Things that take work

Relationships like many other things take constant work and maintenance. Forming a relationship with someone is never supposed to be an easy task that only takes weeks. It can take years to properly form a relationships, fake ones can be made in short time but they do not last. Anything that has worth in life takes a lot of hard work to attain, including relationships.

Forgiveness

Since none of us are ever perfect, forgiveness is a must otherwise how would we function properly? Unforgiveness is what starts wars, causes hurt, and spreads lies. The more time someone spends holding onto something a person has done to them, the more it begins to taint their hearts. If we spend too much time thinking on how others have hurt us or how we will get revenge, we'll become cynical and how can anyone enjoy life in that state. Learn to forgive and you'll have much more harmony in your life.

Forgiveness

Forgiveness is a necessary part of everyone's life. Without forgiveness we would never give others the opportunity to learn, and benefit from learning. It's much more difficult to advance when those we hurt have not forgiven us, especially when they have a desire for revenge. Every person you know in this life will most likely at least let you down once, and if we never forgave we would live short and fragile relationships without meaning.

Leadership

Being a leader is often the most difficult position in a group. They have the responsibility for the entire group, if anything happens in the group it affects the leader. Although nearly impossible to help ever single person under their leadership, they must continue to try. It's a difficult position and most people don't have what it takes to fulfill the role properly. It takes a certain character and determination which most people lack.

Sin

If we ignore sin and treat it as only a minor issue, it gradually begins to grow into our hearts and as time goes on it begins to become normal. When it grows natural to our minds is when we really have to start worrying, how is somebody supposed to know they are about to be hit by a train when they cannot see or hear it coming? In today's society is much easier to treat sin as normal, because to the world it is normal. To the world trying to deal with sin is a waste of time because in their eyes it is the business of no one else as long as they respect the laws of society.

Our Lines of Sight

It's difficult for us because of our human nature to always properly see God's plans for our lives. We often find ourselves confused on what to do in troublesome situations because we simply refuse to listen to the voice we place at the back of our minds. However if we ask God what he wants us to do in order to fulfill his plans we need not worry why he asks us or what the effect will be. Things can be so much simpler than we are making them.

What really matters

Too many people only attend church, pay their tithes, sing gospels songs, and they think it will secure their salvation. The things of the world will not last forever so why would we put so much importance on it, rather than thinking about the condition of our hearts, which are forever. Our hearts are the centers of all our decisions, which affects everyone else. So it's important to help each other work on the cleanliness our minds rather than how clean our suits are.

Time to Move On

It's time for us to stop being modern day Pharisees and start being more concerned about the heart condition of people. If we are to change society for the good we can't be concerned with outward appearances, for they are shallow. Although more difficult, we must work to change the opinions of people for the better, and allow them to achieve a better understanding of the truth, and by choice accept it. Otherwise aren't we all miniature dictators, trying to control every aspect of a person's life through intimidation.

Heart or the Hand

Being more concerned about the outer appearances of a person instead of what's going on in their hearts is the same as accepting temporary satisfaction, while ignoring the long term consequences. Downfall is inevitable when problems are shoved away inside our hearts without being dealt with, this is why when we are trying to help people, we can't judge them by what they do, but what's going on inside their minds. Changing inwardly is always a more permanent change, which normally follows us throughout our lives. While changing outwardly rarely lasts long at all, people change everyday, it's nothing new.

Routines

When we do something for long enough, we begin to forget about it's importance. We get so used to something being there, or something being a certain way, that we forget it isn't limitless and we have to work in order to maintain it. We should try to constantly remind ourselves of how important things are in our lives, before we lose them and we get reminded the hard way. This isn't only for our own selfish comfort, but also for the avoidance of other people's pain.

Using our Gifts

It really is sad that we normally don't realize what we have until it's gone. If we took advantage of all the gift's we were given, and all the opportunities that presented themselves to us, we would be able to accomplish some major things as a society. We can overcome this problem however, by learning from our mistakes and using our newly gained knowledge to prevent further occurrences of the same problem. So we should take note of every mistake we make, and think on how to avoid making the same one again.

What we are meant to do

I don't understand why people would ever be satisfied with the way things are, and not want to advance in any way at all. I think we should always have an open mind to be taught, otherwise we would never go anywhere as a race and our lives would be monotonous. Christians also have a calling to preach the gospel and spread God's love, sitting comfortably in church and worshiping isn't the only things we need to do. If ever unsure about what to do, God is always there to ask and he'll answer.

The outside reflects the inside

At times we say things we don't truely mean, most of the time we just get emotionally unstable for a small period of time and say things we later on regret. Although this is not always the case. How we are internally is often reflected externally on the actions we take and the words we say. It's difficult to completely hide who you are on the inside without expressing it on the outside. Most of the time we express it subconciously and sometimes never notice it at all. If we want to deal with what's happening on the outside we have to look at the inside.

It's our responsibility

As humans of a common race, we have to endure whatever problems we might face as a group and not individuals. We cannot simply blame how we are on somebody else's actions, we have to work together as a community to avoid these types of situations, isn't that what society is supposed to be? If we always went around blaming others for everything, no one would ever get credited for anything good they do, and all people would see is fear and hate. So it's time for us to stop complaining and do something about it.

The Source

It's not only important to look at the source for external problems in order to deal with them. It's also important to look at the source of our own actions in order to avoid pushing away problems we might be hiding from ourselves. How we appear on the outside is not always how we are internally, without dealing with the root of the problem, it can grow and grow, eventually consuming us. So before you move on with your life think to yourself, is there a reason I'm doing this, am I hiding something from myself?

