Ultimate Purpose

Lately all that has been lingering in my mind is what my ultimate purpose here is.  In other words, what was I created to do while I am here on earth?  For one, I know for a fact that I will not be here forever and only God knows when that day will come.  I also know that God did not put me here to merely exist every day.  I truly believe that God equipped me to live a life that not only follows His plan for me, but a life that glorifies Him exceedingly with the way I live.  Well, it is not an easy task for most people to figure out what their purpose is.  Some people choose their purpose in life through the career of their choice and others live each day wondering what they were destined to do.  It can be quite a
battle-field between your heart and your brain.  It also becomes a battle between your spiritual beliefs and what the norms of our society are.  Finding one’s purpose can be a life long struggle or it can be a piece of cake.  Everyone is different and everyone finds a distinct way of figuring out what they want to do for the rest of their lives. 

            Recently I decided that instead of thinking so much about what my purpose is, I would dive into a pool of inspiration and begin to live my purpose. There are so many tools to help us connect with our inner voice.  My inner voice is God directing my path and I can either choose to listen or to make my own way.  That inner voice is packed with dreams, goals and passions that I was once afraid to express.  The problem with us is that we often forget to nourish our purpose; we spend more time letting things magically plan out, instead of feeding our souls with the proper inspiration.  God has equipped each and every one of us with an inner voice and He continues to inspire that voice.  But are we listening to what our voice has to say?  Perhaps the reason we feel so lost is because we can’t hear that voice.  All that we are focused on hearing is our outer voice, other peoples’ opinions and what we “think” God wants us to do.  My point is quite simple, are we letting God guide us into our purpose?

            It is my wish that every day I can work a little harder towards truly listening to my inner voice.  I know that God gifted me with the life I have and He did the same for you.  So the first step to listening to your inner voice is to thank God for blessing you with what you have: the great, the bad, the awesome, the ugly, everything!  It is my experience that a thankful outlook helps project a positive attitude. 

Secondly, grab 2 pieces of paper and write down what you believe your purpose(s) is on one piece and on the other piece write down what your dreams & goals are.  Have fun with this!  Once you are done, thank God for giving you the chance to dream!  Quite often we find that God slowly but surely aligns your heart to the purpose He has for you. 

And lastly, find inspiration in this verse from Galatians 6:4: “…make a careful exploration of who you are and the work you have been given, and then sink yourself into that.” MSG   God is telling us to SINK IN!! Take a dive!  Go for it! 

            My prayer is that we find our purpose (s), sink into them, and reach up to heavens for encouragement!                         
Ready………set……………..GO!

INSANE

I LOVE MY BLOG!  It is nice to know that someday my grandchildren can look me up on the Internet and they can read the stories of my journey.  Any who, today my hubby and I started Insanity.  For those of you who do not know what it is: maybe you've heard of P90X.  Well Insanity is like ten steps above it; it is INSANE!  Just the warm-up alone is killer.  I thought I was having a heart attack.  Today's workout was pure cardio, with one minute non-stop intervals. And the video itself was like 25 minutes (stretching included).  It's so funny how your mind can play tricks on you, but this time I tricked my mind & pushed through the workout!

Lately, the theme of "inviting God into your daily life" has been jumping out at me.  It has been the main focus of my Women's Bible Study.  It simply relies on the fact that we cannot do anything on our own because it is beyond the human flesh & will to do so.  We are always looking for a motivating factor.  We always need a reason to forgive, to love, to work harder, to read our Bible, etc.  As Christians, GOD is our motivating factor.  First we need to grasp the concept that every day we need to invite God into our tasks.  When you wake up, thank God you are alive & you have breathing lungs.  Invite God as you prepare your morning meals.  Invite God to check your emails with you at work.  This idea of inviting God into your daily routine, will not only change your relationship with God, but it will also give you intense fuel to get through your day.  Better yet, it sets the pace of your attitude for the rest of your day. The only way I got through my workout today (Day 1 of Insanity) was because all day I invited God to help me be energized.  

Mind over body: God has the Power to help you shift your thoughts to positive ones.  However, God will not do this unless you invite Him to!  God knows exactly what you need to push through your day.  God knew exactly what I needed today to do my workout & to eat healthy.  The only way that you will be able to retain the ability to have mind over body, is if you find the inner motivation that God has sowed in each & everyone of us.  Yes, non-Christians are successful & they do Insanity & obtain awesome results, but my God gives me a purpose to do what I need to do.  God makes me love everything I do because I do it all for His glory, not to say: "I" accomplished something, but rather say "God" accomplished something & much more! 

