BEING UP, NOT DOWN

I have been reading some old journal entries. I noticed many were about putting myself down ("I feel I am worthless") followed by attempts to uplift myself ("You are worth something, look on the brighter side ...")  I think, over the years, I am getting better at being positive.  Positive moves me forward, negative turns me backward. Positive brightens may outlook, negative dims my outlook. Positive help and improves my family, negative destroys my family.

I would like to pass this caution to my sons:  Do not waste your time by being negative about yourselves or the situations you are in.  It will not help you, it will hinder you; it will not build, it will destroy. Through negativity you not only risk yourselves, but you put your families at risk .

Being truthful and seeing life as it is good but being negative is not good. There are always two or more answers to a question; there are always several descriptions for a situation.  Travel toward the more positive answer and the brighter situation.  There is always a choice.  You must look.

GOING TO WAR

Deu 7:1-2  "When the LORD thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations before thee, the Hittites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than thou;  And when the LORD thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy unto them . . . ."

Let's view this as the nations representing our corrupt natures. They are not peoples we are to conquer, but our tendencies toward corrupt, unkind actions and words.

We do need to destroy those things. We do need to wipe them off the face of our personality. We are to war ruthlessly against ways that are not God's ways, and thoughts which are not God's thoughts.  We can leave none of them alive. They will destroy us if we do.