1 Thing You Can Do This Week (To Begin the New Year Right)

 

UNTANGLE

You must be honest with yourself and realize that you’ve taken this whole year to tangle yourself up in relationships, causes, theologies, politics and negativity that has every intention of bumbling its way into the month of January.

We do not engage. We tangle. And the reason we tangle is that we lack the confidence to believe we have the ability to do things with our own talent, and we cautiously collaborate with those who have less ability and we end up achieving only as much as they are able to accomplish.

• We become sentimental when we actually need to be revolutionary.
• We become revolutionary when what is required is wisdom.
• And we try to act wise and often end up with arrogance.

Untangle:

1. Your relationships

Get a piece of paper and write down the names of your friends. Then consider the number of times they were friendly to you as opposed to the number of times you were friendly to them. Don’t offend them but adjust your contact with them based upon this ratio.

If you were friendly five times and they were friendly three, then include them in your life accordingly. Your time is valuable. You don’t want to hurt anyone, but you don’t help anyone by letting them hurt you.

2. Your goals.

Are they realistic? Have you ever achieved them? Has there ever been a hint that progress has been made? Don’t be stubborn. If you made no progress on your goals this year, then the problem is probably your goals, not your progress.

3. Your clothes.

Go in your closet and inventory your wardrobe. If you have garments you haven’t worn for six months which aren’t seasonal, take them down and find homes for them. There are people out there who will rejoice over your rejects.

And finally,

4. Untangle yourself from your failures.

If you have found the root cause of what precipitated your defeats and you’ve made adjustments, then don’t nervously wonder if the same things will happen again. They can’t because you’ve changed the playing field.

Untangle.

Because situations in our lives which are not useful or helpful will eventually wrap around our throats and strangle our life force.

 

The producers of jonathots would humbly request a yearly donation for this inspirational opportunity

 

Little Red Marble… May 20, 2013

(1,887)

She gently slipped it into my hand.

It was a little red marble. She whispered in my ear, telling me it represented one single drop of the blood of Jesus.

Honestly, those kinds of representations of religious artifacts usually leave me cold, or even occasionally” creeped out.” But the combination of her sincerity and a sweet revelation in my soul moved me.

It is an abomination that in our society, blood has become so frivolous. We now have shows about vampires, doctor and police escapades where blood flows freely, and gore and violence represented repetitively in front of our eyes on a daily basis.

But it really isn’t true and there is no reality to it. The Bible tells us that blood is life. That’s true. If you’ve ever been at the scene of an accident and witnessed blood pouring out of a human being, you immediately realize that their life is draining away. Just because that same sensation does not communicate quite as vividly on the silver screen, DVD, blue ray or photographs does not take away the reality of blood loss.

One drop of the blood of Jesus means that there were many, many pints that flowed from him that day when he gave his life. Having once needed a blood transfusion myself, and having four pints pumped into my veins, I can tell you that the absence of that gift rendered me dizzy, with blurred vision, thirsty and nearly out of my head. Why? Because I didn’t have enough blood.

I do not know what it will take for us to realize that the pictures that come to us from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and points all over the world–where we see blood draining from human bodies–are warnings to us of the temporal nature of human life and the commonality of us all.

Two thousand years ago, a just and righteous man hung on a cross because other men forgot how valuable human life and blood truly was. Even though I may not focus on his death very often (because Jesus, himself, requested that we honor his words) I was moved yesterday in that moment, when the lady handed me a symbolic drop of his life force.

We will never become civilized again until we honor life by refusing to portray the shedding of blood as entertainment.

And we will never become spiritual if we fail to recognize the redemption, salvation and healing that comes through one drop of the blood of Jesus . . . even when it is shown to us in a little red marble.

The producers of jonathots would humbly request a yearly subscription donation of $10 for this wonderful, inspirational opportunity

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Jonathan’s thinking–every day–in a sentence or two …

 Jonathots, Jr.!

Click below

https://jonathots.wordpress.com/jonathots-jr/

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Please contact Jonathan’s agent, Jackie Barnett, at (615) 481-1474, for information about personal appearances or scheduling an event