Category: dignity

One of the biggest lies that keeps people poor, wanting, jealous, overspending, and financially irresponsible is the idea that they understand enough to judge the financial thinking of people—whether bad or good—who have more earned money than they. Equally, another big lie is that wealthy people can understand those who have less money than they ever had; this idea usually brings the downfall of the wealthy and powerful. We only understand enough to judge the financial worldview of wealth or poverty that we have already had ourselves.

One of the best-kept secrets about money is that everyone has exactly what he has, no more or less. Another secret is that God makes money vanish and appear as He wills, yet that is not why most rich and poor are rich and poor. To recognize how much money you have is the first step to mastering money so that money—whether wealth or poverty—doesn’t master you.

The “moral amount” of money is neither great nor small. Morals and money are not measured in dollars, pounds, yuan, dong, or shekels. Morals about money are about we as humans mastering our own money.

Your worth in Heaven is not measured by your neighbors, nor by the numbers in your bank account today, but in your ability to generate, to dig, drill, to strike oil, water, and gold—to put your sweat in the right place and the right amounts and to encourage and guide others as they do the same. But, none of that can happen if you think that you can understand people who have an amount of money that you never have.

Wealth can be unsatisfying, but so can poverty. Thriving includes wealth for the mature. Wealth comes from hard, smart work, combined with a share of luck. We create our own luck by trying again and again and again, not giving up, no matter the sweat and blisters from our weary hands. But, you can’t understand things you haven’t been through. So, don’t pretend. Focus on what you have and what you need to do. Neither despise nor covet anyone else. Rather, seek to master whatever you have by first mastering yourself.

When young, early, poor, and small, life doesn’t offer us the powers and opportunities to smack around those who do injustice to us. Tyrants are made by holding grudges, then beheading their enemies the moment they get the chance. In some cases, your rise to power may require you to send many people to prison or fire them from the company the next day, but be selective. As a general rule, if justice demands that you fire your bad coworkers once you become their supervisor, firing even half of those you could is excessive.

People change with time. Exacting justice against the single worst aggressor may be just what is necessary to bring the rest of the mob in line. Fire only one person on your new day in office, then watch the email meta to see who gets it in gear and who prepares to bail. If you can afford, it’s best to fire no one at all. You would be surprised how loyal your old enemies become once you wield the power of their purse. That could be all the justice needed. This is how God likes to work.

You may be one of the lucky few who gets promoted and are thus celebrated by all your peers. Keep your conscience, keep learning, stay humble, and make sure that you never lose the respect of the friends who helped get you where you are, all while at the same time making the hard choices of a leader.

God allows us to receive injustice in our younger years, but not so to tell us who to hang once we get our turn to keep the throne warm for the day. God shows us these things so we can learn to respond within limits, so that our tenderness can continue once He gives us more responsibility. Look at the limits life gives you and remain within those limits after you receive the power to crush your enemies. Use your past experience to help you remain sensitive to the needs of others beneath you in the future.

Self-control and restraint are necessary for any leader. Learn those things early, then God will entrust you with authority.

Anger makes us weak. Getting a grip on anger is a challenge for every human. Some are more prone than others, but it always sneaks up on us. People who rarely get angry can’t control their anger once something finally pushes them over the edge. People who struggle with anger are not alone—they are not a minority; the person who doesn’t struggle with anger just might be the only one on Earth and he is in great peril for not having learned to deal with it earlier.

Giving up anger for joy is one of the hallmarks of Christianity. Sadly, few Christians cash in on this hallmark of their own beliefs, making the “angry Christian” one of the most common oxymorons in the world.

Overcoming anger requires a recipe of owning responsibility for one’s own emotions, uncomfortable amounts of time in focused prayer to and worship of Jesus, filling one’s own thought life with ideas that support a Biblical framework, and, oddly enough, physical health. Diet, exercise, sleep, and environment all contribute to emotions. Even an approaching rain cloud drops barometric pressure, making people edgy. In East Asia, it is generally known that sugar, spice, and fried food contribute to pimples and an “angry/evil fire” in one’s spirit energy. They solve the problem by drinking water, but asparagus also helps, as do melons, guavas, pears, and various edible fruit blossoms.

While curing anger has its recipes, so does anger itself. An uncontrolled lustful thought life is one of the common culprits of anger. So are alcohol, caffeine, and nicotine. Some recent questions consider whether petroleum-based products and chemicals could also have an “angering” effect, such as coming in contact with gasoline, motor oil, or other chemicals, including dry erase marker ink, petroleum-based skin lotion, or bug spray. But, chemicals are always being researched and they certainly are no excuse.

Jesus paid everyone’s vindication price with his own life. So, discipline ought educate and deter, not “transfer due suffering” to supposedly “pay” for crimes. Any conflict, punishment, correction, or disagreement should be entirely empty of any wrath, venom, offense, or “thirst for blood”. If you can’t help it, get help as soon as you can.

Sometimes, life can act like the only options that work are sinful, foolish, or compromising of essential values. Sometimes, those values are Biblical and we must hold to our values. God is testing us in those times and if we hang on, following wisdom to the death, God will break through and deliver us at the last minute to something incredibly beyond anything we considered. But, at other times, our so-called “values” are in error and God requires us to adjust our understanding of morality to align our worldview with His Biblical teaching. It is very easy to confuse which of these two situations one is in.

Many people die of disease easily cured because they imagined that God would heal them supernaturally. Many people compromise their morals, claiming that “God wants us to be realistic”, thinking that God wanted them to do what they did, thus losing all favor with Heaven and failing this way. Most people who are on the wrong of these two paths have convinced themselves that they are on the correct path. The only way to see clearly enough to avoid confusing the two is through self-honesty and intense, life-long Bible study. There are no gimmicks or shortcuts or cramming books for this test.

