Category: Daily Choices
It was a cold night in late October when I saw Saint Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow, Russia with my own eyes. I was carrying my one-year-old son, and my wife had hold of the hands of our other two small children as we hurried… Continue Reading “Choosing a Faith-Filled Imagination”
Category: Daily ChoicesTags: Afraid, Create, Creativity, Dark Minds, Dark Thoughts, Evil, Faith, fear, Generating, Images, Imagination, Imagine, Imagining, Inventions, Mental, Mental Health, Mind, Redeemed Imagination, Seeing, Sight, Thinking, What if?
Is “spring cleaning” a real thing? For some, this annual purging is what marks the official emergence from the dark survival mode of winter. It’s a time to step into the bright and hopeful newness of a fresh season with summer right in front… Continue Reading “Choosing a Clean Heart”
Category: Daily ChoicesTags: Anxiety, Anxious Thoughts, Bad Attitude, Brave, Bravery, Clean Heart, Clean soul, Clean Up, Cleansing, Confess, Courage, Deep Cleaning, fear, Forgive one another, forgiveness, freedom, Getting Unstuck, Grudges, House Cleaning, Letting Go, Moving Forward, New Life, Offenses, Releasing, Repent, Resentment, Soul Cleaning, Spring Cleaning
Regardless of the secularism that is woven into our present-day culture, we are a generation of worshipers. We tend to revere whatever makes us feel good. And that can cover a broad spectrum of deities. Whether they be the gods of food, money, or… Continue Reading “Choosing to Have No Other Gods”
Category: Daily ChoicesTags: 10 Commandments, False gods, False Worship, First Commandment, Idol Worship, Idolatry, Idols, Love God with all your heart, No other gods, One true God, Only One God, Pride, Repent, Repentence, Self Centered, The god of self, The Greatest Commandment, There is one God and you are not Him, Worship
My father was a boy during World War 2. He often heard of atrocities that America’s enemies, the Japanese and the Germans, were committing. According to the stories, those foreigners were the villainous aggressors, and they were seeking to come to our country to… Continue Reading “Choosing to Love My Enemies”
Category: Daily ChoicesTags: Bitterness, Condemnation, Condemning others, forgive, forgiveness, Grace, Hate, Hatred, hostility, injustice, love, Love your enemy, Merciful, Mercy, Persecution, Prejudice, Righteous Anger, Self Righteousness, Sending others to hell, sin
I recently had someone describe her life problems to me as rooted in co-dependency. She could see that her choices had become so enmeshed with another person’s responses that she no longer knew what was hers and what was the other person’s. The solution… Continue Reading “Choosing Boundaries”
Category: Daily ChoicesTags: 10 Commandments, Boundaries, Boundary, Co-dependency, Codependence, Constraints, Distinctions, Enmeshed Relationships, Fences, God's Laws, Identity, Instructions, Laws, Laws that Protect, Limits, Love Laws, Loving God, Manipulation, Obedience, Obey, Protection, Restrictions, Rules, Submission, Submit, Ten Commandments
I had a short stint running track when I was in middle school. It was enjoyable until the coach put me in an 800 meter race that I had not prepared for. As a sprinter, I applied what I knew and started out strong.… Continue Reading “Choosing to Finish Well”
Category: Daily ChoicesTags: A Good Finish, Admit you're wrong, Admitting Mistakes, Apologize, Ask for forgiveness, Be a learner, Confess, Confess sin, Ending Well, Finish Well, Finishing Well, How will I be remembered?, Humble, Humility, Learn from your mistakes, Learning from my mistakes, Looking Back, No Regrets, Pride, Proudful, Repent, Run the Race, Running the Race
During my senior year in high school, my football coach referred to me as a “great athlete.” I was shocked but ecstatic that he would say such a thing. That was NOT how I saw myself. I had had minimal interest in athletics most… Continue Reading “Choosing My Identity”
Category: Daily ChoicesTags: Accomplishments, Child of God, Creating myself, daughter of God, Deciding who I am, Defining myself, Eternal Life, Family of God, Father God, financial identity, Gender identity, God is my Father, Identity, Identity in Christ, Identity through Performance, intellectual identity, Me, My uniqueness, Performance, Performing, Sexual identiy, Shaping my identity, son of God, spiritual identity, Surrendering my identity, vocational identity, Who am I?
Freshly baked bread. The smell and the taste of it are difficult to beat, especially when it’s warm, just out of the oven. My mother made it when I was growing up and still occasionally does. It’s a comforting memory associated with good and… Continue Reading “Choosing the Right Kind of Yeast”
Category: Daily ChoicesTags: Bread, Cultural Trends, Faith, False Teachings, Ideas that expand, Leaven, Passover, Pharisees, Pure Faith, Religious Teachings, Sadducees, Self-Righteousness, Teachings, Teachings of Jesus, The Kingdom of God, Yeast
I first smoked a cigar in college. Somehow I had managed to avoid all tobacco before that. When I joined several other film students in a project to tell a story set during a poker game, we decided our set needed to be filled… Continue Reading “Choosing the Deeper Desire”
Category: Daily ChoicesTags: Core Desire, Core Longings, Desire, desires, Desires of the heart, Distracting Desire, Earthly Desires, Fleshly Desires, Heavenly Desires, Longing, Physical Desires, Real Desire, Real Satisfaction, Satisfaction, Satisfaction of the soul, Satisfied, Seeking, Seeking what's above, Soul, The Heart, True Desires, True Satisfaction
It’s been used as a joke, but there are some very funny images to support it as a reality. Do humans often resemble their pets? In attitude and temperament? Even in their looks? It appears that the answer is a strong YES! This phenomenon,… Continue Reading “Choosing What I Look Like”
Category: Daily ChoicesTags: Beauty, Character of God, Idolatry, Idols, Looking like my Heavenly Father, Looking like my pet, Looking like my spouse, Loving God, Loving things, Resembling God, Worship