Quotation Saturday

Pss. 25:5 “Lead me in thy truth, and teach me: for thou art the God of my salvation; on thee do I wait all the day.”

FAKE

“A company of wolves, is better than a company of wolves in sheep's clothing.” 
~ Anthony Liccione

“What's the whole point of being pretty on the outside when you’re so ugly on the inside?” 
~ Jess C. Scott

“You will never find the real truth among people that are insecure or have egos to protect. Truth over time becomes either guarded or twisted as their perspective changes; it changes with the seasons of their shame, love, hope or pride.” 
~ Shannon L. Alder

“An open Facebook page is simply a psychiatric dry erase board that screams, “Look at me. I am insecure. I need your reaction to what I am doing, but you’re not cool enough to be my friend. Therefore, I will just pray you see this because the approval of God is not all I need.” 
~ Shannon L. Alder

PRETENSE

“That's what real love amounts to - letting a person be what he really is. Most people love you for who you pretend to be. To keep their love, you keep pretending - performing. You get to love your pretense. It's true, we're locked in an image, an act - and the sad thing is, people get so used to their image, they grow attached to their masks. They love their chains. They forget all about who they really are. And if you try to remind them, they hate you for it, they feel like you're trying to steal their most precious possession.” 
~ Jim Morrison

“Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth -- more than ruin, more even than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habits; thought is anarchic and lawless, indifferent to authority, careless of the well-tried wisdom of the ages. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid ... Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.” 
~ Bertrand Russell

“You wear a mask for so long, you forget who you were beneath it.” 
~ Alan Moore

“After all, what was adult life but one moment of weakness piled on top of another? Most people just fell in line like obedient little children, doing exactly what society expected of them at any given moment, all the while pretending that they’d actually made some sort of choice.” 
~ Tom Perrotta

CHOICE

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.” 
~ Robert Frost

“In the space between yes and no, there's a lifetime. It's the difference between the path you walk and the one you leave behind; it's the gap between who you thought you could be and who you really are; its the legroom for the lies you'll tell yourself in the future.” 
~ Jodi Picoult

“Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself in your way of thinking.” 
~ Marcus Aurelius

“Plant seeds of happiness, hope, success, and love; it will all come back to you in abundance. This is the law of nature.” 
~ Steve Maraboli

TRUTH

“The truth is messy. It's raw and uncomfortable. You can't blame people for preferring lies.” 
~ Holly Black

“Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.” 
~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“The unexamined life is not worth living.” 
~ Socrates

“Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed. If people all over the world would do this, it would change the earth.” 
~ William Faulkner

Wisdom

“The Gospel is meant to change the sinner. Not for the sinner to change the gospel to suit their sin.” ~ author unknown

Wisdom

Job 28:12-13 But where shall wisdom be found? and where is the place of understanding?
Man knoweth not the price thereof; neither is it found in the land of the living.

People seek out wisdom as if it is out there in a book with words attached to it, or from a minister who delivers a message, philosophers, and scientists. But Job clearly states that wisdom CANNOT be found here among men in the archives of the library.

I am not set to judge how you find wisdom or how you put what you’ve found into action but I see many people wandering around like balls in a pinball machine. They jump from one belief to the next, then one minute praise God and the second minute curse their hearts out. Accepting the lost path as a way of life. They’re seeking but not finding wisdom.

I know it is no way of life to be disrespectful, rude, ignorant and selfish but I see too often people who are claiming to be Christian dividing their time between what they believe and what they practice. They believe themselves to be Christians but their actions say something totally different. I wonder why they even walk the path if they are not going to adhere to way to light and life.

The fear of the Lord is threaded throughout Job and it does not mean to be scared of His wrath it means to have RESPECT, reverence for God and to be in awe of His power over your life. I hear so often people saying they gave it up to God but again in the next sentence saying something opposite of what it means to give it up to God.

You don’t give it up to God then continue in your sinful ways. You struggle day after day to bite your tongue, you battle with your flesh filled thoughts striving to lace your conscience in the spiritual nature God had intended for mankind.

Is it an easy fun-filled task? Not at all, it’s hard work! You don’t pull a veil over your eyes and become blind to everything. Why do you think the bible states, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.”

Yeah, this is one of those non-literal meanings.  God was not referring to just a camel or just the rich man. If you have wisdom, you know the difference.

What is wisdom and why is it so important to God? Because the closer you are to wisdom, the closer you are to God. It sounds simple but it is one of the most difficult journeys in your life you’ll ever embark on!

You see with different eyes. You are no longer filled with hate, anger, disgust, or antagonism. You see with loving eyes and embrace all the beauty that is freely offered. Without wisdom, you’ll turn from the true being that God intended for you to be.

When you have wisdom you also have a tendency to reflect the Light of the Lord back into the world. You have the wisdom to know the difference in mean-spiritedness and being spirit-filled.

Being wise is not a goal solely for the Christian believer; the spiritual aspect of life has been around long before Jesus was born. Since we could determine right from wrong, man has been trying to find a way to know God spiritually. Through wisdom we find Him.

