Mistakes do not have to be a bad thing, in fact mistakes can be a good thing, if we are willing to learn from them.  I do not like to make mistakes!  I grew up believing that “if you want something done right – do it yourself!”  This is a very flawed way of thinking!  The fact is:  No matter how good or gifted we are, we can’t expect that we will do everything perfectly every time!  In fact if you are a human being – living on the planet earth – you are going to make mistakes.  Not only do we need to learn to accept our own mistakes, we must also be willing to accept the mistakes of others.  The problem comes when we keep making the same mistakes over and over agian!  Remember:  If we were perfect people living in a perfect world, we would not need grace!

So, get out there and take some of the chances that God is leading your to take!  Put your heart on the line and live like you’ve never lived before.  Let God use you to do the incredible and impossible and when you miss the boat and make a mistake, realize that God’s grace always has another boat on the way!  When you are making mistakes, you know that you are taking chances!  When you are taking chances, you are inviting grace to take full effect in your life and in the lives of others!  Take a chance, make a mistake, learn from it and grow forward for God’s glory and everyone’s blessing!

Every morning I get up early and go for a walk on the beach.  For the past several mornings, I have had an elderly African American man that has walked by me and every morning as he makes his way up and down the beach he greets everyone that he passes with a hearty and healthy “GOOD MORNING & GOD BLESS YOU!”  After we exchanged encouragement to each other and praise to God this morning, the Holy Spirit spoke to me and said simply:  “Every moment of every day YOU decide to live POSITIVE or NEGATIVE!”  Every moment of every day, regardless of what is happening in my life, I get to make the choice of how I am going to respond!  I like to think that I am generally a pretty positive person, but I am many times swayed by the world that I live in and the sway often pulls me toward the negative!  I am going to do all that I can in the days a head, with the rest of my life to try and live POSITIVE!

I think the positive life comes when I truly trust in God with all of my heart and ignore my own understanding.  I need to acknowledge Him in all my ways and in everything that I do and know that He is making my paths straight!  (Proverbs 3:5-6)  I pray that God will help me to live this POSITIVE life, I ask that you would help to encourage me to live the POSITIVE life!  I believe that my POSITIVE life will make a difference for others!

This morning I was sitting outside at the pic-nic table having the first part of my Quiet Time!  I typically spend some time sitting down with my open Bible, an open journal and an open heart and mind!  I use this time to just listen and hear whatever it is that God wants to tell me!  This morning as I was having this time of listening for God’s voice through His Word – someone walked right up and started to ask me questions!  I was in a private place, trying to have a private time with God!  All signs should have alerted anyone that happened to pass by – that this guy must really be into the Bible and should not be disturbed!  But I was disturbed and I was disturbed that I was disturbed!  I think the thing that really got me was the fact that the person that did the disturbing should have known better.  They claim to be a Christian and they have heard me speak of the importance of a Quiet Time.  My Quiet Time is an appointment with God – I do not answer the door, the phone or nothing!  I work to give God my undivided, complete and total attention!

The thing that disturbed me at first was that I was interrupted!  The thing that really disturbed me, the more I that I thought about it was that the person that did the disturbing claims to be a Christian, yet had no idea of what I was doing or how important it was!  At the very least, they should have realized that I was studying my Bible and yet they felt that it was okay to come up and pursue a conversation!  (And the bad thing was – it was a conversation about nothing!)  The really disturbing part is this:  There are many people in our world today – in our churches today, that do not have any idea what it means to have a real, meaningful and growing relationship with Christ.  At best they think they have insurance to get out of Hell and into Heaven!  If Heaven and Hell is the best that we get out of our relationship with Christ, it is still more than enough to motivate us to pursue God!

Jesus died for me, what I could not do for myself, He did for me!  My life belongs to Him!  He and He alone is worthy of my praise and I want to meet Him at the beginning of every day, because I can think of no greater way to begin my day!  I love Jesus and I love you, let’s all get closer to Him in the moments and days ahead!