, to our world—if that makes us comfortable. Still, there are closeted times.

We may still want to be safe and secure, more comfortable, in our own skin.

Presenting The Real ‘Us’

It’s a basic thing, but we all find some level of stodginess in the matter of our minds and hesitancy within the matter of our hearts—states of self-doubt.

If there is a Creator God, and there is, and this Divine Being has constructed us this actual way, there is good reason to present that person to the world. Who would we be to reject the work of an Intelligence beyond ours?

This is a realistic question.

We have many rights over ourselves, many we haven’t fully vindicated in defence of ourselves, yet we have no right over the rejection of God’s work to the ends of seeing ourselves as incapably lowly (with the important exception of humility—but humility isn’t characterised by the struggle for self-acceptance).

Just Saying “Hello Everybody”

Getting to the point of standing before a crowd in order to say, “Hello, everyone, this is me,” is boldness beyond many people’s realistic hopes. Yet, it’s only a risk; for embarrassment; for failure; for humiliation. What is there, really, to lose?

Being abundantly comfortable in our own skin, owning our thoughts and being happy enough in our feelings, may not be an easy destination to reach; but it cannot be reached without a search; without risks taken; without throwing caution to the wind in calculated courage; without negotiating the way.

Introducing ourselves to our world and overcoming our fears is only possible if we give it a go and continue doing so.

World, Accept Me! – Too Bad If You Don’t, Because I Do

When all of what is said is done, and all thinking must be submitted and judged, none of the thinking and judging, it has to be said, means much at all.

Cutting to the chase regarding self-acceptance, there is the crucial task; an order to the world: “Take me as you find me, for I will not change.”

Given the facts of our unconditional love for others, and our enthusiasm to let them live freely, we grant ourselves the same right—we will live and let live.

***

When we accept ourselves, and offer our world the same deal, accepting all their responses with unreserved grace, we are living the dream. If God accepts us, and unconditionally so, who is the person to us that doesn’t?

Cosmically Alone With God

2012-01-27T23:18:00.001+08:00

“... the Lord alone guided him;

no foreign god was with him.”

~Deuteronomy 32:12 (NRSV)

One thing that stands between us, as persons, and the truth regarding life is we are cosmically alone in this world and in eternity—alone with God. We came into this world alone and alone we shall leave it—from our Maker we came and to our Maker we will go; into Divine possession again, yet, strangely, we never really left.

This is a thing atheists don’t understand; we are never apart from God.

We may kick and scream as much as we decide—non-believers and believers alike—hitherto, there’s no changing these simple, still never more powerful, facts.

There is no escaping our relationships with ourselves and, in that, our relationships with the Giver of Life as our lives contend with thought for the Irrevocable Clause: death.

That we pass from a physical, breathing life into the embers of the eternal, spiritual age, and alone we go, must surely be proof of our cosmic aloneness.

This is nothing to be afraid of; nothing we will be subject to is peculiar beyond what every human being will experience.

This is an ethereal subject. Some might think it too morbid; what is morbid about the truth—the inescapable truth? It pays for us to take courage; to be strong and courageous about this. Burying our heads in the sand will do us no good.

If we have the courage, we can dig deeper into spiritual truths almost too marvellous for contemplation.

Our Existence Is Just Us And God

There is good reason to get to know God—it’s our destiny; to meet God.

To spend what amounts to a few short years—100 at the most—in denying our identity as alone-in-God has to be the most short-sighted thing anyone can do. What good is there in denying what is so plainly visible within the precious vestiges of our spirits? To bar God access to that which he designed and created is to reject all intrinsic sense.

Given the aforementioned, what true and logical basis do we have in rejecting the concept of our cosmic aloneness?

Accountable To God

The further we dig the more we get into the basis of our lives and the fact we, alone, are accountable to God.

This means we can be called to account at any time. The fact that our lives will end indicates this calling to account is soon to occur—indeed, it has already commenced, in many ways, by the way we have responded here on earth to the ends of the many consequences for our actions.

That we are accountable to God, and nobody or nothing else, in our cosmic aloneness, is inescapable. There is no sense in disputation. No correspondence will be entered into.

The Very Best Form Of Aloneness

Even though many introverts truly appreciate being left alone, all humanity needs fellowship. The best thing about cosmic aloneness is that it is utterly opposite to the experience of human aloneness; a sound identity in our cosmic aloneness unveils intimacy with ourselves through God.

***

Consider that, truly, God is the only consistent, eternal companion we have before birth, during life, and post death. Being cosmically alone with God appreciates the Lord can never leave us, nor forsake us. The unshakeable Presence of God is the indelible eternal truth.

Graphic Credit: Ashley B. Chapman.

Won To Wellbeing

2012-01-26T22:53:00.001+08:00

Positioned and poised however to be,

The state entranced, one of glee,

Intention’s fixed to remain right here,

Let’s get that abundantly clear.

Present and near future, visions of bliss,

The sky’s blue lure, one to kiss,

No thought to miss, what’s apparently due,

Forgotten or dismissed, thought of blue.

Wellbeing’s been won, heartened and glad,

Life’s all sun, beyond vision of bad,

Gone time’s mad, when life made no sense,

No longer sad, sparing no expense.

***

A State Of Mind – A Condition Of Heart

First and foremost, being won to wellbeing is an experience fondly remembered and, for the fortunate, something easily retrieved. Then we can see our ideas of being won to wellbeing are only as good as what we’ve known. God may even have better wellbeing in mind for us—to be experienced sometime in the future.

However we reflect on the state of mind and condition of heart resplendent in wellbeing, it’s limited to our experience; our perception; our personality.

Such a state and condition is realms beyond worldly happiness; it is peace.

Experienced for a moment—however long it’s to last—there’s the serenity of our most preferred poise; such a thing most personally defined. We intend on staying here, yet the best of wellbeing allows immersion to any circumstance—it surpasses the entrapment of conditions we place on God regarding our lives: what we’ll put up with and what we won’t. Of course, that’s folly.

Yes, the greatest achievement of wellbeing is joy in plenty and in want, when sated or hungry, and satisfied whether jaded and stimulated. This is the peace of the Lord; the tranquil place beyond the wrangling world.

Desiring Wellbeing

It’s perfectly natural to desire wellbeing. Yet everyone defines wellbeing somehow differently within the commonality of the concept grounded in the fundament of God (whether people attribute God as its source or not).

Desire is most important. Where there is desire, the will to imagine a better place where the soul finds better quality rest, wellbeing must surely be available for the grasping.

Desire is what takes our minds through essential thinking processes—those that interrogate the heart beneath, in discovering the path, the milestones, and even the internal monitoring systems giving us feedback as to how we’re going and what needs to be done.

Desire helps us to become convicted about a change in direction, so that something rarely felt can, indeed, be felt all the more.

***

Being won to wellbeing is securing peace, joy, and grace, simultaneously. We may have had it. It can be won, again. That state of mind and condition of heart centres on our desire—will we work for it?

Letting Go As Hurdles Emerge

2012-01-26T06:23:00.001+08:00

Standing back to admire the view is a choice to let go, when to hold on — ever tighter — might be the temptation. Yet, it’s difficult to stand back, happily so, when we’ve been rejected for something that’s important to us, or when something just won’t work out.

These hurdles are synonymous for self-imposed barriers that are placed there by us alone, and against only ourselves.

We create our own dungeons of the spirit because our ideas get stuck before road blocks created from dastardly inner complexity.

The fix?

Before the hurdle — indeed, as it approaches — we let go of the issue. Go and grab a cup of tea. With it, and the elixir of time, we ‘magically’ regain our perspective.

The good life exists in detaching from those things controlling us.

Maximising Your Next 15 Minutes

2012-01-24T16:03:00.003+08:00

The key to achieving any goal is splitting time into usable, manageable portions and doing what needs to be done in the present moment to support longer-term objectives.

The achievement of goals centres on that—doing what needs to be done—over time; in many cases, indefinitely.

To stop smoking it’s a matter of not smoking during every 15-minute period and refocusing on positives that breathe life into our mindsets. Quitting smoking is a compelling example how powerful one 15-minute period is—get through one such period of craving, perhaps by refocusing, and ensuing 15-minute periods are easier.

The more of those 15-minute blocks we tuck into our victory belts, the more confidence we acquire, and the more assured we become.

Breaking Down The Outlook Into Divisible Chunks

It’s a most powerful technique for life when we break our outlook down to each 15-minute moment or segment of time.

This is because we obey God to the extent of agreeing to live within the available present—as behind is the memory and ahead is anticipation; neither is necessary, nor are they relevant to what we can do now.

As far as living capacities are concerned, the past and future are eternally unavailable for our practical use. Sure, they may help or hinder, as providores of faith or fear, but they still stand at an inevitable distance—out of our reach.

Getting into the discipline of breaking down our outlook into smaller chunks of time could be the most basic way of redeeming useable power—the sense of achievement we feel is its own evidence. How good do we feel having obeyed God’s will for that small portion of time?

Developing The Discipline

Maybe the only thing dissuading us towards such a noble goal is our lack of focused mental discipline to think so mindfully all the time. The truth is we do need times when we don’t think so avidly. But we also need times, many of them, when we do.

Developing the discipline could be as simple as setting very easy-to-reach goals that are achieved within our 15 minutes.

Think of the positive energy we draw having completed one, two, or three small tasks in that 15 minutes.

A Further Advantage – The Role Of Positivity

One of the advantages of such an intentioned focus is the fact that positivity floods out the possibility of negativity; when light shines into the darkness, the darkness fades away.

Negativity cannot cohabit in a positive seedbed environment. This alone is reason to invest in the motivation of purpose to the 15-minute end.

***

Distilling life down into the next 15-minute chunk of existence is the power to achieve something small yet significant, or it goes toward the achievement of something larger. It creates focus, enthusiasm, passion; we redeem encouragement.

As the mode for living life, one word describes it: Power—to achieve.

Achieving Simplicity of Flow

2012-01-23T18:03:00.003+08:00

People employing decisive mindfulness are clearer, happier, and better to be around. Their purpose is to achieve simplicity of flow. Importantly, there are at least three facets involved.

