Tests and Blessings

Hey all! Before I start with today's post, I just want to let you know that I'm almost done with editing my Berlin pictures, so I should have them posted by Friday.

Also, I just want to state out of respect for my non-believing readers that this will be a faith centered post.

A conversation I had with a Christian lady in an Italian restaurant in Berlin (go figure) actually put my thoughts onto this topic.

For some reason, conversation had just turned to God and obedience to him. She said that she sometimes struggles with being obedient, especially when God seems to be rather obscure or even difficult in what He wants her to do.

And you know, I think she's far from being the only one. Hell, I think every man and woman of God in the history of mankind struggled with this. I mean, just off the top of my head, I think of Abraham and Job. Or even Noah.

Abraham, after receiving his promised child late in his life, was told by God to go sacrifice him. Job was a famous man of God who fell from the highest heights of God's blessing his life to nothing. He was put through test after test with no end in sight.

Noah was told to build a ship. Easy, right? Nope. From what I understand, no one in his time even knew what rain was. And he was building a ship in the middle of nowhere because God told him to.

So yeah... those examples always makes me feel a bit humbled. God tends to be a lot less extreme in what he wants me to do. (I.E. Writing this post, for example, but that's another story.)

Anyway. The answer I had for the lady must have come straight from God, so I want to share it with you too.

Tests make blessings possible.

If Abraham had put Isaac his son before God's will, God would never have made Abraham the father of a nation. 

The moment Job broke through the doubts and self-pity prevailing because of being tested, and prayed for other people's blessings instead, an amazing thing happened. Not only did the tests stop, but God blessed him even more than he had been blessed to start with. 

And Noah... I doubt he could swim for the duration of the flood and the time until the water dried away again. So because of his obedience, he saved not only himself, but his family as well. 

I know that sometimes we have NO idea why God lets difficult/terrible things happen to us. Or why He wants us to do something random or obscure or weird. But He ALWAYS has a reason. 

And more often than not, these tests are a chance for Him to bless you and/or those you love. 

Have you ever thought back to a difficult time in your life that you came through, and saw the blessings that came from that time? You'd be surprised, I think. 

Anyone want to share a testimony? Or facing a difficult test and needing a prayer from your brothers and sisters in God? 

Starting to Take Charge of Your Life: Part 3

This will be the final installment of my three part series on starting to take charge of your life. There is more to write about it, but I'm not sure if there's any demand for it.

Would you like to know more? If you do, please feel free to let me know.

Here are parts one and two, if you haven't read it.

In the mean time, here's my post about the final thing you need to start taking charge of your life.

Tenacity

To recap: On starting on your journey to happiness, you've done two things: 1) you took responsibility for your own happiness and/or unhappiness and 2) you challenged the way things are right now.

Now comes the really hard part:

You'll have to fight for what you want.

Hard.

As if that isn't hard enough, you'll most often be fighting the very people who were supposed to support you. I wish it wasn't like this. When I pointed out to my mother that getting stuck behind an office table isn't what I want, we fought. Constantly. Every time one of us brought up what we thought I should be doing with my life.

For some reason, she seemed to think that my desire to go into the arts more was due to my chickening out of the hard work required to succeed in the business world.

Yeah... if that's what I wanted, I don't think I would have chosen to try and make it in art.

The point is, my mother had always been the one person who sacrificed the most to support me. She did a lot to put me through university. She sacrificed a lot... and the fact was, I don't think I should have been in the program I'd chosen. So of course she wasn't pleased when I pointed it out.

It takes a lot of tenacity to go after your dreams. Especially in the beginning. It took two things for my mom to take two of my dreams seriously. 1) Placing second in a short story competition and 2) Seeing me perform live as a soloist the first time.

After that, things went a lot smoother. It went even better when I managed to find a place in my life both for my commerce degree (I work for and own 25% of her company and am loving it) and for my artistic talents.

But before you can prove yourself, very few people in your immediate vicinity will understand you wanting to go after your dream.

In one of my fights with my mother, I went off about the fact that my soul was dying without my going after my dreams. Her response: a pitying smile and saying "But darling, hardly anyone gets to do what they dream of doing and they're all here."

My answer to that is what I'm going to finish with today:

I don't have to be someone who ever settles for second best in my life.

NEITHER

DO

YOU.

Never give up!