Cancerous Thinking
Family Leadership Men Personal Development Relationships Women Monday, January 11th 2016 Share the goods! Did you know that cancer cells do their own thing? They have their own agenda and act independently within the body—growing and multiplying as they desire, and destroying the good cells. And this is how negative thoughts work in the life of the believer— each negative thought that we have tends to multiply and metastasize, but God gave us the ability to renew our minds so that each good thought becomes a building block that fortifies us and the body of Christ. But when we allow negative thoughts to grow and metastasize into cancerous thinking those thoughts end up destroying us! Each negative thought that we have tends to multiply and metastasize. Click To Tweet Look at the metaphor in Ephesians 4:15-16 (NKJV) “but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head — Christ — from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.” Joints connect and build up the rest of the body. The purpose of joints in the context of Hebrews 4:12 (NKJV) “for the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart, is for the soul to connect and link up with the...
Plantation Mindset
The Emancipation Proclamation was signed in 1863, but Texas didn’t find out about it until June 19, 1865, which means there was a two-year gap between the time when the slaves were granted liberty and when they experienced liberty. Nobody told the slaves in Texas they were free. Even though they were legally free, they were not experientially free, so in 1865, blacks in Texas were still walking around behaving like slaves.
From the Bottom to the Top
A donkey was walking around and fell in a hole. While it was sitting in the hole a farmer walked by, looked down and started to pour dirt on him. The donkey looked up and he said, “Why did you do that to me?”
Beauty for Ashes
When we hang onto past hurts and wrongs, it causes us to have a victim’s mindset and it keeps us from getting the best that God has for us.
Not in The Shell
Family Leadership Men Personal Development Relationships Women Monday, March 20th 2017 Share the goods! If you want a big tree, you don’t plant a big tree. No, you must plant a seed. This happens in the spring. When you look at the picture on the outside of the package, and you compare it to the contents, the two do not look the same. This is how nature works. You plant a seed, and then the plant comes up, but it does not look like the seed. When you have a bunch of seeds together, it could be apple, tomato, etc. If you place them together, you don’t know the difference until you plant them. But when they grow up they all look different. When you plant a seed and it dies, what really dies? The shell of the seed dies not the heart of the seed. Let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. Matthew 16:24 Click To Tweet Now, this is critical because the life does not come from the shell, it originates from the inside, but that life cannot come forth until the outside of it dies away. This is what dying to self is. Then something new comes. Think about it, in the fall you will have acorns all over the place, but the acorns are what cause oak trees to come forth. So the acorn’s shell dies and dissolves, and the inside of the acorn produces the tree. The trunk of the tree, the leaves, the tree itself, the acorns produced on the tree did not come from the shell rather...
The Summer House
Family Leadership Men Personal Development Relationships Women Monday, February 13th 2017 Share the goods! A woman who was going through a bad time was trying to find rest for her soul. She had lost her husband and felt alone. She was spending time in a summerhouse trying to put her life back together. She was sitting in the middle of a big open room with high arching windows when a bird flew in. It flew up to the ceiling and was trapped. Trying to get out it flew to every window but nothing happened. It flew to where the light was coming in, but it couldn’t get out. It flew window after window, but it would only bang against the window and fall back. It would try to force its way out of the house through every little crack or crevice. She thought in her heart, “Poor bird, why do you not come down lower see this open door and fly out easily?” Tell God how you feel. Let Him bring the strength that is available to you through His Word. Click To Tweet But the bird insisted on wounding itself, flying against all of these clear windows. At last its wings grew tired. It flew lower and lower until finally, it was on the level with the open door. Then, seeing the way of escape the bird finally found freedom. Just then the woman thought, “I am like that bird. Through my pride and self-sufficiency, I have been flying so high to see the window up there, and God has been trying to humble me so that I...
Antiquated Maps
Family Leadership Men Personal Development Relationships Women Monday, February 6th 2017 Share the goods! I heard a story of a group of people who found a 4-month old abandoned German shepherd who was suffering from dehydration. The puppy also suffered from bruises all over its body. The people said that the puppy avoided them and for the first month, whenever they came near it, it would shrink and tremble. When they tried to reach out their hand to pet it, it would cower in the corner because it had learned to expect abuse from the hands of humans. It feared the world that it had come to know. It is the same way with children who develop their perception of the world based on how their first caretakers care for them. If they had good parents then they develop strong trust muscles. If they had bad parents then they develop weak trust muscles and their ability to bond is hindered. It is through these experiences that we draw a mental map of the world and then we order our journey around it. Am I using an old map to live, govern, or dictate my life? Click To Tweet This is not something we do consciously. It is kind of like touching a hot stove and the brain warning us not to do that again. The puppy, however, had not been warned not to touch a hot stove but not to connect with humans. The only problem is that the puppy’s mental map was now outdated. When we are older and are removed from a painful setting, our brain does...
