Forgiveness Is Better than Revenge

There is great value in every act of forgiveness.  You can forgive yourself, you can forgive others, and you can forgive even when you don’t know exactly who to forgive, because forgiveness is not about who is to blame or who is at fault.  It is about letting go, completely and permanently.

Forgiveness is recognizing the reality that what has happened has already happened, and that there’s no point in allowing it to dominate the rest of your life.  Forgiveness refreshingly cleans the slate and enables you to step forward.

Are you contemplating revenge?  You know that’s negative thinking getting the best of you.  However, there is a way to seek revenge positively. How?  Forget about them.  Remember you.  Working on a better you is more fulfilling than hanging on to contempt of others.  Let it all go and hold on to your growth and kindness instead.  If you train yourself to consistently be more loving in thoughts and actions, your positive energy will attract more positive results into your current reality.

Be unlike the person or situation that hurt you.  Let go and grow past your pain.  Carry on living well in a way that creates peace in your heart. The energy you would spend trying to get real revenge can be better spent creating an amazing future for yourself.

The bottom line is that the best revenge is happiness, because nothing drives your adversaries more insane than seeing a fresh smile on your face.

(c) Marc Chernoff

Merry Christmas!

“Merry Christmas!”

That would be the most said phrase or words this season. In the last couple of hours, I have exchanged this greeting with countless number of friends, well-wishers and loved ones and I would still have to do more for another 24 hours or so. However, Christmas is not what it is because of the fanfare, holidays or celebrations associated with it but because of the Man, Christ Jesus, in whose honour and glory it is celebrated all over the world.

“For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.” (Isaiah 9:6)

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.” (John 3:16-17)

Christmas is all about the Person of Jesus who was given to us; who He is (the Son of God) and what He came to do (salvation for mankind). It is about God’s love for a lost and reprobate world whose only destination is eternal damnation, without the salvation of Christ. Christmas means Christ in you; it expresses God resident in your heart and affecting your world with His love. Unless and until a man has this Christmas in his heart, he can not truly enjoy the blessings of it.

Today, let this Christmas find a place in your heart, and not in the shopping malls, movie theatres or Super Diners. Let Christmas find expression through your words, actions and thoughts. Let the world see Jesus Christ in your eyes.

Remember, Jesus said, “Come unto me,…and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28).

Merry Christmas!

(c) Prince Bright Eweka

Is watching pornography sinful?

The Bible makes it clear that watching pornography is sinful. Firstly, the very word pornography comes from a Greek word porneia, which is translated sexual immorality in our English Bibles. Believers are commanded repeatedly in the New Testament to flee from all kinds of sexual immorality and impurity.

Consider these uses of the word porneia in the New Testament:

Galatians 5:19 “Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: immorality, impurity, sensuality,”

Ephesians 5:3 But immorality or any impurity or greed must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints;”

1 Thessalonians 4:3 “For this is the will of God, your sanctification; that is, that you abstain from sexual immorality;”

1 Corinthians 6:13 “Food is for the stomach and the stomach is for food, but God will do away with both of them. Yet the body is not for immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord is for the body.”
  
We could go on with more examples, but as you can see the Bible makes it clear that the believer is to abstain from any and all forms of sexual immorality, from which we get the word pornography.

More specifically, watching pornography involves at least three forms of sin:

1. Licentiousness – The sexual acts on display in pornographic material are acts of fornication, which is the sin of sexual contact outside marriage. When you take part in this enterprise as an observer (i.e., as a customer of pornography), you are condoning and promoting fornication. This promoting behavior is itself the sin of licentiousness, or giving license to sin.

2 Corinthians 12:21 “I am afraid that when I come again, my God may humiliate me before you, and I will grieve for many of those who previously sinned and have not repented of the impurity, sexual immorality, and licentiousness that they have practiced.”
  
2. Lust – Pornographic materials are intended to illicit sexual arousal in our flesh, which is lust. Lust is any arousal of the flesh which occurs in an immoral manner, and the whole purpose of filming other people engaging in sexual acts (often grossly distorted and perverted acts) is to entice lust in the hearts of the audience.
Lust is a sin, and anything that brings us to the point of lust is a sinfully corrupting and tempting influence. Jesus says that the commission of lust is equal to the commission of adultery. Consider the Bible’s teaching:

Matthew 5:28 “But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”

James 1:14-15 “But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death.”
  