Simplicity of flow is the targeted mind set on truth, peace, and purpose.

This is how it might look:

The decisive mind is captive to nothing besides the intentioned flow of thought that diverges not; but if it will diverge it does so promptly and effectually—leaving that new path of stones marked, every single one, with enquiry suited to the interrogator.

Passion for truth is its character.

Achieving simplicity of flow is investing in the following:

1. Search For Truth

Flow is found through the path of truth—truly, the shortest right path, overall.

Whilst many take shortcuts, and we all do from time to time, flow is found in the right way—discerned and navigated.

This way is found skilfully sidestepping deceit and temptation in many varying degrees of folly—it sees waste, turns, and walks. If it is seduced it’s only by the truth because lies and falsity are discerned as personally libellous.

When the mind is set on truth, because the heart has convinced and convicted it, there is the solemnity of focus—again, little room is provided that wolf called Indecision.

2. Find commonality with peace

Peace is home to the absence of chaos as it is to anything. It is the mind at residence within itself—able to calmly consider all that is true about life. It’s not weighed down by splinters of deference for many other things all at once. It sees the lie that sustained multitasking is.

For simple pleasures, peace sustains. Peace enjoys.

But with greed to manage many things—to covet them all—peace vanishes away.

Peace is the by-product of flow and it motivates the ongoing maintenance of flow.

3. Truth And Peace Inform Purpose

If we don’t have purpose in life there is little gain in living it. We can argue that purpose fuels life itself. But purpose without truth is a missing-of-the-mark and a lot of effort for no result, whilst it also redeems us precious little peace.

Without peace how can we have vital affirmations of our purpose? We would be tormented by a flurry of confusion; typically, the hurried life.

Once we achieve the simplicity of flow—from the capture and retention of truth, and the winning of peace—we’re close to our purpose. And the opposite is true: where we align with our purpose we almost magically find ourselves in the groove that is the simplicity of flow.

***

Everybody wants peace—true, vibrant, reassuring, inner peace. There are few better ways there than through the achievement of simplicity of flow: true, confident decisiveness based firmly in faith that life is being lived on purpose. Peace is our reward.

Listing the Let Goes

2012-01-22T21:57:00.003+08:00

The Lord, through Isaiah:

“From this time forward I make you hear new things,

hidden things that you have not known.”

~Isaiah 48:6b-c (NRSV)

As a form of recent reminder, the portion of a message and a good word in any season, there is a necessity to let go of the things that continue, or presently, hold us.

Upon this our salvation rests—the experience of salvation; the knowledge of it and the skill of retrieval. Letting go is the practice of passing to the Lord all manner of things that have kept us captive ‘til, and including, the present moment. Unreconciled, they may menace our future.

Only we, within the scope of decent introspection, can know what these things are to let go of. Letting go may even be the testimony of redemption rather than the implored declaration of ongoing suffering.

Now To Get Motivated

What we may need, however perplexing, is reason to get started—we may know within our intellects that letting go is the best thing, but getting to work is another thing entirely.

We human beings hold onto a lot of things—habits, attitudes, experiences, resentments, pride, dead memories, comforts, paralysing fears, guilt and shame, to name but a few—and these things will corrode away at our spirits if we, alone, let them. They will make us worse off. Held almost to ransom, at any time they take us plummeting into an abyss-of-thought and further from God.

At the bequest of honesty, a plain pattern of thinking that draws us to account, we reel off these ‘let goes’, and just putting them down on paper is a salvific, cathartic experience. How much better to make it a daily practice through prayer?

These things are a dirge of burden we can no longer bear if we have our own best interests at heart... and why wouldn’t we? Why is it that we go off at a spark of notice to help someone else with their stuff and neglect our own?

No, today is a day—like any other—where honesty and courage and hope for release can prevail; and tomorrow, too.

All we will ask ourselves to do is make a simple list and reflect over it; God will guide the rest.

Getting To Work

The fact of the list is letters and words and sentences before the eyes.

These letters and words and sentences in bullet points form for us, meaning, and meaning holds gentle sway in our hearts—and it is at that level that change might slowly be borne. Such change may not actually be difficult; we are letting go after all; letting go of the tension, weighing anchor and setting sail from those injudicious calamities that have imprisoned us, however little or large they are or have been.

Getting to work begins with a promise to ourselves: to enter into a voyage with faith at the helm. Rough seas there may be, but the destined land we shall eventually reach if we continue charting our course.

***

Our biggest problems are the things we hold onto. We can let go of these anytime; God has promised to help us. Letting go is a universal and constant human need. There is no shame in it; only liberation of spirit. Claim freedom: let go.

Intensity Trumps Brilliance Any Day

2012-01-21T09:37:00.001+08:00

“Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.”

~Tim Notke

The eternal wisdom inherent in life itself, indwelt of God, is testimony why the tortoise beat the hare, and will do ever more wherever the proverbial hare is morally sluggish.

This is a great and worthy encouragement for all humankind; for the person, particularly, with a healthy innate desire but is short on so-called talent. And we have all derided the person, who, having their talent, squandered their opportunities that come precious rarely to others.

It is why, moreover, we have come to admire those with both talent and diligence—true champions in any field.

The Abilities Of Hard Work

Diligence is one of the two great virtues of personal mastery (the other is prudence).

As a guiding virtue, it manufactures circumstances implicit of fortune—that some might call “luck”—ensuring that matters of achievement, even in the realm of the talented, will be secured. Diligence, unique to many other virtues, exemplifies both tenacity and resilience; worthy guides for life.

The abilities of hard work—namely, diligence—are a talent all their own.

And the person who masters such an informed and wise ability to harness faith, hope, patience and resolve—forming diligence—has mastered the king of brilliance, for such a glittering thing as brilliance is otherwise short-sighted without a method to assure its success.

College and university degrees are perhaps a most poignant example where hard work, not nous of fabulous intellect, most often gets people over the line—even to the establishment of distinctive performance.

Having Faith In Diligence

This may be where faith strikes at its glorious and most miraculous best; and is only later explained by the investment of hard work.

Hard work, when it comes to dreams, requires having faith for an unseen objective as it prevails over the life we presently know.

The dream will require faith beyond every single other person who might dispel such dreams as folly, yet it only takes one person to believe a goal can be achieved: the person who works hard at their goal. It is theirs and nobody else’s.

Having faith in diligence is the key to the achievement of any goal, for hard work beyond giving up and the creativity of navigation is the only way there.

***

Show me a champion and I will show you not their talent but their hard work that got them there. Anything achievable can be achieved not simply for talent but because of our intensity.

Those with diligent intensity will overtake those with talent.

Graphic Credit: Cedric Sacilotto.

The Gospel Imperative of Overcoming Difficulty

2012-01-20T06:26:00.003+08:00

“Real life isn’t always going to be perfect or go our way, but the recurring acknowledgement of what is working in our lives can help us not only to survive but surmount our difficulties.”

~Sarah Ban Breathnach (emphasis in original)

There are so many temptations to take a snippet of life and resent that snippet instead of recoiling in an instant from the hurt by choosing to see the dim brightness that presents in any and every situation—even in the darkest.

This has to be the way of countering our difficulties. If we don’t counter these difficulties we remain captive in suspense of circumstances—an ever-present potential that could sweep us away on a floodtide of disenchantment any moment; when things get tough we are good for nobody, lest even ourselves.

Choosing Death Or Life

We call these things pessimism and optimism. The view of life is of a cup half full or one half empty; it’s the same cup; it’s the same circumstance—just viewed differently.

Both have power: seeing our difficulties as challenges besieging us is the power with the potential to destroy our lives and those of our loved ones; seeing our difficulties as challenges presenting as opportunities—actually where we might gain—is a beautiful power that has the actualisation of destiny in view. It is power to change our entire worlds.

And we can have either one. Such is the love of God we have been provided with choice to choose our outlook, to choose our decisions, to choose the direction we run in, and to choose the consequences of many of our decisions.

We cannot blame others for most, if not all, the things that occur to and for us; we are active actors in our lives. And the more we choose to see life this way the more we will see it truthfully—appearing as suggested here as a choice for how we see it.

Death or life, in the living of our lives, is not much of a choice; yet, by default many people choose the former when there is little effort, but genuine foresight, in the latter.

So, What Is Working?

The Sarah Ban Breathnach quote is tantalisingly poignant—we can see what is working in our trials when we choose to sincerely ask the question.

When we see what is working in the midst of what is not, we see what we have to work with; what can be further honed. Our focus is acute and directed properly. We have filtered out all the destructive elements and our vision is forwardly situated.

This is how it works, having asked just one question, sincerely. When we receive the answer there is more work involved—and this is the key: if we meet that foreseen workload with enthusiasm, nothing can beat us. Then all we need to do is string the meeting of all our challenges together this way.

Suddenly we are unbeatable because we have adhered to the Gospel truth—Jesus’ words: “In the world you face persecution. But take courage; I have conquered the world!” (John 16:33b NRSV) When we choose to live in Jesus’ name we side with the fact that the power behind difficulty has been conquered, so we now have the capacity for plain perspective—that light may be seen in the darkness; that any difficulty is surmountable.

No persecution (read difficulty or trial) will push us down unless we allow it to.

***

And so what is this secret of life? It is choosing how we see it. When we know difficulties are part of life (and we know they are), yet we take courage despite them, we are positioned for strength and opportunity, not weakness and threat.

Stop, Watch and Learn

2012-01-18T18:22:00.002+08:00

We learn so much about others, and therefore much about our own human lives, when we stop awhile and simply watch—watching for the sake of just watching.

Car parks are perhaps a salient example of human behaviour and decision-making; a nice high vantage point affords the cherished bird’s eye view—life’s peaceful up high.

There is nothing sinister in our motive; we simply take a moment to reclaim our peace and to learn a little about human nature.

Peace And Humility Retrieved

Taking time to simply watch our active world is the cathartic space of aloneness in the lap of God; to consider the vastness of the Creator’s created world.

Such a surreal aloneness is joy—bereft of lack, not fellowship. The best of peace is known to the mind’s space in God-abiding reflection. Such a sense of aloneness is present before humanity, anywhere, anytime, yet most of our lives are spent so much in a blur we don’t retrieve it.