Pain that Fuel Your Dream
Family Leadership Men Personal Development Relationships Women Monday, December 5th 2016 Share the goods! For many Christians, we want God’s training program to be a microwave, but more often than not it is a crockpot or slow cooker. Glen Cunningham was born on a farm in Kansas. He attended school in a rural community in the one-room school house so many of us have seen in our travels around the country. He and his brother were given an assignment to stoke and light the fire in the big pot belly furnace in the middle of the classroom. On one particular morning, they were a bit late arriving at the school house and in order to speed up the process they poured kerosene over the fuel supply before they lit it. Unbeknownst to them there were still some live coals from the previous day’s fire. When they poured the kerosene over the fuel supply there was an explosion and a great fire, which caused both of the young men to be seriously injured. As Glen Cunningham was running from the building he looked back and he saw his brother lying on the floor next to the furnace and he instinctively ran back to grab his brother from the fire. Tragically, a few days later his brother died from the burns and Glen Cunningham was burned so badly around his legs that the doctor said he would never walk again. With God, we can turn tragedies into victories. Click To Tweet Certainly no one ever dared to believe that he would run again and that he would run again to break...
Metabolize Your Life
Family Leadership Men Personal Development Relationships Women Monday, May 2nd 2016 Share the goods! When we do not metabolize or process the events in our lives we prevent ourselves from being able to embrace the new that God has for us. We’re like a computer that has a very small hard drive, say 3GB, and every time we try to upload a new program to our computer it slows down. I once had a computer that took 15 minutes to “boot up.” I would turn on my computer in the morning and then I would take a shower or eat breakfast, or do a whole bunch of other things. I finally realized that my computer was slow because there was no room on my hard drive for anything new. Get ready for the new things God has for you! Click To Tweet In other words, I had to remove some old programs to make room for the new programs. This is how life is for many people. God has some new software that He wants to load onto the hard drive of our life. But because we haven’t metabolized, or processed previous experiences we are unable to embrace what God is trying to do. It could be said that some people spend their whole lives “booting up.” In other words, they never get to run the program of life that God has for them because they are always “booting up.” They never get to the application of the things that God has for them because of unresolved issues that keep them in perpetual “boot up” mode. The goal of...
Break The Cycle
Family Leadership Men Personal Development Relationships Women Monday, March 28th 2016 Share the goods! There’s a term called “transference” that’s used in psychology. Transference occurs when a person experiences something in a previous relationship and the person projects that experience onto others. What makes this dangerous is that “transference” will often make the person unconsciously engage in behavior that causes them to create experiences they fear. For instance, a person who had a tough and controlling father grows up to resent, or fear authority figures. What can happen is that when that person gets a job and their boss gives them some constructive criticism at a 5 level, the person, who is extra sensitive, and expecting the same treatment from his boss that he received from his father hears the criticism at level 9. What’s tricky is that the person will unconsciously engage in behavior that leads to the very situation they fear or were trying to avoid. Don't let your past determine your future! Click To Tweet Suppose that same person’s boss asks them to make a copy. The person making the copy is so nervous that he rushes to make it, but in his haste he makes a poor quality copy. The person then rushes and hands the copy to his boss. The boss looks at it and thinks to himself, “Why would they make such a poor quality copy?” The vicious cycle swings into motion, because the boss then tells them to make the copy quality a little better the next time. The boss’s level 5 comment is interpreted at a level 10 and instead of...
The War is Over
Family Leadership Men Personal Development Relationships Women Monday, February 22nd 2016 Share the goods! Years ago a report was released about some Americans who went to a remote area in the Pacific islands, and discovered people still fighting fifteen to twenty years after World War II had ended. The people on the island had not heard the news that bombs had been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and that a peace treaty had been signed, and the war was over. When the Americans arrived and told them that the war was over, the islanders initially didn’t believe them and thought the Americans were trying to kill them. Are you fighting a war that has been over since Christ died for your sins? Click To Tweet Later they discovered how ignorant they’d been—fighting for two decades after the war was over. This is what the sinner discovers after he gets born again. He realizes that he’s been fighting a war that has been over since Christ died for his sins. And when the sinner finally has a revelation of this, he says to himself, “Peace has been won, and I no longer have to go around fighting for myself living with all of this tension on the inside of me! The war is over and I am free!” MORE TOPICS addiction authority biblical characters career challenges children communication convictions depression discernment emotions failure faith family fear finances forgiveness grace healing identity leadership love marriage men parenting personal development pornography priorities process purpose relationships respect restoration righteousness sex sin success temptation trials women Help us continue helping others! DONATE TODAY Share...
The Pocket Knife
A young mountain climber named Aron Ralston was hiking in a remote section of Utah when an eight hundred pound boulder shifted and trapped his arm. For five days, he tried to do everything he could to free himself.
The Game is Half Over
Roy Riegels was a football player at the University of California who played a close game against Georgia Tech in the 1929 Rose Bowl. Playing defense, Roy Riegels tried to tackle a Georgia Tech player and was shoved against another player and got turned around and he started running down the sideline, probably thinking, “This is great!