Tag: the spiritual competition

Discouraged?

On By Papa TonyIn ThoughtLeave a comment

discouragedAre you dealing with a situation right now that calls aloud for remedy, yet you have no solution? Is there something that you really, really need and thus far have been unable to get it? Are you dealing with a health challenge that you can’t quite seem to get on top of? Are you having trouble in your relationship and as much as you’ve tried, you cannot seem to get it right? And, if you are single, are you looking for love in apparently all the wrong places? Or, has your life as a whole gone in a direction that you never intended, much less expected? As painful as these things are, they are all part of the human experience. No one gets very far in life without experiencing at least a portion of these challenges. While you are in the midst of them it is very easy to lose hope. You pray and pray yet nothing seems to happen. You put forth your best efforts and nothing seems to change. The more you fixate on the problem, the less answers you find. Are you discouraged my friend?

It may surprise you to know this, but God is never behind any of the difficulties you experience. God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. As such, He does not bring you pain and suffering. He doesn’t bring you to it in order to take you through it as the religious pundits proclaim. He isn’t teaching you an arduous lesson. He is never the cause of any delays nor a hinderance in you getting the things that you need. He does not cause sickness and He does not bring about an early death for mysterious reasons we are unable to comprehend. He isn’t punishing you for your sins or punishing you for any reason. He does not withhold blessings in order to force you to get right with Him. All of these cleverly devised lies are simply a cloak of deception for the one really behind our troubles; all of our troubles. As the famous movie, “The Usual Suspects” explained, the greatest trick the devil ever played was convincing the world that he did not exist! Being ignorant of Satan’s devices is the number one reason that people suffer which leads to assigning negatives and evil to God. I can assure you that if God was behind any of your troubles, there would be no remedy. But God is not the cause, ever. In the great drama of life there is an ever present contest going on between good and evil. God seeks to do good for people, bless them, prosper them, deliver them and heal them, while the adversary seeks only to steal and to kill and to destroy. Every problem, every trouble, every pain, every loss you have ever experienced came directly or indirectly as a result of evil that is in the world today. In a perfect world where there was no evil, everything you ever needed would come to pass quickly and easily. But, we do not live in a perfect world and the world we live in is ruled by evil. As such, we are all going to be faced with challenges and we are all going to get knocked down at times. The first step in the recovery of everything you have ever lost or been unable to receive thus far is to understand that your difficulty does not ever come from God. Don’t be discouraged my friend, for better days are ahead.

Once you are clear that your troubles have not originated with God who is love, you are now in a position to believe God to get the results that you need. You need God’s love and God’s power in your life. Without God life is a cruelty doled out in perpetual lumps leading eventually to your own demise. A great man used to say, “Discouragement is a sin, it’s trick of the adversary.” The reason discouragement is a sin is because it foolishly concludes God cannot do anything to alleviate the suffering. It falsely proclaims the power of evil is greater than the power of good. Every time you and I have felt discouraged, we have been deceived. We have believed a lie from the father of lies. Years ago, while trying to deal with a very difficult situation, I found myself angry with God for moving so slowly to alleviate my sufferings. I told Him I was no longer going to be His representative and some other choice things that His grace and mercy overlooked. You see, I wasn’t clear concerning the reality of my situation. I failed to recognize that the suffering I endured was not due to a failing on the part of God, but rather a failing in understanding the spiritual competition and my personal adversary at work to make my life miserable. Things certainly did not improve overnight, but eventually I was able to overcome with God’s help and kindness and love. The same holds true for you. You can find the answers you need, the deliverance you seek, the healing you need and anything else that is important for your own happiness and success. But sadly and unfortunately sometimes you have to fight. You aren’t fighting the devil himself, you are fighting the falsehoods he has been able to lodge inside your head. You are fighting the appearance of things that seem to contradict the promises of God. You are fighting against lies that position themselves as truth. My friend, stand against discouragement for God is on your side.

It is not God’s will for us to have to live this way but it is a byproduct of evil that has been allowed to infiltrate our world. Until that great day in the future, we have to learn how to compete in the spiritual competition. We have to learn how to believe God and claim our rightful authority He has given us in Christ. We have to fight for what is ours! God will do all that He has promised us and more if we will remain faithful to His Word and His precious promises to us. Don’t allow yourself to feel angry with God as He is incapable of evil. If you are going to be angry with anyone be angry with the evil that is behind your every trouble. Rise up in your mind and in your heart and become determined to see the results you desire. Get serious about it! When you have a need, the reason God says to keep knocking and keep seeking is not because He didn’t hear you the first time, but rather because you are standing against an opponent placing obstacles in your path. You are never being tempted by God, you are being tempted by evil to surrender; to give up on your hopes and dreams. Don’t you let them win! God will do what He said He would do. “If you do not fold, you will not lose.” Are you discouraged my friend? Well, tomorrow is a new day to get back in the fight. God will not let you lose.