Peace for ourselves is secured when we think at depth about others’ lives—and that aloneness engenders humility which, in turn, promotes learning.

What We Learn From Others About Ourselves

Ever wondered why someone did something and then thought, “Actually I do that, too”?

We may be different—us, personally, and others—but we are not that different.

So, as we observe others in their going about their lives, we watch with a baited question: “What is common in these behaviours with mine? And, why is that?”

By far most of the observable features of others’ lives we notice are negative—times when they are taking short cuts, showing scant consideration for others, or making dumb errors because they were overloaded mentally or were awry emotionally.

This is not altogether a bad thing. If we are reflecting, honestly, on the commonality implicit in others’ actions with ours, we will draw down what God is saying to us through the account of our own lives.

God will speak. Indeed, the Lord delights through visitation in circumstances such as these—it is honest and availed learning before the feet of the Father. And our Lord will pour in much insight, and enough grace to deal with it, via the Holy Spirit.

***

To stop and watch the world in all its flurry of action is peace. Simply observing life in full flourish is nectar for learning. There is much to learn from others about ourselves. We can only learn when we stop and honestly reflect.

Sharpening Your Spiritual Game

2012-01-17T19:45:00.002+08:00

“Thus says the Lord: Stand at the crossroads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way lies; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls.”

~Jeremiah 6:16a-c (NRSV)

“Whoever would be indwelt by the Spirit must judge their life for any hidden iniquities.”

~A.W. Tozer (modified for gender inclusivity)

The Holy Spirit—the Lord of true spirituality—is no coercer of souls. Though all the power in the universe is spoken forth by the Spirit, there is nothing gentler. And this Spirit is grieved far easier than any of us think.

Sharpening our spiritual game is as simple or hard as understanding, discerning, and obeying the gentle trickle of spiritual communication that can only be distinguished by a soul palpably surrendered in that moment.

We know by the way our consciences function, the moment’s guilt for those hidden things hidden from others but never from God, and how grieved we are (let alone the Holy Spirit) at such folly; we are deceived daily and only a surrendered heart can, again and again, save us.

Life At The Crossroads

The true spiritual life is an existence poised at the crossroads, not in indecision but for the spiritual rationale to ask, to seek, and to knock (Matthew 7:7).

The crossroad is spiritual position ‘A’, because it resolves to stay on the ancient path; one that, in terms of time and space, is so dynamic, the path is lost the moment we go alone. This crossroad is the spiritual reality of life; it situates itself in our present moments, as we walk along in our spiritual walk, because at any time, usually through the rising of the flesh, or complacency, fatigue or frustration, we turn to the left or right and away from the crossroad we go.

Life with God is life, constantly as it rests in the body, at the crossroads.

Sharpening our spiritual game is understanding life at the crossroad—with sight of both Spirit and flesh at our beckoning—is the cherished Presence of the Lord.

There, and there alone, with no desire and no thought for worldliness, the Spirit makes its home; our spiritual game, for that moment, is sharp.

Judging Our Lives

The truly spiritual person is mature enough to understand that spiritual vitality depends comprehensively on the ability to allow God to search them—“for any hidden iniquities.”

Repentance is central to spiritual sharpness; as left is to right, and north is to south, because we are sinful creatures, there is penitence required—the heart put right—for fellowship before God; and there is no spirituality without the Lord.

Judging our lives and confessing our sin is, and will always be, the absolute centre of spiritual sharpness.

***

The beauty of spirituality is the love of choice. God is both all-powerful and incomprehensibly gentle. Becoming spiritually sharp is a choice; only basic acts are required—yet, these are not easy, for we necessarily must swallow our pride.

Graphic Credit: AlicePopkorn.

Sharpening Your Emotional Game

2012-01-16T18:31:00.003+08:00

“For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.”

~Matthew 12:34b (NRSV)

A paraphrase for the words of Jesus, above, could be: the feelings within convert to behaviour without. We hide nothing when it comes to our emotions.

It’s better when feelings are managed, heeded, and explored; and there opens the vent—the abundance of the heart is quelled and the mouth may not be so forced to speak, lacking discipline; the body is, also, loose and not compelled to act out-of-control.

Control over the emotions is a significant portion of self-control, sponsored by the heart-work ventured in the current of honest reflection and thought reconciliation.

***

When we think of emotions, avoidance is the usual default.

The overriding motivation for sharpening our emotional game, then, is negatively situated—we desire the equilibrium of sensual calm that defeats temptation for anxiety, anger, and varieties of anguish.

Just as easily, perhaps, we might feed positive emotions into our psyches—joy, thankfulness, praise; but these, realistically, do not emerge naturally; they tend to more easily be seen via hindsight, not foresight.

Identifying Weaknesses Through Reflection

Strengths and weaknesses might be seen as the currency and debt of our relational lives—they empower or disempower our capacities.

Working on weaknesses will take the strength of humble honesty and it can only be done in the decisive moment or later when the cool breeze of reason arrives—both are opportunities at reflection.

Sharpening our emotional game these ways—in the moment or later—is only afforded when a commitment is entered into; that enough is enough of worry, anger, self-pity and the like.

Reflection is the way, but it must be made a habit to work for us consistently.

Repenting Past Guilt And Shame

Nothing takes us past negative emotions like guilt and shame quicker than the healthy attitude of honest repentance; to prostrate ourselves spiritually before the Lord and share our sin with the one who can forgive us—then, as we experience forgiveness, it is easy to forgive ourselves.

Sharpening our emotional game is adequately facilitated in the promptness of such repentance—to enter in without delay and with the fullness of courage to retain none of our pride.

Honesty is the quickest way home in sharpening our emotional intelligence. It connects feelings and thoughts in a way that has us working with ourselves and not against. There is a lot of uncharacteristic courage involved in honesty and such forthrightness will always help us emotionally.

***

Becoming better adept at managing our emotions requires honest reflection, an understanding of how feelings impact actions, the motive of self-control, and the preparedness to repent—to learn from mistakes.

Controlling our emotions is the key to making the most of our moments in order that we retain a logical mind for making good decisions. When we feel in control of ourselves life is abundantly better; peace and joy abide.

Making the Best of Our Moments

2012-01-15T06:24:00.003+08:00

We wonder why we didn’t make the most of the great moment had—a holiday or vacation time, the day off, a family reunion or such; we knew it then; it should’ve been enjoyed, but wasn’t as much as we had hoped.

***

And we know it now, if now is one of those moments we can’t seem to grasp all the satisfaction out of.

It’s a tenuous thing, enjoying a pleasing moment to its fullest.

***

The goal is simply resting within the available enjoyment, knowing full well that such moments end, but more come. What we want to do is get better at extracting the best out of the moment, as well as making the most of reflective opportunities; good times can be enjoyed, again and again, by the facilities of memory. And we should store them for playback at quieter or less satisfying times (an advantage of journaling).

Making The Best Of The Actual Moment

This is not an easy thing to do, given the fact we need to consciously live the moment as well as reflect in the moment to enhance it as much as possible.

That is two tasks done simultaneously: one active; one reflective.

Two faculties are required, residing with one another in unison, allowing the reception of life and introspection, too. The first faculty receives the moment gracefully, while the second moves the conscious moment in the mindfulness. Doing both together requires concentration and, therefore, energy. Being alert helps. Being hopeful helps. Being free of worry and fear helps, too. A relatively free mind is necessary.

When we understand that all we have is the actual moment we comprehend the importance of enjoying it. Mastering the above two faculties is, maybe, among the most important of fundamental life skills. All our feeling, thinking, and acting are enhanced from such mindfulness.

Preparing For Moments And Living Them

Another two faculties that go well for us, are the modes of now and to come.

That is, living good moments—as they are experienced as good—is not just about the conscious mindfulness described above, it’s also the preparedness to plan, to foresee, and to imagine our expectations in light of what we see.

Management of expectations is essential to joy.

***

Enjoying the moment is what we’re here for; it is God’s will that we achieve this. That in mind, we invest all our powers of learning to master this art of making the best of moments. Motivation is the key, for inspiration is born for the moment. Joy is the result—a thing attainable almost everywhere, anytime.

Sharpening Your Mental Game

2012-01-14T08:53:00.002+08:00

“Commit your works to the Lord, and your thoughts will be established.”

~Proverbs 16:3 (NIV)

Many times I’ve come to a place where the efficiency and efficacy of my thoughts strayed somewhere unknown; like my thinking processes had ground to a halt—even for an hour or a day. Other times it has been stinking thinking that has been the problem; times when rabid thoughts, negative and illogical, clouded my cognitive disposition.

There are numerous other issues that emanate from our minds; sometimes these are informed at a deeper level, by the heart or spirit underpinning.

Whatever the concern, we can address our mental game, sharpening it, by thinking simply about inputs and outputs, and processes of checking and allowing.

Allow What Inputs?

Surely if we are going to control the traffic between our ears we need to check the stimuli we are exposing our minds to.

Myriad inputs for mental dissolution exist in our world; only discipline drives these inputs through a protective filter, by checking. Discipline requires work; effort. The more we are prepared to plan, investing time for forethought, the more we can discern inputs that have insidious or dark features about them—to, hence, avoid them in wisdom.

Sometimes it takes courage to say no. Saying no means upsetting other people, or upsetting our own equilibrium. But discipline requires this. It is an act of faith to sidestep these hazards of the mind.

Perhaps we can picture ourselves as a caretaker for our minds; being studious and prudent regarding what we allow ourselves to see, hear, taste, touch, and even smell.

Checking Those Outputs Before ‘Dispatch’

Despite our best efforts many not-so-good thoughts will buzz through our minds.

Accepting this is one thing, but exercising discipline, again, before attitudes are formed, or thoughts are committed to action, is vital.

When we imagine all our actions are based on thoughts sent from the distribution centre (our minds) we can understand the supervisor (our decisions) giving approval to the truck (the action) leaving the warehouse and making its delivery.

Sharpening our mental game is pausing to stop the process in full swing, to reflect for one logical moment, and to weigh our plans. We ask: is this the right thing to do; the right time; or, the right way?

