As you remember the birth of Jesus may you experience His presence and glory in your heart and life.
Just because the living Jesus is invisible as the Holy Spirit, doesn’t mean that we should ignore His presence most of the time.
Christmas sermons are like lectures about riding a bicycle. If you don’t get on and peddle the bike, the lectures do little good.
Humans don’t make perfect decisions. That’s why we need forgiveness and mercy.
Christmas often has little memory of what really matters.
When jolly
And melancholy
Volley
For your mind,
Grab the jolly,
Not the melancholy.
To narcissize
Your thinking
Is to minimize
Your happiness.
Our emotions give us feedback that tells us how well we are managing our thoughts, desires, and behaviors.
Thinking can be great fun if you move beyond critical analysis and begin to ponder yourself into a state of wonder.
Inspiring thoughts will make you much happier than tormenting thoughts. If you search you can find inspiration all around.
When you’re locked in confusion and logic doesn’t help, open your heart and read something inspirational.
Your inner IT system: Your brain is the hardware; your mind is the software; and you are the programmer.
An unmonitored mind picks up much malware that distorts it and displays many disruptive pop-ups.
Pride causes us to be unaware of our unworthiness and makes us believe that it’s unnecessary that we be forgiven.
We’re usually ungrateful for good things we think we deserve, but grateful when we believe they’re undeserved.
Simple acts and words of kindness can revitalize someone’s weary heart.
A lack of warmth (genuine heart-connection) between people leads to many relational problems.
When people are unkind
It’s because
They’re allowing
Negativity in their mind.
We don’t need
To change geography
In order to be
Internally free.
Let Jesus
Lighten your load
And enlighten the road.
Christian mysticism isn’t mythical. It’s clear vision that comes from God’s aha moments that reveal internal and eternal reality.
When you mix politics and religion, you get religitics. Religitics believes that government should impose some religious views on people.
It’s hard to trust in politics (human kingdoms) and trust in God’s kingdom at the same time. They tend to be competitors. The goal of true religion isn’t to make people behave. It’s to connect them to the living God so He can heal and change their heart and their behavior.
Religion can be imposed on people, but faith comes by inspiration and revelation. Faith looks to God for answers; politics looks to government and politicians for answers.
Politics is about governmental power and coercion. Religion should be about spiritual power and compassion. Politics can quickly distract religion from a God-focus. Religion can inflate a politician’s ego and sense of self-righteousness.
Government forces people to obey. It’s based on coercion. Religion should be voluntary, not forced. Politics tries to rule people externally. The living Jesus wants to rule them from within.
When people feel their religious faith is weak, they sometimes look to politicians as a way to make themselves feel powerful. When politics and faith are intermingled, some people begin to act like all their political views are God-given.
Jesus set a boundary between religion and politics when He said: “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s.”
A country belongs to all of its citizens. It doesn’t just belong to those of a particular religion or a particular political party.
Did the risen Jesus compare gatherings of His followers to the Jewish Menorah? I believe He did so in the book of Revelation.
The apostle (sent one) named John, who had been one of Jesus’ closets disciples, had a vision where he saw the living, resurrected Jesus, full of His eternal glory, standing in the midst of seven golden lampstands. Jesus told John that the lampstands were seven ekklesias (gatherings of Christ-followers meeting under the direct headship of the living Jesus, commonly mistranslated into English as churches).
What were those lampstands? The Hebrew word for lampstand is menorah. God told Moses to make a special lampstand (menorah) for the Tabernacle which was later used in the Jewish Temple. Moses was told to make it out of gold and that it was to have 6 lamp branches plus a center lamp (7 total). Originally it was 7 oil lamps made together out of gold, not a candelabra.
The book of 1 Samuel calls it “the lamp of God.” The Bible describes it in Exodus 21:35-40 and Zechariah 4:2.
When Jesus identified the menorahs that surround Him as ekklesias He revealed some of the characteristics of gatherings of His followers as the body of Christ.
