I am a very compassionate person and I live my life with compassion. I easily cry when someone I know is hurting and I feel the anguish and pain in a very real sense. This is hard if you don’t know how to channel it. Whether I am hurting myself over a present situation or whether I am seeing a friend or a loved one hurting, the real secret is in what are you doing with the hurt?  Are you hurting back, or are you forgiving?  Are you falling back into patterns that only hurt yourself, a sort of punishment you do to yourself, because you failed again? Life is about either progressing or regressing. Because I am a person of compassion, it is important to pay attention to how people handle various situations and how the results have been, from the way they have chosen to deal with their pain. When you do that, you will have a vision of what works and what doesn’t work. One of the most life changing and true statements I have ever heard is ” Stupidity is doing things the same way again, and expecting different results!” Our patterns lead us to our destiny! If we want a different result or destiny, we have to do things differently. We have to react differently. We have to come up with a plan that will lead us to success and not to failure! It’s not easy, making a different choice, but you must realize, if you are right back where you started, you made the same choices to get there.

I think a good place to start is from reading the wise book of Proverbs in the Bible. We have 28 to 31 days in a month, so why not read a chapter a day?  This could be a new pattern for you, if you will take the time and do it.  It is from the wisdom of these pages, we can learn how to make wise choices and we can take off to a new and better ending. The Bible says, “I can do all things, through Christ, who strengthens me!” If you are still doing things the same way and getting the same results, then try, seeking his guidance. Listen to the inner thoughts you are having. There are always going to be two choices going through your thoughts. One may say, “If you tell the truth, you’re in big trouble!” One may say, “It’s time you start being truthful! Just be truthful and ask them to forgive you! They will understand and at least regain respect for you!” Remember this, when you are weak, God is strong. When you are hopeless, God has the solution. When you are hurting, God can restore you, when you have been hurt, God will be the one to handle it if you will let him. When you have been deserted, God will never leave you or forsake you. When you are poor, God will provide for you. When you are alone, God is the friend who will stick closer to you than a brother. When you are sad, look to God and begin to praise him. A song I’ve know for a long time went like this, “Put on the garment of praise, for the spirit of heaviness, lift up your voice and sing!” God will replace your sadness with gladness! When you are lost and don’t know which direction to go, God will be your guide. When someone you know is lost or missing, God is the Good Shepherd. Trust him to take care of them and he can guide you through each day. Satan has a counterpart for all of the things listed above and more than I have even listed. Choose wisely how you respond to the things in life that you face!

If you don’t like where you are today, ask yourself why. Put positive people in your life, that will be there for you in a good way. Some of your “best” friends, will lead you right back into the same place you are now! Do you need to evaluate who you are befriending and replace them with someone who will hold you up and not lead you right down the same path? Once you get strong and on the right path, maybe that friend will be receptive to you showing them a better way.

I just returned from my 40th High School Reunion. I grew up in a small town. Our class was very fortunate. Most of us had parents, who were true believers in God. We grew up in our various churches, but God was an important part of our lives. I think we had a great group of kids. In school, we shared our faith in God and that faith has carried us through many hard times. It is still carrying our members through hard times and it will carry you through hard times if you will let it. As we all gathered, it wasn’t about the losses in life or the physical challenges. It was about being thankful in all things! It was in knowing,  that our trials make us strong, when we let God become our source for handling them. It was about us being there for each other. We laughed and had great memories to share. Our losses, were some of the things that made us strong. I am thankful that we grew up in a time where serving God was a good thing to do. I am thankful that we started each school day with a prayer. I am thankful that even when bad choices were made, God helped us turn it around and get it right. We had so many good things to laugh about and reminisce! Life should be that way.

We were blessed with an awesome class!

You are destined for success and not failure! By making the right choices, you will find, you are fully equipped to have the Power To Achieve!

I guess for me, one of the hardest challenges in life is waiting. I have thought on it a lot this month.  The scripture, “They that wait upon the Lord, shall renew their strength,” has been on my my mind a lot.  We fill we have to do something, when all seems to be at a stand still!  God says, “Be still and know that I am God!” Sometimes we have to stand still and wait.  My thoughts are, if we wait upon the Lord, the next part of that is we shall renew our strength.  You get strong, when you lift something that strengthens your muscles and when you are waiting, God should be the one lifting, and we should be getting our strength renewed.  It doesn’t go along with our normal thinking.  We fill we must push and go this way and that, we must make things happen!  But in some situations, God is asking us to remain still.  We need to listen to what God is saying, and when our minds are doing all the talking and all the work, chances are slim, that we are hearing God’s directions on how we are to proceed.  It is all a part of the “Faith Process!” It is also a part of the “Trust” process!   I remember as a child, there was a song we sang many times and I guess I sang it enough, that it stuck in my mind.  It went like this:  “Have faith, hope and charity, that’s the way to live successfully…..How do I know?  The Bible tells me so!

