HOW TO DEAL WITH YOUR ANGER AT GOD?

By:  G. Chapman

 

The LORD is close to the brokenhearted; He rescues those whose spirits are crushed. – Psalm 34: 18

 

We may not talk about it much, but the fact is that Christians sometimes get angry with God when we feel that God has treated us unfairly. This often comes after a difficult event, such as a child being diagnosed with a serious disease or being born with a physical or mental abnormality. If this anger is not dealt with properly, it will cause marital discord. Why? We don’t feel comfortable expressing our anger to God, so we may express it to our spouse. Our spouse will feel trampled on when the situation was not his or her fault. As a result, our spouse will also become angry. Two angry people do not make for a good marriage.

 

If you feel that God has been unfair to you, let me encourage you to take your anger directly to Him. You need not feel ashamed of your emotions; you can freely express your heart to God. You will not upset Him, and your anger will not catch Him by surprise.

 

When Job was going through a time of intense suffering, he desperately wanted to know why. He brought his questions to God, and God listened – and eventually responded. God did not explain everything; in fact, He responded with more questions than answers. However, Job was reassured that God was present, had heard him, and was fully in control. He responded in wonder, “I had only heard about you before, but now I have seen You with my own eyes.” (Job 42: 5). Often when we express our anger to God, He comforts us by renewing our perspective.

 

The LORD knows your heart and wants to walk with you through your pain. As Psalm 34 reminds us, He is close to the brokenhearted. The first step in finding healing is admitting to Him that you are feeling angry.

 

Father, when I am angry at You, I often take it out on my spouse, even though I know that’s inappropriate, Please forgive me, and help me to treat my loved one with kindness even in the midst of emotional turmoil. Thank You for being big enough to handle all of my emotions, even my anger.

HOW TO KNOW IF WHAT YOU DO IS ALIGNED WITH YOUR PASSION?

By:  B. Sanchez

Today, I’d like to talk about Alignment.

Success is all about Alignment.

Imagine an archer…

For an archer to hit his target, he needs alignment. An archer’s most important skill is the ability to align 3 things: his bow, his arrow, and his target. Without alignment, he can’t hit his target. That’s why my wife and I are aligned—I am Bo and she is Marowe. (Sorry for being corny today.)

I believe we’re all archers.  Why? Because God has created you with a target: Your purpose in life. The Bible says, Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations. (Jeremiah 1:5)

In order to hit your mission in life, you need to align 3 things: your passion, your potential, and your purpose. 

·   The bow symbolizes your passion

This is where your power comes from. You can have a very excellent arrow—sharp and straight and strong—but if you don’t have a powerful bow, it won’t go anywhere. In the same way, you can be as intelligent as Einstein, but if you don’t have passion for your purpose, you won’t be successful.

·   The arrow symbolizes your potential

The arrow symbolizes your CORE GIFT; Your bow could be very powerful, but if you picked the wrong arrow—if you picked an arrow that is bent, or brittle, or blunt —you won’t hit your target. If you want to be successful, you have to stick to your game. You have to be faithful to your core gift.

·   The target symbolizes your purpose

Success is a simple pattern. If you really think about it, there’s nothing complicated about success. If you have the right bow—passion—and if you chose the right arrow—potential—through practice—in due time, you’ll be able to hit your purpose in life.

When you align your passion, potential, and purpose, that is when you achieve true prosperity. This is what I call Divine Alignment. The reason why you lack peace, fulfillment, joy, success, and true prosperity is because something is still not aligned in your life.

Let me share with you today, the first of these three elements that need to be aligned in your life…

Passion

What’s your passion?

Without passion, you won’t go anywhere in life.

Let me rephrase my question: What one thing do you love to do, you’ll do it even if you don’t get paid?

Here’s another scenario: Imagine if you went back to your home province and you were cleaning the backyard of your ancestral home. And as you were walking around, your big toe hit something and you almost fell. After shouting Aray! you looked down and saw something protruding from the ground. You dig around it and realize it was the edge of a box. You dig some more and you realize it was no ordinary box but a treasure chest. You pull it out, open its lid—and discover it was the Yamashita Treasure! 

Later on, you measure its worth—it’s 400 million dollars.

Here’s my big question: If you had owned that money, what will you do?

That question will uncover your passion. For example, if I had all the money in the world, I’ll still preach and write. Much of my preaching and writing, I don’t get paid. For example, I donate my book royalties to the ministry. It’s not about the money. I just love to write! I bet even if I’m 110 years old—if I can still type in a laptop—I’m certain I’ll still be writing my books.

Friend, don’t look around for the Yamashita treasure. Because the Yamashita treasure is within you. It’s your passion, potential, and purpose.

4-STEPs TO STRENGTHEN YOUR PERSONAL SKILLS

By:  B. Tracy

Only by discovering your innate, personal skills and developing and exploiting them to their highest degree can you utilize yourself to get the greatest amount of satisfaction and enjoyment from everything you do. Creating an action plan through personal strategic planning can give you the highest rewards for your efforts and is the starting point in getting the best out of yourself.

When we do strategic planning for corporations, we begin with the premise that the whole purpose of the exercise is to reorganize and reallocate people and resources to increase the rate of return on equity, or capital invested in the business. Invariably, this is done by emphasizing some areas and de-emphasizing others, by allocating more resources to areas with higher potential return and by taking resources away from those areas that represent lower potential returns. By developing or promoting newer and better products and services and by discontinuing those products and services that are less profitable, the company and all the people in it can channel their resources to maximize their returns.

