Journey of a Thousand Miles

Every now and then, I find myself dealing with the repercussions of anger. Here are some tips from Jon Piper on how to manage your anger. I found them to be helpful, and I hope you do too. ponder the rights of Christ to be angry, but then how He endured the cross, as an example of long-suffering ponder how much you have been forgiven and how much mercy you have been shown ponder your own sinfulness and take the beam out of your own eye think about how you do not want to give place to the Devil, because harbored anger is the one thing the Bible explicitly says opens a door and invites him in ponder the folly of your own self-immolation, that is, numerous detrimental effects of anger to the one who is angry — some spiritual, some mental, some physical, and some relational confess your sin of anger to some trusted friend, as well as to the offender, if possible. This is a great healing act let your anger be the key to unlock the dungeons of pride and self-pity in your heart and r...

In case you struggle with procrastination like me sometimes, here are some time management tips from Brian Tracy. Step 1: Decide what you want. Step 2: Write what you want. Step 3: Set a deadline. Step 4: List what you need to do to achieve goal. Step 5: Organize list into plan. Step 6: Take action on plan immediately. Step 7: Do something everyday to achieve goal. And some additional tips on achieving goals: Set deadlines. Create reward system for completion of each task.  Refuse to rationalize or make excuses to be unproductive. Accept 100% responsibility for getting task done on schedule.  Now get out there and achieve shit!

Hey dreamers out there! We took a personality test when we started the WDP, and one of my highest ranking traits is Dreamer. It's just what I am and what I do (and also a recurring theme in my blogs). I've been in pursuit of my dreams since high school and college, but it wasn't until the real world hit that I realized how hard it was to reach them. I have fought for them and given up on them, but they still remain, ready to be untapped. Now that I seem to be on the verge of accomplishing one of my long term goals since high school, I am overwhelmed with fear and impatience. Strange how when it's just in my reach, suddenly I become afraid of taking that first step. Suddenly I want things to take their time. It's when things are right in your grasp, but barely in your reach that you want to grab them and go for it, but then fear tells you to slow down. But then there's that exhilarating feeling of "wow, I can actually do this" that makes your d...

I don't know if you've ever read the book "Counterfeit Gods" by Tim Keller, but you should. Here are a few of my favorite quotes from the book: The human heart is an idol factory. We take good things like a successful career, love, material possessions, even family, and turn them into ultimate things. Our hearts deify them as the center of our lives because we think they can give us significance and security, safety and fulfillment, if we attain them. The very things upon which these people were building all their happiness turned to dust in the hands because they had built all their happiness upon them. An idol is anything more important to you than God, anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God, anything you seek to give you what only God can give. If anything becomes more fundamental than God to your happiness, meaning in life, and identity, then it is an idol. An idol is whatever you look at and say in your heart of hearts, ...

This was written about a year ago, but I'm just now posting. I just love all the stuff I'm learning in my WDP. We're studying Genesis 3 right now, which talks about the Fall of Man. Convicting stuff, I tell ya. It's interesting what we've observed about this text that I missed the first 500 times I've read it. Life-changing. One of the observations we made was how Adam and Eve both blamed somebody else for their sin when God questioned them. They didn't acknowledge their own actions, but immediately pointed to someone else. And they couldn't blame God because He was innocent. [God] said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” The man said, “ The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.” Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” The woman said, “ The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” Then we applied it to our own live...

No, this blog is not about Charles Dickens. Great book, though I have never finished it. This blog is about expectations of other people and how we can never live up to them because we were never meant to. We have expectations of everyone around us: our friends, boyfriends, spouses, children, parents, teachers, bosses.... you get the idea. Some of our expectations are based on Biblical Truth, like expecting someone to be honest, and then others are just ridiculous notions that we have set in our head of how a person should treat us or act. The higher the expectations, the more disappointed we often are because people are fallible and will never live up to most expectations at any given point (God knew this; hence Jesus). We are often disappointed when people don't live up to our expectations, instead of seeing that our expectations are the problem. The thing about expectations is that we expect people not to fail, while we fail to realize that every human being is fall...

I would just like to be truly open about what's going on in my life. At 29, I still struggle with insecurity. I still struggle with comparing myself, not trusting God, and feeling inadequate. I have struggled with these things for as long as I can remember, and although I hoped I would be done with these struggles by now, I am thankful because they remind me of where my true worth comes from: the Lord. It's only when I forget this and start looking to the world to define me that I lose focus on who I truly am. I've decided to focus these next couple of weeks (months, years) on becoming a confident woman in Christ. My focus tends to bend towards my own negative thoughts most of the time, and I've grown tired of that. So I'm changing my focus one day at a time. Today I'd like to talk about unconditional love. At first, the thought of this made me want to roll my eyes. Maybe I don't believe in unconditional love? Maybe it's such an overused cliche that ...

I have no idea where I got these, but here you go:  What people think of you is none of your business. God loves you because of who God is, not because of anything you did or didn't do. Growing old beats the alternative- dying young. If we all threw our problems in a pile and saw everyone else's, we'd take ours back. Envy is a waste of time. You already have all you need. It's not the world's fault you want to be an artist... now get back to work. (something to put above my writing desk) We don't become a genius, we have a genius that gives us our creativity. Man is neither entirely a puppet of the gods, nor is he entirely the captain of his own destiny; he's a little of both. Being overly sensitive is usually nothing less than pride. Temporal things do not satisfy. They only tempt us to further discontentment. Contentment is realizing that true satisfaction can come only from building our lives around those things that canno...

  Awhile back, I read the book "Captivating," and here are some helpful quotes that I found inspiring. I hope it inspires you as well. Beauty flows from a heart at rest. So the choice a woman makes is not to conjure beauty, but to let her defenses down. To choose to set aside her normal means of survival and just let her heart show up. Beauty comes with it. To have a gentle and quiet spirit is to have a heart of faith, a heart that trusts in God, a spirit that has been quieted by his love and filled with his peace. Not a heart that is striving and restless. A woman in her glory, a woman of beauty, is a woman who is not striving to become beautiful or worthy or enough. She knows in her quiet center where God dwells that he finds her beautiful, has deemed her worthy, and in him, she is enough. In fact, the only thing getting in the way of our being fully captivating and enjoyed is our striving. A woman of true beauty is a woman who in the depths of her soul is at rest...