Month: November 2022

The Absence of Happiness

On By Papa TonyIn ThoughtLeave a comment

The word absence on missing puzzle piece. Business concept.

Every person living in one capacity or another is on a quest for happiness. Happiness is the hallmark of all human beings. Absent happiness man merely exists. Yet for all that a man seeks for he often fails to eliminate the one thing that hinders and stymies his happiness. He thinks that happiness is something to be pursued rather than something that appears once the obstacles to its attainment are removed. That which obscures and blocks happiness is always fear; fear lived and entertained in the hearts of men. Fear is an illusion and once the illusion has had its way, happiness is lost and will not return until the fear is overcome. Fear is the absence of happiness.

Life is to be lived in motion. As long as a man or a woman keep moving forward, their happiness will continue to appear encouraging them to continue. In contrast, fear works to slow one’s progress and brings men’s lives to a standstill. Fear removes the energy from life by stealing. It is always an illusion, a threat and impedance to the things people really want in their lives. Fear is a parasite leeching enthusiasm and joy from its host. Because it is not real it can only work when people give it energy. Thus entertained it feeds off the one indulging it. People are worn out by fears and worries more so than any hard work or effort. The emptiness and futility a man feels inside comes not because the pursuit of life is futile, but rather because fear causes it to appear so. Fear paints a despairing view of the future which further serves to steal away life. The reason a person feels they have nothing to look forward to in life is because they have believed the illusion. Otherwise what would stop a man or a woman from expecting good things? Fear is also an expectation, but an expectation of bad things instead of the good. The sure sign that fear is holding sway in your heart is the noticeable lack of energy and vitality in your life. Life and enthusiasm return when the fear has been excavated from your mind. There is not a need to do more, be more or pursue more, but instead a requirement to rid yourself of the impediment. Fear, your fear, is the cause for your absence of happiness. Fear is the cause for the absence of happiness in all people.

Fear, the enemy’s greatest weapon, works by deception. In order to overtake your free will, it has to deceive you into cooperating with it. Even a child knows the importance of dealing with various fears as soon as they show up. Children immediately seek an escape from it. Yet adults, presumably because they think they know better, find ways to work around it or dull themselves to its effects. People do all kinds of things to escape from fear except the one thing they need to do which is to eliminate it! People anesthetize themselves with alcohol, drugs, sex, food; anything that offers promise to take away the effects, if even only for a short while. Fear runs the systems of the world and controls the world by fear. These systems, these bulwarks of error, keep men slaves their entire lifetimes. If you want to force a man or a woman to do something, make them afraid. Promote the things that scare them then offer them an antidote which will never take away fear but rather encourage its existence and power over people. Fear is neither natural nor normal, but we act as if it is. There was a time when you were not afraid until you learned to think otherwise. Fear is always learned either by ignorance or by wrong teaching. Remember fear is an illusion, a lie, a falsehood being palmed-off as truth. As such it cannot exist on its own. The only way to counter fear is by learning the truth. The truth brings light and clarity into the situation. You would not fear walking off the edge of a cliff in the daytime, but in the darkness the odds increase greatly. In the same way, once you have light in your mind it becomes much easier to see the fear for what it really is; a groundless, empty threat. Fear is the absence of life; real life.

As you consider these words, you may feel as if they do not apply to you. You think this way because fear has such a stronghold on the way we think that we often can no longer even recognize its existence. Yet the acid test, the true barometer is found by how you live day by day. Are your days full of enthusiasm and energy with boundless possibilities or are your days filled with boredom and declining motivation and negative expectations? Do you wake in the morning excited for the day and what treasures it might bring or do you awaken the same way you always do with little to look forward to, tired of life and its apparently endless struggles? Boredom and listlessness have their roots in fear. Fear puts a cap on your happiness and your ability to find the things that excite you. Similarly, endless worry about things is never benign as worry slows your progress and brings your life to a standstill. Show me a person besieged with boredom for living, finding ways to pass the time and I’ll show you a person that has too much worry and fear in their heart. Absent the fear and worry they would see life for what it is, a precious commodity to be enjoyed and relished. Fear has many levels and a multitude of faces, but its results are always the same, less life, less possibility, less happiness to those in bondage to it. Fear is the absence of possibility.

