pause – justsomegoodthoughts

Have you ever felt worn down like maybe you have run out of energy? Or maybe you are having a good day and something comes up apparently out of nowhere that seems to zap away your strength? Perhaps you just feel bored with life and can’t seem to find anything that turns you on. These sorts of things are common to human beings and we usually dismiss them as a product of certain circumstances such as not getting enough sleep or maybe being a little dehydrated. And while these types of things may be a factor in how you feel, what if there is more to it than that? We are all in a competition in life between good and evil and because of that truth, certain things are working behind the scenes to shape our existence and convince us of things that are not actually true. These forces work in the circumstances of life to discourage us and steal away our happiness. This competition takes place in our minds. When given access to us, in particular our thoughts, we begin to lose in the competition. For this reason, we need to win the day!

What does it mean to win the day? God designed life to be lived in day-tight compartments. In particular He said, you will have enough trouble with the difficulties of today that you don’t need to start rashly adding on the cares of tomorrow. The troubles that accompany today are the competition. Winning the day means taking the time to focus on the day at hand and not allowing yourself to be taken down the wrong paths in that day, ending in defeat. In other words, take the time and make the time to get things straight. When you feel good and suddenly find yourself agitated, something happened to you. Don’t dismiss it. When you feel as if life has lost its purpose and you are just going along to get along, something has gotten into your thinking (usually fear) and is calling aloud for remedy. These mental assaults which can be incredibly subtle, are endeavoring to work you over. Like thieves that creep in unawares, these thought bandits are hell bent on interfering with your experience of life. People waste days and months and even years wrapped up in some lying notion always predicting something dreadful in their future. But, they are lies from the author and originator of lies. These forces have been so successful in robbing people of life because most people don’t take the time and effort necessary to take them on. Unfortunately, most people aren’t even aware of where their thoughts are going and as such, live according to the dictates of another. Winning the day means first hearing the foul thoughts, then countering them with something that is true. You can do this and you must do this in order to win the day. It doesn’t so much matter where you have been, but instead where you want to go. When you find yourself miserable and defeated, chances are you have been losing and it is incumbent upon you to take a pause and set things in order. Win the moment, win the day.

It seems that people as a whole have been sort of tricked into looking inward when things go south on them instead of looking outward. Thinking you are the sole cause for every negative you encounter is a fool’s game. There is nothing wrong with you, despite your endless considerations. What is really wrong are the forces of evil working behind the scenes to bring you down. You are in a fight man. You are in a contest woman. It is neither neutral or benign. And it is certainly not just a matter of your perceptions which serves to remove the absolutes of good and evil and replace with them some kind of moving target no one can accurately identify. If you think it through a bit, thinking there is something wrong with you every time you feel down or lost or confused, negates the existence of spiritual forces that have surreptitiously led you to that conclusion. How can you be on top of the world yesterday and dazed and confused today? Indeed, something happened to you right between your ears and you didn’t catch it or address it. But, lest you lose all hope, there is something you can do about it. Win the day!

Sometimes I think we all need to slow down and get back in touch with our thoughts. Step off the treadmill where the rats are racing and slow yourself down. You owe it to yourself. When you are feeling off, give it some thought time and track down the culprit. Figure out what is assailing your thought life. I guarantee you behind the obvious there is something nagging at you, threatening you, accusing you and leading your mind away from the goodness of God to some other alternative. Take your mind and your thoughts back! Quit just accepting every ‘nutso’ thing that runs across your brainwaves. In the end, I think you will quickly discover some fear threat, some outlandish accusation about who you are, some rationale attempting to justify why you deserve whatever negative things are going on in your life. The claims of your personal adversary and mine are never true. You know, if there were no such thing as evil, something to look forward to in the future, your days would move along delightfully and with ease. You would feel good, do good and be full of joy and peace. But, today evil still exists and our duty in the competition is to fight back. God will help you my friend. Win the day!

If you want to live a good life you have to learn how to win in the competition. You win as you control your thinking and when you find it has gone south, you reign it back in again to where the blessings are. There is no sin in getting yanked off course, the sin is found when we refuse to fight back. Fight back and win. First win the moment you are in, then the next moments and eventually the day. Don’t add in the cares of tomorrow and for goodness sakes don’t waste time looking back. At the return of Christ, I wonder how much time God will spend showing us what was really behind our bad days and our good days. Slow down a bit and grab that unruly mind of yours and reign it back in. Find the promises of God that refute the lies and think those things instead. Your life, your happiness depends upon it. Win the day!

