FULFILL YOUR DESTINY IN 2017

Most of us have a hope for our future. Some are certain about what they want for their future while others are in search mode. Many have expectations that have come from some childhood exposure that now has been developed and is in full operation; some still in contemplation or preparation.

Having a destiny means that inwardly or intellectually, you are aware that there is more to you than what is currently seen or known about you. There is more! Whatever that “more” is, is linked to an aspiration. When thinking about aspiration, usually words like riches, wealth, good health, success, fame, helping others, changing a condition from negative to positive, breaking negative generational patterns (poverty, addiction, lust, abuse, etc.) or other words come to mind. Aspiration inspires the reason for seeking your destiny.

It is important to know that you have a destiny to fulfill and having the aspiration to seek to fulfill your destiny. Destiny believers and seekers have hope and a motivation for life and living. Without this, most people live unhappy, depressed, confused lives or allow others to tell them how to live. If your aspiration for the destiny you have chosen is disordered, then reaching your destiny will be disordered.

Often a person is driven by a negative desire, to turn it into a positive. Good choice! Some are driven to prove to others that they can reach a particular destiny. Not so good of a choice, but hopefully, eventually leads to a healthier reason. Others may feel that destiny seeking and reaching is only for a few who they consider are called, anointed or gifted. As a result, they make a decision to continue to do what they’ve been doing, retire, then die. It you are doing your very best at what you do and with no doubt, and have peace, believing that this is God’s will for you, then good choice! However, if you are settling because you don’t think God has more for you, or are afraid to try something new or a new nuance to what you’re doing, not a good choice.

What am I getting at with all this destiny talk? Simply to encourage you to pursue your destiny here on earth; (just as I have been encouraged to…) “follow your dreams,” (thanks Ashley) and “let your faith be bigger than your fear” (thanks Melissa). And “Mom, (put your name here) you can do this!” (thank you Vicki). And also, to make you aware that your destiny here on earth is finite; it has an end to it, a timeframe. If you do want to fulfill your destiny, the question is why? The why answer is crucial. If your answer is to please God, to fulfill His will for your life here on earth, and to bless others along the way, then you are on the right track. This is your inspiration; you have been inspired by a Bigger cause, a Bigger Person, than yourself.

Any other reasons that does not include Your Creator, are disordered aspirations and motives and require tweaking. You must take time to meditate, to pray, to read God’s Word (The Bible) and seek (or deepen) your relationship with Him. This will help you to learn what he created you to be here on earth. Then, you have the responsibility to choose to trust Him to direct your path and give you what you need to go about fulfilling it.

However, it doesn’t end there. God has predestined us! Ephesians 1:5 says: He predestined and lovingly planned for us to be adopted to Himself as [His own] children through Jesus Christ, in accordance with the kind intention and good pleasure of His will— (Amplified Bible) This doesn’t mean that we are puppets on earth or that no matter what we choose, God won’t work with us. Yes, He has given us gifts and abilities and will open doors that match and lead to what He knows is good and right for you. But you can choose! He has placed desires in our hearts that as we seek Him, they come to focus. (see Psalm 37:4)

Being predestined, a pre-destiny, an already worked out plan, is a spiritual disposition. (see Isaiah 46:10) God has prepared an eternal, infinite destiny for all of us! It is the destiny above all destinies that getting right, rightly focuses our destiny here on earth. The requirement is seeking Him and being in relationship with Him, God, The Father, through Jesus Christ, The Creator, The One who is, was and will ever be, the One who is the same yesterday, today and forever!

Eternal life in Christ is the pre-destiny that God has prepared, however we must choose it.

He won’t force you to choose Him and His ways of earthly living, even though He will provide many earthly opportunities for you to choose Him. The bottom line is you and your choice.

So, as 2017 has already begun its movement in your life, “Fulfill Your Destiny” by being sure that you are in Him (Ephesians 1), in Jesus Christ, the only way to the Father God. This is your (pre) destiny forever, only if you choose.