3. Sensuality – Watching pornography involves taking pleasure in observing strangers in a state of nakedness, which is the sin of sensuality or lewdness according to Scripture. Glorying in another person’s nakedness is sinful behavior, according to Scripture. Beginning in the Garden of Eden and continuing throughout the Bible, we find those who take pleasure in another’s nakedness (outside of marriage) are depicted as shameful and due condemnation. For example, when one of Noah’s sons took pleasure in seeing his father lying naked in his tent in Genesis 9, the Bible portrays the son’s act as shameful and dishonoring.

More importantly, the Lord sees such conduct as reprehensible. Consider the Lord’s admonishment against Israel when they engaged in lewd and immoral conduct:

Habakkuk 2:15 “Woe to you who make your neighbors drink, Who mix in your venom even to make them drunk so as to look on their nakedness!”

Here, it wasn’t the fact that you gave your neighbor drink that was wrong but that the reason you gave them the drink was to look at their nakedness.

Habakkuk 2:16 “You will be filled with disgrace rather than honor. Now you yourself drink and expose your own nakedness. The cup in the LORD’S right hand will come around to you, and utter disgrace will come upon your glory.”
  
In summary, the act of watching pornography is immoral and sinful. It is wrong because it condones fornication and its licentiousness. It is intended to induce lust in the heart, and it exposes you to the nakedness of strangers.

Lasting Gifts

The most important gifts are not those that you can hold in your hand.  These, in their purest form, are simply an outward representation of the gifts that are the most lasting: the gifts of time, attention, thought, caring, peace of mind, true friendship, acceptance, patience, tolerance, laughter, joy, freedom of expression, companionship, insight, understanding, compassion. 

Sometimes what is really important in life becomes obscured by outer concerns. These have a tendency to make us feel poor and wanting when we are not and to pull our attention to focus on the attainment of symbols of a rich existence, which can ultimately leave us destitute if we lack perspective and balance.

Money and possessions are not in themselves important.  Only what they represent has meaning.  Note also that power, recognition, reputation, influence, control, and manipulation are not included on the list of lasting gifts.   Our real life exists elsewhere, for if those inner gifts are ignored or lacking the rest are empty icons that can symbolize ultimately not abundance, but lack. 

You are fortunate to be both rich and generous with gifts that have real value.  The rest, in the end, is truly nothing.  My wish for all of us this season is the ability to recognize, express, and appreciate the lasting gifts in our lives.

 

(c) Gail Pursell Elliott

Learn To Be Trustworthy

“And if you cannot be trusted with what belongs to someone else, who will give you something that will be your own?” ” – Luke 16:12

There are so many people, who are not receiving blessings in their lives because of their violation of the spiritual principle from this passage of scripture.  You might be employed somewhere where you do not think you are paid enough, so you have started to do something else on the side.  God wants you to honour that contract, otherwise, He will not give you what He has for you!

You may be working for the government yet you are using the time to pursue other things benefitting yourself and your relatives;  so who shall give you your own? Certainly not God, He just said so in Luke 16:12!  You are serving in a ministry, and now you are planning your breakaway, and you want to take some of the followers with you; again who shall give you your own?

When we enter into a contract, even if we think it is unfair later, God expects us to fulfill it. Yes, God might have given you a word to go and start your own business or ministry, so quit what you are doing FIRST;  separate yourself completely, that is part of your faith. Don’t ensnare yourself by going after your former employer’s business, staff, and contracts. If you do this, you will spend years in a very dry place. I am talking spiritually to those who seek understanding:

You must be faithful with that which belongs to someone else, no matter how small. Don’t be careless with things that belong to other people, even your friends.Don’t help yourself to something in your friends house without asking him or her; and if you borrow something, return it.  Better still, don’t borrow anything because of the possibility you might forget to give it back.

My wife lost her mother when she was young and on her death bed she gave her a bible. It was an old bible with lots of her personal notes.  One evening, whilst we were having bible study in our home she lent it to someone who did not have a bible. They never returned it, and to this day we do not know who took it; that was 20 years ago!   I can still see the tears my wife cried that day even though she long forgave and forgot about it.  Brothers and sisters, make yourselves absolutely trustworthy with things that belong to other people.

(c) Strive Masiyiwa

Googling won’t do!