There is also the matter of “vices” that slow us down like an anchor dragged at sea. These are things that we don’t think harm us, but they stop our progress and harm the ones we love. It could be a belief or a pet project you need to ditch or a kind of elbow grease you don’t want to employ.

Let go of whatever harms you and do anything that helps.

When you are in those seasons where, one way or another, your fields yield no harvest: Sow. The Law of Sowing and Reaping is one of your best friends in times of trouble—or your worst enemy for trouble you caused. Sow what is good—learn, initiate, help those right around you, research, move some of your projects forward, get random certifications, do research, practice skills. The more good seeds you sow, the more good harvest the rains will prepare for you to reap.

Whether due to sin or some good design that God intended, our human gauge for “concept of time” usually registers both too much and too little.

When we don’t have a good work ethic, we tend to think we have much more time to be lazy and lax than we actually do. A good work ethic carries a healthy sense of urgency. But on the flip, when we work with that healthy sense of urgency, worrisome events can trigger false flags, making us think that things are even more urgent than they actually are. Busy people becoming worried results from a compound of two perceptions of urgency—the healthy sense of urgency of a good work ethic and the feeling of external pressure from our surroundings.

As you work and bustle to get out the door on time, something may slow you down. The sink may clog, the baby may vomit, the car might not start, the kids may start whining, or your personal gadgets might decide to suddenly stop functioning. But, then you arrive to find those you were meeting were also delayed, and it couldn’t have been timed better.

Frustration with things beyond our control indicate we are somehow “frantic”. Never make excuses for yourself to be frustrated over things you can’t control. You will be so frustrated, just never excuse it. God brought those circumstances to help you calibrate your own heart.

When we are thinking about time, we actually have more time than we think. When we aren’t thinking about time, we actually have less time than we think because we aren’t thinking.

As you work diligently, do not allow tragedies or global shifts or even local catastrophe to trigger that fearful sense of panic. This only applies when you are already working with a healthy sense of urgency. As you work to get things done, but then war breaks out or war is rumored to break out soon, remember that God is still in control. Keep plugging away, keep your Sabbath within God’s schedule for you, keep time to pray. Even an “unjust” traffic light might be a gift from the angels for a needed moment of some extra prayer.

Due to both sin and God’s good design, we are in constant need of recalibrating our sense of our own strength.

Our ability to think is marred by sin, yet we continue to grow. Like children growing up, every day our bodies are bigger than they were the day before. Like mature adults, our bodies don’t always do what they were able to do before. As we grow and mature in our hearts and minds, our strengths and weaknesses also change every day. Know your new strengths and limits each new day and you will achieve things in life that no one thought possible, even with supernatural miracles.

Most of the time, we aren’t concerned enough about the right things and worry too much about things that aren’t a problem. Even when your heart gets its priorities in line—and you are more concerned about charity and looking for anyone and everyone ignored by society’s systems—little, tiny problems crop up that make us worry and we still tend to neglect things that matter. Take sleep for example, exercise, or the simple need to stretch our muscles. Reading Bible daily is minimum if you want a life that’s not a complete waste—any amount will do. When we neglect the little things that keep us healthy, it becomes easy to worry about scary monsters that can’t bite.

Even if a tsunami is headed right for you, the safest place to be is wherever God wants you. Maybe by standing at a certain place in the street, the water will pick you up, keep you afloat, and no debris will hit you. But, if you run to a building several floors above the water, the tsunami could collapse the whole building. What we think is safe might not necessarily be safe because we never see everything.

Only God sees everything. He knows where you are safe and where you are in danger. He knows your strengths and weaknesses on a level that you never can. With God at your back, you can walk through anything. So, when it comes time to walk your road, always get God’s opinion about what matters in the situation for today.

In Heaven’s Kingdom, God raises up our leaders from among our brethren. David was the runt of his litter. Joseph nearly was the same. Jesus’s family thought he was mentally ill.

For decades, God prepares someone quietly, secretly. The one being prepared may have a sense that the preparation is happening, but still can’t fathom how everything will play out. Even Jesus doesn’t know the hour of his own return to Earth. If Jesus doesn’t know when he will come back to deliver us from the evils on Earth, then there is no way in Heaven or on Earth that we could ever know who is and is not in the quiet fields of preparation for the Lord’s purposes tomorrow.

Everyone looks ordinary in person. Seeing a face on a billboard or movie screen makes a celebrity easy to recognize. But, in person everyone remains human.

Say Einstein were to deliver his theory of relativity to one of his college classmates. Or, imagine if Oswald Chambers had gone off on one of his rants as a student in Sunday school. They would be brushed off as annoying and self-obsessed. But, if either man were to sit down in a television studio and show the world how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, the whole world would take notes.

That’s what made Oswald Chambers special to all of us: His wife took notes while he would rant at home. That’s how his famous devotional was written. He dictated off the cuff; she actually wrote it down. We have his words to read because his own family had the insight to value his words first.

Thomas Aquinas was called the “dumb ox” by his classmates because he was fat and soft-spoken. But, his teacher told the class, “One day the ‘dumb ox’ will speak and the whole world will listen.” That teacher recognized talent without needing a movie screen to determine whether his own student had a brain worth publishing.

Don’t assume that your peers can’t include the king God will anoint—that you could never be so ‘lucky’. Your friends aren’t all worthless. Learn to spot talent among your peers before the world does.