These observations are not just theological or theoretical. I have personally experienced them hundreds of times. They are literally manifested when ekklesia meets and allows the risen Jesus in their midst to be the leader of the gathering.
Every state of mind Isn't beneficial. Some are detrimental. It's not judgmental To know the difference.
To be universally liked
Is an unattainable goal.
It’s better to seek
Peace of soul.
People often frown
When they’re bogged down
By the thoughts and feelings
They carry around.
If we try denial
For a while,
It often becomes
An ongoing lifestyle.
If you feel a need to be unkind, don’t be unkind to people. Be unkind to the thoughts, feelings, and desires that are tormenting you.
No matter how strong they may feel, our thoughts, feelings, and desires aren’t impossible to control. Yesterday’s options may be gone, but if we search for them, today still offers many options for a better life.
What you see in the mirror isn’t as important as what you see in your heart. Wash your face, but also clean out your heart. The thoughts, feelings, and desires that you allow to freely stay within you will eventually assume control of you.
As humans, we discover that much that we desire, much that we’re drawn to, isn’t good for us. When you’re being inwardly assaulted by thoughts, feelings, or desires, resist with the same effort you’d resist physical assault.
Hurt and angry people try to find comfort by blaming others. True freedom comes by taking responsibility for our own feelings.
Unconditional approval destroys discernment and embraces both good and evil equally. When I’m unaware that some of my thoughts, feelings, & desires are unaligned with truth and reality, I’m deceived.
Insecurity causes people to feel a need to verbally attack anyone who disagrees with them. If you can’t disagree with someone without being mean, you have a bigger problem than you think they have.
I find time continually sailing by. I watch the future pass by me, and the present moment move into the past.
It’s time for those who love Jesus to be freed from human religious control and to boldly follow and obey God’s Spirit. Let the elders (older Christians) return to their first love and go all out for Jesus! To “seek first the kingdom of God” is to aggressively pursue and surrender to the presence of King Jesus in your daily life.
Jesus is my inner mentor. The more I focus on, listen to and obey Him, the more love, joy, peace and other fruit of the Spirit I have.
It’s not time
To hide God’s light
When people say
It’s alright
To do whatever you feel.
When the living Jesus
Is at hand
Church won’t go
As we have planned.
There’s a rare kind of learning, beyond remembering and analyzing, that reveals the wisdom to live free of negative emotions and self-harming thoughts. Although we learn much information, if we neglect to learn how to successfully manage our thoughts, feelings, and desires, we won’t be truly happy.
Learning many facts but failing to learn how to create an inner, mental and emotional environment of peace and joy, falls far short of a full education. Many people have never learned how to be attentive to and contemplative of what goes on in their own heart and mind, to discern what is helpful and what is harmful.
Harmful thoughts, feelings, and desires abound inside us. If we don’t learn how to protect our heart and mind from them, they torment and manipulate us. True education involves learning to live better by managing our thoughts, desires, and emotions.
Don’t waste your anger. Get angry at the thoughts, feelings, and desires that are tormenting you.
When we disobey our conscience, it sounds the alarm of guilt, warning us that we’ve gone off track. When we let our pride imprison and silence our conscience, we’re in trouble.
Repentance isn’t a religious thing. It’s real. It releases us from inner bondage, renews, and regenerates. A full education teaches us about that.
Our self-will that refuses to surrender to and submit to the living God is the cause of many of our problems. We can learn to escape inner turmoil and to daily experience Christ’s peaceful stillness of mind and heart. Inner freedom can’t be systematized or programmed.
Cruelty doesn’t have to involve actions. It can come forth in words alone.
Cruel words breed more cruel words and will eventually lead to cruel actions.
Words that attempt to justify cruelty are cruel.
Being “cruelty free” involves avoiding cruel words.
An educated mind can be cruel, but an educated heart cringes at the thought of cruelty and strives to be kind instead of cruel.
To refuse to listen to people’s pain and write it off as irrelevant is a form of cruelty.
To overlook cruelty, to be cruelty-blind, is a sign of emotional weakness.
