"9-10 Love from the center of who you are; don’t fake it. Run for dear life from evil; hold on for dear life to good. Be good friends who love deeply; practice playing second fiddle.
11-13 Don’t burn out; keep yourselves fueled and aflame. Be alert servants of the Master, cheerfully expectant. Don’t quit in hard times; pray all the harder. Help needy Christians; be inventive in hospitality.
14-16 Bless your enemies; no cursing under your breath. Laugh with your happy friends when they’re happy; share tears when they’re down. Get along with each other; don’t be stuck-up. Make friends with nobodies; don’t be the great somebody.
17-19 Don’t hit back; discover beauty in everyone. If you’ve got it in you, get along with everybody. Don’t insist on getting even; that’s not for you to do. “I’ll do the judging,” says God. “I’ll take care of it.”
20-21 Our Scriptures tell us that if you see your enemy hungry, go buy that person lunch, or if he’s thirsty, get him a drink. Your generosity will surprise him with goodness. Don’t let evil get the best of you; get the best of evil by doing good."- Romans 12:9-21
Love from the center
Don't burn out
Bless your enemies
Don't hit back
Discover beauty in everyone
That's a lot to accomplish when keeping up with work, friends, and the Kardashians are also on the to-do list.
Habit of Being Happy
I hate skiing. Hate is a strong word, and that's why I chose it. I want to be good at it. I want to enjoy it. Because everyone I know loves to ski and is really good at the devilish sport.
My first experience skiing was on a youth group trip when my sister and I decided to dabble in the fanciful winter activity. Obviously, being the athlete I previously mentioned she was, my sister skips all phases of the mountain: bunny slope, blue circle, purple triangle, green square, and goes straight to the black diamond.
She doesn't fall, she doesn't trip, she just glides down picking up some guys’ number on the way.
I tried the bunny slope and made it halfway down and then forgot to "pizza" my toes and ended up sliding the rest of the way down on my face. Not only did I have one of those awkward nose bleeds that you get when your in the frontlines of PE dodge ball, but one of my skis had managed to pop off and was tangled in a tree.
The security patrol blows a whistle and a man with a siren-helmet comes to my rescue, probably thinking I had died, of humiliation at the least.
The more I tried to get back up and be good at skiing, the more miserable I was. I knew I wasn't good at it, and I wasn't enjoying it. So why was I doing it?
When we do something that is unnatural for us, we often find it difficult and unenjoyable, making it that much harder to glorify God. I was in no shape to bring God glory on that mountain. God did not give me the gift of being nimble on my feet, so why would I try and make that gift myself? God has given me other gifts He intended for me to use in order to bring Him glory.
When we try to be perfect, we usually end up miserable.
No one can be the perfect friend, the perfect student, the perfect neighbor, the perfect parent, and the perfect skiier. But we can embrace our role as followers of Jesus.
When we dive wholeheartedly into the role God gave us, living uninhibited and unaffected by the outside world, we naturally act like Jesus. We can't help but live to please our creator when we acknowledge that we would be nothing without him. Life stops looking like a to-do list, and more like an opportunity to praise and glorify the almighty God who gives us everything He promised and everything we will every need. Our enemies become opportunities for deeper prayers with God, life's challenges become opportunities to represent a Christian attitude in the midst of trials, our bad hair days become opportunities to find our beauty in the knowledge that we were made to look like God, and times of stress become opportunities to praise God for giving us hands to honor Him by our works. Life is hard. Life is challenging. But with Jesus, life is happy.
Don't be perfect. BE HAPPY.