How often have we regretted an action we committed to because our hindsight informed us, too late, that we should have paused?

***

Disciplining our minds can seem impossible at times, but when we commit our plans to prayer, seeking Divine help, in that deft quietness comes ordered thought.

Generosity – The Gift That Gives Back

2012-01-13T19:01:00.003+08:00

“A generous person will be enriched, and one who gives water will get water.”

~Proverbs 11:25 (NRSV)

“Those who are generous are blessed, for they share their bread with the poor.”

~Proverbs 22:9 (NRSV)

Sitting in my office at work recently, enjoying a brief glimpse at the harbour view, God asked me to count the objects on my desk: 31. Thirty-one tools of the trade, some of which are essential for doing my job; some others just make it easier.

The simple fact is, by position and provision, I am mightily blessed. And when we consider our Western lives—presuming the majority reading this are blessed, like me, in their comparative westernised richness—including those in the East, or wherever, who live like modern Westerners—we have little to want for from a material perspective.

No one blessed in such ways deserves it more than someone who isn’t so blessed—born in less fortunate circumstances, perhaps in a poorer country or without the family or support structure many of us take for granted.

Healthy Comparisons

There are not too many comparisons we might make that are healthy; comparing ourselves with others, for instance, is a recipe for envy. But one good comparison to make is our blessedness with others’ relative paucity.

That sort of comparison is, it could be said, not limited to financial or material means; it extends into all circles of life. But material blessing is in present sight.

The motive for such a comparison is genuine compassion, for there is much neediness in the world and so much rank wealth—the distance between the two (relative rich and relative poor) would be hard to parallel.

When Is Enough, Enough?

The nature of accumulation is to gain more and more. How much relative wealth is too much relative wealth? Again, comparatively speaking, though the vast majority of us are nowhere near millionaires, we might still have more than we need.

When we accumulate more and more, redefining with growing blessing our level of comfort, there comes a point where that material blessing has our spiritual blessing ebbing away. The material blessing is a test; where we have enough, can we give some away?

A miraculous thing happens when we start to give away what we don’t need—and the limits of need are much lower than most of us readily contemplate. Not only are we freed of much clutter—mental, emotional and spiritual—we get to feel how God feels, as a sort of provider.

The best thing about such generosity is the desire grows according to the blessings of God that are felt; we quickly realise nothing, not any wealth on this earth, can touch us like God touches us when we act these ways.

***

The responsibility for generosity is a role for the comparative wealthy; that’s most of us. Indeed, everyone has something to share. Nothing can produce the happiness of making someone else happy through the kindness of generosity.

Sweet Revival of the Soul

2012-01-12T17:40:00.005+08:00

“True hope dwells on the possible, even when life seems to be a plot written by someone who wants to see how much adversity we can overcome. True hope responds to the real world, to real life; it is an active effort.”

~Walter Anderson

Struggling souls depend on hope for revival. That hope is awakened by faith-held action—to go on in the hopeless, helpless moment, beyond the negative pale, redeeming the positive.

To be sung in the first person, here is a poem, for you, if your mood descends to the blue:

Swinging with the tide of abandonment, I remind myself of divine enchantment. (For, I am won to the Spirit that descended for me.)

Tumbling in the mix of desolating confusion, I remind myself of the Presence of No Illusion. (God, no less.)

Flattened by the reticence of goals, I remind myself of the Resurrector of souls. (We are raised by request, yet again, by the Son.)

Numbed at the gapingly vacant soul-mood, there is cherished remembrance of nourishing divine food. (Jesus is the Bread of Life.)

When We Feel Abandoned

Rejection is the lowest form of emotion we can experience, for it has trusted in love and unfaithfulness has failed it.

When we feel abandoned we ought to remember the Son scooped and won us. Abandonment has no victory over the soul revived, afresh, by the Holy Spirit.

When We Feel Confused

Chaotic thinking and anxiety abounding, there are times like these where our hearts cannot make sense of our heads.

When we feel confused we ought to remember the Foundation—that Presence of No Illusion is there, in our midst, calming the flailing mind, urging us to take self-respite. The busied mind must take its space.

When We Feel Like A Failure

Whilst the goal of life is to hit the target, whatever that is, we frequently miss. Hope tells us that failure cannot ever define us, unless by choice; to succumb to the inaction of fear when going on in action—the opposite of how we feel—would be the right and better thing to do.

When we feel like a failure we ought to remember there is a Resurrector of souls we call upon in moments like these—to lift us into modes of learning-despite-humiliation and into that raised state of trying again.

When We Feel Empty And Numb

Numbness is possibly the most hopeless of states; yet, it, of itself, is not beyond hope.

When we feel empty and numb we ought to remember to be gentle with ourselves; to go to the divine feeding trough, to the Bread of Life, and eat for rest.

***

Whether we feel abandoned, confused, like a failure, or empty and numb, sweet revival of the soul is but the vision of hope away. Hope believes because it can, especially when all of life is against it. Hope remembers the vision far off and the Presence of God near.

The Art of Prayer for Sublime Focus

2012-01-10T20:03:00.004+08:00

Being human carries with it the state of seeking change—who is 100% satisfied or content with their lives? These changes we seek don’t stick; we keep coming back to the same things we desire to change. We try different methods; a different focus perhaps. And again we fail.

But our resilient desire to improve continues to goad us into trying, again and again; it fights with that fleshy desire that wants us feeling good in the moment; one where satisfaction quickly ebbs away.

A Deeper Focus

Focus is the key to change—to sustainable ends. But such a focus is bound to ebb, itself, if it doesn’t reach a depth we shall call sublime: a focus gained and ingrained through the imprinting of our identities.

Such imprinting takes several months to consecutive years to establish. It’s a journey eternally worth the pain of change, for a new passage to a more satisfying destiny has been tapped.

The work of the deeper focus reaches so deeply into our identities it etches itself into our souls. The change we desired and long fought for has become impregnable.

The Practicalities Of Sublime Focus

These are what procure an indelible and easy focus; but the effort has already gone in.

We have learned to pray the mantra of words God has given us—“Lord, I desire freedom from ____________. Show me the way, today and always. Amen.” Praying such a breath-prayer to the point of consistent habit, many times daily, begins to involve the subconscious mind, supplanting effort.

This is the part of the mind that does our homework for us, effortlessly, once it is trained. Given time, such prayers make their way into our ever-forming identity.

Combined with conscious focus, the subconscious focus now sponsors every effort toward our goal. Focus becomes more sublime, effortless and, therefore, pleasing. The reasons for our devotion to God are beginning to make practical sense.

God’s Spirit has answered our prayers because we have put God first by seeking him, foremost, by a prayer of repentance (Matthew 6:33).

A Gorgeous New Reality

With such a method of godly allegiance, to pray incessantly, we redeem the ever-present portion of blessing for the newly achieved sublime focus.

The change is now seamless. What would take great effort previously, or was not even sustainable, is now somehow never easier because of an undercurrent of focus that comes inexplicably from within us.

We have surely witnessed, first-hand, the genesis and continuation of a miracle—something we cannot fully explain and are, therefore, supremely thankful for.

***

Habit-changing focus must reach, and involve, the subconscious mind. Such a sublime focus is made operative by constant prayer over time, which transforms our identity, making change seamless and pleasing and, therefore, it is miraculous.

The Resilience of All-Conquering Faith

2012-01-09T18:02:00.003+08:00

“Faith upholds a Christian under all trials, by assuring him that every painful dispensation is under the direction of his Lord; that chastisements are a token of His love; that the season, measure, and continuance of his sufferings, are appointed by Infinite Wisdom, and designed to work for his everlasting good; and that grace and strength shall be afforded him, according to his need.”

~John Newton

Most baby believers fall in love with the saving grace of the Lord Jesus Christ because they erroneously think such a life will save them, somehow miraculously, from many dastardly trials ahead. In fact, it will, but not for the reasons they think.

The more mature believer knows this as a trick for the younger player; perhaps one sown by the devil. Not only is it not true, the genuine believer can know their testing may be even more severe than the nonbeliever’s is.

God, at our salvation, never does promise a silky smooth ride through the rest of our lives; indeed, the Bible is a litany of testimony for precisely the opposite. That is poignantly captured in the John Newton quote above.

Faith Is What Separates Experiences Of Heaven And Hell

Faith, which manifests the power and spiritual blessing of the Holy Spirit, is the thing that directs us, via our actions of trustful surrender before God, to a situation of relative heaven over the hellishness of the destination we’re headed for without faith.

It really is, first, a matter of trust.

We cannot know the blessings consequent of faith without first giving it a go; when we see faith work we see how God is carrying us to a better destination, whilst we are thankful for what we have been saved from, despite the work and sacrifice of faith.

And if we have never experienced the blessings consequent of faith, we ought to simply try it; genuine courageous forays into the world of faith do not land without an encounter with the almighty, living God.

Why The Believing Life Is Superior

When we consider that life is a struggle, whether we believe in God or not, and we also know that faith is the only tool combating, with decent effect, the great claims of such trials over us, we must surely not fail to see the importance of the believing life.

There are many reasons why the gospel is Good News, not least of which is the fact that, by the power of the Holy Spirit, we have a way of understanding and overcoming life. Faith, here, is undeniably practical.

How great an understanding it is to attribute everything—the good, the bad, and the ugly—to the Lord’s hand: at the Spirit’s direction. That is Joban theology, right there. God matured Job’s faith through trial, just as the Lord’s refining us through ours. When we approach life this way nothing is truly against us; everything is for our good. Everything can be seen, now, as beneficial from a later perspective.

***

The Good News at the hand of salvation is the gift of power in the Holy Spirit that sponsors faith. Such faith enables an all-conquering life through the strength of honest weakness and reliance on the all-sufficient grace of the Lord Jesus. The faith-life can be seen as winning every time.

The Journey of One Lifetime

2012-01-08T15:48:00.002+08:00

“This is what I have seen to be good: it is fitting to eat and drink and find enjoyment in all the toil with which one toils under the sun the few days of the life God gives us; for this is our lot.”