But maybe you don’t want to serve the Lord. You must choose for yourselves today. Today you must decide who you will serve. Will you serve the gods that your ancestors worshiped when they lived on the other side of the Euphrates River? Or will you serve the gods of the Amorites who lived in this land? You must choose for yourselves. But as for me and my family, we will serve the Lord.”                                                                                                                         (Joshua 24:15 Easy to Read Version)

BE THE YOU THAT GOD INTENDED FOR YOU TO BE

AND

YOU WILL UNIQUELY FULFILL YOUR EARTHLY DESTINY

____________________________________________________

Rosalind Caldwell Stanley is a Licensed Professional Pastoral Counselor, trainer, speaker, wife, mother, grandmother, and sista friend. She and her husband Arthur share in a blended family of five adult children (including her son in law) and eight precious grandchildren. Roz’s latest publication, Family Life: Revolutionizing the Way Families Live & Love can be purchased at www.amazon.com. She is accepting new clients and is available for speaking engagements or group sharing. Her contact information is 757 454-6393, rozbecauseofgrace@gmail.com or website http://www.christiantrngctr.org.

Love Others the Way God Loves You

As I read from a book “Still on the Journey,” by one of my spiritual mentors whom I have never met, Jessica Kendall Ingram, I was blessed with a Holy Spirit revelation that I want to share with you.  

The book is a devotional, as she calls it, “a collection of spiritual meditations and reflections.” As I read the reflection entitled “A Lesson on Forgiveness,” I was enlightened and challenged in my love walk. 

I received a new perspective regarding my praying for God to help me love with His love. When encountered with a difficult person / situation that I know requires my forgiveness and willingness to hold no grudges, respond ungodly or totally dismiss the person, I usually pray, “Lord, please help me to love that person the way You love them.”

Dr. Ingram notes in her journey that she “asked God in total sincerity to help me love him (the him is not her husband) the way that God loves me, with all my faults, frailties, and failings. I prayed for the ability to love him with godly love.” 

I have, too, as hopefully, you also, been on a journey of choosing God’s way over mine. This produces inner conflict and often leads to brokenness. It’s a tough process but yields greater results like spiritual maturity, which means pleasing God more and being a greater asset to His people. 

Anyway, the Holy Spirit quickly showed me, through her words, that only asking to love the person the way He loves them keeps me somewhat emotionally detached, a bit objective and in control (having leverage in the relationship or with the person) even though God does give me the power to love them with His love. However, my loving them, though higher than my human way of loving, is at a lower level of God’s way of loving, where my flesh or sin nature is still in operation. 

To ask for God to enable me “to love the way You love me” causes humility, is an eraser of self righteousness, giving me the ability to “see” the person from a more genuine and loving perspective, letting go of all distain and possible attempts to protect myself from further hurt from them. 

Just to note: I still need God’s wisdom as to how to engage them even after I have forgiven them and have chosen this higher/deeper dimension of loving. This is because I can fully trust myself – my heart and soul (mind, will and emotions) to God and am no longer needy for or ignorant of the place that I had been with that person or in that situation.

Choosing to love people the way that God loves me, and you choosing to love people the way He loves You requires that you first think about / meditate on God’s love for you. You must recognize it and acknowledge it for yourself. This alone brings about an awe to God that humbles the hardest heart because not one of us is perfect and not one of us is deserving, in and of ourselves, of the ways that God shows / gives us His love, even through our sin and the uncertainties and difficulties of life. 

For me, meditation on Jesus and The Cross including all that followed (you get it, we just reviewed it at all of our churches Easter/Resurrection Sunday: ) is what keeps me emotionally, mentally and spiritually balanced. The fact that I have salvation, eternal life through Jesus Christ, because of God’s love for me from the foundation of the world, is enough. But then the fact that He continues to shower His love on me as I journey through life is more than my heart and words can describe! 

So I challenge you to take your love walk to a new place. Choose to love others the way God has loved you. This is without holding judgement about or against them, not holding grudges, realizing that they are still on their journey and are not perfect either. Yes, seek God for wisdom because all forgiveness and love doesn’t mean continued relationship if the person is abusive; that is a whole different blog. 

So, take the challenge being sensitive to your attitude, thoughts and behavior. Then be honest with yourself before God if you are not loving His way. And, using this all familiar line, “I’m only human” doesn’t cut it. God has called us all who say He is our Lord and Savior, to a different standard giving us the power to operate in it – to live it out, and yes making mistakes along the way.  

God’s Love to you as you increase in your love walk! 

