Four Simple Actions that Bring Happiness

“Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.” – Dalai Lama

Autumn is here.

The cooler temperatures and turning leaves is a reminder that change is in the air. As each autumn day passes, the sun sets a little sooner. Before slipping into the western sky, the sun reveals the beautiful world that has been created for you.

Like the autumnal equinox, our time here gets a little shorter each day, too. But rather than reacting in fear we are given the opportunity to see the wonderful things we have been given and then be perfectly happy in knowing that it doesn’t matter how short the days are becoming; what matters is how we are living in those days.

If you want to replace fear with courage or replace anxiety with happiness, make a commitment to do these four simple actions every day. When you do, your beautiful world will shine brighter – no matter what season it is.

Live
Live today. Today is about savoring every moment; it’s about appreciating exactly what you have. Today is about owning your life and being excited about what will happen next. Don’t wait until tomorrow to begin living.

Live right now.

Love
Love today. Tell or show the people who you truly love and cherish how much you love them. Do so with heartfelt sincerity. Love them as if this were their last day on earth. Don’t wait until tomorrow to begin loving.

Love right now.

Laugh
Laugh today. Our lives can be stressful and complicated at times, but that doesn’t mean laughter can’t fill the gaps in between. Perhaps if we can think of more reasons to laugh, the gaps might become further apart. Don’t wait until tomorrow to begin laughing.

Laugh right now.

Bloom
Bloom today. Open your mind to the possibilities that are waiting. Open your heart to whatever it desires. Open your soul to its purpose. Open up and bloom gloriously today. Don’t wait until tomorrow to begin blooming.

Bloom right now.

                          ....... That I may know Him and the power of his resurrection... Philippians 3:10 

The Prodigal Son: 12 Things You Didn’t Know (Continuation)

Lesson 5: God's grace is not in addition to anything, writes Dasher. “The reason that man misses salvation is not because he fails to keep a specific list of rules and laws, but because he fails to see God as a loving and forgiving God who expressed (with the ultimate gift) His love for us (II Thess. 1:5-9; Rom 5:6-8). Man is lost because he fails to see his complete spiritual poverty, and so refuses to turn to his loving God.”
Lesson 6: God wants you to wake up! “The young man in the parable experienced a spiritual awakening that was the beginning of his salvation,” writes Dasher. “When he saw his condition, that he had fallen from great heights to the ultimate bottom, ‘he came to his senses’ and decided to humble himself before his father and accept whatever status his father was willing to give him. There is no negotiation for position or rationalization of his stupidity to be found in this young man.” No, God just wanted him to wake up!
Lesson 7: You are worthy! “He knew that he had nothing to offer his father with which to redeem himself, writes Dasher. ”He expressed to his father his total unworthiness. The young man may have felt ‘unworthy’ but he missed one very important point. While he may have ‘felt’ unworthy, his father considered him to be of great worth.” God feels the same way about you!
Lesson 8: Beware religious jealousy.“Legalists always become angry, whenever grace is extended to another,” writes Dasher. “The reason is because they like to think that there is some merit in what they do. Legalists always ignore their own poverty. Legalists usually perform well and, in the eyes of the world, measure up quite well. In fact, they are the ones who set the rules (ones that are easy for them and hard for others to keep). They like to look at the sin-infested world and click their tongues.”
Lesson 9: Don’t ever think you have God figured out.  “The maturation process of our faith takes a lifetime,” writes Bunch. “Even if you understand everything in the entire Bible (and you don’t, but let’s imagine), all that is God is not even in there. The Bible is what God chose to reveal to us, but our mind is not capable of understanding the mind and being of God.”
Lesson 10: Be teachable!“Never get to a point of arrogance that you cannot be taught by the lessons and instruction of Jesus,” writes Bunch. The Pharisees of Christ’s day “were so blinded, they couldn’t see God standing right in front of them.”
Lesson 11: Maybe you’re the older son. “This son represents God’s chosen people,” writes Bunch. In our day, that could be “anyone who is jealous that another is offered forgiveness. Have you ever felt jealousy over someone being offered forgiveness after committing way more sins than yourself? Ever felt like you’ve been in church obeying all the rules your whole life, and other people get blessed that shouldn’t be? Then perhaps you’re the older son in the parable.”
Lesson 12: God has taken your shame. “The amazing application for our own lives is crystal clear,” writes Williams. “Our heavenly Father has taken our shame through his Son, Jesus, who willingly endured the cross on our behalf. He took our sins’ shame so that we would not have to.”

“The story tells us that we can be forgiven, restored — accepted,” writes Williams. “We do not have to fear going home to our Father and confessing our sins, no matter what we have done, or how many times we have done it (remember, Jesus taught his followers to forgive 70 times seven).” “In the parable,” writes Williams, “only the father could restore the son to full sonship in the family. In our case, we are sinners, and there is nothing that we can do to restore our lost relationship with the Holy God of the Universe. He calls us and waits. A single repentant step in his direction and He is off, running to welcome us back home!”