Just some good thoughts…

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Just Walk Away…

On By Papa TonyIn Thought5 Comments

You’ve probably been a part of a situation where someone wanted to draw you into their drama or to get you to fight about something. Then, because of the advice of a trusted friend or maybe through your own thought processes, you decide it’s not worth it and maybe you should just walk away. Many situations in life draw far more than their fair share of our attention and our focus when perhaps the best option might just have been to walk away. And sometimes even considering a situation or someone’s words or words bouncing around in your own head becomes your problem when you should have just walked away from those thoughts. Just walk away…

It has oft been repeated that where you place your attention, your life moves. And life, if you haven’t noticed by now, is chock full of little life suckers that appear like mosquitos nibbling away at your flesh, one irritation at a time. They don’t represent life threatening scenarios or circumstances demanding your full, focused attention. Instead they are most often represented in annoyances, aggravations and frustrations carefully placed to rob you of minutes and hours, then days and years. They surreptitiously steal your energy, your vitality, your life force. They are raindrops at your picnic, the blowing wind while you are fishing, the clouds at the beach. They move with such subtlety that you rarely see them coming, only to recognize them after their work is done, leaving you depleted and lacking your original enthusiasm. They contradict life by occupying it and busying it until there is no joy left in it. They are not worthy of your attention or your time and are best dealt with by refusal or simply your decision to walk away.

While life demands at times that we must fight, not every fight is worth fighting for. Some fights serve only to draw you into the mud also where both parties have to get dirty. Some fights don’t represent your cause, but another’s cause. Some fights are grounded in frivolity, not engendering sufficient reason. There is a fight worth your effort, unless that is, your energy has already been squandered on things that do not matter. How much time do we invest into things that do not matter? We allow words and opinions and judgments to push us off center, desperately defending ourselves against an idea or a concept that didn’t accurately represent us to begin with. Yet there we remain, rolling around on the pavement getting scuffed and bruised, wrestling with someone or something that didn’t really matter at all. Negative opinions and their associated judgment have never helped one person get better and never will. The only fight worth your time and effort is the fight between good and evil, whereby you do your part to choose the light and love and goodness in oppostion to a whole world full of darkness. The rest exists only to waste your precious time. Just walk away.

The great competition of life takes place in your mind. The great fight is fought between your ears. You win and lose by the thoughts you choose to entertain. Wrong thoughts, negative thoughts, contrary thoughts, fearful thoughts, condemnatory thoughts, self deprecating thoughts, accusatory thoughts, guilty thoughts, threatening thoughts, all carry within them seeds of failure, that in order to grow must be held onto and cultivated. Your consideration is the cultivation. They appear as reasonable in an appeal to your reason. They display themselves as truth but only have a kernel of truth in them. And no matter their appearance, their poison remains within. The more you sip, the more poisoned you become. And if you drink enough of them, they will kill you. These thought enemies appear harmless and beg for further inspection, consideration. And like the cat that curiosity killed, they clamor for your attention. They itch and ask you to scratch them. They tempt you and seduce you for the opportunity to remain, to exist, to have a place. Once you have given them a place they spread out and occupy, fixing little strongholds, seeking stronger attachments until eventually they bring down the entire edifice. And all along while you fight and struggle and reason and worry, desperately trying to figure it out, their hold is strengthened and permitted and allowed. It never dawned on you that your solution was simply just to walk away. Let them go. Stop your consideration of their potential reality and just walk away.

Your time on Earth is limited. Your opportunities for an impact are finite. You have one and only one shot at this thing. You have got one life and not for very long. You owe it to yourself to maximize your existence. Your life demands that you learn where to place your efforts and when to walk away. There are a million worthy causes, but for you only one worthy cause. At the end of your days, you won’t remember all of the petty aggravations and frustrations. You won’t think of all the time you spent in useless worry and consideration over some awful thing that never appeared. You won’t wish you had fought more and challenged more and set people straight. Instead you will reflect on all the good things you enjoyed and the time you spent rightfully on the things that really mattered. You will remember the people you loved and the people that loved you. You will rejoice over those times you got it right and helped people and lifted them up; your time spent on worthy efforts and the time you invested that impacted lives. You will hoped to have left a legacy of love and kindness and goodness that no-one will forget. And finally, you’ll be so eternally grateful for the times you had the good sense to just walk away and no longer squander your precious life on the things not worthy of your time and effort. Thank God you had the good sense to just walk away!