In doing personal strategic planning, the first thing you want to think about is increasing your personal “return on energy,” rather than return on equity. You need to realize that the most essential and valuable thing that you have to bring to your life and to your work is your ability to think, to act and to get results. Your earning ability—which is a function of your education, knowledge, experience and talents—is your human capital, or your equity. And the way you develop your personal skills and use your earning ability will largely determine the quality and quantity of your rewards, both material and psychological, both tangible and intangible.

Action Plan Step 1: Clarify Your Values

This first part of personal strategic planning is called “values clarification.” You ask yourself, “What values and virtues do I most admire and wish to practice in my life?” If you wanted to discover your strengths and personal skills in the work world, first you would define your values as they apply to employment. The values that companies settle upon would be similar to the values that you organize your work life around. Often, both companies and individuals will choose values such as integrity, quality, respect for others, service, profitability, innovation, entrepreneurship, market leadership, and so on.

In a similar vein, you could use those values to define your position with regard to your work. In your personal strategic planning, you could decide to plan your work life around the values of quality, excellence, service, profitability, and innovation. There are dozens of values that you can pick from, but whichever you choose, and the order of priority you place on your choices, will determine your approach to your work.

Action Plan Step 2: Create Your Personal Mission Statement

Your next step is to create your personal mission statement. This is a clear, written description of the person you intend to be in your work life. I have often found that this is even more important than setting specific financial or business or sales goals. Once you have decided how much you want to earn, you need to write out a personal mission statement that describes the kind of person you intend to become in order to earn that amount of money.

Remember: Your goal is to identify your personal skills and strengths so that you can deploy yourself in such a way as to increase your personal return on energy. In personal strategic planning, one of the best mental techniques that you can use to develop your personal skills is to see yourself as a “bundle of resources” that can be applied in a variety of directions to achieve a variety of objectives. As a bundle of resources, the amount of time and energy that you have is limited; therefore, your time and energy must be put to their highest and best use. Stand back and imagine that you’re looking at yourself objectively, as if through the eyes of another person, and you’re thinking about how you could apply yourself to bring about the best results. See yourself as your own employer or boss. What could you do to maximize the output of which you’re capable, and where could you do it?

Action Plan Step 3: Perform an Audit to Strengthen Personal Skills

Once you have defined your values and written out your mission statement, the next step of personal strategic planning is to do what is called a “situational analysis.” Sometimes we call it a “performance audit.” This is the process of analyzing yourself thoroughly before you begin setting specific goals and planning certain activities. You begin your performance audit by asking yourself some key questions.

One of those questions should be, “What are my marketable skills?” Think about it. What can you do for which someone else will pay you? What can you do particularly well? What can you do better than others? What have you done particularly well in the past?

A wage or a salary is merely an amount of money that is paid to purchase a certain quality and quantity of labor or output. The results that you’re able to get by applying your personal skills and strengths largely determine your rewards in life. If you wish to increase the quality and quantity of your rewards, you have to increase your ability to achieve more and better results. It’s very simple.

Action Plan Step 4: Determine Your Area of Excellence

Finally, in personal strategic planning, the aim is always to achieve leadership in your chosen market niche. Business leaders have the authority to determine the area of excellence in their business. Analogously, on a personal level, you can choose the thing at which you’re going to become absolutely excellent and achieve extraordinary results. So in what areas are you going to work to achieve results that are far beyond what the average person could be expected to accomplish?

You were put on this earth with a special combination of talents, abilities, and personal skills that make you different from anyone who has ever lived. Whatever you’re doing today, it’s nowhere near what you’re really capable of doing. The key to a happy and prosperous life is for you to regularly evaluate your strengths and weaknesses, to become very good in the areas you most enjoy, and then to throw your whole heart into what you’re doing.

HOW TO KNOW THE REAL SOURCE OF POWER?

By:  D. Cerullo

“Then the mystery was revealed to Daniel in a night vision…‘Let the name of God be blessed forever and ever, for wisdom and power belong to Him. It is He who changes the times and the epochs; He removes kings and establishes kings; He gives wisdom to wise men and knowledge to men of understanding.’” – Daniel 2:19-21 NASB

To the people of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar was the supreme ruler. In fact, he had the power of life and death. But when he had a troubling dream, this king realized that he had limits. His eyes were opened to a dimension beyond his control or understanding.

Confronted with the challenge of telling this dream and providing the correct interpretation, even the wisest men in the kingdom were powerless. Yet Daniel was given the answer, because he sought God.

Through this revelation, Daniel realized that wisdom and power belong to God alone. Governments may change. New rulers may come to power. But God always remains sovereign, and He is the source of real wisdom: “It is He who reveals the profound and hidden things” (v. 22).

Daniel recognized that some things are beyond our understanding. He had faith in God and knew that He could reveal anything to His servants. When Daniel was brought into the king’s presence, he declared that it was “God in heaven who reveals mysteries,” who was making known “what will take place in the latter days” (v. 28).

Today, who in this world has the real power? Presidents? Governments? Generals? These people may seem to have power. But, over time, we see a consistent pattern: Rulers come and go. Nations rise and fall. Movements start and end.

As Daniel discovered, real power belongs to God. Behind the scenes, in ways we may not see, He changes the times and epochs. He establishes and removes kings. And He gives wisdom to those who seek Him.

In your life, place your hope in God. Like Daniel, seek Him for the answers you need.