From My Reading #3: The Fear of Failure

"Here is my point. The cure for the fear of failure is not success. It's failure. The cure for the fear of rejection is not acceptance. It's rejection. You've got to be exposed to small quantities of whatever you're afraid of. That's how you build up immunity. . . One of the greatest things that could happen to you is for your fear to become reality. Then you would discover that it's not the end of the world. Your fear is worse than the actual thing you're afraid of." -Mark Batterson, In A Pit With A Lion On A Snowy Day

I love this because it disables fear. It takes power away from our circumstances and gives it back to God. Even if every single one of my greatest fears came true, God is still bigger than all of that, He'll still hold me fast, He'll still have a direction for me to walk and a Kingdom for me to build and live in. He will still be faithful, satisfying, world-defying. Surely, if we as Christians saw the big picture, that the Lord establishes our steps (Prov. 16:9), that He can get us where He wants us to go, even when we fail, our present circumstances would not affect us as severely as they do.

From My Reading #2

"Think of every opportunity as God's gift to you. What you do with those opportunities is your gift to God. I'm absolutely convinced that our greatest regrets in life will be missed opportunities." -Mark Batterson, In a Pit With a Lion on a Snowy Day

Hmm. I think I would rather seize opportunities and fail than never take the risk. What opportunities are available to me right now? And what does God want to do in those?

Just For Fun #2

Whoa, sorry. Long day. Here's one of my favorites, no extra charge.



Higher quality version here.

Old Wisdom #1: G.K. Chesterton

(In this column, I'll find some quotes from someone who lived long ago who held views rarely heard of in our current time and culture that I think are worthy of remembrance and application.)

G.K. Chesterton was an English writer during the early 1900s. Check out his biography here.

"To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it." - A Short History of England, Ch.10

"The reformer is always right about what is wrong. He is generally wrong about what is right." - ILN 10-28-22

"Progress is a comparative of which we have not settled the superlative." - Chapter 2, Heretics, 1905

"Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around." - Orthodoxy, 1908

"The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him." - ILN, 1/14/11

"The Declaration of Independence dogmatically bases all rights on the fact that God created all men equal; and it is right; for if they were not created equal, they were certainly evolved unequal. There is no basis for democracy except in a dogma about the divine origin of man." - Chapter 19, What I Saw In America, 1922

"There are those who hate Christianity and call their hatred an all-embracing love for all religions." - ILN, 1/13/06

From the Notebook #2

Just For Fun #1

(This column will be a break from the norm. I'll just post something fun I found online. Pretty self-expanatory.)

Here's a great short film about a blind girl that'll warm your heart, haha.

Get Real: Brutal Honesty for Brutal Times #1

(We all know that things are not how they should be, in the world nor in our own hearts. But we would be foolish to avoid or ignore these things, for they speak of our true condition at the time. When we allow the truth of God to come up against these raw, messed-up situations, that is where healing begins. In this column, I'll write about a situation like this from my own life.

I wrote this on my laptop last Saturday:

Why I (Sometimes) Don’t Like to Eat
• Due to how stressed I am, I often feel sick after I eat.
• I often end up eating alone, which isn’t fun.
• I don’t know how to cook good food.
• I don’t like to buy a variety of ingredients because they often end up going bad before I can eat them.
• If I don’t plan enough time to eat, I often end up buying something on the way, which costs more money.

I need to bring my eating into the Kingdom of God. But how?