As with many of the problems with which we encounter, fear being our number one problem, the solution is often found when we finally get honest with ourselves and with God. If your life is miserable for any reason at this present moment, fear is involved in some way. Just get honest and admit it. All of us have fear at one time or another and all of us have been held captive by its claims. There’s no shame in admitting we are afraid. The shame enters in when we allow fear to continue controlling us and defeating us when help is available. Once we finally get honest with ourselves and then with God (who knows anyway), we can find the solutions we need in every case. God would not tell us so many times to “fear not” if He did not also have the answers we need and the power to bring them to pass. With God there is nothing to fear in this life and once we finally escape its clutches we find life, our life and happiness quickly return. In your sincere quest for happiness and enjoyment in life, do the one thing you need to do to ensure its continuance. Abolish and eliminate fear whenever and wherever it appears. Remove it from your heart, that great citadel for your life and find again the life you once enjoyed as a child. Once the fear is gone there is no absence of happiness remaining.

Just some good thoughts…

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The Man in the Mirror…

On By Papa TonyIn ThoughtLeave a comment

screen-shot-2014-12-17-at-9-57-47-pmThere is a famous poem by Dale Wimbrow called, ‘The Guy in the Glass” and there is a famous song by Michael Jackson called, “Man in the Mirror” both focused on the judgments we assign to ourselves. The reason both works are so important is because their messages point us back to things we think about ourselves, indeed the judgments we conclude as true about who we are. The problem with our self-judgments is that they are typically not true, but rather a compendium of other people’s judgments we have assumed as our own. Judgment runs rampant in the world today. People are quick to point out your flaws because they have been trained to focus on their own flaws. People judge your socioeconomic status, your standing and station in life (i.e. whether you are above or below them), your acceptability or reasons for rejection, your attractiveness quotient, your body shape and size, whether you are good or evil (as an all or nothing proposition) and finally your value as a human being. In this, you and I are submerged and swallowed up in judgment day by day whether we recognize it or not. Each days holds an opportunity or multiple opportunities for people to take shots at you either in cruelty and meanness or disguised and wrapped up in humor. Not only do you become the butt of the joke, but worse an assault is being made on who you are. For this reason it is incumbent upon us to learn how to make proper judgments about ourselves and even more so, how to properly discern and reject others’ judgments of us. Thus, the judgments of the man or the woman in the mirror become paramount. 

Since we were children we have been subjected to other people’s opinions about who we are. It began with our parents assigning to us whether we were “good” or “bad” instead of teaching us how to behave in a good way as opposed to behaving in bad or wrong ways. But, regardless of a child’s behavior, the parent’s responsibility is to shape the child’s belief in his or herself in a positive light. If behaviors alone defined who we were, we would all fall short. Belief systems are formed very early on and you as a parent hold the most weight in determining how your child will judge him or herself. Negative patterns formed early in youth will be difficult to excavate. Add to this the socialization process of schools and grade based rankings from teachers, coupled with the judgments from the other children, generally worsening in middle and high school and you have the perfect recipe for insecure adults. This all happens because it is the pattern of the systems of the world. It is certainly not God’s way. Parents therefore have a serious responsibility in terms of what they say and how they treat their children. Words from other people, especially those we love and trust carry a disproportionate weight in terms of determining our self-worth and value in our own eyes and heart. 

Once we are grown up so to speak we enter society and the workforce where the negative conditioning worsens and accelerates. People use words like missiles to denigrate other people typically because that is how they have been trained to think and thus speak. The most critical people; those who judge everyone and everything, are the same people that judge themselves with similar or worse judgments. Most folks, behind the scenes of course, are brutally cruel with themselves. They pick themselves apart all day long and it’s no wonder they react so angrily when they meet with criticism from other people that matches what they have been thinking about themselves all along. The problem isn’t so much the other people as we are all in the same boat, but rather the things we think and conclude about ourselves. Sadly, we are the ones that are accepting and believing other people’s judgments and we are the ones rehearsing those ideas in our minds and hearts.

