Choose Life!

Apart from Christ, you can do nothing (John 15:5).

In Christ, you can do everything (Philippians 4:13).

Everything has an environment in which it flourishes – a fish in water, a plant in the soil, a star in the sky.

A fish in water is in its element. It is totally unlimited in fulfilling everything that it desires. It moves; it feeds; it breeds. It is free.

A plant in the ground flourishes and grows, producing flowers and fruit, beauty and benefit to all around.

The stars add magnificence to the night sky, and help us navigate and determine seasons and times.

But take a fish out of water, and it doesn’t do so well.

A plant plucked out of the ground may still look good for a while, but the fact that it is dead will soon become all too visible.

Even a shooting star is a dying star – a rock burning up as it leaves its own atmosphere and enters ours.

You too have an ideal environment; an atmosphere in which you flourish.

God.

You were created in the image of God, and God breathed His breath in to you to give you life (The Bible, Genesis 1:27 & Genesis 2:7).

You were made to live in Him.

Having a relationship with God is not really a matter of choice or even of belief.

It’s a matter of necessity.

You need to be in a relationship with God.

Just as a fish needs to be in water, and a plant needs to be in the ground, you need to be in a relationship with God.

In God, you are in your element. You are totally unlimited in fulfilling everything that you desire. You live and move and have your being. You are free. You grow, you flourish, you provide beauty and benefit to everyone around.

Apart from God, you may look good for a while, but the fact that you are dead will one day become all too visible.

Which Fruit Bowl Are You?

I chose you... to produce fruit that will last...

John 15:16, The Bible, New Living Translation

One of your most important resources is the people that you know and influence.

People are actually central to your being successful in reaching your goals.

As motivational speaker Zig Ziglar often quotes, “You can get everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want.”

Every day we come into contact with different people, and we always leave an impression – good or bad.

First impressions really do count, and every interaction is an opportunity.

You never know the impact you might have on someone by the way you treat – or mistreat – them.

You know what it’s like when someone crosses you. You go into a shop, a restaurant or some other place of business, and you experience terrible customer care. The sales attendants are rude, the service is slow, the food is awful, they mess up your order – whatever.

If you’re like most people, you may not make a huge fuss, lodge an official complaint or ask to see the manager, but you can be sure that the next 10 people you meet will hear every last detail of what those nasty people did to you! 

And anytime the name of that business comes up in conversation in the future, you will gladly recount the details of your horrible experience – only now it will be the highly exaggerated, somewhat modified version, as tends to happen with numerous retellings and the passage of time!

It’s much better to make friends than gather enemies.

And remember – there are no little people. Every person counts. The Bible tells us to show hospitality even to strangers because some people have entertained angels without knowing it (Hebrews 13:2).

Be especially thoughtful to those who serve you in some way. There’s a website out there that names and shames celebrities who are good tippers and those who are stingy! (Don’t even ask me how I know this!).

What kind of taste will you leave in the mouths of the people you meet today?

Will The Real Me Please Stand Up!

It’s in Christ that we find out who we are and what we are living for.

The Message, Ephesians 1:11

crying on the inside?

I am the product of a multicultural upbringing.

My father was Malawian, but was born, grew up and lived in Zambia. My mother is South African. My parents were diplomats, and by the time I was 10 years old, I had lived in 6 different countries on 3 different continents.

When we finally returned ‘home’, I attended an international school where most of the students and all of the teachers were expatriates who traced their origins to other countries, and I was part of the indigenous minority. Outside of school my peers laughed at my stumbling pronunciation of the native tongue, and grown-ups criticized me for not following the customs of the land.

I spent more of my early adult years out of my home country than in it, pursuing further education and training opportunities.

Now, in midlife, I find myself back in the country of which I am a passport holder.

Unsurprisingly, for the larger part of my life I struggled with not quite knowing who I was, and not quite fitting in, no matter where I was.

I could be at ‘home’ in my home country, surrounded by people who outwardly were very similar in appearance to me, but our ways of thinking, our language, and our experiences couldn’t have been more different.