Burdens

It is never God's plan for us to have unnecessary burdens on our hearts. He stresses the concept of forgiving and forgetting so much, how can we linger on things that are of the past. God is not interested in what was already been forgiven, all he wants us to concentrate on is the here and now. We might wake up one day and everything might be totally different. Do we really want to spend the last of our days sulking instead of doing God's work?

Who is Affecting Who

There are several reasons why we are not fully completing God's mission a we are supposed to. First of all being the minority in the world, it is often difficult not to be affected by the world's trends seeing as they are all around our surroundings. Second we do a lot of talking about spreading His love and showing people the truth, but how often does it actually happen, not enough in my opinion. Thirdly a lot of Christians have a desire to spread the Word, but do not thoroughly study it. Most of us think we know how God works because of what we learn in Sunday school, but really we have to read the Word for ourselves and study it.

What's Your Excuse

It's widely known that anything worth having comes from hard work. It works the same way with God, he would not make our jobs easy only to sit back and relax while we're here on earth, then relax even more in heaven. He wants us to do the mission he gave to us here for now, it's mentioned many times that the road would not be easy, but that we shall be rewarded in the end for what we have done. If God wanted to make it easy for us, he would have shown himself to the world in order to make them believe he existed, instead of requiring faith.

Our Importance

If we are to stay aware of our importance to God's plan then we must continually remind ourselves. It is easy to get distracted from our goals and end up forgetting who we are and what we are capable of. There are those that will try to harm your plan's and you must ignore these people because what they say or do will not change anything in God's eyes. There isn't a single person who God does not have a plan for, each of us are uniquely designed for our individual purposes, and that will never change regardless of what anyone else might say.

On and Off Switch

Every person in a place of responsibility is accountable to every single decision they make. Unlike the common person, those in a place of maturity and leadership, such as Christians being servants of Christ, are constantly being observed by the community in order to see what kind of decisions they make, and how they make them. We cannot be a people of teaching if we refuse to follow the rules that we have said to be true. You can't be a servant sometimes but not others, it's either all the time or none of the time.

Outcasts

Christians are often seen as odd or different, but if they were seen as normal then what difference would they make in the world. In order for change to happen, something new has to come in, if we try to clean something with dirty water it will never be cleansed. In the same way Christians will not be able to do God's work and spread his purity throughout the world if they are part of the world. Being different isn't always the bad side of the situation.

"Let's Start Doing Things Right"

I think that when God said that people as servants to him on the earth, it would not be difficult but would give us strength to overcome all, it relates to Pastor Paul's example if being in a position of authority but being able to rely on God's decisions in order to make sure things go as planned. Barely anything of value ever comes easy, but even though it can be difficult it is never God's plan to make us go through it by ourselves.

Too many "If"s

I think people shouldn't have to use the word "if" when they are referring to something they believe in. If is a word is uncertainty, and using it signifies that you are completely sure about whatever the topic is. If you are going to trust someone, then trust them, it shouldn't be a half trust because they just don't work out. You either fully trust God, or you don't trust him, there is no gray area in between.

"Extraordinary Living"

It does not take a world change event in order to have an extraordinary life. People seem to think that they have to create such huge impacts on the world in order to live as someone who was valued in history. Doing the simplest tasks like helping your neighbor cut their lawn, can change their day completely and they might end up making better decisions. Some would call it the butterfly effect, how one simple thing you do, can end up drastically changing everything as we know it. I think all that should matter to us is that we helped someone in their day, and got positive results, because that is something rare to come across these days.

"Are You Wrapping the New Gift in Old Wrapping Paper?"

I think bringing in new things to our lives is important to do regularly. We have adapt in the right way though. If we try to bring in something new and expecting things to be done in the same way as the old, we'll be unprepared and it will be more difficult to change. In the same way we put new wine into new wineskin, we have to expect things to be done differently when we bring in the new.

"I've got the power"

Most of us usually do have the strength within us to do great things but we don't normally realize it. The way we look at situations is we see ourselves to be a lot smaller than we really are. I think it might be because most of us just think that if we try it won't work, so no one ever ends up doing anything. Even if you try and fail, you can learn from the experience and see where your mistake was, but not trying never works.

"Let's Do It"

Knowledge on how to do something is useless unless we apply it in our lives. For example, I hear about a lot of people studying many subjects on college but never end up going into that subject. I suppose they could have taken the course simply because they enjoy learning about the subject, but I don't see why you would just leave it at what you learned without further exploring it. Most of the time I think it's our laziness that is the problem, we just aren't willing to put the work into using the knowledge we've gained. However, we have to learn to force ourselves to apply that knowledge in our lives if we want to live how we are supposed to.

"Misjudging our Father"

People often make stupid decisions when they are offered satisfaction right away but pay the price later. I think that's why often people go to their friends or family when they need help because they think they will get the help they want right away instead of having to wait for a prayer to be answered. In the end though you might get the sympathy that you wanted but rarely do you get any actual help that benefits your life. Taking the short and easy road is rarely ever rewarding. In the end you're back where you started; facing the decision of which road to take.

"Love God and Love People"

Being a friend to a sinner while avoiding entering sin with them can be a challenging thing at times, but most things that aren't easy are not worth it to begin with. Just like youth you can't blame people for not knowing right from wrong, just like it wouldn't be right to punish your pet without it knowing what it did wrong. Something as simple as being a friend to someone without leaving can affect their lives enough for them to listen to what you have to say, you trust someone you have known for a long time more than you trust a stranger.

"Others"

If we have an opportunity to help people out when they cannot help themselves then it would be selfish not to. People who have the ability to help others shouldn't avoid their calling and hide away just because they don't feel like it. We're all in this together and if we want to live the way we should then we all have to play our part in life. It takes action for change to occur.