This is where I struggle. At youth camp this year the minister, Bro. Soto, preached about being a thermostat or a thermometer. You see, thermostats set the temperature. But thermometers only read and react to the temperature. Do you determine your attitude, or do your circumstances and emotions? A bad attitude is like a virus which slowly creeps in, spreading as it goes. If it is left unchecked it can wipe out an entire system. A bad attitude will slowly poison a person’s life, till every area is contaminated. Their every perspective will reek of negativity and complaint. Negativity stinks.

But even Jesus had to keep His attitude in check. In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus didn’t feel like obeying the will of the Father. But disregarded His feelings and His opinion and said, “Nevertheless not my will, but thine be done.” I believe it is God’s will for us to genuinely be happy. Not merely to think happy thoughts, but to have the joy of the Lord in our life. However, our flesh does not always want to be happy. Then you must choose to count your blessings, choose to be thankful, and choose to praise God until His presence brings joy to your situation. You’ll be glad you did.

When you enter a setting such as the work place or even your home, it is easy to pick up or sense the attitude that has been set by those who are there before you. If your co-workers are discouraged or upset, it is easy to let your attitude slowly begin drifting toward theirs. Maybe at first you merely want to be compassionate and understanding, taking time to listen to their problems and frustrations. But listening to people complain, hour after hour, day after day, can begin to wear on you. It is important to decide at the moment you realize this is happening that you will be a thermostat.

You can decide your attitude; you are not bound by your emotions or your circumstance. Determine to set the atmosphere at your work, home and church. Sometimes you must be the change you want to see. If you are tired of people taking you for granted, then make sure you go out of your way to be thankful for those around you. Create the culture you in which you want to live.

To begin with, I will recap the story, which takes place in Matthew 25:14-30. The story begins with a master and three servants. The master is going away on a long journey and so he puts the servants in charge of the “talents”. To one he gives five, another two and to the final servant he gives one, “every man according to his ability” (Matthew 25:15). The master went on his way and the servants were left to do what they would with their talents. The first (with five talents) works and doubles it. The second follows suit. However, the last servant simply hid his talent in the ground. When the master came back he was pleased with the two who had doubled theirs, but he was angry with the one who had simply hidden his.

The correlation which so plainly developed in my mind upon reading this parable is this: where have I invested the talents God has given me? Do I take time to further them? Am I working towards the increase in them? I have found myself in this quandary more than once before; I have the option of developing a musical, writing, scholastic, or spiritual talent… or to fritter my time away gaming or watching videos. I have the option to further myself and increase the assets I have for the kingdom of God… or just take the easy way out.

I have been endeavoring of late to stop taking the easy way out and instead invest in the talents God has given me. Perhaps I’m not always successful, but I’m still trying. I encourage you to do the same, or if you’re already developing the talents God has given you, to continue developing them toward the vision God has for your life.

So often I come to the altar wanting to give my all to God… but I also desire to know what the future has in store for me. I want to have the security of knowing I’m in God’s will and knowledge of what will happen in the future. While it’s great to know exactly what is in store for you down the road, I realized that knowing what’s in store doesn’t make me surrender my life to what God wants. That’s not seeking Him first. The truth about my feelings is that I want to take a look into my future without surrendering my life to God — I choose to wait until he reveals the things in my future that I want to know about before I’ll commit to Him.

That isn’t how He intended it at all! We are to throw ourselves into whatever he has for us with an almost reckless abandon, not caring what becomes of us, so that we can become all that He has for us to be, whether or not it’s revealed to us at this moment. We must become willing to submit His process for our lives whether He shows it to us or not.

Imagine that you’re a young child and that God is your father, taking you on a vacation. You’re excited because He’s told you that you’re going to another state and the two of you will be driving there. While you’re on your journey there, however, what are you doing? You are in the car with Dad, having a splendid time, but what are you doing? Since you don’t have a driver’s license, much less a road map, you’re left trusting that He knows where He’s taking you. You must accept that He knows the way and He has the best route in mind for you.

