DON't FORGET: 10 Basic Truths We Forget Too Easily

It’s surprising how easy it is to lose sight of the important things in life. Busy schedules and weekly routines have a tendency to put the brain on autopilot.

Some of life’s essential truths need repeating. Keep this list handy and give it a read any time you need a boost.

1. BEING BUSY DOES NOT EQUAL BEING PRODUCTIVE

Look at everyone around you. They all seem so busy—running from meeting to meeting and firing off emails. Yet how many of them are really producing, really succeeding at a high level?

Success doesn't come from movement and activity. It comes from focus—from ensuring that your time is used efficiently and productively.

You get the same number of hours in the day as everyone else. Use yours wisely. After all, you’re the product of your output, not your effort. Make certain your efforts are dedicated to tasks that get results.

2. GREAT SUCCESS IS OFTEN PRECEDED BY FAILURE

You will never experience true success until you learn to embrace failure. Your mistakes pave the way for you to succeed by revealing when you’re on the wrong path.

The biggest breakthroughs typically come when you’re feeling the most frustrated and the most stuck. It’s this frustration that forces you to think differently, to look outside the box and see the solution that you've been missing.

Success takes patience and the ability to maintain a good attitude even while suffering for what you believe in.

3. FEAR IS THE #1 SOURCE OF REGRET

When it’s all said and done, you will lament the chances you didn’t take far more than you will your failures. Don’t be afraid to take risks.

I often hear people say, “What’s the worst thing that can happen to you? Will it kill you?” Yet, death isn't the worst thing that can happen to you.

The worst thing that can happen to you is allowing yourself to die inside while you’re still alive.

4. YOUR SELF-WORTH MUST COME FROM WITHIN

When your sense of pleasure and satisfaction are derived from comparing yourself to others, you are no longer the master of your own destiny. When you feel good about something that you've done, don’t allow anyone’s opinions or accomplishments to take that away from you.

While it’s impossible to turn off your reactions to what others think of you, you don’t have to compare yourself to others, and you can always take people’s opinions with a grain of salt. That way, no matter what other people are thinking or doing, your self-worth comes from within. Regardless of what people think of you at any particular moment, one thing is certain—you’re never as good or bad as they say you are.

5. YOU'RE ONLY AS GOOD AS THOSE YOU ASSOCIATE WITH

You should strive to surround yourself with people who inspire you, people who make you want to be better, and you probably do. But what about the people who drag you down? Why do you allow them to be a part of your life?

Anyone who makes you feel worthless, anxious, or uninspired is wasting your time and, quite possibly, making you more like them. Life is too short to associate with people like this. Cut them loose.

6. LIFE IS SHORT

None of us are guaranteed a tomorrow. Yet, when someone dies unexpectedly it causes us to take stock of our own life: what’s really important, how we spend our time, and how we treat other people.

Loss is a raw, visceral reminder of the frailty of life. It shouldn't be.

Remind yourself every morning when you wake up that each day is a gift and you’re bound to make the most of the blessing you've been given. The moment you start acting like life is a blessing is the moment it will start acting like one.

After all, a great day begins with a great mindset.

7. YOU DON'T HAVE TO WAIT FOR AN APOLOGY TO FORGIVE

Life goes a lot smoother once you let go of grudges and forgive even those who never said they were sorry. Grudges let negative events from your past ruin today’s happiness. Hate and anger are emotional parasites that destroy your joy in life.

The negative emotions that come with holding on to a grudge create a stress response in your body, and holding on to stress can have devastating health consequences. Researchers at Emory University have shown that holding on to stress contributes to high blood pressure and heart disease.

When you forgive someone, it doesn't condone their actions; it simply frees you from being their eternal victim.

8. YOU'RE LIVING THE LIFE YOU'VE CREATED

You are not a victim of circumstance. No one can force you to make decisions and take actions that run contrary to your values and aspirations.

The circumstances you’re living in today are your own—you created them. Likewise, your future is entirely up to you. If you’re feeling stuck, it’s probably because you’re afraid to take the risks necessary to achieve your goals and live your dreams.

