LauraK
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Digging Out of the Debt
Star this Commitment
Week 12 of 12
LauraK commits to:
Dig out of debt
11
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No more reports due
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My Commitment Journal
 LauraK
April 5, 2010, 3:54 PM
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What I Learned from Easter and Passover This season, the lesson to be learned for me is that less is more, and that sacrifice to God brings freedom and life. This worldwide recession is forcing us to make sacrifices - spend less money and make more, or for many of us even hold onto our job and home, potentially sacrificing the roof over our head and our livelihood. Many people are in financial straights especially people who are older who are seeing their retirement savings vanish, and new homeowners who extended themselves too far into unmanageable mortgages in the reality of a falling real-estate market. Many are facing bankruptcy because they have too much debt to bear. Lots of us have health problems and don't have health insurance to cover rising medical costs. Some are in the middle of religious or political wars, dodging bullets and bombs, praying to stay alive. How are you? Really - how is your life? Please post a comment and let us know about how you are struggling, and what you've learned recently. Please write and tell us, so we know we're not alone in our struggles and sacrifices. I am with you, I too have to make a lot of sacrifices and make significant changes, I'm struggling with some of the same things everyone else is. This Easter and Passover season, I'm thinking about how the two holidays are similar, teaching us to follow and depend on God 100%. Easter to me is about Jesus Christ's many sacrifices to teach us about God and how he gave His life and accepted the fate of being killed for His teaching about love, kindness and forgiveness. God was there with Him, protecting Him, loving Him, allowing Him to ultimately transcend death. Passover, for me, is all about following God and totally relying on Him against oppression and evil, sacrificing our own will so that we can follow God's leading to the Promised Land of hope and peace. Although different in history, both are rites of sacrifice, passage, and renewal in God's hands. These religious holidays are celebrated in springtime, the point in the season that the dead of winter is now over - last year's crops are long gone back to the earth, and the seeds of hope are sprouting and living new life from old. Easter and Passover teach us hope and renewal, in exchange for our love and sacrifices. If we follow the path of faith and hope, instead of delving deeper into our sufferings and hopelessness, the promise of new life, of freedom from earthy mortality and limitations, is given us in abundance. We don't understand exactly how life from death may work yet, it is ours miraculously, only for the price of giving up our suffering and sinful errors to God, trusting Him to show us the way to the Promised Land of salvation and infinite life anew. Have you put your life in God's hands? Have you surrendered to faith and experienced renewal, new life and salvation? Please tell us about it, so that we can also be reminded and renewed in God's love. Norris Chumley |
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LauraK
April 5, 2010, 3:48 PM
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Will God Ever Reject Anyone? "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life."1 A Daily Encounter reader needing help shares, "The circumstances of my birth were not good. My mother, newly wedded, had me by another man. Ever since I found this out in my teenage years (when my parents finally got divorced after a horrible, horrible marriage), I have felt like an outcast, as if I were cursed because I was born in a sinful manner. I know a child of God cannot be cursed because Jesus hung on a tree for us, but it's hard to shake the feeling sometimes. I've often felt as if God had rejected me. Is it possible for God to reject a person?" Dear Michael (not his real name), thank you for sharing your heart. First, let me assure you that you are not rejected by God. He loves you no matter what your background is or the circumstances of your birth. God's Word assures us that he loves each of us with an everlasting love. Remember that Solomon in the Bible was the child of a woman with whom King David committed adultery, and that God forgave David, and that Jesus came through the line of David via Solomon. This is a divine example of the grace of God. When my youngest son was still a teen, on one occasion he was very angry at me about something—something that I can't remember—but I will never forget his reaction. He blurted out in a very angry voice, "Well, why did you have me anyhow?" Immediately I replied, "Because you are a part of God's eternal plan!" And Michael that is also true of you. YOU, too, are a part of God's eternal plan. God loves you eternally. Jesus died on the cross for YOU. Please don't ever forget that. And if you have never accepted Jesus as your Savior, I urge you to do that today. Also, at the beginning of every day I urge you to pray the following prayer: "Dear God, again today I commit and trust my life and way to you. Please guide me in the way that I should go and help me to become the person you want me to be. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully in Jesus' name, amen." I have prayed this prayer every day ever since my youth and plan on praying it every day for the rest of my life. I encourage you to do the same. This prayer has truly revolutionized my life. If you pray this prayer every day from your heart—not as a ritual—it will, in time, also revolutionize your life. And to every Daily Encounter reader I encourage you to pray the above prayer every day of your life as it can also revolutionize your life. 1. John 3:16 (NIV). |
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LauraK
April 2, 2010, 2:22 PM
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"Rolling the Dice" by Brian Tracy In his article, "Rolling the Dice," motivational speaker, Brian Tracy, says that "Gambling is perhaps the most perfect example of the desire to get something for nothing. The whole idea behind gambling is there is some fast, easy way to get money that you have not earned. Proponents of legalized gambling declare that it is an innocent form of entertainment. But gamblers always lose eventually. It is only a matter of time. The billion-dollar casinos and gambling resorts have not been built with losses.'" Tracy concludes by saying, "It is not possible to outlaw gambling. But like an addictive narcotic, the only way you can avoid its destructive effects is to avoid it altogether. You can recognize that it is an attempt to get something for nothing, which is inherently wrong. Worse, it weakens your moral immune system and makes you susceptible to other temptations to get something for nothing." From Personal Success by Brian Tracy. http://www.briantracy.com/newsletter/ |
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LauraK
March 29, 2010, 2:42 PM
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| Keep your lives free from the love of money, and be content with what you have for he has said, “I will never leave you or forsake you.” Hebrews 13:5 | |
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