We know that we cannot successfully guide ourselves through the roads of life and make every turn correctly. We must rely on our heavenly father. We are mere children in the scope of eternity, in need of a Father to guide us and make sure we get to our destination safely. We can’t control where he brings us: we just have to submit to the ride ahead and hopefully enjoy it.

I want to surrender to God’s process for my life without doing it for a look into the future. My prayer is that you will do the same.

That reminds me of a similar story. Jonah received a clear command, and just like a certain motorist from Cleveland, Jonah made the wrong decision. Jonah’s instructions did not come from a police officer, but they were no less clear and direct. In Jonah 1:2, the Lord told Jonah to go to Nineveh. Jonah made his big mistake and got on a ship headed in the opposite direction, to the city of Tarshish. Before long, Jonah was thrown off the ship and spendt the next three days and nights in the belly of a fish!  Both of these stories are pretty comical to me. If Jonah had followed God’s orders the first time, he would never have been thrown overboard and eaten by a fish. If the driver had pulled over in the first place, he probably would have driven away with nothing more than a ticket.

We shouldn’t have too much fun at their expense, however.  I wonder how many times I’ve behaved like Jonah? Has God ever asked me to do something, but I ran in the opposite direction? I imagine I’m not the only one who has disobeyed God in this way. One lesson we can learn from Jonah is that God wants the best for us and for the people around us. When we turn from Him and act disobediently, we hurt ourselves and the people we influence. We have a choice: we can run blindly, jumping fences into prisons of sin with long lasting consequences for ourselves and the people around us, or we can be obedient to a clear command and fulfill God’s will. Like the citizens of Nineveh, people are lost and looking for truth. Like Jonah, we have an opportunity to share Jesus with them. We have the keys to unlock the prison gates. Will you open the gates?

“I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live: That thou mayest love the LORD thy God, and that thou mayest obey his voice, and that thou mayest cleave unto him: for he is thy life, and the length of thy days: that thou mayest dwell in the land which the LORD sware unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them.”  — Deuteronomy 30:19-20

“But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.”  — Matthew 6:33

Like a recurring dream, there is one choice in life that is presented to us over and over again. You have probably made this choice at least once today. You made a choice when you woke up and decided whether to thank God for the day or simply begin your routine. It came up again when there was an opportunity to help a coworker or a schoolmate, but it was out of your way. That recurring choice is the decision to put God first or to please ourselves, but it’s a false dichotomy: Jesus said (in Matthew 6:33) that if we put God first, the things that are beneficial to us will fall into place. He actually said they would be “added unto” us. We don’t have to chase after them, because God is the one who adds to our lives — not us. When we chase after God, we’ll find that He takes care of the things we would have been chasing anyway.

We all have to make this choice repeatedly. Maybe this time it’s a job or a relationship. Maybe you’re dealing with academic decisions or family issues. Or maybe your choice is too personal for me to enumerate. But regardless of the specific situation, the principle of putting God first holds firm.

There’s a good example of working from principles in the field of aviation. If you were to read an airplane manual or an instruction book for flying a plane, without actually flying one, you might be left with the impression that the important part of flying is the details. There’s the trim, the flaps, the fuel mixture, calibrating the instruments, adjusting the propeller angle… there are a lot of parameters that will affect your flight. But an instructor will leave out those details while you’re learning and will have you focus on a few simple principles. Pull back to pitch up and push forward to pitch down. Left and right tilt the plane in that direction. Point the nose toward wherever it is you want to go. Many forces can work on the craft to affect the outcome, but as long as you continue to follow those principles it will work itself out.

So it is with life. There are billions of unique situations — everyone on earth is dealing with life from a slightly different perspective. But without knowing anything specific, we could still say with confidence that the most important decision is to put God first. Our challenge today? Seek first the Kingdom.

Last week we talked about small, low-effort portions of life that make a big difference. We called these small changes “shoelaces”. One example is taking the time to compliment or encourage someone. Now there’s a new question to address, however: how can we keep doing this? Shoelaces are low-effort, sure, but they still require effort. No matter how good it makes you feel to brighten another person’s day, it’s easy to get worn out. At some point, making that decision again seems like too much effort.