When it’s time to take action, remember that it’s always better to be at the bottom of the ladder you want to climb than at the top of one you don’t.

9. LIVE IN THE MOMENT

You can’t reach your full potential until you learn to live your life in the present.

No amount of guilt can change the past, and no amount of anxiety can change the future. It’s impossible to be happy if you’re constantly somewhere else, unable to fully embrace the reality (good or bad) of this very moment.

To help yourself live in the moment, you must do two things:

1) Accept your past. If you don’t make peace with your past, it will never leave you and, in doing so, it will create your future.

2) Accept the uncertainty of the future. Worry has no place in the here and now. As Mark Twain once said, “Worrying is like paying a debt you don’t owe.”

10. CHANGE IS INEVITABLE - EMBRACE IT

Only when you embrace change can you find the good in it. You need to have an open mind and open arms if you’re going to recognize, and capitalize on, the opportunities that change creates.

You’re bound to fail when you keep doing the same things you always do in the hope that ignoring change will make it go away.

After all, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

Life doesn't stop for anyone. When things are going well, appreciate them and enjoy them, as they are bound to change. If you are always searching for something more, something better, that you think is going to make you happy, you’ll never be present enough to enjoy the great moments before they’re gone.

Bringing it all together

Are there important truths that I've forgotten? Please share them via (albert.oppong-asante@scef-international.org). I learn from you just as much as you learn from me.

America's End: Signs of Martial Law Coming

Porn don’t just affect your life; it affects everyone around you in ways I don’t think you can ever realize.

A Letter from a daughter to her Dad on the effects of Pornography 

I want to let you know first of all that I love you and forgive you for what this has done in my life. I also wanted to let you know exactly what your porn use has done to my life. You may think that this effects only you, or even your and mom’s relationships. But it has had a profound impact on me and all of my siblings as well.

I found your porn on the computer somewhere around the age of 12 or so, just when I was starting to become a young woman. First of all, it seemed very hypocritical to me that you were trying to teach me the value of what to let into my mind in terms of movies, yet here you were entertaining your mind with this junk on a regular basis. Your talks to me about being careful with what I watched meant virtually nothing.

Because of pornography, I was aware that mom was not the only woman you were looking at. I became acutely aware of your wandering eye when we were out and about. This taught me that all men have a wandering eye and can’t be trusted. I learned to distrust and even dislike men for the way they perceived women in this way.

As far as modesty goes, you tried to talk with me about how my dress affects those around me and how I should value myself for what I am on the inside. Your actions however told me that I would only ever truly be beautiful and accepted if I looked like the women on magazine covers or in porn. Your talks with me meant nothing and in fact, just made me angry.

As I grew older, I only had this message reinforced by the culture we live in. That beauty is something that can only be achieved if you look like “them”. I also learned to trust you less and less as what you told me didn’t line up with what you did. I wondered more and more if I would ever find a man who would accept me and love me for me and not just a pretty face.

When I had friends over, I wondered how you perceived them. Did you see them as my friends, or did you see them as a pretty face in one of your fantasies? No girl should ever have to wonder that about the man who is supposed to be protecting her and other women in her life.

I did meet a man. One of the first things I asked him about was his struggle with pornography. I’m thankful to God that it is something that hasn’t had a grip on his life. We still have had struggles because of the deep-rooted distrust in my heart for men. Yes, your porn watching has affected my relationship with my husband years later.

If I could tell you one thing, it would be this: Porn didn’t just affect your life; it affected everyone around you in ways I don’t think you can ever realize. It still affects me to this day as I realize the hold that it has on our society. I dread the day when I have to talk with my sweet little boy about pornography and its far-reaching greedy hands. When I tell him about how pornography, like most sins, affects far more than just us.

Like, I said, I have forgiven you. I am so thankful for the work that God has done in my life in this area. It is an area that I still struggle with from time to time, but I am thankful for God’s grace and also my husband’s. I do pray that you are past this and that the many men who struggle with this will have their eyes opened.

