Editor: Richard (Dick) Innes
Published by: ACTS International
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Vol. 14 – No. 1112 March 17, 2012
Thought for the week: A blind person asked St. Anthony: "Can there be anything worse than losing eye sight?" He replied, "Yes, losing your vision!"
"Friendship is like a book. It takes years to write, but only a few seconds to burn." – Unknown
"Prayer is not a 'spare wheel' that you pull out when in trouble, but it is a 'steering wheel' that directs the right path throughout." – Unknown
"When God solves your problems, you have faith in His abilities; when God doesn't solve your problems, He has faith in your abilities." – Unknown
"When you pray for others, God listens to you and blesses them, and sometimes, when you are safe and happy, remember that someone has prayed for you." – Unknown
"People often say that this or that person has not yet found himself. But the self is not something one finds. It is something one creates." – Thomas Szasz, psychiatrist
"The farther backward you can look the farther forward you are likely to see." – Winston Churchill
The following letters requesting support were received by a welfare department office. They've been around awhile, but are certainly comforting to those of us who make our share of "mistrakes."
"I cannot get sick pay. I have six children. Can you tell me why?"
"I am glad to report that my husband who is missing is dead."
"This is my eight child. What are you going to do about it?"
"I am very much annoyed to have branded my son illiterate. This is very much a dirty lie as I was married a week before he was born."
"I am forwarding my marriage certificate and three children, one of which is a mistake as you can see."
"Unless I get my husband's money pretty soon, I will be forced to live an immortal life."
"You have changed my little boy to a gird. Will this make a difference?
"In accordance with your instructions I have given birth to twins in the enclosed envelope."
Author Jim Collins makes reference to this outlook in his book, Good to Great. Collins tells the story of Admiral James Stockdale, who was a prisoner of war for eight years during the Vietnam War. After Stockdale's release Collins asked him how in the world he survived eight years in a prisoner-of-war camp. He replied, "I never lost faith in the end of the story. I never doubted not only that I would get out, but also that I would prevail in the end and turn the experience into the defining event of my life, which, in retrospect, I would not trade."
Collins then asked, "Who didn't make it out?" Admiral Stockdale replied, "Oh, that's easy. The optimists ... they were the ones who said, 'We're going to be out by Christmas.' And Christmas would come, and Christmas would go. Then they'd say, 'We're going to be out by Easter.' And Easter would come, and Easter would go. And then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again. And they died of a broken heart."
Real courage embraces the twin realities of current difficulty and ultimate triumph. Yes, life stinks. But it won't forever. As one of my friends likes to say, "Everything will work out in the end. If it's not working out, it's not the end."
– Source: Max Lucado's UpWords Weekly, MaxLucado.com
In 1887 Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinborough, had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years prior:
"A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse over loose fiscal policy, (which is) always followed by a dictatorship."
"The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:
From bondage to spiritual faith;
From spiritual faith to great courage;
From courage to liberty;
From liberty to abundance;
From abundance to complacency;
From complacency to apathy;
From apathy to dependence;
From dependence back into bondage."
Professor Joseph Olson of Hamline University School of Law in St. Paul, Minnesota, believes the United States is now somewhere between the "complacency and apathy" phase of Professor Tyler's definition of democracy, with some forty percent of the nation's population already having reached the "governmental dependency" phase.
There were two young boys who were raised in the home of an alcoholic father. As young men, they each went their own way. Years later, a psychologist who was analyzing what drunkenness does to children in the home searched out these two men. One had turned out to be like his father, a hopeless alcoholic. The other had turned out to be a teetotaler. The counselor asked the first man, "Why did you become an alcoholic?"
And the second, "Why did you become a teetotaler?" And they both gave the same identical answer in these words, "What else could you expect when you had a father like mine?" It's not what happens to you in life but how you react to it that makes the difference. Every human being in the same situation has the possibilities of choosing how he will react, either positively or negatively.
When we think about character, we tend to envision really big things, like taking heavy risks, committing bold acts of integrity, being grandly generous, or making tough sacrifices.
Such noble choices indicate character, but for the most part, our integrity is revealed in much smaller events, like apologizing when we're wrong, giving to causes we believe in, being honest when it may be embarrassing, or returning shopping carts.
One of my favorite stories is about a father who asked his son to return a cart they had just used. The son protested, "C'mon, Dad. There are carts all over. No one returns them. That's why they hire people to collect them."
After a short argument, mom chimed in, "For heaven's sake, it's no big deal. Let's go."
Dad was about to surrender when he saw an elderly couple walking together to return their cart.
He said, "Son, there are two kinds of people in this world: those who put their carts away and those who don't. We're the kind who return theirs. Now go return the cart."
Which kind are you?
This is Michael Josephson reminding you that character counts.
"Each one should test his own actions. Then he can take pride in himself, without comparing himself to somebody else, for each one should carry his own load."1
Comedian Bill Cosby received a lot of flack because he told his own people to quit blaming anyone else for the problems they have, to act responsibly, and develop and use the abilities they have. This is a message we all need to hear regardless of the color of our skin or the circumstances of our background.
In fact, two of life's greatest abilities are depend-ability and response-ability. Dependability is keeping one's word. It's being there when we say we are going to be there, and doing what we say we are going to do. It's keeping the commitments we make.
Responsibility is realizing that I am totally responsible for what I say, what I want, what I feel, and for what I do or don't do. True, I was not responsible for my background or my upbringing, but I am totally responsible for what I do about overcoming my background if it were less than desirable, for what I become, and for every area of my life. As long as I blame my past, my parents, my background, the government, or anyone else, I will stay in a self-pitying and self-defeating mode going nowhere fast.
Unless some think I am an armchair-theorist coming from a highly privileged background telling others what they should do, they are mistaken. I came from a very dysfunctional family background, was not allowed to attend high school, made to go to work fulltime when I was still 13, and came overseas to get an education without any help from anyone (worked my way through college and worked three jobs at once during the summers). I made up my mind while still a teen that I wanted to fulfill God's will for my life, and for my life to amount to something, so I did what I needed to do to make it happen.
What I did have going for me was a firm belief that God had a purpose for my life. I didn't know what it was at the time but I knew that I needed to prepare myself for whatever it might be. Sure, there were obstacles to overcome and challenges to meet, but these made me all the stronger. Today it has paid off tremendously. I count it a tremendous privilege to be able to publish the gospel and Christian message, and be communicating it around the world to multiplied thousands of people. There is nothing better in life that I could have wanted or wished to do.
The point is, every one of us needs to know that God has a plan and purpose for his or her life, and then employ all of his/her powers for the achievement of that purpose. God will do for us what we cannot do for ourselves, but he will never do for us what we can and need to do for ourselves—otherwise he would be acting irresponsibly by keeping us immature and over-dependent.
Suggested prayer: "Dear God, help me to discover what my God-given life purpose is, and with your help, act responsibly to overcome all setbacks, and develop all of my abilities to achieve my life purpose. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus' name, amen."
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