I love to express what I feel called to say. Writing helps me to open up my heart and do that. I hope that what I write helps you in some way. I hope it makes you think, encourages you, or inspires you. If it challenges you or if you disagree, I hope you know that I respect your right to have a different point of view.
To enjoy your interior life embrace accurate, helpful thoughts and reject inaccurate, harmful ones.The interior life is a flowing collage of consciousness, concepts, thoughts, emotions, ideas, desires, reasoning, conscience, etc.
“It’s my life.” If you want your life to be truly yours, you must take control of your inner world.
Psychology tries to understand the inner life through intellectual analysis and research done on groups of people. Perhaps a more effective way to understand the inner life is through observing your own interior experiences and conducting your own experiments of your own inner world.
There is much about you that’s not observable from the outside. That’s your interior life.When your inner intention doesn’t match your external behavior, that’s called hypocrisy.
People can do the same thing for different reasons. Their exterior life looks the same, but their interior life’s very different.
A chaotic interior life ignores and drowns out God’s “still, small voice.”We can strive to daily align our interior life with God or choose live it in rebellion against Him.An unmanaged interior life stays overgrown with weeds and is unwelcoming to God’s spiritual seeds.You can’t align your interior life with God without humble, honest introspection and the willingness to admit where you’re off track
Genuine connection with the living Jesus occurs in the interior life, not in the exterior — “Christ in you,” not Christ around you.Jesus wants to be present and interactive inside you, not just for you to worship Him as if He is far away.If you don’t want an intimate, interior life with Jesus now, then you probably won’t enjoy being stuck with Him forever.
Interior life is often chaotic and conflicted, but ongoing, surrender to the living Jesus trains us to calm the inner storms.If Jesus isn’t continually changing and improving your interior life (your thoughts, desires, and emotions), check your connection. “Christ in you” will grow or diminish, depending on how you tend your inner garden.If you won’t hear and surrender to Jesus’ voice in your heart, hearing about Him from a preacher does little good.
Shall we talk? As long as racism is a closed-to-discussion-zone, it won’t ever be gone. Racism grows without thinking, but logic and reason make it shrink.
Racist? Perhaps racism is like lying. Most people will tell a lie, but few people accept being called a liar or will self-identify as a liar. Racism denial is widespread.
Racism-blind? It’s easy to be racism-blind and to fail to see the cruelty, horror, and evil of history’s color-based atrocities.
Color-blind? If you can recognize someone’s skin color, your definitely not color-blind.
Racism is effortless. It’s easy to think less of people because of their skin color and to overlook “the content of their character.”
Racism is sneaky. It’s hard to stop evaluating people by their skin color if you believe you aren’t doing it.
Racism sins. If you see someone as even slightly inferior to you because of their skin color, you won’t treat them as your full equal.
Being white doesn’t connect me with racist things done before I was born. I can admit the terrible details of those atrocities yet not feel guilt about them.
I woke up this morning thinking about how I would tell someone what it’s like to have the risen Jesus Christ freely living in me. Here goes:
Like a hand puppet, the more I let Jesus take control of me from within, the more animated and free I become.
As a concept, Christ in me is interesting, but as an ongoing, daily experience, it’s infinitely powerful and life-changing.
The living Jesus is like a sparkler in my heart, radiating never ending sparks of inspiration.
Christ in me isn’t passive. The living Jesus makes me continually aware that there is someone besides me living inside of me.
Surrendering to the continual embrace of Jesus is like a comforting, healing hug that never ends.
A religious teaching or program could never give me peace, but surrender to the risen Jesus releases peace that never ends.
Christ in me is a flowing fountain sending streams of glory in every direction (if I don’t shut Him down).
Like a spring in the desert, the living Jesus irrigates my heart and turns my desert into His garden.
The living Jesus creates an aliveness in me that shapes me and guides me in ways and to places that I wouldn’t choose to go.
Christ in me continually prompts me to move out of my comfort zone and into His discipleship zone.
The risen Jesus is the immovable Rock that keeps me stable and secure during all the turbulence that happens in my heart.
All humans eventually collapse like an empty space suit falling of its hook, unless we let the risen Jesus suit up and live in us.
Jesus said that He would teach His disciples and that they would hear His voice. He speaks to and teaches me everyday.
The risen Jesus shines His light so brilliantly inside me that I’m captivated by His glory and healed from desiring darkness.
Christ in me isn’t about imposing my will on other people, but about allowing Him to do His will in and thru me.
The living Jesus continually unleashes inner fire hoses of hope that keep discouragement from burning down my faith.