We live today in the culture of hurry. We want our food fast, our internet fast, our weight loss programs fast, our test results fast. We tend to seek out the quick fix, the shortcut. We don’t want to invest the time, just get it done, the sooner the better. Microwave beats stove top and temporary repairs are preferred over lasting solutions. We just don’t have the time to invest in doing things properly or the right way because we have to get to the next thing. Can’t we just pay a guy or order it on Amazon and get it done already? And while technological advances have certainly made life easier, we seem to have lost our ability to exercise a little patience. The best things in life always seem to take a little time. Do we even know anymore what it means to be patient?

If you have ever watched a craftsman at work, it becomes apparent rather quickly that there is always an element of time involved. The craftsman isn’t just trying to get the job done, but instead is seeking to get the job done where the result is perfect and beautiful and pleasing. People are willing to pay more for that person because the quality of the work speaks for itself. And as much as our frenetic world says otherwise, quality always makes the lasting impression. It’s quality, not quantity that we are after. The lowest bidder’s work generally reflects a lower quality because of the time and effort they are willing to exert on the task. If you pay less, you generally get less. The cheap clothing doesn’t last and for every dollar you save in your purchase, you pay for in terms of its longevity. It is better that you spend more on the front end than count on the bargain to stand the test of time.

In life, the best things take time. Relationships take time. Raising children takes time. Perfecting a skill takes time. Success takes time. Learning to live life the best way takes time. There are no shortcuts. Shortcuts always promise a faster result but fail to deliver, though they appear to do so at first. Whatever is easy generally isn’t worth it. That’s not to say that everything good is hard, but rather that good things require an investment on your part. Expecting good things without investing your own personal time and energy into those good things cannot fail but to produce loss. You may be able to count on the conveniences of technology to make things happen faster, but the real things in life; the most important things, require time and with time, patience.

Patience is a lost virtue in the helter-skelter of life today. We have been seduced by technology into thinking that there is always a way to obtain a result more quickly. We carry that mindset into our important life activities and expect a similar result. We seek to get the degree quickly in order to advance, but leave off the learning. We pursue important changes in our lives by employing the method that seems to get us there the fastest. We are all hat and no cowboy. We look good not by patient training and self control, but by the cosmetic surgeon’s scalpel. We want the diet plan that offers to burn the calories via a pill that requires neither exercise nor portion control. We want to have our cake and eat it too. In terms of our mental health, we don’t want to invest the time in discovering where our thinking patterns have gone astray, but instead seek for a diagnosis with its subsequent promised medication fix. And while medication is a beautiful addition to life, the goal was always that we arrived at the good place naturally, even if it took a little time. Modern advances certainly succeed in making life easier, but sometimes the ease and the convenience are not what we really need. It’s the pricks and the obstacles and the difficulties of life that really put us on our toes and awaken us to life’s more important lessons, as Emerson masterfully noted. Give a man a serious challenge to contend with and note how quickly he engages himself fully until a solution is at last found.

The reason we do not exhibit patience in life is that we have bought into the illusion that we have no time. We fail to recognize how forcefully we are being pushed and pulled towards activities that have little impact in helping us to live our best lives. We feel as if we don’t have time to think things through, much less the time required to actually solve our problems and make strides towards a brighter future. We are loathe to engage in something uncomfortable or new even if that new thing might serve to completely revolutionize our lives. Instead we go to work expending our best efforts for someone else and leave ourselves and our happiness undone. When we try something new or endeavor to move in a different direction, we feel that we don’t have the time or the energy to make the necessary changes though we only gave it a minimal try at best. Living this way, we soon find ourselves at the end of this brief life, full of regrets regarding the man or woman we always knew we could be. And all along all we had need of was a little patience. All we needed to do was step off the hamster wheel and take ourselves to account. We only needed to slow down a little and give our lives a little more consideration.

It’s never too late to begin practicing patience. Patience isn’t as concerned in getting the job done as it is in getting the job done properly. Patience knows that all good things take time and allots its time accordingly. Patience is required to live a successful life and to allow yourself the love and the space to get it right! Be patient with yourself and extend that same patience to everyone and every thing that you love. Be patient.

justsomegoodthoughts

Tag: pause

Win the Day!

Be Patient…