~Ecclesiastes 5:18 (NRSV)

We are to be forgiven for vacillating throughout our lives—rocking between the flesh and the Spirit—whereby we struggle and fight regarding the dual claims over our lives. We want ‘us’, by virtue of all manner of pleasure that is open to us, and so does God want us, via the obedience we are capable of indwelt of the Holy Spirit: the inspiring life of sanctified actualisation.

The journey of one lifetime—our living, breathing minutes connected in series from cradle to grave—can be seen as a fight or, just as equally, the journey replete in God’s grace, which carries us through every exaltation and every humiliation and all between.

Grace – The Common Thread

The same grace that was on display at the mutilation of the Saviour, the reconciliation of humankind, is disposed in your life and mine, through every life, to the extent of every feature of created life. Grace is eternal as it unfolds here, today, always.

This grace that carries us through the journey that is one lifetime sticks with us through every disobedient thick-and-thin, ever disposing to us second chance upon second chance. And that is the love of God—the Almighty Deity who sponsors the whole journey of every lifetime ever ignited.

Grace’s most majestic achievement is, of course, salvation, and that is the choice only one soul, representing one lifetime, can make. I cannot have my father, nor my brother, nor my daughter saved any more than a wish or a prayer. Salvation is a question—with grace the key—every heart and mind must answer of their own accord.

Still, grace extends herself to believer and nonbeliever alike, equally, and passionately, that they may live how they wish, but its wish is that they choose for God.

Think Of Your Life

We may think of things such as our lives vacantly or deliberately, yet how often do we view life from the eternal context—from the position post-death; that is, having lived the entirety of our lives, now with eternity to reflect over that divestment of time.

The journey of one lifetime is what we have.

According to the Teacher of Ecclesiastes we have a “few days” with which to fully experience life. And experience it we will; as sinners and as saints; in good days and bad; in happiness and sadness; in sickness and in health; right until the end.

***

What are our lives? With transport of time, from cradle to grave, we live the best we can—a very imperfect journey. Still, we can know God’s forgiveness for the things beyond us and our limited power. Within sensible limits, life is to be enjoyed!

Peace and Quiet In Life’s Thunderstorms

2012-01-07T15:32:00.004+08:00

“Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or frightened but go on in fortune and misfortune at their own private pace, like a clock during a thunderstorm.”

~Robert Louis Stevenson

Making a study of the features of time might seem numbing to the younger player, but there is something tantalising in the truths bestowed within the characterisation of time; that is, to imagine our emotional lives, more or less, at the steady state resembling time.

Some people naturally resemble such clocks. Their emotional ambience flickers little; they are not easily swayed, upset, or even buoyant. They just keep living, one ticking moment following the previous one, and so on. These have little redress for regret, for they seem to manage the tremulous minute the same as they ever do—there is a pleasant casualness about them that we tend to admire. They seem resilient and stoic.

Could it be that their minds function quietly? Are their hearts, underpinning, also more present to self-acceptance?

Quietening The Mind

We all seem to understand the theory—that a quietened mind is preferable and critical for control—but we struggle with the practicality of instituting same.

This is because we understand, implicitly, how the mind should operate but we have little understanding on gaining control over it.

Could it be that there are levels of psychological functioning and coping well below the thought processes? We need to conceive that the feeling heart underlies the thinking mind. Only when we venture into steadying the heart, in seeking to understand and accept ourselves, will we be granted opportunities to sustainability quieten the mind.

The Value Of Steadiness Of Heart

Much deeper below the thinking process is the heart silently informing thought, especially stressed thought. When the going gets tough, not only do the tough get going, but the heart becomes more fully engaged. At non-stressful times we couldn’t care less.

The more fully employed heart, coming in to the allegiance of both eustress and distress, is either ally or enemy. We, of course, are interested in enhancing the former and dispelling the latter.

The tumultuous seconds must be managed, not in a way where the mind is busied by the chaos of the instant, but in such a way as to busy the mind only with logic and reason enough to get through. That, there, is victorious kingdom living and it is retrieved moment-by-steady-moment.

Heart And Mind Combined

The state of the imagination, now, is sent to crisis:

Heart and mind will work in unison to produce the seedbed of the calm reality, but the default is to panic, where, again, heart and mind work together, but against us.

This level of inner collusion will produce avoidant or risky decision-making, and particularly procrastination, because of a lack of courage or the winning of fear, where what we really need in a crisis is a steady heart producing a quietened mind.

It is important to understand we have two allies in the heart and mind and that they work together to achieve, for us, peace. If we feel in steadiness, despite our fears, sticking with logical and reasoned thinking, we treat the heart and mind as allies and they work industriously for our defence.

***

We are to aim to live, emotionally, from within ourselves, as clocks—ever turning clockwise at the same cadence, neither running ahead of time nor behind. That requires thinking soundly, feeling in steadiness, and, with mind and heart aligned, it achieves for us quietness of mind—even in the midst of life’s thunderstorm.

Delightfully Cracked, Wonderfully Broken

2012-01-05T23:12:00.005+08:00

“The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.”

~Psalm 51:17 (NRSV)

“There is a crack in everything; that’s how the light gets in.”

~Leonard Cohen, Anthem

Blissful humanity!

We are known as much for our fallibility as we are for the greatest of human achievements—no matter how proficient we ever get at living life, we’ll always be subject to God regarding the circumstances of life and how they play out. Proverbs 16 has much to say about that!

One thing we have little control over is the way we are built and the way life is designed.

The issue of conditionality regarding life is as much about biology as it is about circumstances; we may be one lump or one headache away from the worst news imaginable. And that’s only what could happen to us; we are possibly more hurt through what happens to us when other people we love suffer—as is the case with parents and grandparents who endure much additional indirect hardship.

The longer we live the more we realise how cracked life is.

Yet, if there were no imperfections there would be no striving for God; if there was no darkness there would be no need for the light; if there were no hopelessness, there would be little need for hope.

A Theology of Cracks

God avails to those least perfect of us the warm oil of power to transcend our vulnerability by simple acknowledgement: we are not there yet! The truth prevails upon us this awkwardly inconceivable power—in weakness there is inimitable strength.

This Lord of turning things upside down is doing so by favouring the humble and contrite. There is no need of perfection in an imperfect world. The humble will be exalted, but those who insist on exalting themselves will be humbled against their will (Matthew 23:12; Luke 14:11; Luke 18:14).

Yes, God wants cracks.

The living God wants us dependent to the point of obedience—for our very own good; not to break us, but to infirm us enough that we may follow the right way. Disobedience and unfaithfulness make no sense in a life implicit of love. Still, there is room for wayward imperfection. Praise God for such grace!

***

There is little point in pretending we have it all together, but there is no excuse in settling for less than our best. We may be wonderfully and fearfully made; we are just as much delightfully cracked and wonderfully broken. Only when we celebrate this fact are we ready for communion with God.

Problem Solving for Solidifying Change

2012-01-04T23:30:00.001+08:00

There are three core reasons why plans to change fail us: the dissatisfaction that drove motivation to change has dissipated to indifference; the vision to carry us the journey has withered from relevance or importance; or, the plan to forge and achieve the change was either ill-conceived or we didn’t stick to it.

Whenever we think of the life changes we’ve made that didn’t stick we can analyse these occasions for insufficient dissatisfaction, lack of focused vision, and the lack of conception of or adherence to a plan to achieve the change.

1. Maintaining The Hunger Of Dissatisfaction

Motivation is, and will always be, the key ingredient compelling us to first believe we can change, and then to inspire whatever it takes to make that change happen.

Dissatisfaction with the status quo is a primary driver for a change-engendering period of adjustment.

The problem of the human default, however, is we remain dissatisfied for only a period of time, once the change is applied; then, we start to believe our own copy—we’ve got this change licked! But, as we should know, pride always precedes a fall.

Maintaining the energising dissatisfaction that started us off in good stead is simply about ensuring memory is not lost of how it felt to be sick-and-tired-of-feeling-sick-and-tired. We need a legacy to it so we remember why we needed to change in the first place.

2. When The Vision Has Withered

There are few people who can maintain focus and concentration on the vision without severe prodding. Although vision is about believing in an end we feel we are capable of, it is more so—like above—about not forgetting how or why we developed such a vision in the first place.

The vision for change most often comes from the intensity of dissatisfaction.

When we begin justifying the softening of our vision we need to be careful that we don’t betray the person inside us who agreed to the earlier vision. We too easily betray an earlier version of ourselves; the one we should be listening to.

Our momentary compromises have us paying a hefty debt, sometimes even to the point of spiritual bankruptcy.

Memory is critical to both the above two, but it’s a lack of care in the planning that hurts us most with the next one.

3. Failing To Plan Is Planning To Fail

We have probably heard clichés like the above spouted so often the truth to their meaning is lost on us, and it is a powerful truth.

Planning can only fail for one of two reasons; either we planned poorly, and the conception of the plan was maligned from the beginning, or we did not diligently adhere to the plan, and therefore our plans didn’t cater for digression.

Any good plan considers possible excursions from normal practice, and plans an appropriate response for each of the issues identified.

***

We all need change in our lives from time to time. Embedding change is much harder than initiating it. We need to plan for problem solving regarding the maintenance of change. Only then can we reach our goals with sustainability.

This is a companion article for, Steps to Turning Life Around.

Joy’s Key Performance Indicators

2012-01-02T07:52:00.003+08:00

The world of management statistics gave us the Key Performance Indicator, and there are two types relevant to joy—the lead indicator and the lag indicator.

Lead indicators help us understand what we may be doing now to provide for future joy. Lag indicators, on the other hand, help us learn as we look with hindsight at what has and hasn’t worked for joy.

Lead indicators are more positive than lag indicators, but both are meaningful.

Lag Indicators For Joy

Though we are tripped up by the mistakes we make we’re still provided great ammunition for learning.

Lag indicators to joy are things like complaint, or times when we let a spirit of disconsolation reside over our souls, perhaps from a waking moment. These types of indicators show us where we haven’t experienced joy, and under further investigation we’re able to determine why.

