Fear is the thief of dreams – unknown
When nothing is sure, anything is possible. – Margaret Drabble
life: acoustic & amplified
poetry, quotes & thoughts about life
Archive for the category “Growth”
as much as we want
I don’t want you to get all A’s in life. I want you to get life. I want you to get God. A.W. Tozer said that you can have as much of God as you want.
It’s wild to think about that: How much of God do you really want? How happy do you really want to be? Why would you avoid Him and all your joy — when you could hunger for Him and have as much happiness as you want?
Ann Voskamp/July 10, 12
http://www.aholyexperience.com
——————————————————————————————
The sun rose this morning
with more light than you know what to do with.
More beautiful green living things
reach out to you
than you’ll ever have time to consider.
More birds sing to you than you’ll ever listen to.
Immeasurable grace
is poured out upon you,
splashing,
most of it rivering down your legs
and into the floorboards.
More of what you need to carry on
is secreted into your heart than you believe.
There is hope enough folded into this world.
Of forgiveness and tender delight
you are given more
than you can ever use or comprehend.
Of the darkest mystery,
dense with love
like the billioning stars,
you are given so much more,
even in your bleakest droughts,
your dustiest griefs and desolations,
than you can know.
And of you yourself,
given with confidence to this effulgent universe,
there is so much more than you can see,
so much more.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
We are what we continually do – Aristotle
Habits Die Hard
I am your constant companion.
I am your greatest asset or heaviest burden.
I will push you up to success or down to disappointment.
I am at your command.
Half the things you do might just as well be turned over to me.
For I can do them quickly, correctly, and profitably.
I am easily managed; just be firm with me.
Those who are great, I have made great.
Those who are failures, I have made failures.
I am not a machine, though I work with the precision of a
machine and the intelligence of a person.
You can run me for profit, or you can run me for ruin.
Show me how you want it done. Educate me. Train me.
Lead me. Reward me.
And I will then…do it automatically.
I am your servant.
Who am I?
I am a habit.
by Mac Anderson & John J. Murphy / simpletruths.com
Stephen Covey, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Rest in peace.
Habit 1: Be Proactive
Take initiative in life by realizing that your decisions (and how they align with life’s principles) 
are the primary determining factor for effectiveness in your life. Take responsibility for your choices and the consequences that follow.
Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind
Self-discover and clarify your deeply important character values and life goals. Envision the ideal characteristics for each of your various roles and relationships in life.
Habit 3: Put First Things First
Prioritize, plan, and execute your week’s tasks based on importance rather than urgency. Evaluate whether your efforts exemplify your desired character values, propel you toward goals, and enrich the roles and relationships that were elaborated in Habit 2.
Habit 4: Think Win-Win
Genuinely strive for mutually beneficial solutions or agreements in your relationships. Value and respect people by understanding a “win” for all is ultimately a better long-term resolution than if only one person in the situation had gotten his way.
Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood
Use empathic listening to be genuinely influenced by a person, which compels them to reciprocate the listening and take an open mind to being influenced by you. This creates an atmosphere of caring, respect, and positive problem solving.
Habit 6: Synergize
Combine the strengths of people through positive teamwork, so as to achieve goals no one person could have done alone. Get the best performance out of a group of people through encouraging meaningful contribution, and modeling inspirational and supportive leadership.
Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw
Balance and renew your resources, energy, and health to create a sustainable, long-term, effective lifestyle. It primarily emphasizes on exercise for physical renewal, prayer (mediation, yoga, etc.) and good reading for mental renewal. It also mentions service to the society for spiritual renewal.
7 Habits – repost from http://thedailylove.com/
don’t loose the simple definition: God is love
Yes, the people around us, and these lives we lead, are becoming more and more complex. There is no denying that the world is becoming a smaller and smaller place, as we have faster and faster means to get anywhere we want to go. Nothing seems to be very simple, yet at the root of everything in our lives, hearts, world is this one simple need: to feel loved and to give love – to be accepted and acknowledged for who we truly are.
Into that need comes our creator and He wants us to realize this truth: He IS love! We are His beloved! Pure and simple. He makes sure we all know – if we don’t have love, and live love – we have nothing. There is nothing else that is this important. Nothing else that is life changing and world shaking.
Today, sift through all your laters of complexity in your over-stimulated, over-scheduled, uber busy life and ‘turn up the quiet, cause love wants to dance’!
what motivation am i (are you) choosing?
There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and accepta
nce. We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create. Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life. – John Lennon
it’s all about love
We are celebrating freedom today. What is freedom about? It’s all about love.