If you are God’s child, he is always there for you. He is there to direct your paths.  He is there to supply your need.  He is there to help you through any physical problems you or someone you love is going through!  He is your strong tower and your fortress.  He is your rock and your shield.  No weapon formed against you will prosper!  You will make it and you will look back over the path you have trod and you will see his hand as it guided you!  You will know, it was him, not you, that got you through the storm.

I have a friend who had much of her family in Joplin, Missouri when the big tornado hit.  Very fortunately few people were hurt or lost their lives.  My heart goes out to those who did lose loved ones and possessions, but my friend told me the biggest miracle was the hand of God and his protection through all of the devastation.  After the storm, that was what everyone saw.  How could such devastation come without more death and injuries?  It was the unseen hand of God!

As I finish up this Power to Achieve writing, I want to ask you the question…..whose voice are you listening to? When I started typing yesterday, I didn’t know how I would finish, but as I woke up this morning, I knew what I needed to write as God began ministering to me about this.  Here is the what I wrote down:  God speaks with Wisdom and Satan speaks with despair.   God Speaks with truth and Satan speaks with lies.  God speaks with encouragement, which causes hope, joy, love, peace, long suffering, faith, security, and forgiveness.  Satan speaks with accusations, causing guilt, discouragement, despondency, (No Hope), insecurity, anger, bitterness and inferiority, (thinking everyone or someone is better than you and more qualified to to do what God has called you to do!) God says, ” you are secure and safe.” Satan says, ” you should be afraid!”   He wants you to live in constant fear!  God says, “Have Faith!” Satan says, ” You’re not going to make it!”  God says, “You can do it!” Satan says, “You will fail!”  God says, “You have what it takes!” Satan says, ” You don’t have what it takes!”  God says, “Sin will destroy you!” Satan says, ” There is not God!  Live for today!  Do whatever makes “YOU” happy! God says, “Put it in my hands and trust me!” Satan says, ” It’s all up to you!”  God doesn’t have anything to do with “Your” life!”  God says, ” You can do all things if you trust me.  I will strengthen you!” Satan says, ” You will never amount to anything!  God says, ” No weapon uses against you will prosper!  I will protect you!” Satan says, “You are weak.  You cannot stand.  You cannot forgive.  You can never trust again!  You will never be able to do that again!  Don’t do that, you’ll just get hurt again!  They don’t like you!”  He will also say things about the things such as “don’t touch that, it will hurt you!  He will say things like this about the things that once brought you joy!  If he can keep you living in “Fear,”  he will win!  If something in life was good and once brought you much joy, don’t let fear keep you away from it.  It is yours!  Take it back!

Notice how Satan has to use so many more words.  He is helpless against the things of God and desperate to come against God’s people.  Remember, God says “You can do all things through Christ, who will give you strength!  He also says if we wait on the Lord, we will mount up with wings like an eagle.  We will run, and not be weary.  We will walk and not faint!   Use the words God has spoken to you and they will give you victory over you life and past circumstances and failures.   Put it in God’s hands, and he  will give you the Power to Achieve!

Who you are and what you do in this life are important! Life has taught me that we all live with a special call and a special purpose for our lives.  Never feel like your gift to this world is not important.  You are a contributor and without your special part, there would be a vacancy in God’s plan!  I  think the biggest challenge of life, is to accept who we are, and walk in that gift God has placed within us.  So many times, we focus on the things we don’t have, and disappointment  gets a hold on you and if you are not secure in who you are, it will knock you off of your feet.  We were not meant to crumble under the challenges of life, but we were meant to use those challenges as stepping stones to a greater victory!

Life is not always kind. Things don’t always go the way we think they will go.  We are challenged by so many things!  I choose to believe, that when God said he would never leave us or forsake us he really meant it!  He is always with us.  There is not a weapon formed against us that will prosper!   How could that be?  Remember, if you are walking with God and he is directing your path, he knows where he is allowing you to go and he knows what is ahead.  When I decided to start trusting him, and let him be in the driver’s seat, I found great peace in knowing he would get me to the right destination, even though I might not understand every challenge along the way.

