Presenting Yourself to YOU and others
If you are insisting on dressing like a bum, you will be treated like a bum. Tattoos are a drag down no matter how pretty they are. Funny hairdos. Strange clothing. Smelling bad. In other words do the best you can with what you have. Clothes may not make the man, but they can bring him or her down. A sweatshirt might be OK but not if you are going to see a client. Keep your car clean..best you can. A back seat full of empty fast food containers and big gulp says slob. And if you live in that, you will act like that.
Treating every event as a crisis.
This is almost an art form for many pastors and preachers. They have learned to "never waste a crisis" as a method to make sure the offering bucket is full. That has taught their congregations to become drama kings and queens. Learn some stoicism. It's not about you. Yes, we all have issues, but learn to endure. The true test of faith is not your boisterous positive confessions but how you stand when the hard winds of adversity blow. Your best testimony comes out of your darkest test. Some bad things that happen to you are not for public information. Man up.
Life Cycles out of order
Working in ministry in the City of Chicago I have come across a core cause of poverty. Lives out of order. In contacting people I find that many have a hard time getting out of bed before noon and seldom asleep before 2 or three in the morning. They may not be partying. They might just be up watching TV (they would say praying). The truth is Ben Franklin's advise is still true, "early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy wealthy and wise. Before electricity, people rose when the sun came up and went to bed when it went down. Now people are awake all hours of the day or night. Lives are out of order. Showing up at 2 pm means the early birds have eaten all the worms. Make a decision to wake up at the same time (before 7am is a good start) and go to bed every day at the same time, 11PM would be a good bet. Think of the Convenience store. 7-11. There's a reason. My wife has a saying, "Nothing GOOD happens after Midnight". I know this is true for me. All the bad behavior I ever have been trapped in was after hours.
Allowing every form of garbage into your soul and spirit
I am stunned by Christians and even pastors who go to every hellish movie on the big screen, watch any kind of TV (I actually had one say to me, "You can learn a lot from those housewives shows" SMH). I won't even mention porn. Never mind that the best selling porn book is 50 shades of something (for women). Do you think it's even possible ONE christian lady bought this book? I do. AND VIDEO games. It's amazing that Christians play for hours with these video games with demonic themes. They somehow think that they can get away with it by offsetting it with some church going. A little poison in the water is what it is. I won't even mention Sports and some of the excesses in that area. I wonder what the GNP of the christian community would be if we had back all the hours invested in sports voyeurism and reinvested it in enterprise. Then there is music that comes from hell. Enough said about that. I had a christian pastor say to me when he was justifying spending a hundred fifty dollars a month in cable and pay TV for entertainment and he couldn't pay his rent. HE said to me, I gotta have my entertainment. He is still poor. Marriage ended. Now in his late 50s. His behavior was his downfall.
Sloppy Stewardship
I have given away cars, furniture, computers, clothes and a dozen other things. I have bought new many things. It's amazing that the very people who are in the deepest poverty cannot take the time to take care of the little bit they have. They are poor stewards of their possessions. So clothes break down. Cars don't run. Houses leak. They will always claim that they don't have the money to take care of them. I know a man in perpetual property who has some equipment I supplied him with. There are tires on this equipment. Tires that need attention from time to time. I gave him an air compressor. A good one. Told him that these tires needed to be kept up for the equipment to work well. When I checked back to see how he was doing the equipment was broken down. He didn't check the tires. Too busy he said. IF I as a man see this, how much more does our Father see how we treat his blessings. Do you think I will do more for this man?
No comments:
Post a Comment