This is the hallmark of a lifestyle choice: it’s a choice that’s made over and over, even when it’s inconvenient. Lifestyles are defined not by the great big choices of life — the ones that are made by logic — but by the small everyday choices. These are the shoelaces that tie our lives together. For proof, we need look no further than Steven Levitt’s book Freakonomics. The author, an economist, devotes the fifth chapter to the analysis of parenting, posing the question “what makes a perfect parent?”

Surprisingly, Levitt found no connection between traditional parenting advice and the success of a family’s children (as measured by scores on standardized tests). Instead, factors such as parental education, eating habits, and PTA involvement were the determining influence. The author’s conclusion is that, when it comes to parenting, who you are matters more than what you do.

Why is it that character influences more than action? It’s a question of lifestyle choices. Big decisions, logical decisions, those are easy to replicate. But it’s the millions of tiny lifestyle decisions that change the course of a family, workplace, or town. Decisions like kindness, humility, generosity, and personal involvement shape the environment as well as the person. Those kinds of decisions cannot be duplicated by observation, for they are not logical conclusions, but organic results.

Lifestyles are determined at an early age. The broad decisions about what kind of person you will be are made as early as the middle school or early high school years. In a very real sense, all those millions of tiny decisions were made years beforehand. They were determined before we were aware of the repercussions. A lifestyle can be changed, but only rarely can it be planned. Who you become is more important than what you do, or try to do.

Returning to the original question, how can we continue to do this? Where can we find the power to change our lifestyle for the better? As a previous author has noted, Muhammad Ali understood the process of determining a lifestyle when he stated, “the fight is won or lost far away from witnesses — behind the lines, in the gym, and out there on the road, long before I dance under those lights.” We need a source of power that affects us before the decision arrives. Matthew 6:6 states this very fact: “But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.”

We see from the evidence that it is impossible to consciously effect enough change in ourselves to be consistent in making these “shoelace” choices. We cannot perfect ourselves through force of will; instead, we must let God change us and help us become the kind of person that is loving and kind by nature. He is our source of power, the author and finisher of our faith.

Too often, we compare ourselves with others. We are quick to think bad about ourselves when we see someone walk by, criticizing our bodies, personalities, or anything else that doesn’t compare to what they have. Did you know that God created everyone different for a reason? That he made us “fearfully and wonderfully”? Not only that, people who take a stand are special because they don’t look like everyone else. There is a line that separates people of conscience from the rest of the world, allowing the differences in how they act, talk, and dress to be clearly seen!

God told Christians to be different for a reason. Sometimes I can’t help but get sad when I see other Christians backing down on their convictions just to match the people around them. These are people who once had a strong walk with God. They knew who they were in Him — until they saw the world. They saw what they were “missing” and started trying to please themselves instead of God.

Question: since when does our life and our will matter? Why are we getting hung up on our lives all of a sudden, trying to please others instead of God? We are too possessive of our lives sometimes. James 4:14 says this: “For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.” What is your life? God made it clear in Isaiah that we are nothing but dust in the palm of his hand. If that’s the case, why bother stressing so much over this world? Why care about what other people think of us dressing different and even keeping holy standards for ourselves? Besides, the truth is that others want something different. Everything they see is the same. Modesty isn’t a concern any more; swearing is part of normal conversation.

We need to shine where we are at, whether it is at school, work or even in the supermarket. When someone looks at you, whether they know it consciously or not, they notice a difference. They notice your joy, your freedom from sin, your liberty, and your purpose in life. God has already called us to be exactly who he wants us to be. If we lived by the expectations placed on us, no one would have the strength to stand for any cause.

I’m not saying there won’t be pressure: there will. But pressure doesn’t mean we have to live in a bubble trying to avoid it. We just need to re-evaluate who we are in God and how he sees us. We need to re-evaluate our walk with him, our standards and our motives for doing the things we do. We need to re-evaluate what our life really is and start living to the expectations God has for us, even if they’re different from expectations. After all — life is only a vapor.

What are some “different” convictions you’ve held (or still hold) that have produced good results? How about bad results? Should people understand that standing out can be a positive thing, or is it right to expect absolute conformity to trends and fashion? Let us know what you think in the comments.