It’s the age of “click and find.” But there is no replacement for the human brain as a learning tool. The Internet has revolutionised many aspects of our lives, changing them in ways which would have been impossible to imagine a few decades ago. Education, like all other fields, is not immune to the influence of the Internet.

The Internet is a “disruptive” technology we are exposed to in our daily lives. The question is: Is the influence of the Internet such as to make our system of education redundant? The answer, according to some people is a “big yes.”

To quote the famous author and journalist Thomas L. Friedman, “Increasingly the world does not care what you know. Everything is on Google. The world only cares, and will only pay for, what you can do with what you know. And therefore it will not pay for a C+ in Chemistry, just because your State College considers that a passing grade and was willing to give you a diploma that says so. We’re moving to a more competency-based world.”

Whither knowledge

“Everything is on Google.” Such statements seem to devalue the knowledge stored in the human brain. Does the availability of information at the click of a button reduce the importance of a knowledgeable human being? After all, even in the pre-internet age, knowledge was widely available, though not in such a convenient form.

In the pre-Google era, encyclopaedias were repositories of knowledge on a wide range of topics. But it was never suggested that once knowledge is written down in books, it was useless to acquire that knowledge. The present day pundits are missing an important point. It is not enough to have access to information. Information has to be assimilated and digested by a person before it can be put to use. It takes years of study before one can truly understand a subject. Merely because someone can access information at the click of a button does not make him an expert in that subject. One has to go through the hard grind of working out known or solved problems before one can tackle the unsolved ones.

New Connections

Even revolutionary changes in scientific theory turn out to be based on knowledge which was available at that time. For example, Albert Einstein discovered his famous Theory of Relativity when he tried (and failed) to reconcile Maxwell’s equations of Electrodynamics with Galilean Relativity.

It is seen that in many cases, “new” knowledge is created by extending or making connections between the existing branches of knowledge. Such connections become obvious only after the student toils through the various lanes and by-lanes (and blind alleys) of science.

No shortcuts

There are no shortcuts to success in science. Even if a student or a teacher merely knows the fundamentals of a subject as enunciated in standard textbooks and is not able to apply it in the sense of creating something useful to society, his knowledge is not useless. He may inspire many others to make path-breaking discoveries by his flawless and inspiring teaching of the subject. A teacher who is thorough with a subject would be able to advise students about the authenticity of the material which is available on the net.

Many faces of knowledge

While innovators, inventors and creators of new knowledge are important to society, we need not run down others. Finally, there are many fields and spheres of activity which should have become defunct with the advent of the Internet, but they are carrying on, today. Quiz shows are popular on TV and contestants win prize money in millions for information which is readily available at the click of a button.

We did not stop children from doing arithmetic by hand, even though electronic calculators were available decades ago. Why? Necessity is the mother of invention. The need to do tedious multiplications or division, forced people to invent schemes for calculating in an efficient manner, and this in turn, was used extensively in Number Theory.

Similarly, the need to store enormous amounts of information in our brain will ultimately lead us to analyse and synthesise that information. This in turn will enable us to find out similarities and connections between diverse facts and fields. While computers and the Internet are definitely invaluable tools for our education, there is no replacement for the human brain.

(c) 2013 The Hindu

See How Far You’ve Come!

 

There was a time when you could not do many of the things you can do now. Yet you learned, and now those skills that once were out of reach have become second nature.

There was a time when you felt uncomfortable venturing into new places, situations and relationships. Even so, you did it, and now you feel perfectly at home with those people and places.

There was a time when you could not comprehend many of the things you now understand so well. And you took the time to listen, to learn, to think and to challenge yourself.

You’ve come a long way already, and because of that, the challenges now are even greater. That means they’re filled with even more valuable opportunities for you to move higher and higher.

Though you’re not yet where you truly want to be, you’ve come a long way in that direction. The knowledge, the experience, the strength you already have is more than enough to move you forward today.

Make use of it all, and tomorrow you’ll have even more.

NOTE: Today marks 4 years since I started blogging on WordPress.com and it’s been a wonderful journey of self-discovery, fulfilment, positive global impact, friendships, intellectual collaboration and worthwhile partnerships. I’d like to thank all my readers, contributors, copyright owners and supporters all over the world for your kindness and generous assistance. Knowing you are out there, gives me a sense of assurance and acceptance. God bless you, richly.