Change sounds good. Being endowed to make choices that can bring about positive change feels great. Changing for everlasting… euphoric!

I’m writing today as a contributor to the Christian Writers Blog Chain. Our theme for this month is “Change.” Christianwriters.com is an excellent place to network if you’re a Christian writer or author.

“Every human has four endowments – self-awareness, conscience, independent will and creative imagination. These give us the ultimate human freedom… the power to choose, to respond, to change.” Stephen Covey

WoW, that’s powerful stuff!! These 4 human endowments, or natural abilities, are up to us. We have them and utilize them as we please. If we are focused on doing the right stuff the four endowments work for us, keeping us out of trouble and in His good graces.

How grateful I am to see the power of human will at work in the spirit of change, in my world and also in the people who fill my close circles… when we put our mind to it, we have the ability to change… improve… grow.

The power to change is our most omnipotent choice! (Click to Tweet)

Just think about it… whenever we can modify or alter our behavior, and do so repeatedly so that we develop a new behavior pattern, we’re exercising our free will, through self-awareness, to change. If that takes the influence of our conscience and a pinch of creative imagination, we’ve utilized all 4 endowments in the process.

OK, so I have an example… the HB and I share this pretty crazy connection, it’s like being cut from the same piece of cloth. That makes life very interesting because we share an electric passion that you just don’t find very often in life. Well, there’s an up side and a down side to this… and one thing we’re finding out is that we need to get to know each other better, just as friends. This is very important if we want to carry us to the next level… to a deeper, more meaningful intimacy and everlasting (i.e., the longest term). Why? Well, whenever I think about the world and everlasting, I wonder what we’ll carry with us from this world to the next. This connection that I share with HB… if it is truly a gift from the Holy Spirit, as it seems, will we take that with us? Or, is it just something to enjoy and share while here on earth? I have no idea what the future holds, and so this is a conscious choice as believers… a choice or a change for us. So we had some tidying up to do…  in a nutshell, it goes back to the connection between harmony and morality… focusing on friendship for us means we have something we know we’ll share the rest of our lives here… and that’s relevant to our everyday lives… now and in the future…

Let’s face it, we all have some tidying up to do. We all have some choices, or changes that we could make, right? Once we fess up to this (i.e., have self-awareness), we can move forward to the next hurdle… do I want to change? Often this is the question of conscience… the question of do I really care? This is the point at which we often find out who… and who’s we really are… what’s motivating us… what are priorities are. Next up, exercising our independent will… do I REALLY want to do this deep down in my soul? Will power… we can do most anything if we really set our mind to it… yep, just keep focused on everlasting and that will help ;-)… finally, we may feel the need to use our creative imagination to keep moving forward over the next hurdle… and the one after that. Sure, I can make a short-term change… but will it really stick? Time will tell…

Change sounds good. Being endowed to make choices creating positive change feels great. Changing for everlasting is euphoric! (Click to Tweet)

Being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. Philippians 1:6

Q: Do you believe that change is the most powerful choice we can make? What change have you made in your world that has proven most valuable?

Christian Writers Blog Chain

Image courtesy of seksuwat / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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Oomph… share pizzazz with those around you!

The power of Oomph… what’s that?

Maybe it’s the ability to have influence beyond our concerns… yep, that’s a Covey thing. It’s having a positive impact on the people who are around me. This creative energy creates behavioral influence… and pizzazz!

Whole heartedly using our spiritual gifts to connect our current opportunities to the next and to everlasting.

Our message at Access Church yesterday echoed something that I’ve been thinking a lot about lately… how our opportunities, the past and future, are all connected. We’re in the midst of a 6-part series on God’s Will, it’s called Game Plan. You can watch yesterday’s sermon by clicking here. This is the power of Oomph at work in my life… sort of spooky sometimes because Andy Stanley’s message yesterday fit like a piece of a puzzle perfectly in place with the other pieces that I was trying to connect… crisp and firm… with zip!

Andy says this is one the most important actions we can take today:

– Be excited about and pursue with all your heart what you have on your plate today, the opportunities that are right in front of you.

This will bring about the right, new opportunities that God has in store for you. I have a story to share… you may know that I took a job working at the local Planet Fitness a while back. I still work there, one day a week… through that job I have been blessed in oh so many ways… I’ve made some lifelong friends… the HB and G.A….met thousands of people from nearly every walk of life who became members and live in my community… it’s been a crazy, superiffic experience that has opened doors that I otherwise would not have ever seen! How did all that happen? Just like Andy said…

– Be excited about and pursue with all your heart what you have on your plate today, the opportunities that are right in front of you.

Through that one experience God delivered in so many ways.

Here’s the passage out of Colossians that moves me with the power of Oomph…

“Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly lived, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.

Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” Colossians 3:12-17

This speaks to my soul. For whatever reason, it seems to pick me up and gets me moving in the right direction. Moreover, it ties the power of Oomph in with Peace, Love and Unity. How?

It’s simply this: sing… dream… and love… I guess that’s peaceful Oomph 🙂

How does Monday usually take you? Is there a Bible verse that is speaking to you with Oomph today?

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Plug ‘er In !!!

