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encouragement

Are you making lemonade? A Food for thought blog post

I am sure you have heard the phrase, “when life gives you lemons, make lemonade” right? Well, it’s true … in so many instances. Take job hunting for example. You could be looking and looking for hours on end for the perfect job … one that will suit you to a tee … the perfect balance of excitement so you don’t get bored, downtime so you don’t get overwhelmed, great pay so you can pay your bills, and location so you don’t get exhausted from the trip before you even arrive! Unfortunately, even after all your searching the endless job postings, it appears there is “nothing” out there. Well, obviously that’s not true. In reality, there are jobs out there … just nothing that you were willing to do. 

Willing is the key word. If someone were desperate enough, they just may be willing to do almost anything … even a job they might not consider “perfect.” When someone chooses to be willing, everything changes.

It’s like a light bulb moment. All of a sudden, you could be looking at a job posting and think, “I could do that.” Then, once that thought starts to take root hope begins to form.  It’s like a window opens to new possibilities.  You start to realize, I’ve seen a lot of these postings recently … this is a high demand job … this is what’s available out there right now … and then the thought comes again … I could do that.”

At that point, your creativity may start to chime in. You may think, this isn’t what I was wanting to do but this is what’s available. Am I going to take it? Am I going to take what’s been made available to me and make the best of it … maybe even get creative and see if I can make it into something great? 

You may realize the job has all the major elements you were looking for … just in a different package from what you were expecting. You may realize you have to make a choice: Do I want to be frustrated, or do I want to be flexible? Do I want to take these “lemons” and make “lemonade?”

They also say “necessity is the mother of invention.” If someone didn’t have something they needed while cooking, for example, they may try something they did have on hand … and, without realizing it, they may inadvertently have come up with a new “invention” that tasted far better than the original.

So, today, are you choosing to make lemonade out of the lemons life has thrown at you? Be encouraged to know that you are not alone,  Jesus has said,  “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” John 16:33 (NIV)

 

Dependable (a Timeless Truths blog post)

car with fireHave you ever had a car that you thought would be a reliable, dependable vehicle only to discover later it was actually a lemon? You had invested so much money, so much time, and so much effort into trying to do the best you could into getting the best you could afford only to have your hopes crushed. What a disappointment. How about if you’re a business owner? Have you been diligent in carefully screening all prospective employees to find the right match for your company, thinking you’ve done all you could to ensure you would be hiring a dependable worker only to discover later they had lied on their resume and had actually convinced other people to lie just so they would get a positive reference when you called to check out the person’s character. Wouldn’t you be disappointed? Wouldn’t you wish there was some foolproof way to be sure the next time you hired someone you wouldn’t have to go through the same thing again? Don’t we all wish that there could be something or someone that we could trust to be absolutely, completely dependable? Lamentations 3:21-23 (NIV) says, “Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” Did you catch that? The Lord’s compassions are new EVERY MORNING … every.morning. … Every Morning … every single morning. This timeless truth assures us that every day we can trust that the Lord is absolutely, completely dependable to be compassionate towards us. We can be absolutely sure He will be faithful. We can know, without a shadow of a doubt that He will always be there for us in whatever challenges we face … good or bad. Webster’s defines compassion as a “sympathetic consciousness of others’ distress together with a desire to alleviate it.” So, when we comprehend that God Himself is compassionate towards us and that His compassion is new every single morning … no matter what we are going through, no matter what we are facing, no matter whether we bought a lemon for a car, whether we hired an undependable employee, whether we ourselves need to learn how to be more dependable ourselves … no matter what we face in life, we can trust that God will ALWAYS be there for us in a dependable, compassionate way that desires to alleviate whatever distress we may be in. So, if you need anything … anything at all: strength, help, hope, encouragement, love, peace, joy, wisdom, enablement to keep on keeping on … whatever it may be, you can trust that God will be absolutely, completely 100% dependable every single morning to compassionately be there for you to meet your need. He is faithful. He will never let you down. His desire is always for your ultimate good. His ways are higher than our ways, so sometimes His ultimate good may look different than what you may consider to be good … meaning you will most likely still have to go through some hard stuff in life … but our ultimate good always comes whenever we trust the Lord to give us the strength to get through whatever we may need to go through and when we learn whatever valuable lesson we may need to learn in the process. So, today, whatever you are facing, know that God wants to compassionately be involved in it. He compassionately wants to help you in more ways than you could ever imagine. He wants you to trust that He, alone, is absolutely, completely dependable … through it all.

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