Tag Archives: faith

Blogroll, Enlightenment, Growing, mindfulness, purpose, responsibility

Control Is An Illusion And Resilience Is A Gift!

I have been through a lot of different things in my life and the toughest things have always been the things that strip away and take my ability to exercise control. Fred Bubbers said: ““Control is merely an illusion we construct to cope with the chaos that is reality.” and I have to admit that sounds pretty much right.

We like the idea of control, until we have to face the reality that control is really something that we have very little of. Chaos on the other hand is the thing that we have more of than we can stand.

When ever we face times of chaos that remind us of just how limited our control really is, it for some reason causes us to start looking back on our lives and living. We love to revisit our successes and even appreciate looking to see what we learned from our failures. We like to tell ourselves that learning something from our failures means that they were not a waste, but served a higher purpose.

In the last week of my life, I have been doing a lot of this looking back and one thing that the Spirit has been helping me to see is RESILIANCE. Resilience is the ability to come back from whatever it is that attempts to take you down and out. It is the ability to take the bad and do something good with it, the setback and use it for a come back, so that you can grow into the something greater that you have always been created to become.

Live life long enough and no matter how good you think you are, something is going to come along and knock you off of your high horse. Whatever it is that knocks you off and down is not the end, unless you give up. Resilience is an unwillingness to give up and a willingness to make sure that you get yours.

When I watch my Granddaughter Addie Jo, I see resilience in its most pure form. She came into this world, laying in whatever position she was placed in, but almost immediately, she was dissatisfied with that position and started working to figure out ways to experience the freedom she was looking for. She cannot even talk, but she has learned that if she grunts long enough and loud enough, with a tear here or there that she can manipulate others to do for her, what she cannot do for herself.

She does not give up, she does not give in, until she gets what she wants. I have seen her doing it in a thousand different ways and as I look back on my life, I have seen where I have done the same thing in a million different ways.

Proverbs 23:7 says: “As a man thinks in His heart, so is he.” The heart is the heart of resilience. While we may not have control, we do have resilience and with resilience, pretty much anything is possible, so let’s get to it…

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Blogroll, Enlightenment, Expectation, faith, Mystery, Life,, Uncategorized

The Mystery Of Life!

One of my favorite country songs has a line that says: “A woman is a mystery a man just can’t understand…” I think we can replace the word woman with life and we would be right on target. “Life is a mystery, we just can’t understand!” Here’s the real question we need to answer: Who said we were supposed to understand anyway? Maybe it is our trying to understand that causes most of our problems.

Life is a gift and a gift should be appreciated, enjoyed and most importantly lived. If you really want to live, then let life unfold without making any attempt to try and figure it out. There is another line in a song that says: “Let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be!” This is exactly what we need to learn to discipline ourselves to do, to just let it be…

This human life is a divine gift from our Heavenly Creator and Father. Everything is going to stretch out just the way it was designed to. We really don’t have to try so hard to make things work out. What we really need to do, is learn to simply ALLOW.

Not everything is hard work, struggle and toil. Not everything has to be understood and explained by us. It is okay to say: “That’s above my pay grade!” Life is life and life is unfolding just the way is was designed to, regardless of what we do or do not do.

Expectation is often times a very unrealistic enemy that causes us to miss the obvious, while we are distracted by what does not really matter. Live life long enough and I can promise you that your expectations are going to be shattered and when they are, it is a great opportunity to practice the art of allowing by letting go of the way you think it should be and embracing the way it is.

Here are a few ideas to help you practice the art of allowing:

Observe! Open your eyes and really allow yourself to see. See with your physical eyes, not just what you want to see, but the big picture. See with you mental eyes that there is so much more to this life than living and dying. See with your spiritual eyes the unseen wonders and miracles that most everyone tends to miss every moment of every day.

Don’t Judge! This is the hard part, because everything in this world is working to conform us to it’s own shape and anything different is to be thought of as unworthy. How many times have we missed the blessing, because we were distracted by judgement, when we were supposed to be enlightened by freedom?

Listen! There is so much to hear, if we can learn to really listen past the common noise that drowns out the still small voice of our Creator. Did you hear the breeze as it rustled the leaves in the tree? Did you hear the bird singing as it woke up with the sun? Did you hear the laughter and feel it touch you somewhere deep inside that you didn’t even know was there? Listen to hear these things and so much more. God is always speaking blessing, but we have to listen to receive.

Open Your Heart, Mind And Life! To really live life, we are living from three places: The physical, mental and spiritual. Open yourself to learning and growing in all of these areas to experience the totality of all that you have been created for. Life is not a mystery to be understood and explained. Life is a mystery to be experienced and enjoyed… 👣

Blogroll, mental challenge, personal growth, self improvement

Walking Through Life!

We have been blessed with a great freedom, the freedom of choice. We get to choose what kind of life we want to live. We can choose to walk by sight or we can choose to walk by faith.

When we walk by sight, we think we can see clearly, but we can only see what is can be seen and this is why we often find ourselves disappointed, discouraged and defeated. We make our evaluations of worthiness based on what our senses can see, hear, taste, smell and feel using our eyes, ears, tongue, nose and skin. This way of living makes our reality what it is and cause us to miss the miracle of what could be.

17 For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; 18 While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal. -2 Corinthians 4:17-18

When we walk by faith, we can see the unseen and live in two worlds at the same time. We can live, learn and love in this physical world, which is temporary by while healing, growing and developing in the spiritual world, which is eternal.

The reality is that we all live in two worlds, but most folks are only awake and enlightened to one, but as a believer, we can connect with the miraculous and experience a whole new world that most can only dream or imagine.

It is primarily through our senses that we connect with the physical world and it is with our spirit that we connect with the spiritual world that exists in and around us. You have a choice today: You can live by faith or by sight. I suggest you give faith/belief/trust a try, because with faith you can see the unseen, understand the unexplainable, tap into incredible strength, experience the miraculous and live in the supernatural… 👣