I can’t imagine there will ever be a writer that could come along and replace William Shakespeare. Much like Beethoven and Mozart, the two great composers of music, the written word just seemed to flow from this Bard fellow…

I never really put much thought into this until recently. Sure, I waded through Theatre Appreciation at the University of Florida. Yea, I remember it well… but it didn’t really move me back then… I took the class for cultural enrichment as an easy elective… classical music, on the other hand, I loved (and likewise, Music Appreciation), but the written word just did not move me all that much in that day and time.

This is the meaningful part… at least to me… and I’m hoping it might inspire you…

I didn’t pick up on this writing thing until much later. Somewhere along the way everything changed. For me, it wasn’t just all of a sudden… it was a gradual transformation. One that I can point to a number of events that moved me in a different direction. Most notably, it was through the power of the Holy Spirit that I was given a gift… a passion… much like that fruit of the Spirit thing… it’s like plugging a lamp into a light socket… the instrument… vehicle… or tool… sort of “comes alive” if you will.

That seems to be what’s sort of transpiring with me at the moment with the Holy Spirit… and with Shakespeare’s poetry… I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to write any poetry, haven’t tried that one just yet… but I am curious and it does speak to me like never before.

So I thought I would write about it… thinking maybe it could help move someone else to follow the Holy Spirit wherever they’re being lead…

Here’s a piece of one of Shakespeare’s sonnets… it’s a love one (hee)… yep, that’s me! It’s believed that through the Sonnets that Shakespeare “unlocked his heart.”

Here’s Shakespeare’s 18th Sonnet…

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed,
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course untrimmed:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st,
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

This passage just breathes with love and life to me… stability… and carrying forward our themes of memories connected to everlasting and the perfect eternal beauty… this whole image is more precious than summer… and the crescendo of the exegesis, or interpretation of complexion… the dual meaning, in my perfect example anyway, of inner AND outer beauty…

A form of poetry, the Sonnet, as written by Shakespeare, includes a collection of 154 poems themed on the passage of time, love, beauty and morality.

Foreshadowing… if you know theatre (and me) you know where this is all leading to… Shakespeare… who wrote love and drama in the form of comedy, history and tragedy like no other… and finally… the last romances… blending this with a twist of lemon… toss in a few monkeys, a dash of adventure, and a pinch of sage… you’ve got the recipe for a really good chapter!

Q: Do you feel the Holy Spirit leading you anywhere in particular at this time?

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connecting our memories to everlasting… or tug-o-war…
either way, it’s all good 🙂

I’m writing today as a contributor to the Christian Writers Blog Chain. Our theme for this month is “Memory.” Christianwriters.com is an excellent place to network if you’re a Christian writer or author.

I believe there is a connection between our memories and everlasting. Our memory is one of the fascinating abilities of the human mind. The ability to store knowledge and images and recall them years later is a true gift… these memories are a collection of people, places, feelings, sounds and smells that we’ve encountered… they make us all unique.

Memory…

I think it’s kind of neat that our memory is more than just what we’re leaving behind. We all have a place in everlasting, right? Like the pieces of a puzzle fitting together perfectly… if God really wanted this place to be any different from the way it is don’t you think maybe He would have done just that? I try to think of our past and the memories as a continuous or fused process with the future and everlasting. Everything fits together seamlessly in His perfect way. This concept or connection that I’m suggesting is simply carrying forward the impressions that we’ve made in the past… through cause and effect… to the impact they have on the future, or everlasting.

I would like to leave behind a lasting memory that is good and one that people will say he did a good job of walking in Jesus’ footsteps. Not someone who was perfect, but someone who God used in a powerful way.

How we live our lives will determine how we are remembered.

What we do now DOES matter… every day… and for the future, too.

This Is A Love Story… yep, that’s my story. It’s been almost a year since I wrote anything about it… unless you can read between the lines here at I’m Just Thinkin’. A lot of what I write here is my daily journey.

Sometimes it seems like the harder we work for God the more difficult the evil one makes it for us.

It’s sort of funny because I actually became a believer later in life… I was baptized on March 5, 2000, at Neptune Baptist Church by Pastor Tom Bary. Interestingly, life seemed to get an order of magnitude more challenging after that. Sounds strange, doesn’t it?

Yes, I’ve worked in some beautiful places… at the same time I’ve seen a few trains run off the track too (in a manner of speaking…)!

My life can be pretty ho-hum sometimes… and on other days you wouldn’t believe me if I told you…

Most of all, it truly seems like a tug-of-war between good and evil. Remember Raggedy Ann? Yep, I’m feeling her pain when she’s the object of affection of two kids at the same time!

I guess one of the most meaningful things that I can carry from memory to everlasting is that I feel like my children love and respect me for who I am. I try my best to just be real. That’s about the best way to sum it up. No ulterior motive… just a pretty simple kid at heart trapped inside what the HB tells me is an attractive shell. My girls tell me they’re proud of me. That brings a tear to my eye…

Memory… so much more that what I am leaving behind…

We all have a place in everlasting…

What do you most want to leave behind / have a place in everlasting?

Christian Writers Blog Chain

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