Just some good thoughts…

Why am I so Tired?

On By Papa TonyIn ThoughtLeave a comment

6-medical-reasons-why-you-might-be-feeling-tired-all-the-time-136425477714502601-180228094029If you are like the rest of us, there are times in your life when you feel perpetually tired and worn out. Often we attribute these feelings to not getting enough sleep or maybe because we are getting older. But, what if there is another reason for those pervasive feelings of fatigue? What if there is a hidden cause you have never even considered before? Are you weary with it all? Then, keep reading!

All of us have a finite amount of energy that we utilize throughout a day. And though we probably have more energy than we realize, we all experience weariness at times. That weariness manifests itself in a lack of zest for life and steals away our ability to solve our problems, ending in frustration and defeat. Our difficulty lies in not understanding the source of our vexation.

All of us compete day by day in the great competition of life. This competition takes place in our minds; specifically in our thoughts. The trial confronting us all lies in a battle between good and evil. It doesn’t matter if you are a Christian, a Buddhist, a Muslim or an unbeliever, the reality is that if you are alive, you are in the contest. An adamant disbelief in spiritual powers doesn’t take away those powers, it simply leaves you as prey unable to defend yourself appropriately. The contest rages on. Every day and every moment of the day, you have a choice concerning which thoughts you will entertain and which thoughts you will discard. Failure to discard the wrong thoughts, thoughts originating in evil, however subtle they may be, consume your energy rendering you worn out and unable to resist.

The effect of your thoughts on your life is perhaps the most misunderstood thing in the world. Thoughts are not just chemical reactions taking place in your brain, but are in fact the very basis of the life you live, be it bliss or be it misery. Your thoughts form the foundation of your beliefs which in turn produce the reality you are experiencing. Good thoughts, good life. Bad thoughts, bad life. That’s not to say that good thoughts are ignorance or refusal to acknowledge the difficulties of life, but rather deliberate decisions we make regardless of the difficulties, the trials, the challenges. All men are confronted, pushed and prodded, at times with great severity. But in order to prevail, you have to fight back! Failure to fight back and confront the evil, or worse to ignore it or refuse to acknowledge it, will lead ultimately to your eventual demise. There are few things more critical to your success than your thought life.

Spending the day entertaining thoughts of negativity, sour or should I say soured attitudes; cynicism and the like, serve only to suck away your valuable life source. They are carnivorous cancers eating up all they encounter. They are sandpaper in your machinery eventually grinding your life to a halt. Have you ever noticed how much life slows down while you are engulfed in worry over some negative possibility? Sadly, we all live in a world drowning in fear of the next terrible thing that might enter into our lives. Whether it be a disease or loss of income or some unexpected catastrophe, all of us find ourselves threatened day in and day out. Yet somehow we fail to recognize these slights to our existence and continue on as if it is normal. “That’s just the way it is” they say; “That’s just how life works!” Thus I submit to you it is not the way life works! It is an aberration of life.  It is a deformity. It is the unfortunate outcome of a world ignorant of spiritual realties.

Your requirement in the competition, should you decide to start competing, is to take control of your thoughts with the emphasis being “your thoughts.” You have to make the decision to stop entertaining all the nonsense that surrounds you. You must stop accepting the notion that life is already fixed with you powerless to change the outcome. This will take a great toll on your ego and your insistence that you already know, but do it you must. The consideration of evil, in whatever form it assaults you, will invariably deplete your energy, rendering you worn out and unable to fight back. How could you hope to fight back after already accepting the lie? You are defeated before you begin. You are tied to the corners of the ring with your opponent free to bash your face in. Instead, by controlling your thoughts, or at minimum endeavoring to control your thoughts, you are taking away the means of access to your heart the enemy has long since enjoyed. You are saying that life is not all the disaster you’ve been convinced of and that there is a better way. You are demanding your energy and your power back!

There is no human alive that completely gives up on themselves but that they’ve first endured a long fight that has totally worn them out. Human beings are resilient and need simply an opportunity to get back up and get back into the fight. This is your opportunity. Learn for yourself what are “good” thoughts and then learn how to compete. Your victory will come about more by what you refuse to think about than what you do actually think about. Spiritual contests can only be won by spiritual prowess which means engendering the good in order to beat the bad. Your human ability is no match for your opponent, but once you begin to act in the manner which God advises, you will find not only your energy, but unlimited power at your disposal!

Are you tired, my friend? Why not get tired of being defeated and learn how to compete? You are worth that, aren’t you?

I love you…

Just some “good” thoughts…