“For it isn’t your Father, or Mother, or Wife,
Who judgement upon you must pass.
The feller whose verdict counts most in your life
Is the guy staring back from the glass.” (Excerpt)

You and I have to learn how to think differently about ourselves. Our childhood is long past and no matter what we were subjected to during those formative years, now that we have grown up, we can and must change those beliefs. Beliefs form by the things we tell ourselves and the things we feed our minds. God didn’t say you were fat, the world did! When other people judge you, they do so from their own vantage point heavily influenced by their own thoughts about themselves. God tells us in His Word not to judge other people. We can certainly judge behaviors, but it is not up to us to determine another person’s value. How could you? How could I? We only know what we see and hear and most likely that only represents a tiny snippet of another person’s life. So, don’t put so much weight on what other people say and think about you. They have no right to judge you even if they are your family or the people you hold most dear. They have no right to do so and when they do so they are merely cooperating with evil by being unaware of what is behind all of the negative judgment and criticism. The world, the systems of the world have a plan, namely to make a man or a woman less than the beautiful creation God has made them to be. Evil seeks to diminish man, created in the image of God, by accusing him and judging him (through people, media and social media) until he, the man, levels those same judgments upon himself. In this we cheat and rob ourselves of the glorious existence God has prepared for us. We are contradicting who God says we really are. 

The spiritual reality behind negative self-judgment is very clear. To counter this God has given us His Word. His Word explains how He gave us His only begotten son, the Lord Jesus Christ, who died to pay for every single thing that was ever wrong with you and me. In this God once and for all eliminated the need for us to live in perpetual judgment concerning ourselves. He simply laid all of our sins (past, present and future), all of our human-nature flaws, every mistake, shortcoming and failure on him thereby doing for us what we could never do for ourselves. We judge ourselves by this standard and by this standard alone. When Jesus Christ said it was finished, he meant it. In his life, death and resurrection, he forever freed us from the tyranny and cruelty of pervasive negative self-judgment, authored by the enemy of mankind, the devil. We no longer need to spend our every waking second evaluating, analyzing and judging our every move. We no longer need to be subject to the endless judgments of man, but instead rely solely on the judgment of God, who has (past tense) in Christ Jesus made us forevermore righteous in His sight. 

My friends, you have to learn the truth about who you are and with that understanding begin to view yourself in a different light. God did this for you and me to help us to overcome. Outside of what God did by His grace we can never be free of judgment. Do not allow people to make negative judgments about who you are and at minimum, if you cannot confront it, stop listening to it and embracing it. How silly for you and me to cleave to the weakness and inability we had when we were children.  How foolish it becomes to carry around all of those myths you developed long ago concerning who you are. How ridiculous it is to think that you cannot trust yourself and your own judgments in life’s circumstances, thereby concluding you are always wrong and desperately need the approval and blessing of other people in order to pursue your life’s dreams. What you think about yourself and who you think you are carries an immeasurable weight in determining how your life will turn out. Start seeing yourself as God sees you and quit relying on your own limited thoughts and the limited thoughts of those around you. You are God’s masterpiece and that is a verdict worth holding onto. You are God’s best. Tell the man in the mirror that! 

Just some good thoughts… 

 

Mental Health Musings…

On By Papa TonyIn Thought3 Comments

mental_health_jpg-10Mental health has become a popular topic nowadays. People are becoming more and more aware of the importance of their mental health and how it positively or negatively affects their lives. It might surprise you to know that as long as there have been human beings, mankind has endured mental health problems. As thinking beings and the only thinking beings as we know it, man is forever impacted by the thoughts he chooses and the thoughts he entertains. To separate the mental health issues that plague mankind and his thoughts serves only to make man a victim and not someone that has control over his thoughts and thus his mental health. A healthy mind must be fed healthy thoughts and the thoughts that contradict health always lead to sickness, first in the mind and later in the body. Have mental health issues got you down? If so, listen to my mental health musings and see what you think.

As free-will beings with complete free agency over what we choose to think about, I think you would agree that most folks’ thinking is downright awful. It’s not negative here and there, it’s awful, if not cruel. We berate ourselves, judge ourselves, analyze our every move and generally pick ourselves apart. We are often our own worst enemy. We focus on everything that might be wrong with us. We chastise ourselves for not being thin or attractive enough or sexy or handsome or pretty. We level unfair and unjust criticism regarding anything and everything. Instead of embracing who we are and who God made us to be, we look for flaws and imperfections. And that encompasses our flesh only. We focus on the things we don’t like about ourselves or at minimum the things we have foolishly decided we don’t like about ourselves. It never dawned on us that all of the negativity we have assigned to ourselves did not come from us first, but originated elsewhere. No man or woman naturally dislikes themselves. Instead, they have been talked into those thoughts by forces seeking only to steal and to kill and to destroy. This kind of thinking is sick and only serves to further the sickness. We wonder why we have so many mental health issues yet never consider the cruelty we level upon ourselves day by day. No one forces us to think the way we do, but instead we are choosing what and how we think. We cooperate with it and often without a fight. If you are not for you, how can you expect anything else? How could you ever win in a world that opposes you if you do not support your own self. Yet onward you march clinging to falsehoods and lies because someone told you so. Are you really that bad? Or is it something you have been persuaded of either by public opinion, or social media or those people closest to you?