I could be amongst people with whom I shared more in common, in terms of the way I thought, the way I spoke, and the way I viewed life, but from whom I was inescapably separated by external differences in the colour of our skin and the texture of our hair.

However, I have since discovered that I was not unique in this sense of detachment and confusion of identity.

In the company of others like myself, who were brought up wandering around the Diaspora, I discovered a similar sense of confusion, and found a semblance of belonging.

Even amongst those who appeared to have had a more ‘stable’ upbringing, I discovered this uncertainty of self, this yearning to belong.

Everyone has doubts at some point about who they are. We all want to be accepted. We all want to be okay.

We go to great lengths to identify with our peers, our group, our culture.

It’s what draws young people to gangs; fuels fashion trends; forms facebook groups. It’s why every group comes up with its own uniform.

Even those who opt out of mainstream culture tend to do so in groups – Hippies, monks, Goths.

It’s at the heart of every teenage rebellion and each midlife crisis.

Who am I? Where do I belong?

My aha! moment came when I finally realised that my life was not a random series of events.

I learned that ‘[God] saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in [His] book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed.’ (The Bible, New Living Translation, Psalm 139:16).

My birth date, my birth place, my family, my nationality – none of it was an accident. Nothing was a mistake. Everything had a purpose. No experience would go to waste. God could use everything as part of His plan. ‘He knows us far better than we know ourselves... That’s why we can be sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good.’ (The Message, Romans 8:27, 28).

I finally realised that I was okay. It was okay that I had grown up experiencing a diversity of cultures in a myriad of countries. It was okay that I hadn’t grown up immersed in the languages and traditions of my homeland.

I was not a misfit.

I was an original.

A carefully crafted creation of God.

LESSON 2: Watch What You Say

‘Words kill, words give life; they’re either poison or fruit – you choose.’

The Message Bible, Proverbs 18:21

It was a familiar scene.

A group of us ladies had met up, and as usual, before long the conversation turned to weight issues and body woes. We all tried to outdo each other as we recounted the details of the endless diets and fitness plans we had tried – what had worked, and what hadn't.

We vied for attention as we compared our various defective body parts…

“I don’t know what to do about my thighs. I have so much cellulite.”

“That’s nothing! You should take a look at my bum – it’s huge! I can’t find any jeans to fit me!”

“You call that huge? You haven’t seen my tummy! Look at that bulge!”

…And so on and so on...

You get the picture. Sound like anything you’ve ever done?

Well, stop it!

In LESSON 1 You Are What You Think, we discovered that to change your life, you have to change your thoughts. If you want to change who you are, or what you do, you have to change the way you think.

Well, your words are connected to your thoughts.

Your words are the vocal expression of your thoughts.

Your words convey your inner thoughts, beliefs, opinions and intents.

A good indicator of what you are thinking is what is coming out of your mouth.

To change your life, you have to change the way that you speak.

You have to stop talking about the negative, and start talking about the positive.

Stop talking about everything that you think is wrong with you. Stop rehearsing your faults and weaknesses. Going over your faults again and again and again only serves to emphasize them and to reinforce the belief that that’s just the way you are, you’ll never change.

Change the way that you speak to yourself and about yourself.

Speak hope to yourself. Stop focusing on the way things are right now. Start focusing on where you want to go. Speak about the better future that you’re looking forward to in 2012. Focus on the better you that you want to be. Start rehearsing who and what you want to be and do.

Speak kindly to yourself and about yourself. Stop putting yourself down; not everything about you is a walking disaster area! Look for your strengths and emphasize your strengths.  Start focusing on what is right about you.

Science is finally catching up with what the ancients have known from ages past: sound affects matter.

Scientific research has shown that matter, our very DNA, is affected by sound. The study of Cymatics is spearheading knowledge in this field.

The Bible tells us in the Genesis account of Creation that God spoke everything into being (Genesis Chapters 1-2). 

The universe was created by words. The universe responds to words.

Your body, your world, was created to respond to words.

You effect change in your world by the words that you speak

Use your words wisely.

Use your words to build up and not to tear down.