My Blog, my journey… or something like that :o)

"Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction."

The following story has been around on the email for a while, but it stands repeating. It is reported to be an actual radio conversation of a U.S. naval ship with Canadian authorities off the coast of Newfoundland in October 1995.

Americans: Please divert your course 15 degrees to the North to avoid a collision.

Canadians: Recommend you divert YOUR course 15 degrees to the South to avoid a collision.

Americans: This is the Captain of a US Navy ship. I say again, divert YOUR course.

Canadians: No, I say again, you divert YOUR course.

Americans: This is THE AIRCRAFT CARRIER USS LINCOLN. The second largest ship in the United States Atlantic fleet. we are accompanied by three destroyers, three cruisers and numerous support vessels.

I demand that YOU change YOUR course 15 degrees north, that’s one five degrees north, or counter measures will be taken to ensure the safety of this ship.

Canadians: This is a lighthouse. Your call.

Suggested prayer: "Dear God, please help me not to be carried away with my own importance, never blame others for my problems, and always be open to correction and guidance. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, Amen."

"The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control."

Imagine living in a world without emotions. It would be like living in a world without color—a world without blue skies, white fluffy clouds, red roses, or beautiful rainbows and sunsets. Everything would be a dull monotonous gray. Life would be deadly dull and boring—as it is when emotions are repressed.

Like many others, especially men, I grew up being taught that feelings weren’t important and that you couldn’t trust them."

Thank God it isn’t so. Feelings are God-given. They are an inner monitor letting us know what is going on inside of us. The more we are in touch with our true emotions, the more they can inform us when our life is out of harmony and we need an emotional tune up, caution us of impending danger, warn us when we are around unsafe people, affirm us when we are with safe people, guide us when we have major decisions to make, keep us in tune with God’s leading, and assure us when our life is in harmony with others and God. Admittedly, if we don’t understand them, they can confuse us and get us tied in knots!

Feelings are a gift from God. To deny and repress them we now know can be disastrous, physically, emotionally and spiritually. The first three fruits of God’s Spirit—love, joy, and peace—are emotions. Thus, if our emotion of love is repressed, how can God’s love flow through us? It can’t.

Yes, it may take a while but we can learn to trust our feelings. What we can’t always trust is how to interpret them correctly. It can be like learning a new language, but a language well worth learning, without which there can be no true intimacy either with my loved ones or with God.

Another way of describing emotions could be E-Motions or Energy in Motion! One thing is sure. Without emotions we are characteristically bored with life and lose our energy and our drive. Thank God for emotions.

Suggested prayer: "Dear God, as you desire truth in the innermost being, please deliver me from the ’sin of denying my true emotions,’ help me to get in touch with my true feelings and inner self, and learn how to understand them and express them creatively when such is needed. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, Amen."

"Let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No’."

I’m sure you know some people who won’t take no for an answer. They’re boundary busters who have no respect for other people’s personhood.

Healthy boundaries are to protect ourselves from toxic people, from controlling and manipulating people, from con artists, from abusive people, from people who can hurt or use us for their own ends, and so on.

External boundaries are needed to protect our physical well-being. Nobody has a right to come into our space, get into our face, or touch us without our permission.

Internal boundaries are to protect our feelings. Nobody can upset us, hurt our feelings, make us feel guilty, ashamed, afraid, or angry without our permission. This is why we need good internal boundaries.

Boundaries are not walls. Boundaries allow the people in that we want close to us. Walls shut everybody out. Boundaries are also needed to contain our own "badness" so we don’t hurt others.

Without healthy boundaries, people will walk over us, use us, or abuse us and we will end up feeling angry, upset, hurt, and maybe even wallow in self-pity. What other people do is their responsibility. What we allow them to do to us is our responsibility. This is why we need healthy boundaries without which it is impossible to recover, grow, and live meaningfully.

Furthermore, without the freedom to say no our yeses are meaningless.

Read the life of Jesus in the gospels for a good example of healthy boundaries. Nobody ever controlled, manipulated, or did anything to Jesus without his permission—including his parents once he became a young man.

Suggested prayer: "Dear God, please help me to develop healthy boundaries to protect others from my ‘badness’ and to protect myself from others’ ‘badness.’ And help me always to respect other people’s boundaries. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen."

"If you love me keep my commandments."

"A ruthless businessman once said to author Mark Twain, "Before I die I mean to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. I will climb Mount Sinai and read the Ten Commandments aloud from the top."

"I have a better idea," Twain remarked, "You could stay home here and keep them."

Talk is cheap. It’s what we do that counts—not what we say—and when our words don’t match our actions, we are, as the Apostle Paul put it, as empty vessels and clanging symbols.

One of the best lessons I learned from one of my many teachers was the written comment he seemed to relish writing in bold red letters in the column of several of my written assignments. It simply read, "Show me. Don’t tell me!"

I’ve never forgotten that lesson. It really applies to all of life’s lessons we want to impart to others—especially to our children! Whatever we want to teach others we need to model ourselves before we can make any lasting impact on anybody else, otherwise what we say is unbelievable and the only person we deceive in the long run will be ourselves.

As a general rule, we teach best that which we ourselves most need to learn. And the place to begin modeling what we want to teach? At home!

Suggested prayer: "Dear God, help me to model the kind of person you want me to be … a better father/mother/child … friend … partner … business person … and Christian so people seeing what you have done in my life will want the same for themselves. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen."

*this is from the Daily Encounter….. Ouch! I must say I’m 100% guilty of what the reflection is saying. It’s really difficult to wlak the talk but the best about it is you can feel a certain level happiness within you becuase you stood by your words. This also reminds me of a text message I received re: living the righteous life in order to disprove people who wants to destroy you….

"I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you."

Vern Treat tells about a scuba diver who said that "when you’re in deep water, you’re encircled by light, so there’s no way you can tell which way is up because the water diffuses the light. You’re also totally weightless, so you have no sense of gravity.

"Surrounded in an aura of light and weightlessness, it’s very easy to lose all sense of direction and get disoriented. You may sense that this way is up and that your air bubbles are going sideways. You may be so convinced that your perception is true that you decide to ignore your bubbles and go the way you think is up. I wouldn’t be surprised if some divers have drowned because of this. One of the first things we were told when learning to scuba-dive was to always trust your bubbles—to always follow your bubbles. No matter how you feel, no matter what you think, your bubbles are always right."

Life can be like that at times too. If we base the rules of life on our feelings and/or perception, we can be very easily led astray. The philosophy, "If it feels good it must be right," is a dangerous guide to follow because our feelings can play all sorts of tricks on us. If something is wrong, it is wrong regardless of how we feel. True, it’s important that we don’t deny or repress our feelings because we can learn to trust them—but what we can’t always trust is our interpretation of them or understand what they are telling us.

In life the only safe guide to follow when it comes to fruitful and successful living is to trust God and his Word, the Bible. Therein lie the "bubbles of life" to follow. These "bubbles" are always right. Always!

"Suggested prayer: "Dear God, thank you for your Word, the Bible, and for giving us principles for healthy living and loving. Give me a love for your Word and the desire to hide it in my heart so I won’t sin against you. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen."

*from the Daily Encounter