At the end of the day, I look for my Eternal Life with God in His Glory, where someday I can see my loved ones once again!  That is INSANE!     

Stay posted for my progress with Insanity! 

For Our Angels

Usually I am pretty good at expressing my emotions through writing, but for the first time in my life I have been speechless.  I was listening to music this morning and I heard Kenny Chesney's "Who You'd Be Today" and it describes my feelings right now.  I wrote a blog when Shawn, Grms & Amy passed away, but it is too hard to publish.  So I will let these lyrics speak for me.  ~Always in my heart~

"Who You'd be Today"

Sunny days seem to hurt the most
Wear the pain like a heavy coat
I feel you everywhere I go
I see your smile, I see your face
I hear you laughing in the rain
Still can't believe you're gone
It ain't fair you died too young
Like a story that had just begun The death tore the pages all away
God knows how I miss you
All the hell that I've been through
Just knowing no one could take your *place*
Sometimes I wonder who you'd be today
Would you see the world?
Would you chase your dreams?
Settle down with a family?
I wonder, what would you name your babies?
Some days the sky's so blue
I feel like I can talk to you
And I know it might sound crazy
Sunny days seem to hurt the most
I wear the pain like a heavy coat
The only thing that gives me hope
Is I know I'll see you again someday

In Excess

My friend Sammy wrote a blog titled “Find Your Spot.”  I always say that he manages to use absolutely every life situation to write a blog, inspire a thought, or does a bible study.  Well this particular blog he wrote (Which you SHOULD go read, right NOW: www.holycrossnm.com/blog) inspired me to write the continuation of it. “Find Your Spot” speaks about finding your balance through God.  I can recall all of the times that I continually prayed, read my bible, went to bible study & those were the times that I felt more joyous.  At the time I didn’t notice that keeping my focus on God helped me have a thorough balance in my life.  It felt like nothing bad could happen and if it did, God snapped his right fingers & just like that my problems melted away.  I still feel that way today, but now I am fully aware of the ways God is working in my life.

The integral part of one’s faith and life is to find a “healthy” balance in everything you do.  This ensures positivity, productivity and success.  By “healthy”, I am referring to knowing your own limits, weaknesses and always keep in mind that everything in excess is not good.  Well, the only thing that you can never go over on is your relationship with Christ!  Everything else is of the flesh and will derail the path that was destined for you to follow. 

Eating in excess will lead to obesity and that will cause many medical conditions.  Drinking in excess will cloud your judgment and you can become an alcoholic.  Spending money in excess may leave you broke.  I could go on and turn this blog into a book of “Things in Excess.”  Personally, I don’t care if my sin leads me to being fat, diseased, addicted, or broke, but what I do care about is that my relationship with God would be forever dampened because I decided that a life of excess was what I wanted.  Ok, so I hope everyone knows that I do not lead a life of excess and I don’t do it because having God be my Father is more important to me.  However, there are people that are already leading a sinful life and they seem to not be able to turn away from it.  Maybe they have no clue as to how awesome being part of God’s family is.  Maybe they feel like the only way to cope with the road blocks in life is to live a life in excess.  Whatever the reason, I can guarantee that if you could hand people a magic wand to fix their lives, they would run with it and “fix” everything. 

The only problem with this magic wand is that as soon as the problem has been “fixed” another problem will arise.  Life is not perfect, that is the beauty of it; but our God is and that is even better.  Now, if we focused our lives to God our creator, He would take care of all the problems in the past, present & future.  We wouldn’t need a magic wand and the good news is that we don’t need that magic wand.  You see, when you put all your energy into making God be “your spot”, you won’t need anything else.  You will not need everything the flesh craves in excess because God is here to quench the thirst of the flesh. 

1 Peter 2:11 reads: “Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul.”  Peter knew that when you focus on “sinful desires”, instead of on God, there will be an unbearable war between your flesh and your soul.  Let’s keep our focus on God and on His Kingdom because He will take care of everything for us.  Abstain from excess gossiping, eating, drinking, shopping, etc.  You may think that what you are currently doing is not so bad, but when your focus is on everything, except for God, your balance in life will be completely thrown off.  Remember that God loves us infinitely and if you let Him, He will start to work on your heart and He will finally end that war between your flesh & your soul.

Feeling unbalanced? Addicted to excess?  Open your Bible right now.