It was several years ago.  I was sitting in my church and there was a lady there who I had never met.  I noticed as she sang, she had a beautiful voice.  Later when she did a special musical number for the congregation I knew she could have easily recorded, with her country voice.   Several months went by, and I really had never gotten to know her.  I did know her name and heard one day that she was very seriously ill with breast cancer.  God literally put her on my heart.  I had heard she was single and alone and I truly felt she needed a friend.  I asked and found out what hospital she was in, and picked up a little doll that I actually thought looked like her.  I headed to the hospital to see if I could meet her.  When I got there, she was in surgery and I didn’t get to see her.  I left the doll with the nurse and later, went back again.  That was the beginning of a two year mission, God had me on.  Almost daily, I visited and we shares so much during those two years about God and his love.  I found out how just a year before her diagnoses, her Mom had died of Breast cancer and she was still grieving over that.  I was there with her through many visits from friends and was able to share God’s love many times to many who came and went.  Today as I type, I am praying for one of those special friends was just diagnosed with cancer and now facing some of the same challenges my friend Rhonda faced.  Rhonda had great faith and we had so many times we were up and so many times we were down.  I remember  a time, toward the end of the two years.  It was evening and I knew when I left, she was not going to make it through the night.  She had another friend who helped me and I left and drove home with the weight of the world on my shoulders.    As I prayed for her, I saw in my minds eyes two really large feet and I was so small beside them.  I knew I was standing at the feet of Jesus.  I saw myself holding Rhonda and all the cares she faced and realized, they didn’t belong in my arms, but in  his.  I saw myself hand her to him and I felt the weight lift.  The next morning, I went to her house and there she was sitting up on the bed and talking on the phone!  I knew God had done a miracle!  Rhonda did reach her appointed time to die and went on to be with Jesus, but his love we shared during those two years, impacted my life.  I pray many were touched by that time and somehow felt his love in the midst of the situation.  Rhonda’s grandparents were actually 15 miles from the town I grew up in, and I felt God allowed me to be there for her.  Perhaps because of a Grandmother’s prayer or just his special way of doing things.  I noticed a newspaper clipping on her wall when I first started going over to help her and it was from Borger, TX, 12 miles from where I grew up.  Since I live approximately 12 hours away from that location, I was amazed!

This was one of my “God’s Little World” moments and I have had many of them throughout my life. It’s one of those times,  when you have those moments and you wonder, “WHAT ARE THE CHANCES OF THAT HAPPENING?”   Chances and numbers don’t mean a thing when God is in charge.  Diagnoses and situations don’t mean a thing when God is in charge!   We must live in a relationship with God, where we will allow him to carry all the load and we will trust him with the outcome!  I’ve always thought about the time we have here on this earth.  There will be a time when our earthly clock reaches the final moment and we will then be finished with our assignment.  It’s not what happens to us in this life that counts, but it’s how we react to what happens to us that counts.  I think a lot about many things that try to rob and steal our peace.  We are left with a choice!  Will we allow our peace to be taken, or will we put our anxiety in Jesus arms and let him defend us!  He will always be there and our job is just to be thankful in All things, because wherever we are or whatever we are going through, we can be thankful he has it all under his control.

My mom left so much of a legacy for us. It never fails, I will be going through some of the things she left, after she moved in with us.  Maybe something in a drawer, or a card she gave me.  Today, I found an article she had cut out about a little boy.  His mom had taken him to the Dr. as he didn’t feel well.  The Dr who was doing the exam, tried to get his mind off of the examination and said, “Let’s look in those ears, and see if Mickey Mouse is in there!”  He looked in his ears and then said, “I didn’t see him in there.”  The little boy smiled.  Then, the Dr. decided to listen to his heart.  He said, “OK…lets see if Mickey Mouse is in your heart.”  The little boy looked a bit more serious as the Dr listened.  He said, ” Nope, I don’t hear him in there either. “  Before they left, the little boy looked up at the Dr and said, ” Dr. I just thought you might want to know, Jesus lives in my heart!”

If only we could have the faith of a child, we would truly discover the Power To Achieve peace and success in our lives and leave a legacy that would touch many others, even when our last second on earth is done!