Nobody Told Me The Road Would Be Easy

I just can't give up now.  I've come too far from where I started from.  Nobody told me, the road would be easy and I don't believe, He brought me this far to leave me.

These words are lyrics from a song that I really love by Mary Mary.  Songs help me meditate on God's promises.  Has anyone ever told you the road would be easy?  Exactly what is the road anyways???  For me the road depends on who you are and where you are in life.  Here are a few roads that come to my mind:

The Road To Salvation- Even though salvation is a free gift, why is it so hard for some to accept it?  It seems like a lot of people feel that being saved means losing freedom.  What freedom are you losing by doing things God's way?  If you think about it, going against God's word is more like slavery.  Let's take the 10 commandments for example.  Thou shalt not kill, covet, commit adultery, and steal to name a few.  What is the problem with that?  Does that seem like freedom to you?  These are things that will get you locked up for life.  Instead, focus on the fruits of the Spirit such as love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness and faithfulness.  Not all of these are easy but the key is to focus on these things daily. 

The Road To Redemption- I struggle every day with my flesh.  Lately I have been petty and plain old rude.  When someone does something that affects me in a negative way, I do not focus on any fruits of the spirit right away.  For me, the first thing I want to do is get even and make them pay.  I mean really, I am so legalistic sometimes that I can't even stand myself.  I have to ask God for forgiveness so that I can receive mercy from Him and also have mercy on others.  At the end of the day, I want God's favor.  To me, redemption is about forgiveness and renewal.  This is a daily thing for me and it's not easy but it is necessary.  Currently, my memory verse for this is Create In Me A Clean Heart  Psalm 51:10.

The Road To Integrity- Image is more important to me than I would like to admit.  When I blog I often stop to think about how I will look when I admit my short comings to the world.  Then God tells me that my purpose of this blog is to bring glory to Him and I am not admitting to anything that He is not aware of.  More people can identify with you than you know.  I act on my emotions without thinking and I'm trying to learn how to stop, think and pray before I act.

Billy Graham once said, "Integrity is the glue that holds our way of life together. We must constantly strive to keep our integrity intact. When wealth is lost, nothing is lost. When health is lost, something is lost. When character is lost, all is lost."  

Without character and integrity, image is nothing.

For The Lord Searches All Hearts  1 Chronicles 28:9

Whose Job Is It To Make You Happy?

Have you assigned your happiness to someone or something?  Your friends, children, spouse or significant other?  What do I mean by that you ask?  Well first of all, happiness is an emotion which is driven by one thing, your choice.  You do realize that you can actually choose to be happy, sad, angry, etc.....?  Let me just tell you that my emotions are typically all over the place on any given day.  But I am currently learning that I need to control my emotions and try not to let my emotions control me.  That is a difficult task for me but with God's help, I know I can do all things.
  To control your happiness or any other emotion, is to decide what or who makes you happy, sad or angry.  There is a time for everything.  There are times when happiness would not really be appropriate, like when somebody hurts you physically or emotionally.  That would cause you to be angry or sad and that's OK.  The important thing is our reaction, like getting even.  If someone is rude to me, I cannot help but to be rude right back.  But God is not very pleased with me when I do that and He lets me know that right away. 
  Yesterday morning on my way to work, it was so beautiful outside and my morning had a great start.  I almost forgot my coffee which can be a bit disturbing for me, or not.  You never know with me.  So I find my coffee in the garage where I left it and now here I am in my car with my coffee listenin to some good music of course.  Once I get on the freeway I take a swig of my coffee and it spilled down my shirt and into my lap.  Oops, the lid wasn't on tight enough.  Now, my main emotion to this is frustration and my reaction would be a few dramatic choice words.  Yes, apparently I am a drama queen according to my friends and family.  Whatever, they always seem to see things that I don't.  What is that all about?  Anyways, that's an entirely different story and I will write about that some day.  Back to my reaction to getting myself all dirty before I even get to work.  That morning, I had also began my draft on this posting so I was already geared up for this test.  I pulled myself together, thanked God that I wore black pants and only got a small splash on my super cute tan shirt with the giant black flower.  I chalked it up to que sera sera, whatever will be will be and told myself not to cry over spilled milk, well coffee in this case.  I have literally made a big ugly deal over spilled milk before. 
I just happened to be prepared for that test and made the choice to be happy and continue to enjoy my beautiful commute to work.  I would say I got an A on that emotions test for a change.  I ended up having one of the best days at work that I've had in a long time.  I even helped a co-worker channel her emotions when our system decided to crash while she was trying to meet a very important deadline.  I told her, it is what it is, just work on something else but she really didn't have anything else to work on so I told her to take a break, in a nice way of course.  That's exactly what she did and she was happy.