Excerpt 1
Faith is to the spirit as the
eyes are to the body. We see with
faith. It takes many forms. It not only enables you to embrace an unseen God;
it determines your whole outlook on life.
You have the confidence to try what you believe that you can do. If you have no faith, you will fail to
attempt the tasks necessary to become successful. It’s difficult to attempt what you can’t see
yourself doing, but you don’t know if you could succeed until you try. Nat King Cole thought he couldn’t sing. He made musical history when he tried.
With faith we can dream of a time
when we will be reunited with our departed loved ones in that land of bliss
with God. With faith we can dream of
doing great things. Everyone dreams but
only those that plan and work to fulfill their dreams. Dreaming without planning and working with
stubborn determination is as useless as faith without works.
Thomas Edison taught us a great
lesson about achieving success in life.
He dreamed of creating the light bulb.
He planned, worked and failed, or so his friends thought. He was not discouraged because he knew he
hadn’t failed but had merely found things that don’t work. There are many
skeptics because when success comes slowly, it’s easy to start believing in
failure. Edison
didn’t fail because his motivation was not what he saw, but what he believed.
Glen Miller had a dream of what
he wanted his band to sound like. He was
not discouraged when he failed several times over a period of years, but kept
trying until he succeeded. He was not
inspired by what his band sounded like, but by how he believed they could
sound.
To fulfill a dream, you must plan
and work to remove the
obstacles in the way. The plan is called
a goal. Those without goals have no
direction for their life and little energy.
The ones struggling to fulfill a dream have abounding energy because
inspired living is energy giving. The
future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams. ‑‑Eleanor
Roosevelt
J..C.
Penny once said, “Show me a
stock clerk with a goal and I will show you the future head of
the company. Show me a person without a goal and I will show you a stock
clerk." If you don’t have a dream
of your own, you will work for someone else, which is helping them to fulfill
their dream.
You are not a failure if your
project fails. Making mistakes and
having failures is a part of life. You
can accept them and learn from them or be bitter and give up your dream. Failures are actually your training
ground. You can learn valuable lessons
from them. If you do, you can make them
the stepping stones to your success.
Excerpt 2
We have a personal relationship
with Jesus. Though we all must follow
the same steps to obey the gospel, the Lord often has different messages for
each of us. Jesus told Peter to follow
him. When Peter asked about John who was following them, Jesus answered “If I want
him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? You must follow me” (JN 21:22). We are
all different. We have different
abilities and opportunities. In that
respect we each have our own gospel. He
has different tasks for each of us.
Being in the presence of the Son
of God is an experience that can never be forgotten. His piercing glance could look beyond the
outward appearance and examine the heart.
Everyone that meets him is shaken to the very core. The rich young ruler was torn between
following him and keeping his wealth (LK 18:18). After just one meeting with this word that
became flesh, the woman at the well, told everyone she met “Come see a man that
told me everything I ever did” (JN 4:29).
The light of the world blinded Saul and sent him to the ground (Acts
22-45). Those who tried to trick him
with their questions were answered so that they didn’t dare ask him any more
questions (MT 22:44). Even the mob that came to arrest him and take
him to a kangaroo court, drew back and fell to the ground at the sound of his
voice (JN 18:6)!
Is it any wonder that this divine
visitor could stir the souls of everyone that heard him? He didn’t use flowery words or long
descriptive phrases but got directly to the heart of the matter. No one is ever the same after they meet
him. The ones that ignore him don’t know
him. You can’t know him and fail to be
changed. Even those who refuse to obey him
are shaken. Felix trembled as he learned
that obedience to Jesus was his only hope to escape the coming judgment, but he
put it off for a more convenient time (AC 24:25). There is no record that he ever
responded. Due to the urgency of the
Lord’s message, you are forced to decide whether to follow him.
The one who came to die for the
sins of the wor