All posts tagged: Monday Motivation

Change Your Mind: Choose Your Own Adventure pt 1

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“…I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life…” ~DEUTERONOMY 30:19b Remember back in the day when you were in elementary school and you got to go to the school library and pick out a few books to take home and read? Back when I was a child, that was one of the highlights of the week, going to the school library, and nothing brought more joy than getting my hands on the latest Choose Your Own Adventure novel. Those books were fantastic in that within the limitations of maybe one-hundred and thirty or so pages of medium-sized print, seemed to be an infinite amount of unique stories that came to life simply by skipping from one section of the book to another. Choose your own adventure. To see what happens if Sally falls in the well, skip to page sixty-four. To have Sally leap over the well to safety, go to page fifty-seven, to see what happens next from here, keep reading. Some of these stories always had the same …

Choose Your Own Adventure: Learning to Choose Christ’s Narrative Series Intro

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The Lord has given you a mission…a vision…a call…an impossible dream. You set out with courage to conquer the goal, but you are met with great resistance. Mountains stand in your way even though He has said He would make your pathway straight. Weapons form, drought consumes valleys in the place where He promised there would be rain. But He promised victory. So, now what? Do you walk by faith or do you rely on your sight? You are now faced with choosing your own adventure. Will you read the pages that the liar and enemy of your soul has penned or will you turn to the pages of Christ’s Truth written for you? Whose story will you make your own? CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE is a series dedicated to helping the Children of God trust Christ’s narrative for their lives, circumstances, and situations no matter how tempting it is to speak out and cling to the enemy’s. The challenge is real but the adventure is worth it! We just have to focus on the …

Start with Confidence: Start Here pt 3

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Several years ago, I had the pleasure of reading an article that introduced the concept of ‘dual idealism.’ Now, because it was so long ago I can’t quite remember which publication it was that I read nor if the phrase they used was ‘idea-ism’ or ‘idealism’, but for the sake of this moment, I am going to fly with ‘idealism.’ What the author of the article was addressing was the anxiety that many authors of fiction face when they have come up with a completely organic and original idea for a story plot, only to find out that someone else, on the other side of the world has been working on a project that sounds similar if not exact! What the author of the article wanted to drive home was that even though there may be similarity in thought that personal design makes each interpretation solely unique. When we are given an idea or vision from God and we embark on our faith journey to see it made manifest we too can find ourselves facing …

Start with Fire: Start Here pt 2

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“We are on fire. Act now.” ~UKNOWN I saw an image of an activist with a sign that read, “We are on fire. Act now.” Instantly, the thought of the words of the Savior flickered into a flame in my heart. The scripture is Mark 9:35-38, which reads: “Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.  Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.” What the Lord began to reveal to my heart in light of the sign and then the reminder of the scripture was twofold. ONE: The Lord was saying and is saying to all of us who know Him, that the people in the world are ready, right now, to hear about Him. They are thirsty for the …

Start with a Seed: Start Here pt 1

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“…Jesus told them. “I tell you the truth, if you had faith even as small as a mustard seed, you could say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it would move. Nothing would be impossible.” -MATTHEW 20:17b When a person sets out to give life to their dream or vision, or even to undertake a project that is relevant for that season of their life, one thing they do without fail is to take stock of what they have in hand. Our Master and Savior, the King Creator, actually instructs us in His Word that a wise man takes inventory of what he has before he begins, lest when he starts he finds he is unable to finish (LUKE 14:28-29). The one thing that many of us find paralyzing about this is that when we do actually take inventory of what we have, we tend to lean on our own understanding, often stifling the voice of the Lord that is telling us to begin, in favor of believing what our eyes and logic …

Start Here: Starting Right From the Heart Series Intro

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Do you have a vision? Do you have an ember of hope for something different burning inside you? Have you found yourself frustrated with the predictability of the ‘usual’ and often slip into the imaginative world created by the dream in you? That is fantastic! Christ has given us all seeds or ‘talents’ to work with, but oftentimes we find ourselves lost in the fog of ‘how’. How do we get from where we are to where we dream we can be doing the very thing that Christ has branded in our hearts to do? We start. And we start here, right where we are. This new series, Start Here, will explore what it means to take the first step of faith to go toward your vision, dream, call, or destiny. Sometimes you have to start in the dark, sometimes the mess, but the glory is starting in faith, right where you are. It begins with the heart and the matters that lie within and go to places beyond our imagining. Join us for this …

Enthusiasm Equals Greatness: A Quote & Encouragement

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*Revised from May 6, 2016 “Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.” ~RALPH WALDO EMERSON Whatever you set your mind to do be sure to do it with enthusiasm. People appreciate the spirit in which something is done more so than the actual doing. And in that shared spirit is true greatness. “The point is this: whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.”     ~II COR. 9:6-7 The Word of God instructs us to be cheerful givers and to sow with purpose from our hearts. Great or small, a simple act of kindness, a story written, a picture painted, or even a glass of water, give it with enthusiasm. It is out of little seeds of enthusiasm sown that fruitful trees of greatness grow. *Photo by Caleb Woods on Unsplash ~Dream. Imagine. Believe. Do. CONQUER!

A Merry Heart: The Gift of Laughter

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*Revised from May 20, 2016 “The most wasted of all days is the one without laughter.” ~E.E CUMMINGS Laughter, like food, is the one other universal language that every person on this planet not only enjoys but needs to survive. Laughter is the music that is never out of tune. It is the one song that we all can sing, and find ourselves singing along with even if we can’t explain why. Laughter is a gift, a precious gift given to us from Christ Jesus and one that we can give to others. It is a fire that burns nothing but calories! And who doesn’t like that? Laughter is priceless. Be sure to treasure it and share it with those around you. No day or heart is complete without it. “A merry heart does good like medicine…” ~PROVERBS 17:22 ~Dream. Imagine. Believe. Do. CONQUER!

Renewing Your Vision

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*Revised from April 15, 2016 “Worse than being blind is to see and have no vision” ~HELEN KELLER Proverbs 29:18 says, “Where there is no VISION the people PERISH…” (Emphasis mine) To be able to see is one thing, to have a vision is another. Vision is the driving force that calls us to keep putting one foot in front of the other. Vision is the crown that causes us to press even in the face of repeated failure because it’s given you hope for the future. To be a person who has lived and not simply existed, you must have a vision–a goal. Although vision and sight are different, they are not mutually exclusive. To maintain your vision you must keep it ever before you (Habakkuk 2:2) Put it down in the simplest of words as a reminder of what you are aiming for. It is very easy to allow the challenges of life to stifle our vision. In faith, in Christ Jesus, we are called to ‘renew’ or minds, that we not be conformed to the …

Inevitable Change: Encouragement in Transition

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Revised from August 18, 2015 “Change is inevitable, Growth is optional.”~JOHN C. MAXWELL Change. The only time that most people search out change and willingly run with it is when unsavory circumstances have begun to dim the light and joy form their life and they are desperate to get it back. Otherwise, change is seen as the unwelcome guest who showed up at your perfectly numbered dinner party, uninvited. Change requires sacrifice, which generally goes hand and hand with discomfort and for some of us, discombobulation. But change is necessary. It is going to happen whether we like it or not, whether we are prepared or not. Think about an infant in their mother’s womb. Change comes and is without a doubt a straining shock to everything within the infant and around them. But what awaits them at the end of their travailing journey is something far greater. Consider the caterpillar who crawls through life, knowing in the core of their being that they are meant for greater heights. They must burn with the urge to …