Editor: Richard (Dick) Innes
Published by: ACTS International
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Vol. 9 – No. 2207 June 02, 2007
Thought for the week: "I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else." – C. S. Lewis
"Don't let your worries get the best of you, remember, Moses started out as a basket case" – Anonymous
"Our lives improve only when we take chances... and the first and most difficult risk we can take is to be honest with ourselves." – Walter Anderson
"One is a Christian 7/24/365 or he is but a tinkling cymbal." – Richard H. Jett
"It is the character of a brave and resolute man not to be ruffled by adversity and not to desert his post." – Cicero, Roman orator
"It does not matter if we have material wealth. What really matters is—what do we do with it?" – John Wood
"If you've done big things in life you must expect to have excited some criticism. It's only people who've done precious little who get no criticism at all." – Margaret Thatcher
"Don't join an easy crowd; you won't grow. Go where the expectations and the demands to perform are high." – Jim Rohn
"If we ever forget that we're one nation under God, then we will be a nation gone under." – Ronald Reagan
The telephone solicitor selling basement waterproofing must have thought she'd died and gone to heaven when she reached my very polite and patient son on the phone. At the end of her long sales pitch, she asked, "Do you mind if we send out someone to give you an estimate?"
"Not at all," my son said.
"When would be a good time?" she asked.
My son answered, "Just as soon as I dig a basement."
Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened.
Pain and Suffering is inevitable but Misery is optional.
A good exercise for the heart is to bend down and help another up.
Life is what you make of it ... kinda like Play-Doh.
The bubbling brook would lose its song if you removed the rocks.
Happiness comes through doors you didn't even know you left open.
Everything is always okay in the end; if it's not, then it's not the end.
If all my friends jumped off a cliff, I wouldn't jump with them. I would be at the bottom to catch them.
A girl on the street is pointing up at the sky. 'Look, an angel!' she yells. Passerby laughs, 'You fool, that is only a cloud.' How wonderful it would be to see angels where there are only clouds. How sad it would be to see clouds where there are angels.
Here is a test to find whether your mission on earth is finished: If you're alive, it isn't.
So be happy! Don't let anything burst your balloon! Boogie through life!
"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.' That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell.
You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to."
Harvard Medical School psychologist Steven Berglas has written a book called The Success Syndrome. He found that individuals who in his word "suffer" from success have arrogance and a sense of aloneness.
Insider trader Dennis Levine was asked by his wife why he needed the money from insider trading and he really had no answer. Levine says that when his income was $100,000, he hungered for $200,000, and when he was making $1 million, he hungered for $3 million. Berglas says that, oddly enough, people who find that $200,000 did not make them happy never asked themselves why they thought $300,000 would make them happy.
Asked to prescribe a cure for the success syndrome, Berglas said, "What's missing in these people—Ivan Boesky, Michael Milken, Leona Helmsley—is deep commitment or religious activity that goes far beyond just writing a check to a charity."
When Teresa, a widow with four young children, saw a notice that members of her church would gather to deliver presents and food to a needy family, she took $10 out of her savings jar and bought the ingredients to make three dozen cookies. She got to the church parking lot just in time to join a convoy going to the home that was to receive the congregation's help.
The route was familiar, and she was stunned when the cars pulled up in front of her house. When the pastor saw her, he said, "We never expected you to join us, Teresa. We know it's been a great struggle since your husband died, and we all wanted to support you."
Although she was uncomfortable being thought of as the object of charity, Teresa didn't want to embarrass anyone so she cheerfully said, "Well, at least I can share these cookies with our friends."
This parable teaches us that no one is too poor to help others and that true charity is rooted in love and compassion. Poverty of spirit is worse than economic distress. Teresa's story reminds us that very few of us give as much as we could and should.
My friend Larry Rosen, president of the YMCA of Metropolitan Los Angeles, introduced me to the concept of "sacrificial giving" -- giving in abundance to a point where one must sacrifice something that is desired.
You can start out easy. Take whatever amount you were thinking of giving to charity, then double it. If that's too much, increase it by 50 percent instead. The idea is to stretch yourself. It will mean a lot to those you help, but it will mean as much to your heart.
This is Michael Josephson reminding you that character counts.
"Casting all your care on God because he cares for you."1
"Worry, like a rocking chair," said Vance Havner, "will give you something to do, but it won't get you anywhere." Or as somebody else has said, "Worry is the advance interest you pay on troubles that seldom come."
According to Ken Anderson, nine times out of ten, the worrying about something does more damage to the one who worries than the thing he or she is worrying about.
Anderson continues, "Modern medical research has proved that worry breaks down resistance to disease. More than that, it diseases the nervous system—particularly that of the digestive organs and of the heart." Concern is needed to keep us on track with our responsibilities, but worry, like stress, is a killer.
An examination of 500 patients in a British clinic showed that more than one-third of their visual problems were caused by emotional tension. And a survey of some 5,000 university students showed that worriers get the lowest grades.
The word "worry" comes from an old Anglo-Saxon word meaning to strangle or to choke. While we need to be attentive to life's concerns, worrying about them "chokes" the joy out of life. "Worrying is like driving a car with one foot on the accelerator and the other foot on the brake."
One antidote for worry is trust and trust is a choice. When things aren't going well and I am prone to worry, I keep praying until the storm passes: "Dear God, I choose to trust you in this situation no matter how I feel." In time my feelings catch up with my choice and the worry gives way to calm. Meaningful worship, supportive relationships, sharing my feelings with a trusted friend, physical exercise, proper diet, deep breathing relaxation exercises and sufficient rest all help—plus learning to pray about the causes of my worry and not just the symptoms is a major key in learning to win over worry.
All the water in the world
However hard it tried,
Could never, never sink a ship
Unless it got inside.
All the hardships of this world,
Might wear you pretty thin,
But they won't hurt you, one least bit
Unless you let them in.2
Suggested prayer: "Dear God, please help me to learn to trust you more fully, act more responsibly, face and resolve the causes in my life that are at the root of my worrying, and leave the outcome to you of the many things in my life over which I have little or no control. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus' name, amen."
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