Skip to main content

Find time

"'We do not want you to become lazy, but to imitate those who through faith and patience inherit what has been promised.' (Heb 6:12)

"I love this verse.  It gives one more example of the created order, the way God set up the universe.  He makes promises about life, and then he expects us to do our part and not be lazy.  He promised the children of Israel a 'promised land,' but they had to go and possess it.  They had to fight a lot of battles to get there.  And, little by little, they did.  'Imitate those who through faith and patience inherit what has been promised.'  God has promised you abundant life, but he has not promised you an abundant life with no effort.  Work on your happiness, take responsibility for it, get moving.  Work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who is working within you.  He is doing his part; now you have to do yours.  Don't be lazy!

"Since I write books, people often come up to me and say, 'I would love to write a book.  I have been wanting to write for a long time.  I already know what I want to write about.'...'I have a job too,' I tell them. 'I have to write in my spare time.  It has only been recently that I have been able to set aside time specifically for writing.  But my first twenty books or so, I had to do it when I could find a moment.

"Most often they just look at me.  They I tell them, 'You will find time to do what you want to do.

"I love the story of John Grisham.  He was an attorney and a state legislator but always wanted to be an author.  Obviously he was busy, full-time and more.  But with a dream of writing a novel, he got up a little earlier each day and wrote one page.  Within a few years, he had A Time to Kill: A Novel. He has sold more than 100 million books since then, but it all started by not being too lazy to write just one page a day.  Get moving toward the activities that are going to make you fulfilled and happy.  One page or one call at a time." - Henry Cloud in The Law of Happiness

It is true that we find time to do what we want to do.  Sometimes it is just filling our lives with escapism, i.e. addictions, rather than truly going towards the life that we want.

Renee Madison, MA, LPC, CSAT is a counselor in Colorado.  She can be reached for appointments at 303-257-7623 or 970-324-6928.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Accepting a compliment

"Nearly everyone who is asked, 'What is the proper response to a compliment?' replies, 'Say 'thank you.''  But when actually offered a compliment, only a third of people accept it so simply and smoothly, found linguist Robert Herbert of Binghamton University. "The difficulty lies in the fact that a compliment ('What a nice sweater!') has two levels: a gift component (accept or reject) and a content component (agree or disagree).  The addressee is confronted with a  dilemma--how to respond simultaneously to both: 'I must agree with the speaker and thank him for the gift of a compliment while avoiding self-praise.' "Contrary to conventional wisdom, women aren't worse than men at accepting compliments.  It is the gender of the compliment-giver that most influences the response.  Women and men are both more likely to accept a compliment coming from a man than from a woman.  When a man says, 'Nice scarf," a...

Drug use and crime in USA

"Gil Kerlikoske, the White House director of national drug control policy, said a study by his office showed a strong link between drug use and crime.  Eighty percent of the adult males arrested for crimes in Sacramento, California, last year tested positive for at least one illegal drug.  Marijuana was the most commonly detected drug, found in 54 percent of those arrested. "The study found similar results in four other cities: New York, Denver, Atlanta and Chicago.  Among the cities, it included examinations of 1,736 urine samples and 1,938 interviews with men who were arrested.  "Researches found that marijuana was the most popular drug used by men who'd been arrested in all the cities, ranging from a low of 37 percent in Atlanta to a high of 58 percent in Chicago.  Chicago also had the highest overall positive test results, with 86 percent of the men found to have at least one drug in their bloodstreams. "Cocaine ranked as the second most ...

Couple Therapy

"What I learned confirmed Bowlby's message that patterns of relating created by attachment, separation, and loss during the first few years of life become fixed and impact all future relationships.  It also confirmed that couples' narratives (i.e. their presenting problems) are the logical products of the cortex playing catch-up with the emotional part of the brain.  The limbic system reacts almost instantaneously.  This understanding supports the view that couple therapy should concentrate not on the espoused content of the partners' conflict but rather on their underlying core dynamics. "Dr Walter Bracelmanns, who was developing his own integration of couple therapy.  I thank him for the support that he gave to the new idea that the focus of the work is the relationship, not the growth of the individual self of each partner." - Marion Solomon in Love and War in Intimate Relationships Couple therapy theories vary greatly.  So many different t...