Don’t Let Yesterday Take Up Much of Today

Are you letting yesterday take up too much of today? Unfortunately many of us are. We spend so much time thinking and talking about how achievements, our victories, our breakthroughs and our successes of yesterday, last week, last month, last year and so on and forget to act to improve our lives today.

There are also some of us who spend our today whining and complaining about the misfortunes, ill lucks, failures, disappointments and adversity of yesterday. All we do is blame others, circumstances and events that happened yesterday, last week, last month, last year and so on for our inability to act today. We exist today but we are not fully alive.

Folks don’t let yesterday take up too much of today. No matter what you achieved or didn’t achieve previously, forget about it and focus on today. Take the advice of the scripture that says, “Forget the former things and do not dwell on the past” because it is gone.

MOTHERS WANTED!

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I visited the home of a senior friend of mine whom I hold in very high esteem once and the behaviour and attitude of his young children really marvelled me. I couldn’t help but imagine how a polite, humble man with good character will raise children that are such opposites of him in terms of their behaviour and attitude.

As I kept pondering on the kids behaviours, I asked myself what could be missing? Obviously the children attend very good schools they have good Christian parents who are working quite hard to provide them a great future, they have house helps and Nannies to attend to them, and just then it occurred to me, that the kids lack a mother.

You see while their mother was in the house, she wasn’t so much in their lives. She loves them care for them, provide for them, but these kids still in their formative years are being raised by the house helps. It then reminded me of the words of an ancient Greek philosopher, who once said, “Give your child to be educated by a slave, and instead of one slave, you will have two.”

I have heard parents react to a child misbehaviour or utterance of a negative word by asking the child, “Who taught you that, because it’s definitely not from me?” children learn through modelling and imitating. They model their gestures, their speech, their habits, their character after those of the people close to them. So if you want your child to have a good character, present him with a good model, and the model that should be constantly before the child is the mother.

Stop Sitting on The Edge

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One day two butterflies were on the edge of a flower, discussing. One said, “We cannot know whether there is any honey in the flower; no butterfly ever found honey, and no butterfly ever will.” The other said, “Well, nevertheless, I think there might be some.” And while they argued back and forth, a humming-bird flew in and ran its long beak into the flower, and sipped the sweetness they flew away.

Most of us are like these two butterflies, we sit by, discussing, arguing, planning, and praying but we never dare take action. And while we contemplate and plan, someone else rushes in and takes the opportunities from under us and become successful.

There is a saying that “fools rush in where Angels fear thread.” While this statement may be true for people who act without plans, the world we live in today has been made better because some people acted where others were too scared and sceptical to take action. Do you have a dream, vision or goal? Enough of all the talk about your intentions step out today and act on them and you will see that circumstances, events and people will come your way to help you succeed.

Who Deserves More Love, The Dead or The Living?

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Some news I received yesterday made begin to ask, “why don’t we take care of our old people in these parts, especially our poor old people? Instead of helping them we abandon them, praying for them to die. “He/she is a burden now”, “they are too old and sickly”, we say most of the time. When they fall sick, we never always have money to give them the best treatment we can afford that they deserve.

Every day in the news, what you read, hear or watch is the talk about hunger, poverty and death. The world is seeking for ways to feed people and we forget that there are more people in this world who are hungry for kindness, sympathy, friendship and love than they hunger for food. If we showed people genuine love and care, maybe they won’t be hungry in the first place.

Sometime ago I attended a funeral, and like most of the funerals all over the world, people sent in their tributes and all they had to say about the dead were very glowing and positive things and nothing negative. As I stood there listening and watching, I began to wonder, why is it that death makes us suddenly remember about the hundreds of good virtues in a man/woman who we neglected and considered faulty and not relevant while they were alive?

During their death we speak as though the dead person was an angel living with us all the while but we only discovered. Folks it is good to speak of the dead, to spend money for their funerals and remember their strengths, and forget their weaknesses.

So No One is Repaying Your Kindness?

I was listening to a radio programme yesterday where there was a discussion about gratitude and kindness to others. In the course of the programme, someone sent in a message and stated that he had stop caring about others because in spite of all he does for others, nobody ever shows him gratitude or return favours.

As the show continued, most of the callers’ responses to the message were very sympathetic to the guy who wasn’t receiving enough gratitude and favours for the good he does to others. One caller went as far complaining at how the world is filled with ingrates and unloving people.

Some of the questions going through my mind both during and moments after the radio show were; “why should we write off the world just because of a few bad people?” Why should our love and kindness to others be tied to what they give to us or how we expect to be treated in return? Must everyone whom we show some form of kindness pay us back or even tell us gratitude?

Sometime ago I ate food that didn’t taste very nice but that didn’t make stop eating food again because of my previous experience. Some people drive and unfortunately get involved in some accident, yet they never stop driving or travelling along the road. But you find an individual who helps someone or some people, who later didn’t do enough to repay his/her kindness, says, “I have had my experience, I have learned my lessons. This is the last time I will ever show kindness to people. I did this or that for this and that, and now see what I got in return.”

What Are You Confessing?

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The Bible instructs us as Christians that we should hold on to our confessions of faith but too often when we are faced with challenges most of us forget about our faith and “speak reality” little wonder the challenges keep increasing. In order to help us keep professing our faith and confessing positive things into our lives, here are 8 powerful affirmations and confessions to help us through challenges:

1. “Never Again will I confess “I can’t,” “I can do all things through Him who strengthens me” (Philippians 4: 13 NAS).

2. Never Again will I confess lack, for “My God shall supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:19 NAS).

3. Never Again will I confess fear, for “God hath not given us a spirit of timidity, but of power and love and discipline” (2 Timothy 1:7 NAS).

4. Never Again will I confess doubt and lack of faith, for “…God has allotted to each a measure of faith” (Romans 12:3 NAS).