This is about learning from our mistakes so far as we allowed joy to escape our grasp. Yet, sometimes no matter how hard we try we cannot have that joy, because of some life adjustment, or the expression of grief for loss, and sometimes for inexplicable reasons.

The lag indicator can reveal successes, as far as joy is concerned, as much as failures. That might be the truest joy: to reflect on the essence of the significant achievement of joy; from the lag perspective.

A far more proactive way of measuring for joy, however, is via the lead indicator.

Lead Indicators For Joy

Everyone in management circles loves the lead indicator because it provides early warning of the performance we can expect to achieve at the lag indicator stage—yes, the best of circumstances are targets met according to the lag indicator!

For joy, our lead indicators are things like enjoyable activities and the realistic goals we set that are achieved. They are investments for good performance as soon to be revealed by the lag indicator. Converting opportunities into good results is simply wisdom.

We extract more joy from the lead perspective when we plan ahead, don’t covet things too much, give ourselves plenty of time to do things, and ensure we do our best to have things to hope for.

To focus on joy in the here and now, and a joy to be experienced in the near future, is to attend to the lead indicator.

***

The most salient indicator of joy is hope. Where we have hope it translates into a lived-out joy, and peace is consequent of that—the abundant life.

To gain grasp of joy, then, is to invest in a truth-borne hope, which is backed up by what life delivers us every day. The indicators of joy are merely the results of a quotient of hope we have both experienced and are experiencing.

One way to enliven hope is to focus on the joy key performance indicators.

Joy is outbound of our inner hope; a fervent indicator of our present sense of spirituality. When we work on our joy we increase our hope and that in turn helps us feel more joyful.

What Are We Running From?

2012-01-01T11:30:00.003+08:00

Think about life for one reflective moment—that minute caption of time, long enough to consciously think—and what do you see?

There is no limit to answers for such a spacious question.

The specific answer I was given as I reflected, recently, was that life catches up with all of us in the end—and that end is not about a conclusive end, but an end in the realm of the coming, and soon-to-arrive, even been-and-gone, circumstances.

Life has a cause-and-effect basis about it. And there is no good running from it, because, though life is relatively still and calm as in a flow, it involves us to the level of consequences for the actions we decide for.

What, truly, are we running from—from the folly of past decisions—the common human destinies devoid of situational wisdom?

Answering THAT Incisive Question

Any time we approach life in such a way as to either reflect in these ways or to delve specifically into the sources of denial that continue to restrict the level of practiced wisdom we deploy in life, we are the benefactors.

That is as a direct consequence; for we learn. And what is wisdom but learning?

There are also other benefactors (friends and loved ones) as we choose to live in such ways.

Think about a time when we might approach life as a constant prayer regaling these enfolding hopes:

What am I running from?

Why, by doing this, am I afraid of life?

Why can I not see life as an innocuous character repaying me for my deeds of the day and previous day?

Two Ways Of Living – One Right And One Wrong

If our modus operandi is to rush through life, or to blame life and its other characters for the things that happen to us, we will never be happy. We will earn ourselves a miserable existence. And the irony will be: only ourselves can we truly blame.

But when we flip our thinking by having the courage to go against fear, to deal with life on honest terms, and at its natural ever-eternal pace, we collect for ourselves not misery, but fuel for learning; and learning requites wisdom, which in turn blesses us with peace and joy. And we learn about love, patience, and compassion whilst we get to sail upon the splendiferous rolling sea of virtue beyond it.

***

Notwithstanding loss and grief, our emotional states tell us a lot about how we are choosing to live life. Just as easily we can have peace, hope, grace, and joy, as burden, stress, rushing, frustration, and fatigue. We just ask ourselves, “What are we running from?”

From there—a 5-word prayer—new life begins! Revealed by God, the truth becomes self-evident, and learning betroths blessing.

Graphic Credit: Handpainted Quilts.

Venturing to Inner Desire

2011-12-31T08:26:00.001+08:00

“Just as you do not know how the breath comes to the bones in a mother’s womb, so you do not know the work of God, who makes everything.”

~Ecclesiastes 11:5 (NRSV)

A mystery is whispered through the genome of time and it is heard silently within the soul of every living being, though many millions ignore it. This mystery is, of course, entwined in enigma and is, in very nature, the Lord—with us; within us; the intriguing inner desire that corresponds with truth.

Knowledge of the untenable inscrutability of God is most acutely known by the fact of how little we know even of ourselves.

We have evidence of this mystery in the longing that precedes our soul’s continual unease. Smothering the inner desire that can only be sated by God is a plethora of worldly and fleshly desires that overlay and conquer that sense-of-Spirit within, if we’ll allow them to.

And, as a matter of course, we do.

War of the Worlds

The battle of desires is a silent war raging within the anatomical region that is in and through one human being. Torrents of gunfire blast intermittently and relentlessly from cradle to grave and either frustration grinds or patience is built—yet, neither is the final answer.

A Sentinel stands there ready to defend, but we do not commonly defer to this Mighty Defender. We try our own way.

We beat our outer desire the best way we can, without the Sentinel, our God, but forlornly our endeavours fail, because we have not sought to venture into and meet the inner desire—that cherished destiny the Lord, our God, has wired into our psyches from the beginning. We need to seek re-connection to that.

Part of our problem is the inner desire is mysteriously hidden from everyday view; we only venture there by faith and it is a difficult journey because we must negate prevailing desire with an ennobled, quieter one.

But, what is not easy is still possible.

Hope’s Revived in the Achievement of Inner Desire

All manner of sinful desire perplex the goals of the would-be faithful. Yet, this considers the effect of being controlled over the state of wresting control.

Where the outer desire controls us, the inner desire—once harnessed; and it is not easy—facilitates control. The outer desire is a burden on our flesh; the inner desire is plentiful fuel for power to redirect one human being toward his or her goal: the achievement of the momentary will of God.

The inner desire does not fight with the outer desire; it simply operates differently, bypassing it. It has fallen out of love with the world and what its eyes and ears have been typically given to.

We must know by now, the things we must accept (spiritual things) and the things we must reject (worldly things that control us from the outside).

The Way There

Faith is a thing dripping with action-oriented diligence and prudence; all manner of blessed virtue toward the enactment of action, even without assurance of the promised vision.

Yet, on faith we must depend.

Diligence is the role of faith as it esteems common progress toward the inner desire; that which has sought God so fundamentally that the outer desire has been ripped clean away and does, though it remains, no longer wrangle with the flesh.

The harnessing of inner desire is a situational achievement; the blessing of God.

The way there to the inner desire is, firstly, the motive of love to know God and, secondly, it’s the habit of continually re-entering the very soul of the mysterious God existing within each one of us via prayer. The way there is first, interest, and second, practice.

A Winner’s Response To Bad News

2011-12-30T05:10:00.003+08:00

Recalling Joseph of Genesis, and the fact he was wrought many a cruel blow, yet he suffered such indignities stoically, we are reminded of the winner’s response to bad news.

Of course, there are three archetypal responses to bad news; two are negative and damaging if they aren’t arrested, with only one a satisfactory response—the positive one—even out the grip of pain.

Let’s cover these in reverse order—the negative ones first.

1. Bad News Is Taken As a Crushing Blow

Perhaps we might see this response as the submissive one.

We’ve all felt like reacting this way: the unexpected bad news deals us an unchallengeable body blow and we are reeling. The terms which have been dealt cannot be handled right now, if ever.

This is a sinkhole response; with time things don’t get better, they get worse. Such bad news has been the catalyst toward sending us into a self-absorbing bout of anxiety-riddled depression.

2. Bad News Generates Anger and Blame

If the above is seen as the submissive response, this one is the aggressive response—we should know that only assertive responses are ultimately desirable.

Yet, to the reception of bad news comes instinctive anger. What was never expected has now come to pass, and the only way to respond right now is in a fit of rage, whether expressed or not, because from within there is unremitting panic. Fear swarms and the way we battle is to fight.

Like the above reaction, however, this too is a sinkhole response; unless we get over our anger and travel on to the third response (below) the anger will see us bitter and never better for the experience because, quite frankly, we cannot bear the truth right now.

Only when we can bear the truth can we entertain the third option of response.

***

Before going on to the third response, however, it is important to note that initial reactions in the vein of the first and second responses are completely normal and forgivable; but, we need to turn these responses over to the response below to win our day.

3. Bad News Invites The Question – “Okay, What Now?”

This is the Joseph response.

Whether he was cast into a pit, or rejected by his brothers, or convicted innocently and thrown into jail, or for any other reason, we suspect Joseph had basically the same response each time: “Okay, (Lord) what now?”

This is the healthiest of the three responses because neither is the bad news ultimately a crushing blow nor something to derail life at the quest of blame. No, bad news is simply the revelation that there is a longer way than expected to the goal. This is no doubt disappointing, but the winner in such cases takes a situation like this, affording some despondency, and they react with eventual resilience. It proves inspiring.

Despite what they might feel they will act in faith and continue along the path that has been started, not giving up. Very soon they find the temptation to give up was the false veneer of hopelessness in plain view from any bad event. Only after such an act of faith can this lie be seen for what it is.

The winner keeps going despite their disappointment.

***

It bears repeating: the winner keeps going despite the disappointment. They know with gritted teeth and a smile all the crushed expectations in the world mean little if they have the true grit to continue on. They keep their goal firmly in sight and they eventually achieve it, which makes life only more satisfying.

Steps to Turning Life Around

2011-12-29T20:58:00.002+08:00

Times for change commence at a thought, progress with a plan, and are achieved by resolution sufficient to sustain a new habit. That initiating thought is our mark.

The mark of change can be thought of as an acronym: a Circumstance is Heightened in Anxiety for a New thing to Grace life, Everlasting. We want change to stick.

In other words, the mark of change is the instant, perhaps felt now, where dissatisfaction for an element of life reaches that point where change must now occur.

It’s distinctly uncomfortable, but from the vision of hindsight, having met the goal, or gone a long way toward it, we are ever so thankful—that God pushed us into such territory that we demanded much more from ourselves; change that we knew was within our grasp; change that we knew we had to make.

1. The Mark of Change Manifest In Dissatisfaction

The role of dissatisfaction in change cannot be overstated; we often need to be sick and tired of being sick and tired.