                         ....... That I may know Him and the power of his resurrection... Philippians 3:10 

The Prodigal Son: 12 Things You Didn’t Know

We’re all familiar with the story of the Prodigal Son – the rich man’s kid who demands his inheritance, then squanders it in wild living, ends up scrounging for food with the hogs, then returns home ashamed and in hopes of being a servant, but instead is welcomed home by his loving, forgiving dad.  What’s in this parable for us?
Dad ran for a very good reason! “In the first century, a Middle Eastern man never, never ran,” writes Matt Williams, of Biola’s Talbot School of Theology. “If he were to run, he would have to hitch up his tunic so he would not trip. If he did this, it would show his bare legs. In that culture, it was humiliating and shameful for a man to show his bare legs.”
“If a Jewish son lost his inheritance among Gentiles, and then returned home,” writes Williams, “the community would perform a ceremony, called the kezazah. They would break a large pot in front of him and yell, ‘You are now cut off from your people!’ The community would totally reject him. “So, why did the father run? He probably ran in order to get to his son before he entered the village.
Lesson 1: You are worth it! “The father runs — and shames himself — in an effort to get to his son before the community gets to him, so that his son does not experience the shame and humiliation of their taunting and rejection,” writes Williams. “The village would have followed the running father, would have witnessed what took place at the edge of the village between father and son. After this emotional reuniting of the prodigal son with his father, it was clear that their would be no kezazah ceremony; there would be no rejecting this son — despite what he has done. The son had repented and returned to the father.”
Lesson 2: God doesn't want to make deals. “The son decides what he will tell his father upon his return,” writes Clark Bunch for The Master’s Table website. “He is no longer worthy to be a son, but will work as a servant. He plans to earn his keep in his father’s house, possibly even to repay the wealth he has squandered. He has a plan all worked out in his head.” However, “the father doesn't even listen to it,” writes Bunch. “He cuts the son’s plan off in the middle, and calls for the robe, ring and shoes. Whatever we offer God in return for his blessing, or what we promise to do to earn our salvation, it will never be enough. God doesn't want to hear our plan, he wants us to admit we can’t do it on our own and depend on his mercy and grace.”
Lesson 3: God isn't keeping score. “What is it about God that is the most difficult for you to accept?” asks Gordon Dasher of The Examiner website. “Is it that He exists? Or that He punishes the disobedient? For most, it is probably that He loves us, that He is concerned with our welfare. The result of this is that many are frustrated, full of fear and guilt. Eventually, this distorted view of God is to be found as the root of all legalism.” “Just look at the ways that we view God,” writes Dasher. “We view Him as the heavenly record-keeper, in spite of the fact that Paul, in I Corinthians 13, said that love keeps no record of wrongs.” Jesus told the Apostle Peter that forgiveness is unlimited.
Lesson 4: Rethink poverty! “Jesus tells this story about a young man who went from riches to rags,” writes Dasher. “How many of us can relate to that? We have at least felt the magnetic pull of independence. We know what it feels like to think that we can make it on our own, that old Pop has lost touch with the modern world, that he doesn't really remember what it feels like to be young.” “Most of us look back on that time in our lives with shame,” writes Dasher. “We think about the money wasted, the time spent in pursuit of things that, when realized, were so empty and void. We cringe at the thought of our own little hog-pens and the slop meals of our youth.”
“The problem with some of us is that we do not have a realistic understanding of the spiritual poverty from which we have been saved,” writes Dasher. “Somehow, somewhere in our perverted thinking, we think that our salvation was no more than a ‘little help’ from God. We could have made it on our own, just not as well. This misses the point of what God's love and forgiveness is all about. “His love is ‘in spite of’ and not ‘because of’ ourselves,” writes Dasher. “And here is the root of all legalism. We just do not like to think of God's love in these terms. It is not complimentary to us. The thought that we are totally and completely impoverished does not appeal to us because it says something about us that we do not like to hear or think about. Our naturally legalistic minds begin to ‘reshape’ God and His grace to fit our thinking. His grace becomes that little extra ‘boost’ we needed to get us over the hump."

to be cont'd... 

      





                           ....... That I may know Him and the power of his resurrection... Philippians 3:10 

The More We Know Christ, the More We Love Him

Col 2:2  That their hearts may be comforted, they being knit together in love and unto all the riches of the full assurance 
of understanding, unto the full knowledge of the mystery of God, Christ, (3)  In whom all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden.
Eph. 4:13  Until we all arrive at the oneness of the faith and of the full knowledge of the Son of God, at a full-grown man, at the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.

All Christians love the Lord Jesus. The only difference among them in this matter is the degree of their love for Him. Even a backsliding believer loves the Lord to a certain extent. How much we love the Lord depends on how much we know Him and how much we realize concerning Him. For example, a child may appreciate a little box made to contain a diamond ring more than the ring itself. This shows that the degree of love is determined by the degree of appreciation. The more we know the Lord Jesus and appreciate Him, the more we shall love Him. Hence, we need to go on to know the Lord Jesus not only as our Savior and Lord, but also as the mystery of God.

The Colossians did not have the full assurance concerning Christ. Otherwise, they would not have turned to the worship of angels or taken in such things as observances, ordinances, and philosophies. On the one hand, they had received Christ and knew something about Him. On the other hand, their knowledge of Christ was not with the full assurance of understanding. The Colossians definitely believed in the Lord Jesus and held to the faith. But they did not have all the riches of the full assurance of understanding. 

The benefits are in the knowing... the more we know the more we begin to enjoy. "Owning is contingent on knowing"





  



                         ....... That I may know Him and the power of his resurrection... Philippians 3:10