If you want to have a healthy body, you have to choose the things that promote good health. You cannot carry around loads of excess weight, nor can you feed your body poisons or substances that make you sick. To get your body healthy you have to take the steps that promote good health. If you don’t do anything, nothing will happen. That doesn’t make you a victim, it means you decided not to exert the effort required. Similarly, your mental health requires the same level of attention. It does matter what you think about. Carrying around the thousandfold baggage of yesterday impedes your progress. Feeding on angry thoughts, frustrated thoughts, critical or condemnatory thoughts doesn’t make you better, it makes you ill. You have to change what it is you have been feeding on. What are you watching on TV? What information have you been digesting into your soul? What you read, what you see, what you look at does matter. That’s not to say that all of TV is bad or everything you see online is evil. But, you still have to pay attention. Most of the deception that occurs happens day by day during mindless and empty thinking. If you aren’t willing to direct your thinking, something else will. Change what it is you are thinking. Stop opposing yourself. Stop cooperating in opposing yourself by drawing terrible conclusions and thinking the worst about yourself. You are the only you, you have and to constantly participate in opposing yourself is crazy and makes you crazy.

As I muse on the importance of mental health, as someone with a similar mind and similar tendencies, I can’t help but to lament on how easily you and I have been led to to the wrong assumptions concerning ourselves. Not everyone cares about what is right and in doing right, so how insane is it for us to find ourselves unworthy as members of the group that cares? Surely something else is involved, something that seeks that which is wrong over that which is right. How slow we have been to realize what is behind that persuasion. You and I are in a fight and we can only win when we make the effort to think as God says to think. Contrary thoughts and contrary feelings are no guarantee for what is true. We are all imperfect creatures and God does not require perfection from us. Instead He requires that we control the one thing we can control and that is our thoughts. Think healthy thoughts. Allow yourself to be a human and as such experience your humanity. When you are wrong it is always apparent. Learn from it and let it go; for goodness sakes, let it go. Every wrong thing you and I ever did we did because of the influence of evil and we would not have done so otherwise. To allow evil, the source of our errors, to accuse of the evil it engendered is the ultimate deception. Likewise, to persist in thoughts that serve only to oppose us, coming from us and directed to us is insane. They are your thoughts and they are my thoughts. We can control them and we must control them if we want to protect our mental health.

It really does not matter where you have been or what you have done in the past. It doesn’t even matter what you did yesterday. What matters is what you choose to do with your mind in the moments called now. If you want to have a healthy mind you have to feed it healthy thoughts. Quit dragging around in the misty flats and get up on the high road. Stop feeling sorry for yourself or lamenting your life choices up to this point. God functions in the now and can help you in the now. Take control of that unruly mind of yours and see how quickly things turn around for the better. It is your mind and it is your life. These are mental health musings worth thinking about. Live who God made you to be.

Just some good thoughts…

Barking Up the Wrong Tree…

On By Papa TonyIn ThoughtLeave a comment

00600640_1cfab8e5705ade4c407fcd6b966006c0_arc614x376_w735_us1One thing we all have in common as human beings is the desire to find things that make us happy. If you think about, we are all on a quest for happiness. And, far too many people seem to be unable to find it. It is probably the most written about subject in the whole world. Some folks think happiness exists as a direct result of their financial means. Others claim it is the direct result of extreme poverty and stripping yourself from all the entanglements of the world. Some say it is found in nature, while others want to experience it in the city. No matter where you find it, one thing we all agree on is our need to have it. So, when it comes to happiness, are you barking up the wrong tree?

The world we live in today or maybe those things behind the world seem to be well aware of our heartfelt desire to find happiness. As such, the world feeds us endless ideas about where and how we might get that happiness. Television shows promote a world where flawless beauty can be manufactured and purchased in order to “create” the perfect type. And once the perfect type is obtained it may be used to build incredible wealth through product offerings and appearances promising the same ability to obtain perfection. The stars live a dream life in dreamy locations complete with full time make up artists and staff that exist only to serve the needs of the exalted ones. They fly on private jets to exotic locations on a whim with unlimited resources that never run dry. And while these programs do provide a level of entertainment, they also paint a false portrayal of happiness. Like movie stars, it is a world of make believe. It sends a faulty message that promises something it does not actually provide. That is not to say that everyone in these situations is wrong or evil, but rather that the message portrayed to the world (by the world) is not true. True happiness is not found through fame and fortune, though the messages seek to convince us otherwise. What the world offers will always be found a counterfeit. It is a surface expectation that produces only a superficial result. It is barking up the wrong tree.