Such dissatisfaction is nurtured, indeed transformed, into a driving passion to see change take place—where teeth are gritted, and eyes are focused for a place out of such despairing.

A weird convolution of emotions is experienced ranging from the raging will to fumbling disbelief to outright fear to desperate measures entertained. But such a headspace is tantamount to motivation rarely experienced.

Such a motivation must be harnessed; focused into a usable medium—a vision to get our aim right.

2. A Vision to Inspire Us

Vision takes us many good places that a lack of vision could never see.

It, therefore, requires a fundament of belief—the cherished nexus of an action-oriented faith; one that acts on the belief coveted by the vision and pushes us to continue along the path from thought – to plan – to execution – to finalisation of the dream beheld.

The vision will take us from A to Z and it will help us survive through the twisted augury of many forlorn fears, deceiving promises, and premature celebrations for pride.

3. A Process to Get There

This is where the rubber surely hits the road!

There is little good in bearing a world of dissatisfaction and nurturing the vision to climb out of such hellishness if there is no process—a plan in its simplicity—to restore sanity to a world of chaos.

The process needn’t be complex. Simplicity is more blessed if we’re able to keep it that way.

***

The mark of change is an anxiety-producing dissatisfaction, which generates a vision for change, which requires a process to get there. These three will help us achieve change: sufficient dissatisfaction with the status quo; a vision for a better future; and finally a simple, workable plan.

Prayer In The Moment’s Need

2011-12-28T17:57:00.002+08:00

Prayer may be thought of as a Plea Requesting Assistance; a Yearning for Encouragement and Respite. The moment of prayer is a sacred one; a moment between one human being and their God.

And this is to be remembered, each time, for all time: whenever there is need, there is need of prayer. What could reach out for the moment better than a word of pleading toward one’s Creator?

No, nothing is more appropriate.

P.R.A.Y.E.R. Meets The Needs Of The Moment

There are needs all about, whether we consider the definitiveness of our personal lives, or the incomprehensible size of global need; this thing of need is so massive, to sincerely consider it possibly wears us down.

But the moment of prayer avails for us, peace; not despair.

As we pause, even in the midst of resolute action, the mind resolving to be with its God, we attain a destined oneness that possibly sees the incongruence of reality as it is; however unacceptable that might be.

As we grapple with the moment, a convolution of emotion spilling over from within, prayer steadies us. It affords the instant of escape, even by the cause of an irrepressible reality that imposes itself upon us. It is a moment of survival that can be joined, each moment at a time with each other, to produce a season for survival.

Prayer meets the needs of the moment, without explanation, and where there is no reason there is also no complaint, just praise, for that sense of peace redeemed.

P.R.A.Y.E.R. Is A Worthy Acronym

Again, we might favourably consider prayer as a Plea Requesting Assistance; a Yearning for Encouragement and Respite.

Such an acronym, compartmentalised into the psyche for the moment’s need, can be a great blessing; to think that God, by divine wisdom, has designed such a tool for progression through trial is a true marvel. Again, we know we are not left alone in difficulties, distress, or despairing—even from a waking moment! God is with us as we pray.

Prayer may be many more things than a Plea Requesting Assistance; a Yearning for Encouragement and Respite, but contained within the moment’s need little truly matters more than divine provision of a safe house in the cold of night.

In that moment of need, let us prove worthy of this sensibility: make the Plea Requesting Assistance; a Yearning for Encouragement and Respite, for the Lord will help.

Know that God has proven once, if not infinite times, worthy of the plea made requesting assistance beyond personal capability; that yearning for encouragement and respite beyond personal grasp without such prayer.

Prayer is the help we all desire.

Postscript: this is a partner article to the biblically-based, Every Temptation, Need to Pray.

Judgments of Conscience

2011-12-27T07:34:00.007+08:00

“Every judgment of conscience, be it right or wrong, be it about things evil in themselves or morally indifferent, is obligatory, in such wise that he who acts against his conscience always sins.”

~Thomas Aquinas

This above quote may need to be read several times before its meaning sinks in—it is worth rereading. There is only one rider to it. The worth of a pre-seared or restored conscience is incalculable.

The Searing of Conscience

There are so many almost completely beyond the reach of God; there is no conscience left, or that conscience is confused or undermined. Hence, so often the conscience is betrayed of true Spiritual sight and sound and, therefore, God doesn’t get a look in.

Satan has his part in the world to do these things—to meddle with and muddle our sense of morality; and our flesh adds further weight. If we are fortunate what we have left is enough to work with in restoring that original frame of conscience—the God-conscience.

Life, itself, through our experience of brokenness, has produced—in select parts of our lives to the whole of our lives—the effect of conscience-as-barbecued; its outer structure has been scorched on all sides so as to prevent the entrance of discernible moral stimuli to affect obedience, even lasting change. In simple words, plain judgments of the good path (straightforward morality) become invisible, confused, or betrayed by compromise and self-justification.

The product is sin and at different levels we know it.

Searing of conscience merely adds to the weight of our problem; the rearguard against sin is weakened significantly against such a thing as can be seen via a cooking process.

Rebuilding the Conscience

The Spirit of God never forces anyone to change. There must be willingness within the vessel for the Holy Spirit to agree, and to cohabit. This must occur at the level of the conscience; convicted against its own things; mortified by its own contempt of its Maker; an agreement that the seared conscience must now be tenderised by the Word and will of God—that it will be subject to truth.

This is essentially what the rebirth into Christ facilitates.

And this is precisely why so many are stunted in their growth to the ends of Christ when Satan gets at them to stifle their need of growth; the conscience is nowhere near convicted enough. We need to recommit and regularly so.

The Lord can only do a work of the miraculous in us through our absolute obedience and total adherence to the truth as it applies to discrete compartments of our lives.

Life in Christ is essentially the process of rebuilding the conscience; to allow the Lord to open our eyes and ears afresh to the significance of Divine sight and sound as motives to be acted on, leading to the obedience of faith.

The Primary Odyssey

2011-12-25T08:39:00.003+08:00

The Lord says: You have long anticipated this new season I am taking you to, for there have been many false starts when that anticipation went ahead of Me. You have learned to wait in advancing, to retreat upon pride, to know the folly of running off in veiled excitement.

As you watch for Me now, the sound of My voice within you, you steel yourself for the required moment. Anticipation has given way to calm deliberation; not pensive, but just simply ready.

The Primary Odyssey awaits. This is now what life is about. The preparations have finished and all waiting, concluded; though the preparations and waiting have only just commenced.

Many might call this the coming-of-age. It is not. It is the eternal thread of purposeful movement, in and through the fabric of life itself.

The Primary Odyssey has always been there and always will be there, ready. Even by further lapses.

As for you, My dear child, hear Me now as you ought to eternally. At your consent, because you are ready, I am taking you to the journey of your destiny.

Where we are going—on a spiritual trek, not without trepidation—is what you have always wanted, but never quite knew why or how or when. There will be doubting; trust will be required of you as you turn back at each opportunity to My way: the only way.

This pilgrimage is not one of perfect means or ends. Only the enemy will sell you that lie. No, you are ready for the humblest of journeys to within yourself, and to without—regarding your world. All of life now stands before you. You are ready.

***

This Odyssey, called Primary because of its innately personal and destined nature, is a path etched out by the Creator God for each and every person to inhabit.

It is only as cryptic as we would have it be; the Spirit of God is not one to make such great an expedition any harder than the simplest thing. This is when we can know the patience of God; the Spirit waits... for years, or ever... for when we, personally, ready ourselves.

The journey to the life that God has for us, today, is and was always ready—but we, perhaps, were not. We may now be ready. How exciting it is, then, to take grasp not of tomorrow, but of today. The Primary Odyssey awaits.

I take it with both hands, with a freshened mind, and a stoic heart, knowing that God is with me in all I do.

The Pinnacle for Change

2011-12-24T07:29:00.002+08:00

“Just how and when we tell the truth—or keep silent—can often reveal the difference between genuine integrity and none at all.”

~As Bill Sees It (1967)

We may perhaps be thinking of change. Truly, we may not know how to go about it; just as these problems swarm, and in a debilitated state we feel for our response, we can know one simple thing that will lead us to change every time.

People might say it is self-respect, but of course it’s deeper than that, though its manifestation is central upon the achievement of self-worth (critical for lasting change).

The pinnacle for change is honesty. The condition of the blessed life, without exception, is that cherished ability to be truthful with others, yet never less with ourselves. Honesty is the key to humility.

Plans Are Important... But

Drilled into us from the very beginning are clichés like, “Plan the work and work the plan,” or, “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.”

These sayings are 100% truthful.

But like speaking in tongues of mortals and angels, whilst being without love, is just a noisy gong or clanging cymbal (1 Corinthians 13:1), planning without the underpinning modus operandi of honesty, generating the motive of self-respect, is forlorn.

Plans are necessary, and just as they are critical they need to be flexible, also. One thing, however, that is not flexible is our driving M.O.—we are brutally honest with ourselves; responsible to each thought, accountable for each and every feeling. Then, alone, is change possible.

Belief Is Important, Too

Whilst plans provide the roadmap to get where we need to go regarding change, and a rigorous self-honesty will take us anywhere good we would like to go, self-belief, which is generated from a healthy and functional belief in God, gives us the confidence to be honest.

Such a belief means we can afford to be courageous, especially when we are required to take risks in demonstrating our honesty, for such truthfulness will often bear costs—a price we should always be willing to pay. The unspeakable rewards make it abundantly worth it.

The truth is, at accord with our truthfulness with ourselves—our integrity—we can change anything we want about us that is changeable.

Any sin, habit, trait, or any vice, can be vanquished and, therefore, transformed into practices for living that bless our lives and others’ lives. Do we believe this? We need to in order to change.

***

Planning is important, and self-belief too, but to achieve self-respect, know that honesty keeps us true.

Blessed Family Intercessions

2011-12-23T18:46:00.005+08:00

Whatever we think about our familial relationships, we cannot help interceding for them in our thoughts and, therefore, our prayers. God hears them all.

