Insights For Living

1. You are what you eat and what you focus on or give yourself to is what you become.
2. Your destiny is hidden in your daily routine.
3. What you say is what you are.
4. You can understand your life with your mind by looking backwards, but life can only be lived looking forwards with eyes of faith, hope, and love.

We are designed to worship

A life of bad eating leads to poor health and a chance of earlier death.  There is also a spiritual principle that what we behold we become.  If you behold Christ, you will become like him.  I know it is not enough to just look, but by looking at Jesus we hear him and obey him, imitate him, and have his nature imparted to us and are transformed; which is the Christian life or "Christ-i-an".

There is nothing wrong with many things in life like work, hobbies, creative interests, and important relationships; but if any of these becomes what we are living for, they will take over.  We were designed by God as creatures that worship Him in relationship to him.  It's not like God needs or wants the worship or the preeminent place in us to fulfill Himself, but we worship Him and Give him the throne because of who God is.

You don't know God if you don't get how worthy of our praise and worship that God is.  Worship is a life and a relationship, not just an expression or time at church.  We were designed to worship the King and then enjoy the life he gives us.  If we get is backwards and begin worshiping anything or anyone else besides God and place God anywhere in our lives to the side, when God needs to be in the center, on the throne, we are in trouble.  We will begin to become what we focus on outside of God.

Seed and harvest

Seeds sown germinate into plants.  In a spiritual sense, we sow seeds daily and they will grow slowly.  We want the short cut of bringing in partially grown or full grown plants to our personal gardens.  Or we might want to buy, borrow, or steal someone else's harvest that we desire.  But who you will become is actually grown slowly over time.  A journey is thousands of steps.

Often people have a realization that they want to make a change, they want to walk with God, they want to live righteously, or they want to find and move into their destinies in God.  That new path or journey is going to be a series of small steps, small decisions, in minutes, hours, days, and years.

Turning to God and going towards your destiny, living towards the answers is God's way.  "Trust and obey for there is no other way to be happy in Jesus but to trust and obey." 

The power of speech

We can be our own worst critics and tear ourselves down with our own words or we can over inflate ourselves into delusion with our self-flattery, believing our own press-releases.  Many of us need self-esteem adjustments.  The narcissistic egomaniac and the self-loathing worm-theologist have in common that their self-esteem is out of whack.  Self love is a good thing.  But we love ourselves because we are loved.  God's love defines me and makes me lovable.

So when I talk, it reveals my theology and my theology reveals or defines what I believe about everything, including my self.  Bad speech is a symptom of a bad heart.  Out of the heart, the mouth speaks.  If the mouth speaks things that are ungodly, then the heart needs saving; perhaps even deliverance, and there is no shame in that.

There is power in our tongues.  We can bless or curse with our words.  How we talk is very important.  Nasty, sarcastic, or cursing talk is a symptom of a heart that needs to be be saved.

Living by faith

The guidance system does not come on until the rocket has been launched.   We were never called to understand with our minds, but to trust with our hearts.  Christians are called to be a prophetic people who's lives don't make sense to onlookers who do not share the secret passion for Jesus.    The call to follow does not carry with it a guarantee of understanding.  The call is a call to love and obey.  He is good and takes care of those who put their faith in Him.

We learn from our mistakes and are comforted in suffering by his grace.  We learn from the lives of others in scripture, in history, and from our elders who have pioneered on similar or same paths that we are traveling on.