For many years I struggled with my desire to know about God. Who was this God? How could I grasp Him at all? One day I was brought to realized – God is love – that’s the root definition of God. I still remember that moment in 2009! Everything else springs from this fact. Every other belief and doctrine is based on this truth. God doesn’t just want us to need Him, God wants us to love Him. We do not obey because of fear of breaking the rules and punishment. We give love freely because we are in love with the love with Him, and we give ourselves freely as we express this passion and love inside of us. This is our most important relationship, but is what we base all of our human relationship from.
That sounds simple, right? Don’t we all talk about love and know about love? I thought I did, but as I began to read, think and live from this new knowledge of God, I began to realize how little I knew about love. It has been the most challenging and mind-blowing concept I have ever found. It challenges me every minute of everyday to try to live this way. This is not about head knowledge – this is about true intimacy. This is how we change the world. Each of us are responsible to live this way and show others this unconditional, and unconventional, love. God gives us true freedom. He will never make us do anything. He offers this love freely and all He wants is for us to receive it and allow it to seep into every aspect of our life and living. He allows us to make the choices on how we live out our lives. It is never coerced. Never manipulated. Will we choose this narrow way? It is not an easy way to live, yet it leads to life, and life abundantly.
It calls for so much more than religion, more than being ‘right’, or following the ‘big-ten’. It is not about figuring everything out, but about letting it all go. Abandoning myself for a love I cannot understand in my human experience, but I do experience it – in spirit and in truth – and so I KNOW it’s true. I have found it, I have lived it, I cannot deny it. God is love is my truth. Now I must live that truth. It is a life which is challenging in every way. It brings us to messy, dangerous and uncomfortable places. Yet, when we really understand it – it is the only way to live. I have found obedience is the least I can do for this gift – it is truly my reasonable service, and the more I live this way and find intimacy with this great and amazing love, the less I want anything else. Nothing else can satisfy.
The truth of the words, God so loved the world, MUST change us. He gave his only son, the value of my soul, of each created soul, is found in that. We are each Beloved – just as we are. This is love and it is good!
Freedom is not cheap. The cost of our country’s freedom has been great. The cost of my personal freedom has been great. The cost of our soul’s freedom has been greater still. How I express my gratitude matters. I am so blessed and so grateful. What can this poor girl give in return? All I have are love songs – and that is why I sing my love songs, as loud as possible.
spiritual understanding is not understanding at all…
but listening for God’s voice and being free to follow that calling and your intuition, in spite of what everyone around you would say is the ‘right thing’. It is sometimes a very lonely and misunderstood path. but it is the only way to know intimacy with God. Communion with God is eternal life, which comes by faith in Christ. A mystery we will never completely understand, for when we think we know all about God and that we are the only ones that have that knowledge – we have lost it all. God is much more than our human comprehension. Shall the created stand up and tell the creator what He is? or what to do? Do I make rules for this God who created me – body , soul and spirit? Who spoke a word, and this complex, and extravagantly beautiful, universe came into being? I tremble as I think of the audacity.
Does believing this way mean I will never make a mistake? Not at all. It is a battle every day to step out of our human natures, away from our chosen form of goodness in our own flesh, and follow a call that is much more than we could ever be comfortable with. Jesus never promised us comfort. Following this path is full of risk, loss and danger. Is it worth it? More than words can express, and it makes me continue to live dangerously – in spite of the personal costs and the misunderstandings along the way. I do not share what I have found out of a desire to annoy, or hurt anyone, but because I cannot help but share this love and goodness that is changing me every minute of every day. I am His and He is mine – forever and ever. Amen. Selah.
Psalm 37
1. Fret not thyself because of evildoers, neither be thou envious against the workers of iniquity.
2 For they shall soon be cut down like the grass, and wither as the green herb.
3 Trust in the Lord, and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed.
4 Delight thyself also in the Lord: and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.
5 Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass.
6 And he shall bring forth thy righteousness as the light, and thy judgment as the noonday.
7 Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for him: fret not thyself because of him who prospereth in his way, because of the man who bringeth wicked devices to pass.
8 Cease from anger, and forsake wrath: fret not thyself in any wise to do evil.
9 For evildoers shall be cut off: but those that wait upon the Lord, they shall inherit the earth.
10 For yet a little while, and the wicked shall not be: yea, thou shalt diligently consider his place, and it shall not be.