Social media feeds us an endless array of images designed to make us seek the wrong things. Money, or the love of it, rules the world. We define success primarily by the amount of money and subsequent influence an individual has been able to obtain. We conclude rich people have “made it.” We think that money can solve any problem. We say, he who has the gold makes the rules! But, sadly, money alone is never the answer. The answer is being able to get our needs met. We do actually need money and I’m guessing that we likely need more money than we might actually have. Having enough money and having the discretion to make choices or engage in certain activities is vitally important to our happiness. No choice is not happy. Scraping along in the world unable to get the things we want is not happiness. Spending our time doing things we loathe in order to get money is not happiness. Having every need that comes up becoming a catastrophe due to not having enough money is not happiness. Thus, we actually do need money and maybe more than we think. But, money alone will at some point cause us to fall short of our real happiness. Seeking to be rich is always barking up the wrong tree.

Happiness is not something to be obtained, it is something to be enjoyed in our hearts. The perfect partner will not be able to make you happy unless you are already happy yourself. The perfect job, the perfect house, the perfect circumstances, the perfect relationship all work only to produce a temporary happiness because they do not contain the actual essence of happiness. Happiness is always the result of having your needs met and as your needs change so will your requirements for happiness. Whenever you rely on another person or obtaining certain things in order to find happiness, you will sooner or later come up short. You work so hard to obtain the perfect house and then what? Once you get what you so ardently desired, then what? Happiness, enduring happiness has to be much deeper than that. Life has to be more than acquiring things and gathering up the most toys before you die. The pursuit of happiness by trying to get stuff is barking up the wrong tree.

God as the creator of life has built into all of us a desire to find out about Him. Whether we be simply curious or spiritually starving, all of us have a desire to know Him. In our hearts, we instinctively know there is more to this life than we may have imagined. We seek a universal goodness that guided our hearts when we were children. We dream of a life, an existence, that is totally secure and taken care of and is lacking nothing. We long for the carefree days of our youth when we were truly happy. We want the liberty and the freedom to do as we please. We want life where we do not have to be afraid and can be sure we will be safe and protected no matter what. In fact, many folks seek wealth in order to experience this reality only to find out it doesn’t work. We as a people have never connected the dots that He (God) is our happiness. We have been looking for love in all the wrong places. We have foolishly tried to provide for ourselves what only He could provide for us. We worry and fret and seek and strive to find safety and peace and rest. We have never considered that we are trying to find Him in material things or in money or in things. Even our relationships are centered in Him and without Him cannot be fulfilled. He is all that we could ever need and He is the solution to every thing that has ever gone wrong, the answer to every question. We miss Him because the world has convinced us otherwise and our experience of life has confirmed it. But, what if we are wrong? What if we have barked up the wrong trees long enough that we know something is missing? What if our system of trial and error has exhausted us and we have sought yet not been able to find? What if our happiness and blessedness in this life comes from Him and from Him alone? God as our Father wants to teach us and help us and guide us. He wants us to be happy with a happiness that is not dependent upon circumstances or favorable conditions. He wants to be our all in all in every conceivable way. To know Him is to love Him and He is the first place for which to expend our efforts. He is the only tree.

Just some good thoughts…

Can You See It?

On By Papa TonyIn Thought7 Comments

believeI often reference the process of believing God when I write my blogs and I began to wonder if people really understood what it means to believe God. Believing is one of the most simple, natural things in the world. It is not some magical mind activity that we employ when we have a need, nor is it the power of the mind which some erroneously purport. Instead believing is a prerequisite to receiving anything from God. In fact, it is the necessary ingredient in order to bring any good things into our lives. People believe everyday and remain unaware of it. If believing is the key to receiving, then it behooves us all to learn how to believe. In this I ask, can you see it?