If cruelty to animals is a bad thing, then cruelty to any form of human life is also evil.
Silence in the face of cruelty is cruel.
Anger, personal pain, and/or self-righteousness are no justification for cruel words or actions.
No political system has a monopoly on cruelty. It’s a part of human nature that we must strive to overcome.
When light-skin/dark-skin was defined as good-skin/bad-skin, history unleashed terrible cruelty.
Before you say or do something from an agitated or annoyed state of mind, ask yourself, am I about to be cruel?
We too often
Let life be annoying,
When it’s something
We should be enjoying.
Being alive gives you an ongoing opportunity to adjust and optimize the settings on your thoughts and feelings. An analytical mind sees little meaning in life, but a deeply happy heart dances with destiny.
I see sadness as a warning light that I’m mismanaging my thoughts and emotions. I believe I’m designed to be happy. Being alive is vastly under appreciated. That’s because being alive without feeling alive gets boring.
To feel alive, ponder. To ponder is to wonder with your mind and to appreciate all the inspiration that is both around you and within you. Try pondering this: The future is never far away; the end of this sentence is the future of its beginning.
Living can be merely existing, or we can make it much more than that. Make your life more. Living from the heart is where we find meaning and purpose. Search for: Elephants INspiring The Room.
I believe that Christ came to give our dead and fallen world life. He can do the same with you, if you welcome His presence within.
Cold air shows people’s breath. A cold attitude shows the hardness of their heart.
Until hope happens inside of you, you haven’t really been inspiried. Information’s not enough. Let inspiration and insight pitch in to brighten your inner world.
If you’ve ever seen someone glow with happiness, it’s a rare, but amazing sight! It’s contagious and makes you breathe in joy. An open heart and a guarded mind enables human connection and helps avoid deception.
Breathe the air
Of hope,
Not despair.
Dare to show people
That you care.
Our purpose of life
Isn’t just to breathe,
But to conceive
Ideas that relieve
Burdens.
Breathe in
Fresh air,
Breath out
Despair.
Without trying,
Or thinking
Or noticing,
We all consume our share
Of air.
If breathing required wisdom, we’d be doing it wrong, thinking we are right, and telling others how they need to do it. Unconditional love always cares unconditionally, but it doesn’t always approve.
I physically breathe what I can’t see, and it keeps me alive. I spiritually breathe by taking God’s invisible air inside of me.
To open your mind and accept every thought that comes your way (from inside and outside) guarantees ongoing inner turmoil.
If all your ducks aren’t in a row, Elephants INspiring The Room can help you realign them.
Positive expectation
Leads to
Joyful anticipation.
What are you
Hopeful about?
To expect disappointment
Is to be disappointed
Before anything disappointing
Happens.
Looking ahead
With dread
Or anxiety
Is worry.
I call
Looking ahead
With hope
Worglee.
If you hesitate
To anticipate
Good things,
You”ll miss out
On the joy
Of hope.
Your thoughts aren’t hidden. They show in your face, your attitude, your words, and your behaviors.
To neglect to anticipate anything positive and exciting makes the future look boring. Anticipating happiness and joy makes you happy and joyful now.
Every human heart contains both good and evil. For a happy life, we need to struggle to activate the one and overcome the other. Any society that continually trains people to deactivate their conscience will eventually collapse into chaos.
When your thoughts start going in a bad direction, interrupt them before they bog you down. The thoughts that you often repeat in your mind active your emotions. Changing your thinking will gradually change how you feel.
Your mind follows what you feed it. Your emotions follow the evaluations your mind makes. Desires, when obeyed, grow stronger. When consistently resisted they weaken.
When I anticipate good reactions from people, I behave differently toward them than if I anticipate bad reactions. When I anticipate kindness and goodwill, people are almost always nice to me.
Humans are built to connect with each other, heart-to-heart, with kindness and compassion. The lack of such connection creates much loneliness and despair. Our imaginings and assumptions about other people often cause us more pain than reality.
Free Gas for Your Think Tank -- Short Reflections, Lasting Encouragement 