God is good and so is today!

God led me to sign up at Chruch Growth Institute when I wanted to find out my spiritual gifts. I signed up for their email and when I get a chance I read them. The prayer today was perfect for me....today....and I thought I would share it. I love what God is doing in my life. I just have to remember to keep satan's negative thoughts out of my mind, like when he starts in on me to worry about my house, finances, the kids. That's when I have to turn to my latest book "The Worry Free Life". Awesome book that helps me to fight back when Satan starts talking to me :-)

Dear Father in Heaven, Please work in me today to ripen the fruit of the Spirit. Help me to bear this fruit in my life...to show and share love, joy, and peace; to be long-suffering, gentle, and good; to have strong faith; to be meek and temperate, slow to speak and quick to listen. I want to walk in the Spirit so that my life will be pleasing to you and a light in the darkness, that the world may know that You are God. With praise and thanksgiving, in the name of Jesus. Amen

Adding value

So, as my relationship with God continues to grow, I find Him talking with me more and more. Its interesting how God talks to me, and actually He does this with everyone (its just a matter of being quiet enough to listen). For the past three years He has been laying on my heart that I need to add more value for my precious time. So, three years ago I took that to mean in my job. At that time I didn't really know that was coming from God. See, I was raised with the expectation (and taught) that happiness comes from getting a good, well paying job (which in turn ended up being defined to me as a successful job = wealth which = HAPPINESS). About a week ago, I FINALLY translated that into how it defined my every emotion and my happiness, the soul of my being, that all I was living for was to create my own happiness....as I was sitting in yet another mind numbing, no value added (in my definition), waste of my time meeting I started to write out what that all meant to me. I came up with the following:

Good paying job = Wealth
Which then will = Happiness = Success = Respect

Happiness = nice things, comfort, security, nice home, nice car, nice clothes
Success = Good job, Goals reached (worked hard/hard worker)
Respect = People looking up to me as a knowledgeable leader, power, control

Then on the other side of my paper I wrote out what God was trying to define Happiness as:

Happiness = Will come from having a personal relationship with Him and serving Him
Success = Will come from having a personal relationship with Him and serving Him
Respect = Will come from having a personal relationship with Him and serving Him

This was very interesting to me and a total shift in how I and the secular world see's all these things. As I had tried to achieve all of the above as defined by the world I always came up short, thus never being truly happy.....all of those worldly views were attainable achieved for a short period of time and I would be happy for a short period of time, but within those worldly definitions they will always let you down one way or another. For me that was: yeah, I had a great paying job but it always came up short to make me happy. For me I guess I put too much emphasis on how the job defined who I am and my emotions (happiness)....yeah, I was successful, made a lot of money, but it still wasn't making me happy.

So, about a week and a half ago I really started to listen to God and how he defined happiness! I wanted that! Thus, I decided (when work laid me off) that it was time to look at happiness in a different way....happiness does not come from all the material stuff that the world has to offer, because that only lasts a short time. True happiness comes from God and serving Him. I look forward to now adding value where I believe I am adding value and I know God believes I am adding value. I am excited to see where God will lead me. It is liberating! :-)