When I focus on the living Jesus as I read the Bible, He makes the words jump off the page and dance in my heart.
The more I give Jesus permission to live in and thru me, the more like Him I become.
It’s an incredible thing to realize that Jesus rose so that He can continue His life in me (and His other disciples) and to experience that reality through out each day.
Christianity: If it ain’t happening inside you, there’s a strong chance it ain’t happening to you.
If you want to make your own rules, invent a game. If you try to replace God’s rules with your rules, you’ll wreck your life.
When desire rules and rules are not desired, life becomes congested with negative consequences.It’s amazing how many problems you can avoid in life by playing fair and following God’s rules.God’s rules are designed to hinder and hold back evil. Violating them welcomes evil.
Rebellion is in the human heart. If you don’t brake your desires, you’ll break God’s rules.When you break God’s rules, He no longer rules in your life and you distance yourself from His kingdom.
God’s rules were not made to be broken. They were made to protect us from self-destruction. When we ignore God’s rules we begin to experience inner anarchy.
If we humans were good people, we’d do good and avoid doing bad, even if there were no rules.When human emotions and behaviors are allowed expressions that violate God’s rules, evil is at hand.
You don’t have to break God’s rules to be creative. Just look at all that He has made by following them.
If parents have the right to make rules for their children, God has the right to make rules for us humans.Both the concepts of grace and of atheism are frequently used as an excuse to break God’s rules.
The more we break God’s rules, the less spontaneous joy we experience and the more we feel the need for artificial happiness.When rules are removed and human desires are unrestrained, it’s soon obvious that the results aren’t good.
Your conscience knows God’s rules and reminds you of them. If God’s rules didn’t matter, you wouldn’t feel guilty for breaking them.
The way I want to write is to use words to support what’s right and to overcome what’s wrong. So I write on.
To follow God’s rules Is a struggle But it makes for Good trouble.
Life’s big question: Shall I follow My desires Or do What God requires?
Approval Won’t bring about The removal Of your guilt, But repentance Will drive it out.
Guilt repressed Leaves you stressed; Guilt forgiven Feels like Heaven!
Freedom: When your conscience approves Of your daily moves, Guilt no longer reproves.
People who feel guilty blame others. People who have deeply experienced mercy and forgiveness forgive.When your conscience continually gives you low approval ratings, it’s time to change your behavior.
The approval of your conscience will make you much happier than the approval of people and disapproval of your conscience.All the approval and applause in the world won’t satisfy you if your own conscience disapproves.No matter how hard you try (even if you deny), it’s extremely difficult to be comfortable without the approval of your conscience.
Activating the belief that there is a God and that He’s ready to forgive and to restore you to innocence and wholeness, is life-altering. Reading the New Testament part of the Bible (with an open heart) will begin to activate that belief.
Our death won’t remove our guilt, but the sacrificial death of Jesus freely provides forgiveness to those who repent and follow Him.Jesus didn’t come to condemn us. He came to freely offer us forgiveness and the power to obey God, so He can tell us, “Well done.”
A sunrise of abandoning conscience and moral compass is a sunset of character and integrity that welcomes darkness and chaos. It’s not a great day in the morning.
Just be cause you have the right to do something doesn’t make it right to do.If we’re not careful we can proclaim our rights so loudly and proudly that we drown out our conscience.The more we free ourselves from our conscience, the greater will be our bondage to our desires.
A great nation requires citizens and a government that both have great ethics, great fairness, great kindness, and great integrity. To be great is to do what’s right even when you don’t want to–to obey your conscience above your desires and feelings. As more and more of it’s citizens begin to humbly and courageously prioritize doing what’s right instead of doing what they desire, a nation becomes great.
Saying that wrong is right doesn’t magically make it so.Trying to be unconscious of your conscience and to silence its voice, doesn’t change the truth of what your conscience says to you. If you would like to have less guilt, simply let your conscience manage your life.
As humans we have a continual choice. We can do what we desire or we can do what we ought to do.As long as our desires, feelings, and preferences matter more than doing what’s right, our lives will be a mess.Any society that teaches that right and wrong are determined by a person’s desires will go headlong into wrong.
Some people deny their wrong behavior. Others claim their wrong behavior is good. A few admit when their behavior is wrong.Teaching people that wrong is right traps them in wrongdoing. It doesn’t set them free.
No word game Can remove our shame, But heling comes When we humbly Admit our blame.
Free Gas for Your Think Tank -- Short Reflections, Lasting Encouragement 