It reminds me of the story of Gideon, a judge of Israel. After an angel appeared to him and foretold the victory God had in mind, Gideon asked for a sign. First he laid out a fleece and asked for the fleece to have dew on it in the morning, but for the ground around it to be dry. The next morning, the fleece was wet and the ground was dry. Then Gideon asked for the situation to be reversed. Again God answered: the fleece was dry and the ground was wet with dew. He didn’t ask for another sign.

Perhaps Gideon doesn’t seem to be a great man of faith just yet. After all, it took an angel and two miracles for him to believe. He is not the picture of confidence and valor that people look for in a leader. But God had chosen him, and now God showed his own confidence: “Gideon! Your army is too big! If you win a battle with this army, Israel won’t accept that it was My doing. Tell all the fearful men to go home.” The army of 32,000 shrank to 10,000 after that announcement. God spoke again: “Your army is still too big — go to the water and have the men drink. Let only the watchful men stay.” Gideon was left with 300 men.

If you’ve heard this story before, you probably think I’m going to say that God told Gideon to equip the men with trumpets and pitchers and lamps and go out to battle with that odd assortment of weapons. But there’s a problem: God didn’t tell Gideon what to do after that, other than to go fight the Midianites. Gideon was in serious need of direction.

So who came up with the battle plan? Who decided that trumpets and lamps were the weapons of a victorious army? Apparently Gideon did. After setting him on the right path, God left the method of victory up to Gideon. He made a choice . . . and God stepped in to back him up. It was Gideon’s plan, but God’s victory.

I’ve often wondered if I would have the guts to make a choice like that. It seems like there are so many ways to make a wrong choice. But the story of Gideon helps me realize that if God has trusted me with a choice and my heart is in the right place, I will always make the right choice because He will back it up.

This has lead to a change in my thinking. For about a month now I have been thinking of my life as a canvas. I have two general choices about who to let paint my life. The first choice is to paint my life the way that I see fit, to run my life myself, my way and generally not take anyone’s way but my own.

The other choice is to let God take control of my life. It’s a choice to let Him paint me into the picture that He has for my life, no matter where that takes me.

Now the difficult choice: do I let God begin by giving him the paintbrush? Or do I start with the paintbrush? I have been striving to let God be the painter of my life. That doesn’t mean that I am perfect and always let him paint my life. Sometimes I still get worried or anxious and try to take the paintbrush back.

But whenever I’ve done that, I’ve seen afterward that the painting has a big blotch on it where the master painter has to come fix things through repentance and His forgiveness. He has to set my painting back to the way that He planned it to be.

I want to let God direct my life. I want Him to paint my life into the beautiful masterpiece that He has for me. How has God helped you to give Him the paintbrush of your life? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Over twenty-six hundred years ago a great preacher passionately counseled his countrymen that they were drifting into perilous waters. He predicted their political demise should they refuse to make drastic corrections. It seems that his congregation had committed the most devastating and most common offense known to man: they traded the real God for fake gods. They were driven by a desire to be religious without really having to obey the living God.

While pleading with his contemporaries to return to the true God, Jeremiah employed some curious language. He said, “the heavens are shocked.” God was shocked that mankind would trade a relationship with the real God for a relationship with powerless, temporal substitutes. Here’s the crux of Jeremiah’s message:

“Has any nation ever traded its gods for new ones, even though they are not gods at all? Yet my people have exchanged their glorious God for worthless idols! The heavens are shocked at such a thing and shrink back in horror and dismay,” says the Lord. “For my people have done two evil things: They have abandoned me — the fountain of living water. And they have dug for themselves cracked cisterns that can hold no water at all!” (Jeremiah 2:11-13 NLT)

Jeremiah warned his contemporaries that their moral choices were as foolish as choosing cracked cisterns rather than a real well of water. Are we making the same choice? Do we want true worship, intact families, real peace…? If so, we need to shift back to the real God who provides spiritual water for our souls.

Do you seek that living water? How do you share the Gospel with friends and relatives, or relate to them the experience of living for God? Tell us in the comments.