When I die, it is not my physical body or my material life that will meet the Maker face to face, it is my spirit and all it is filled with that will join me together with my Heavenly Father. Our physical bodies are tainted and spoiled by the darkness in the world. The spirit is shaped, molded, refined and formed by God. Those who have wisdom, let them hear.

If a man (or woman) call themselves Christians, that means they’ve sought out Christ. They know there is something about Him that holds weight in the world and seeks to find the Holy One. Without a spiritual journey, the path becomes askew; they believe one thing, say another and act however they want. They are lost sheep always seeking but never grasping the truth of the matter.

However, the spiritual journey leads you to a path of wisdom. No, you won’t know God better than He knows Himself. You will not be on a journey of being better or equal to God, but you will be able to discern good from evil in an unveiled light. You’ll discover innately the essence you never knew you were born with. You will then seek to see the good in all and it empowers you to be a better person all around, not just in ways that suit you.

Yes my friends, the spiritual journey brings you closer to the plan that God Himself intended all along. Wisdom is not gained by a belief in Christ. Wisdom is knowing instinctively the difference.

What a difference...

Rom 13:12 The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light.

...a day makes.

Wow, all I can say is, WOW! I said I wanted change, and I just can’t stop looking at my blog page and thinking, Wow! Now this is change! Many years have passed through in my life and many have been full of change, but this one has to be the one that will stand out as one of the most exciting years of change. This is why I wanted the drastic overhaul of my blog, so you all can change with me.

I decided a few months back that things needed to change in my life. After I made that decision, oh about the end of September I’d say, that was when things began to swiftly change. I peeled off layers of pain, let go of the darkness that tried to swallow me, left it to build it’s own little playground of dark matter and I moved on, at a snails pace.

I was consumed with life! You know this thing we must live, in a physical world. Life, the reality of things in real-time happening, not virtually. I got off of the maypole, slid across the sand on gravel-burnt knees and embraced, LIFE.

Have you ever read a book, gotten so consumed with the character(s) that you lost track of time and space? That’s a writers job, to make sure you are consumed with their characters so much so that you forget your reality. That is exactly what the virtual world holds in its clutch. Sure, some folks will say, “There are some good things too, that the computer holds.”

Sure there is, and just like God himself is a struggle to find when you are in the pits of darkness, the computer wraps you in its tentacles, squeezes you real tight, until you are gasping for breath, never really knowing who you are or the insanity that has taken over your life. You dig and plow your way though the mire, stab through the muddy waters, and find pieces of the light as you surface.  What am I saying? That the computer, IN MY OPINION, holds more dark than LIGHT!

In October, a realization hit me, that it isn’t about consuming myself with the virtual world. Life is not about building walls of defense to protect yourself. You should be able to freely live and appreciate the snowballs that are tossed in your face, and with great strength, brush away the powder!

Life is about change, characters are about transformation, story line is about variations, so why would we not take the precious care of our lives as we do with the characters and worlds we form? You can not produce something of context, if you haven’t taken the time to shape the content of your life.

It’s not about consuming all you can of the virtual world, because change only comes when you’re brave enough to tackle your inner world.

Quotation Saturday

OVERCOMING FAILURE

"It doesn't matter how much milk you spill as long as you don't lose the cow."
-Harvey Mackay

"Forget past mistakes. Forget failures. Forget everything except what you're going to do now and do it."
-William Durant

"I've come to believe that all my past failure and frustration were actually laying the foundation for the understandings that have created the new level of living I now enjoy."
-Anthony Robbins

"Failure is only the opportunity to more intelligently begin again."
-Henry Ford

SKILLS

"The better you get at your key skills, the more you accomplish in a shorter period of time."
-Brian Tracy

"Don't wish it was easier, wish you were better. Don't wish for less problems, wish for more skills. Don't wish for less challenges, wish for more wisdom."
-Jim Rohn

"If one is master of one thing and understands one thing well, one has at the same time, insight into and understanding of many things."
-Vincent Van Gogh


MAKE A DIFFERENCE

Happiness and a meaningful life come from making differences. But this is the most important rule to follow: Always make the differences you can make, not the differences you would prefer to make but can't. As you keep making differences, your skill will automatically and effortlessly increase. Anything human beings repeat they get more skillful at. Including misery!
-Lyndon Duke


You count. You make a difference. You can add to the sum of beauty and joy and love and understanding in the world (for yourself, your family, your friends, your community, however you define it), or you can subtract from those already scarce enough commodities. What you do matters.
-Vincent Barnett

VISION

"Teaching people skills without giving them a vision for a better future a vision based on common values is only training."
-Nido Qubein

"With vision, every person, organization and country can flourish.  The Bible says, ‘Without vision we perish.’"
-Mark Victor Hansen

"Yesterday's passions may not serve tomorrow's goals."
-Frederic Hudson

We're writers, we all see things in a new light.~ Joni Zipp