  (C) 2016 by Rosalind Stanley

Rosalind Caldwell Stanley is the author of Family Life: Revolutionizing the Way Families Live & Love. Purchase it today from Amazon.com

“Soul Food” to Heal Your Soul

When I think about soul food, I immediately think about collard greens, black eyed peas, macaroni & cheese, grits, fried fish or chicken, cornbread, sweet potato pie, and other rich and tasty foods which are often cooked with ingredients not so good for a healthy body.  The food, however, when presented to us looks and smells so good that we inwardly surmise, “who cares, it’s too good to turn down!” So we eat. Some of us discipline how often and how much we eat (knowing that too much is not good for us), while for some, it’s the normal way of eating. Research concurs that wrong ingredients fed to our bodies can over time hinder our mobility (obesity) or lead to various sicknesses and death.

However, when it comes to our very soul, we often do not give second thought to what we feed it. What we choose to feed our souls can greatly affect our daily living and determine our eternal existence. Our soul is our mind (beliefs, thoughts and thought processing), our will (decision making and daily choices, or willingness toward a specific way of being, doing and speaking), and our emotions (positive or negative, intense or repressed, affections and feelings). The mind, will and emotions are linked together and operate as a car with all of its parts that keep it driving properly.

Many people go through life not even realizing what a “soul” is or that they even have a soul. Not knowing or not understanding is ignorance. Ignorance is open territory for anything to happen within our souls, and anything usually is the negative rather than the positive. Some of you may have heard the cliché, “ignorance is bliss,” meaning what you don’t know won’t hurt you. The truth is that what you don’t know can slowly kill you and cause you to miss out on the kind of life and eternal existence that God, who is our Creator, has for you!

So, why am I making a big deal about this, you might be wondering. Well, truthfully, as a person, first of all, then as a counselor for many years, I’ve eye witnessed many people whose souls are sick. They became sick because of what they’ve been fed. The feeding either came from their childhood experiences, relationships, or from ignorance about their soul and/or the authority and control that they have over their own soul. By eating the wrong soul food, they have indirectly, unknowingly, or unintentionally allowed other people or external situations to influence and control their mind, will, and emotions.

My purpose in writing this is to let you know that it’s never too late to get healing for your soul! It will take you being willing to admit that your soul is sick in some ways then determining to get healed.  Just like going to a medical doctor when your body is sick, a diagnosis of where the sickness in your soul lies would be necessary. This allows the helper (little h and big H) to assess your soul needs then give you the right prescription for healing. This could be an instantaneous healing but more than likely, will require a process of time and application of the correct soul food that will change and rearrange the affects and influences that your soul has endured in order to bring about true healing and restoration.

True soul healing comes by way of the Truth that sets us free (John 8:32). The feeding is the process, which is the application of the prescribed Word, along with prayer specific to you for your soul. It’s a time of yielding to and determining to “know the Truth” (by the way, Jesus is the Truth and is the Word of God – John 14:6, John 1:1-14). Most of what our souls are fed is counterfeit soul food. It looks good, smells good, sounds good, and for a time tastes real good, only to eventually make us sick in some ways (Romans 3:23).

Our call and purpose at CTC Counseling, including our training and all activities of Christian Training Center, is to help people find healing for their souls and/or to move forward in their lives, ministries or organizations with good, godly and healthy perspectives about conducting the business of life and living. Since our relocation to Virginia, we are reopening soon to be available to help you, your family, and friends, your church, ministry or organization get the soul healing that is yours to be had. We’ll also notify you of upcoming training sessions.

Call for a counseling appointment

at

757 454-6393

Be sure to leave a detailed message with your name, email address and available meeting times then we will be sure to get back to you, ready to serve up the kind of soul food that leads to a better lifestyle and relationships than what you are experiencing now! What you eat determines whether your daily living will be positive or negative and also leads to your eventual eternal existence.

Note: How we live and what we believe impacts our children and families either positively or negatively. Families were established by God and are the foundation of every other institution in society. Family Life God’s way can directly impact other families in our society. 

Purchase my new book on Amazon.com to help your family and other families live God’s Way. 

Family Life: Revolutionizing the Way Families Live & Love

http://www.amazon.com/Family-Life-Revolutionizing-Families-Live/dp/146641393X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1428705176&sr=8-1&keywords=rosalind+stanley