Nothing is worse than doing nothing: Start living your best life now

Don’t Die Sitting tells the story of four outcasts who confront death and risk their lives to save their city from military assault. 
Having been banished from the city because of their disability, they become homeless people living outside the city gate. But when food becomes scarce in the region, they have to decide if they should go back to the city that expelled them, stay homeless until they die, or explore their future in spite of its unforeseen dangers. They are are rejected, they are hungry, they are sick, but they are determined not to die—sitting.
 Their faith will challenge you, their courage will fire you up, and their story will show you how you too can: - Handle life’s challenges and keep moving despite the obstacles - Take calculated risks and seize your defining moment - Make great choices amidst conflicting opportunities - Start living your best life now—tomorrow might be too late For anyone aspiring to live a legacy.

Adventist Review Online | ​Falling in Love With Martyrdom

Adventist Review Online | ​Falling in Love With Martyrdom

Concern, Compassion, and Hope for Ex-Adventist Pastor Who Left God

News commentary: May God surround Ryan Bell and each of us with servants of the Lord who will not be quarrelsome but be kind and able to teach.

Former Seventh-day Adventist pastor Ryan Bell entered 2014 with a New Year’s resolution to live the year without God. The decision generated significant media coverage and a lively discussion among both atheists and Christians from various faiths.
Thoughts of concern
Thoughts of compassion
Thoughts of hope

Now that Ryan has finished the year living as an atheist, he has announced that he no longer believes that God exists.

"I've looked at the majority of the arguments that I've been able to find for the existence of God, and on the question of God's existence or not, I have to say I don't find there to be a convincing case, in my view,” he said in an interview with NPR radio on Dec. 27. "I don't think that God exists. I think that makes the most sense of the evidence that I have and my experience.”

From a distance, I have followed Ryan’s journey from being an Adventist pastor to a self-declared atheist disappointed with what he sees as a lack of social justice among Christians. My heart has been filled with three types of thoughts: concern, compassion, and hope.

Concern because Bell's experience with all its questioning reflect the unwelcome reality that some people, even after years of Adventist education and enculturation, will reject the faith.

Concern because many, like Bell, become confused when they attempt to intellectually grapple with “reality” through the reading uninspired notions of truth and worldview. There is a truth, "that by beholding we are changed" (2 Corinthians 3:18).

Concern because Bell's journey, while couched in religious jargon, shows all the signs and symptoms of a person struggling with major depression. "If God exists," say those who are depressed, "where is He? Why doesn't He reveal Himself?"

Concern because Bell appears to be rejecting the only source of true hope and help in a desire to truly experience "reality."

Compassion because many others have asked similar questions and, as a result of their "give me" attitude, found themselves in the same "far country" as the prodigal son in Luke 15.

Compassion because the "this isn't fair" mentality of the prodigal son’s elder brother also has led many with a social justice mentality to a "far country"—even though we remain safely at home by all outward appearances.

Hope because prodigals with "give me" attitudes in far countries can and do return. I know I did.

Hope because there are father figures who, although misunderstood and mischaracterized as patriarchal and provincial, still pray and hope for the return of their much-loved sons.

Hope because the much-romanticized "experience of reality" has a way of ultimately leading us to appreciate the larger truth that the father and his philosophy that we jettisoned were not so bad after all.

Hope because we've seen others through the power of God alone turn from "give me" and “it’s not fair” philosophies to a simple yet humble request to be made one of the father's “servants."

In the end, the words of counsel that Paul wrote to the young Timothy, who was dealing with those who desired to live without boundaries, ring with truth and wisdom: “And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful. Opponents must be gently instructed, in the hope that God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth, and that they will come to their senses and escape from the trap of the devil, who has taken them captive to do his will” (2 Timothy 2:24-26, NIV).

May God grant Ryan and each of us in 2015 with the gift of repentance that He has promised. May God surround Ryan and each of us with “servants of the Lord” who will not be “quarrelsome” but be “kind,” “gentle,” “not resentful” and “able to teach.”

May God grant Ryan the type of experience he needs so he may see Him for who He really is.