11 But the meek shall inherit the earth; and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace.
12 The wicked plotteth against the just, and gnasheth upon him with his teeth.
13 The Lord shall laugh at him: for he seeth that his day is coming.
14 The wicked have drawn out the sword, and have bent their bow, to cast down the poor and needy, and to slay such as be of upright conversation.
15 Their sword shall enter into their own heart, and their bows shall be broken.
16 A little that a righteous man hath is better than the riches of many wicked.
17 For the arms of the wicked shall be broken: but the Lord upholdeth the righteous.
18 The Lord knoweth the days of the upright: and their inheritance shall be for ever.
19 They shall not be ashamed in the evil time: and in the days of famine they shall be satisfied.
20 But the wicked shall perish, and the enemies of the Lord shall be as the fat of lambs: they shall consume; into smoke shall they consume away.
21 The wicked borroweth, and payeth not again: but the righteous sheweth mercy, and giveth.
22 For such as be blessed of him shall inherit the earth; and they that be cursed of him shall be cut off.
23 The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord: and he delighteth in his way.
24 Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down: for the Lord upholdeth him with his hand.
25 I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.
26 He is ever merciful, and lendeth; and his seed is blessed.
27 Depart from evil, and do good; and dwell for evermore.
28 For the Lord loveth judgment, and forsaketh not his saints; they are preserved for ever: but the seed of the wicked shall be cut off.
29 The righteous shall inherit the land, and dwell therein for ever.
30 The mouth of the righteous speaketh wisdom, and his tongue talketh of judgment.
31 The law of his God is in his heart; none of his steps shall slide.
32 The wicked watcheth the righteous, and seeketh to slay him.
33 The Lord will not leave him in his hand, nor condemn him when he is judged.
34 Wait on the Lord, and keep his way, and he shall exalt thee to inherit the land: when the wicked are cut off, thou shalt see it.
35 I have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading himself like a green bay tree.
36 Yet he passed away, and, lo, he was not: yea, I sought him, but he could not be found.
37 Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright: for the end of that man is peace.
38 But the transgressors shall be destroyed together: the end of the wicked shall be cut off.
39 But the salvation of the righteous is of the Lord: he is their strength in the time of trouble.
40 And the Lord shall help them, and deliver them: he shall deliver them from the wicked, and save them, because they trust in him.
our words become us
A Courageous Life
“Have courage,” we often say to one another. Courage is a spiritual virtue. The word courage comes from the Latin word cor, which means “heart. A courageous act is an act coming from the heart. A courageous word is a word arising from the heart. The heart, however, is not just the place where our emotions are located. The heart is the centre of our being, the centre of all thoughts, feelings, passions, and decisions.
When the flesh – the lived human experience – becomes word, community can develop. When we say, “Let me tell you what we saw. Come and listen to what we did. Sit down and let me explain to you what happened to us. Wait until you hear whom we met,” we call people together and make our lives into lives for others. The word brings us together and calls us into community. When the flesh becomes word, our bodies become part of a body of people.
– Henri Nouwen
http://www.henrinouwen.org/
no need to worry
Storms will come, count on it.
Times may come when you feel God is asleep,
not taking care of you, protecting you.
“Don’t you care?” you will pray.
Of course God cares, but just isn’t worried. Not at all.
You see, you are perishing, my dear, bit by bit.
God won’t take that from you,
won’t come between you and the storm,
but will go through it with you.
Even as the waves of your fear
wrap their white knuckles around your boat
there he is, curled in the stern,
unworried, vulnerable, babylike, willing.
Do you think he’ll let it sink if he’s in it?
When Jesus, drenched with your life,
cries, “Peace, be still,”
who do you think he’s talking to?
The calm of a storm-free life
might indeed be, as the writer says,
a dead one.
And if this really is the last chapter of your life,
won’t you have had
exactly what both of you want the most—
to be together through it all?
Storms will come.
Peace, be still.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
http://www.unfoldinglight.net
do all things with love
Yes….ALL things!
“Love the Lord with all your heart. Love your neighbor as yourself” – Jesus
Love is truly all we need.
Not love the way our world protrays it, most of the time.
A love that takes us higher and higher.
Love that brings freedom and fuels our passion and purpose.
Love that builds our world and changes hearts.
He leads us by example.
His words are life changing.
I know – it happened to me!
He loves us beyond anything we can comprehend.
Yet just a glimpse brings our souls and hearts to life, flaming the passion to give, and receive, this love.
It is real and it is available for everyone.
We are all his beloved.
life: acoustic & amplified 