Believing is something that all humans do and the result of it can be found in the circumstances of our lives. People that expect to prosper, do prosper despite their upbringing, their education or social status. People that have escaped extreme poverty have done so because they believed they could. Believing is a principle that cannot be broken. Fear is also a form of believing, but it is believing in reverse. Instead of an expectation of blessings and goodness, fear is an expectation for negative things to happen. Fear only produces negative results. What you fear in your heart will manifest itself in your life. If you are afraid of a disease, not just wary of it or uncomfortable about it’s possibility, but truly afraid of it and you incubate those thoughts long enough, you will get that which you have greatly feared, not because God doesn’t love you, but because the principle of believing has already been set. The admonition to fear not is found on the pages of the Bible more than 5,000 times. That should arrest our attention! You and you alone set the limits of your believing. If you believe you can, you can and if you believe you can’t, you can’t. In both instances you are correct. Often in life people think they were born or predetermined to enjoy or not enjoy a certain station in life. They foolishly conclude that prosperity and good things are reserved for other people. Sadly, their expectation has been set by their own hearts; their own expectations. Believing is the reason some people are successful and some people are not. Believing is the reason certain folks live in relative safety while others suffer one calamity after another. God has not decided this for you, you have. God’s will is that you believe Him in order to receive His promises to you. Did you know there are over 900 promises in the Bible for you and for me? Despite our sincerity, God will not and cannot override our free will. Human beings have no power of the mind as I mentioned before, but they do have the power to decide what they will and will not believe. Can you see it?

The how of believing is really quite simple. Believing is a decision we make from our hearts, greatly influenced by the thoughts we choose to think about the most. The world and the great media machine and social media platforms work hard to shape our believing. All day long we are bombarded with images and ideals and are led to form the wrong conclusions. The world, a metaphor for evil at work in the world, informs us of what we can and cannot have. God’s Word also tells us what we can have and it will always be found to be in direct contradiction to what the world is reporting. Thus believing positively is our responsibility and our right as the rightful owners of our own free will. Believing is a verb and, grammar fans, always involves action. If we believe something is going to happen, good or bad, our corresponding actions will align themselves with whatever it is we are believing. If we believe God is going to do something to help us, we will naturally be looking for the help or the solution. If we say we believe God will help us, but do nothing to find that help, we are not believing. We are simply mentally assenting to the truth instead of living the truth. Living the truth means expecting God to do what He said He would do and not stopping until we get what we are believing to get. Again, believing is not difficult or requiring mental gymnastics. If you believe, you act! Expectation is a key you hold to every lock. Believing has no limits as God who honors it in every case has no limits. God is not deciding how much money you can have, your health status, where you can live or even what kind of car you can drive. You are! If God decided what people could have or how far they could go, He would be a respecter of persons and He is no respecter of persons. All of us can believe including the unbelievers and believing equals receiving including those unbelievers. When you observe some dastardly person prospering it is because they also believe and as such, receive. The principle has no respect for who someone is, but rather what they believe. Can’t you see it?

Finally, if you cannot even get your own mind to entertain the idea of getting something you need, you will not be able to receive it. Our minds come complete with imaginations which we control. The reason Jesus told us to have the heart of a child is because children have unlimited and unrestrained imaginations. They can picture what they want, believe and thus can receive it. You too can follow this same process. Our minds work in images. How easy it is for us to picture disasters and negatives, yet how infrequently do we take the time to picture good things? As easy as it is for us to conjure up images of defeat and loss, is as easy as it is for us to “imagine” good. You choose the pictures in your mind. Why not picture yourself having what you need and want? Can you see it? Can’t you picture yourself getting the good job, having plenty of money, enjoying health and having a loving relationship with those you hold most dear? You have to believe first before you see it which means you have to be able to see it in your heart and mind before it comes to pass in your life. Bryce Harper saw himself where he is today, playing in the World Series, (Go Phillies) long before it came to pass in his life. Yet now he gets to live it and enjoy it. Can you see it? The pictures you hold in your mind are a form of believing and there is no limit to what you can imagine. Determine now to begin seeing things you want in your life which serves to root out things you do not want in your life. It’s your mind. Can you see it?

As a great man once wrote, “How have you mentally pictured yourself for the past week, month, year, ten years? The picture that you carry of yourself with clearness and concern is what you are.” Can you see it? You are deciding how your life will turn out by the things you are believing in your heart. If you cannot get your mind to see good then you will have trouble receiving good as you determine what those things will be. Learn to believe positively. Rid yourself of fear whenever and wherever it shows up. Don’t keep waiting for your life to get better, believe (act) for it to get better. Give God something to work with. When you believe God you unleash His unlimited power into your situations. You can have everything you ever wanted if you will only believe. Can you see it?

Just some good thoughts…