Prayer makes for reality in ways we don’t even realise. Most Christians think they don’t pray nearly enough, but is it perhaps that God hears every single concerned thought and discerns them as prayers?

Do we also maybe live a life that is foolproof in these ways? Simply put, the love and devotion we have for our families, or the pains we continue to endure because of them, is felt intrinsically by the Lord of Glory—the King of Creation.

Resting Easier

Just the simple fact of knowing God’s there and approving every concerned and worriedly prayerful thought is enough—despite our pain—to breathe easier.

From the beginning we were designed to know peace and joy and grace, that these portents were qualities God shaped for us, and to realise that everything of life—and particularly family—was to be a cherished blessing. We know the Fall destroyed the magnanimity of that vision, but we still have the majority of it preserved in God.

From the ideal to the real to now, the realised whole, we can find in family the object of our passions and the stanzas of love we always wished for. There is peace in the fact that our families push us, conform us, inspire, and rile us. And still, we’re there for them, and they are for us.

It’s an awkward ease we can feel; it’s because we care.

Improving Our Relationships Through Intercession

As we prayerfully think about our familial situations and come to be thankful for them—whether they bless us or not—we come into a different arrangement with them, one that comes from within our hearts. It is something that has not much to do with them. These extra portions of deep thought project for us something that occurs deeper below even than our own consciousness.

We begin to love longer, better, wider and deeper than perhaps we were capable of beforehand. Our prayers are blessed of God for they’ve reached our hearts and we’re being changed and transformed.

It is simply wonderful to know this experience and to nurture it.

Only One Easy Answer

2011-12-21T17:17:00.002+08:00

About the Source of Wisdom: “That path no bird of prey knows, and the falcon’s eye has not seen it.”

~Job 28:7 (NRSV)

A life without problems is no life at all—when we are of our right mind, we wouldn’t believe anyone who might say, “Life: got it sorted.” No, time sorts them out. Problems are so implicit to life that searching for solutions, and preferably an easy answer, is our common default.

We have learned to run to the next thought—the easy, or easiest, way through the problem. We commonly find the hard work option less palatable.

The way we leap from one quick-fix to another in the hope of the grand elixir or panacea is indicative of where and how we place our faith.

Our allegiances are clearly to this apparent wisdom of ‘discoverable’ ease when deep down within we know we’ve been there a thousand times and more; it’s an everyday experience. And we still follow, blindly, because of faint hope in the promise, and because it’s where the crowd lingers—many follow, so the advice must be good!

While we follow as sheep we don’t realise our results that way; we reach square one, back to the drawing board, singly, alone, despondent. We follow in a huddle, yet feel abandoned when the sought-after results fade from vision.

Failure has a certain loneliness about it.

Wising-Up to the ‘Easy Answer’

If there was an easy answer for our problems everyone would be doing it and no one would make any money from the so-called easy answer. That, unfortunately, is not our world.

There is only one easy answer and it is not a popular one, unfortunately.

It’s the direct path; one most people shy away from: the path leading to God and the right way. That path gets us there, wherever ‘there’ is. Only that path is the guarantee.

The glaring truth regarding this path, however, is this ‘easy way’ is no easier than we originally perceived it to be. Yet, it’s probably no harder, either.

Taking Active Part in the Only Operable Easy Answer

Why life is hard is a mystery, but at least the challenges are similar if not the same for everybody. Sure, some people have it much harder than others, but the human condition is basically the same across the board.

Taking an active part in the only operable easy answer is partnering with God upon the work before us today. This is no wild goose chase, and the path is utterly trustworthy.

There is no easy way to do the hard thing, but the easiest way is doing it.

Forever Young I Want To Be

2011-12-20T06:16:00.004+08:00

Ageist depression can occur at any age and stage of life; some feel too old, whilst others feel far too young and inexperienced to make an impact in their or others’ lives.

Despite our age, let us acknowledge this:

We are forever young: God sees each of us as forever young. We never outgrow being children of God. Age is merely a barrier of vanity.

The desire to be forever young—or old or experienced enough to be respected—is a perfectly natural, normal yearning.

As the years advance, and with grace we take our age in acceptance, we can still know the safe assurance—we never outgrow God.

Whether we like it or not, despite our ailing bodies, we are forever young—of spirit.

Even as our minds fog up due to underuse or misuse, the capacity of our soul never diminishes; indeed, the maturing of the years merely tempers our brash hardness.

The One Aspect of Ourselves That Questions Our Real Age

As is alluded to above, it is the age of our spirits—if we can even understand them as having an age—that truly quantifies our age. (But, what is eternal has no age.)

The body, whilst it does decay, and the mind, whilst it does take time to mature, and of itself decays in our twilight years or through lack of use, these both are not our true us—they, both, are just vehicles to the transportation of the real us to our world, and that world to us.

We use the body and the mind to achieve an end—the living of mortal life. Without the body and the mind we cannot live mortally, but without spirit—our very soul—we cannot live at all.

Age, therefore, truly is one of the great veneers of vanity we will ever know; it is the brokenness inside each of us that mourns for youth or the respect of maturity—whenever there is a perception we don’t have the one we seek.

Going Beyond Age

If we believe what we have read—that God, in his wisdom, has sought to give us eternal souls—and there is no reason not to, we can so easily go beyond our age, and think and feel from a basis that comes from beyond age; that reclaims any memory and any hope and sees both past and future from the present-tense context.

That is, to see the entire flow of life as a plane along the lines of eternity.

When we go beyond age, for ourselves and others, we look into the essence of eternity; God has our interest and our inspiration. We see, with immediacy, all of life as it is. Age, as we think and feel, is a thief, but only if we allow such larceny.

When Commitment Is Wrong

2011-12-18T12:27:00.002+08:00

“To be weary and heavy laden is to have the highest fitness to receive that rest which Christ alone can give.”

~William Law, A Collection of Letters

Upon times of sharp distress, where life is somehow betwixt in a flux of numbness, change being the very definition of change, there is a probing temptation, yet no justification, for making commitments that will bind.

Commitment, at such a quavering time, would be to turn from reality into a fantasy of hellish discord; a road with which one could only sensibly turn back upon. Yet, many that have travelled such a road have continued to beat its harrowing path, where regret—and remorse, underpinning—resounds.

There is a way through hell and the making and breaking of commitments—from that space—is not, generally, the way there.

A Process for Rest

At such a place all commonly find themselves at least once: The Place of Disconsolation. It is the rabbit warren of fuming madness; a bridge to nowhere; the place where time stands still for all the wrong reasons.

Life as it was, for myriad reasons, has ended; a new, perhaps transitional, period we are now transported to. “Such is life,” people might flippantly tell us—but we know differently. (This, in the midst of it, is no life at all.)

At such a place—one beyond recognition of the Divine—there is no rest unless we take leave of absence, venturing into the heart of God, which is beyond perplexing self-thought, the ravages of the world, and past and present dilemmas.

Here, as we find ourselves suffering at fear, for anxiety, in a deep depression, for however long, and for whatever reason, we must rest—finding that rest which subsists in God alone as it prevails to us, for us, and through us; in ways that are relevant and meaningful to us, alone.

God is personal when he meets us here.

Hell Is Not a Place for Making Commitments

Notwithstanding a previous article, The Sword of Love—an exhortation to commit to the processes of life—one place we do not commit, unless God makes it palpably plain that to do so would be good, is in the location of a living hell—where our minds and hearts are not of one, or sensible, accord.

The only sensible commitment might be that commitment to not commit; to be free simply to bathe in the powerful Presence of the Spirit indwelling us, at The Peace That Transcends Understanding.

Wisdom finds itself acknowledging such times of scant regard to sense much like we might answer a difficult question; it utters the response, “I don’t know, and may never know, and that’s okay.”

Commitments for the making are designed for the sensible mind.

Germinating Life’s Destiny Seed

2011-12-17T10:42:00.004+08:00

“Any person who does not accept the conditions of life sells their soul.”

~Charles Baudelaire

A common thing in the modern rat-race of life, and just as common a thing in any other age, as we might find on further investigation, is the prevalence of denial, anger, bargaining, and depression over the greater or lesser aspects of one’s personal situation and life. All four prevailing moods-of-spirit deny the truth.

As the quote at top indicates, there is a costly price we pay in procuring denial over the predominant truth—truth is a fact never changed.

Two Forms of Denial

We are all given to the shape and consistency of denial, even by those little lies we tell—the ‘white’ variety; the omissions; the half-truths. Indeed, truth does often command its own price. And our humanity cannot always pay it.

We are all tempted to enter into a deeper, more life-paralysing denial. The symptom of this form of denial—the virulent selling of one’s own soul—is escape by activity or substance.

Look at a person with an alcohol, other drug, gambling, or pornography etc problem, and there you see the symptoms of the deeper cause: they cannot bear the truth, and they are running, sardonically, from themselves—and from God.

Now, we can see that denial leads to major problems and minor problems; both because truth was not chosen as our ally. Accepting the conditions of life is harder than we suppose, but it does help to know denial is insidious.

Acknowledging That Denial Is Insidious

Denial is subtle and menacing; we can divert our attentions to it, now, if we are truly interested in reclaiming our destiny seed—that which God has planted so deep in our psyches, we haven’t a clue until we dig truthfully through to it in the quest to see it germinated.

But, first, we must grapple with the fact that denial will topple us if, and whenever, we allow it to—that is, whenever we prefer our conditions rather than accepting the never-changing conditions of life.

When we are aware of this truth, and we are committed to approaching life more truthfully, we crush denial in its tracks, and our souls are our own, again.

Accessing the Destiny Seed

God has designed a path for us—it is the narrow way lit up in truth.

We can call the commencement of this path, Life’s Destiny Seed, though it doesn’t matter what we call it, so long as we strive to attain access to it. This seed was planted before we came into being; the presence and make-up of this seed are absolutely irrefutable—in essence, we are God’s.

Whenever we accept the conditions of life, without denial, anger, bargaining, or depression, we have Life’s Destiny Seed at our grasp. When we go this way, God gives us the keys to the city of our souls. And we go on to becoming the persons God destined us to be. Only then can we be content.