Ten Keys to a More Meaningful Life

1. Be comfortable walking in small circles. Understand that everyone will not comprehend your vision, and that’s ok. They don’t know your story.

2. Don’t be afraid to walk away from toxic situations and people. Save your allegiance for those worthy to receive it! Shake off the dust from your feet and keep on moving!

3. Don’t waste your time looking backwards. What’s behind you is just history. Learn from it and move on. Your destiny lies ahead!

4. Make gratitude the starting point of each day. Being thankful where you are prepares you to walk into greater blessings with appreciation and humility.

5. Don’t worry about defending yourself against false accusations or the negative opinions of others. People attempt to cover their own shortcomings by hating on others. It never works, by the way!

6. Don’t take social media seriously. It’s not real life! Instead, foster real relationships in the real world. Meet for lunch. Make a phone call. Write a letter. Send a card. We were created to be physically connected to others. Liking and commenting will never fill the void of real relational interactions!

7. Stop making assumptions. Don’t talk about what you don’t know, and don’t base your opinion of others on what someone else tells you.

8. Be quick to show love and compassion for others. Sometimes people just want to know someone cares about them.

9. Never give up! Be an overcomer. It may be raining where you are right now but rest assured that the sun is still shining somewhere!

10. Persevere through the storm. Blessings are on the other side! Place your faith in God and not man! Man will let you down, but God will never, ever fail you!

Free Christian Resources

The Abiding Will of God

There are two words being noised abroad in the culture, especially by political candidates of one sort or another. Those two words are "conservative values." Those words are spoken as if they have the same eternal value as God's word, at least some seem to see them on a similar authoritative level. There is a vast difference, however, between the conservative, or any values of men, and the unchanging, unalterable will of God. Though some may be valid, men masquerade their values as God's in order that they may have validity, and the prevailing culture will look to them as the standards to live by. Only God's values are perfect, unquestionable, and abiding. Only God's biblical ethics are absolutely authoritative. The Church must bear responsibility for not making the obvious differences known, and more important, to make the culture aware of God's moral ethics. Many simply do not know what God requires--even many church goers. Therefore they have nothing to compare man's values with so they can know where to draw the line, and be able to determine where a believer must take his or her stand. The Church must announce God's will at whatever cost and not play the role of coward facing the giant, rather, she must be a David challenging the mighty opponents of God's eternal will whoever or wherever they may be.

The Battle Plan

Christians seem to be coming under attack by the enemies of God now more than at any time in recent history. It is not by frontal assault as in previous times, but by religious deception. The Bible warns that Satan appears as an "angel of light". In too many cases, the false angel (Satan) is not detected and wreaks havoc in Christians lives and in the Church of God. In other cases, there is a deception that is not directly of Satan, but by the unsaved who manage to infiltrate the lives of believers and who come into the Church as members. These people do not know Jesus as Lord and Savior nor his mission for the Church. The problem, too, is the lack of discernment by many believers who are not able to detect the enemy's subtleties. God will grant the believing community the necessary wisdom and discenment if we are faithful to him. He loves his people and wants to see them spiritually healthy in order to fight the fight of faith and spread the gospel. This can only be done if we allow his word to direct and strengthen us. How do we do so? We must read and study his word, obeying and applying its truths daily in our lives. We must walk in the light of his word in order to see where we are and where we need to be. God's word, through the Holy Spirit, will teach us how to recognize the sin within and the enemy without. His word will direct our personal cleansing through confession and repentance of sin, and show us how to maintain the purity of our own lives, and of his Church. We will then be able to recognize and guard against the invasion of this ungodly culture.