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

Retrain Brain

"Consider stroke victims.  Medical science has made huge advances in patient survival after even massive stokes, some of which can be attributed to better medications and to the upsurge of trauma units, since stokes are ideally dealt with as soon as possible.  Quick treatment is saving countless lives, compared to the past. "But survival isn't the same as recovery.  No drugs show comparable success in allowing victims to recover from paralysis, the most common effect of a stroke.  ...with stroke patients everything seems to depend on feedback.  In the past they mostly sat in a chair with medical attention, and their course of least resistance was to use the side of the body that was unaffected by their stroke.  Now rehabilitation activly takes the course of most resistance.  If a patient's left hand is paralyzed, for example, the therapist will have her use only that hand to pick up a coffee cup or comb her hair. "At first these tasks a...

Endings are natural

"Today may be the enemy of your tomorrow. "In your business and perhaps your life, the tomorrow that you desire and envision may never come to pass if you do not end some things you are doing today.  For some people, that is clear and easy to execute.   They end the things that are holding them back.  For others it is more difficult.... "Endings are a natural part of the universe, and your life and business must face them, stagnate, or die.  They are an inherent reality....  There are different kinds of endings and that learning how to tell one form the other will ensure some successes and prevent many failures and much misery, ending substantial pain and turmoil that you or your business may now be encountering." Dr. Henry Cloud in Necessary Endings Most endings are hard to do, hard to walk through and seem not necessary.  However, when we hold on to the situations, people or things when we need to let go of them we can then experie...

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...