Psalm 23 continued

I have heard a lot of people referring to Pslam 23 lately so I thought I would give it a closer look. In my last post I told you about the embarrassing misunderstanding of the first line that I had when I was a child. So today I wanted to look at the second verse and tell you what it means to me now compared to when I was a child. And in the weeks to come I will continue on through the entire passage.


Psalm 23
1 The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.

2 He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.

Now why in the world would God make me lie down and lead me to places where I may not want to go? Why wouldn't God just let me do what I please? That was my perspective when I was a child. I know what I want to do and God should just let me do it. That made sense to me. And the truth is God will let you do that if you don't listen to Him.

All those years when I strayed it wasn't because God no longer cared for me. I no longer listened to God. That little voice in my head saying slow down, rest, rejuvenate yourself was God talking to me. That voice I listened to that said push on. Do more, you don't need to rest was me telling myself what to do. And I got what I asked for. Exhaustion, frustration, self pity and disappointment. I set my goals too high and never took the time to ask God what his goals for me were.

I walked past the green pastures in search of golden pastures. I moved away from the still waters in search of excitement and the adventure of rough seas. I got what I searched for but it never seemed to be enough. The more I got the more I wanted and I discovered that I could never reach my goals in life because they were ever changing goals. All I really needed to do was to listen to God. He already had my goals set for me and Those goals never change. The truth is He knew I would stray and go my own way. But He also knew I would return to Him and the green pastures and still waters were waiting for me, right where He left them.

Have a Blessed day,
Greg

Psalm 23

I learned Psalm 23 (the King James version) when I was very young. But I have to admit that when I first learned it, I had a problem with it. And it was the first line that I had a problem with:

"The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want."

Now depending on how you read this line, it can be a good thing or a bad thing. And as i often did at that age, I somehow took it the wrong way. Here is what I thought it meant:

The Lord is my Shepherd, and I don't want that.

I took the "I shall not want" part to mean that I shall not want the Lord to be my shepherd. See how I was confused? It wasn't long before someone explained my mistake and I understood the meaning of the passage. However it wasn't until I was much older that I understood the "feeling" of the passage. The truth is it was quite recently that I began feeling a lack of wanting.

Amazingly I have discovered that it has nothing at all to do with material possessions. I could have nothing and still not want. And I am finding that the less I have the less I want. As I unload my material possessions my spiritual possessions increase. As my relationship increases with the Lord I feel less of a need to have material things. Just like a shepherd, the Lord will take care of his flock. He will feed us, and protect us. And if we follow his guidance we have no need to want anything else. He will guide us if we allow him to.

Have a Blessed day,
Greg

Please Pray for Chelsea

On my other blog I asked everyone to pray for Chelsea. Because this is so important, I wanted to add the prayer request here as well. I will thank you in advance because I know you are all great people and will want to help this girl out.

James 5:16
Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.

Have a great day,
Greg

Have a little Faith

Faith is sometimes the only thing that people struggling to survive have. It is the last hope for a desperate person. With everything else gone Faith can still carry you though. Why not make it part of your life before it is all that you have. Strengthening your relationship with God now will make it easier to call on him if you need him later. Have a little faith.

Greg

Where do I begin.

I have decided that the best place to start re-reading the bible is Psalms. I think the important thing is to read some of God’s word every day and I really enjoy reading Psalms. This morning I read Psalm 7 and came across these interesting verses. For some reason I don’t remember reading them before. I think every time I read the Bible I find something new. I thought they were so appropriate with everything going on in the world today.

Psalm 7:

14 He who is pregnant with evil
and conceives trouble gives birth to disillusionment.

15 He who digs a hole and scoops it out
falls into the pit he has made.

I see lots of pregnant people these days and a lot of pit digging going on. What about you?

Have a Blessed Day,
Greg

Life is looking up.

You may have noticed; I have been feeling a little under the weather lately. Life in general has been getting me down and therefore my head has been hung a little low and I am not my usual chipper self. Someone here at work (which tends to be the den of downer people) even noticed that my smile was missing this morning. (don't worry, when he said that I put it back where it belonged) With all this sickness and depression that is going around a lot of people just like me have their heads hung low. And once you get like this it is hard to recover.

The more we look down the deeper we dive into depression and sadness. We begin to think about being down and we sink even deeper into our pit of sadness and self pity. Depression can lead to sickness and sickness leads to more depression.

News flash:

The problem is that we are looking in the wrong place; Look up, not down. The devil wants us to look down. He can make us feel really bad about ourselves when things are getting tough. He’s pretty smart. He knows how to make us feel bad and keep us feeling bad. He wants us to keep looking down (away from God). He knows that God can heal us so he doesn’t want us looking up. So what are we going to do about it?

Look up that’s what!



Psalm 121

1 I lift up my eyes to the hills—
where does my help come from?
2 My help comes from the LORD,
the Maker of heaven and earth.
3 He will not let your foot slip—
he who watches over you will not slumber;
4 indeed, he who watches over Israel
will neither slumber nor sleep.
5 The LORD watches over you—
the LORD is your shade at your right hand;
6 the sun will not harm you by day,
nor the moon by night.
7 The LORD will keep you from all harm—
he will watch over your life;
8 the LORD will watch over your coming and going
both now and forevermore.


Have a great day and keep looking to God for answers.
Greg

If you lay down with Dogs you get up with Fleas.

My mother used to say that all the time. However she was never very good at taking her own advice. Sometimes we are forced to work with and associate with Dogs. There isn't much we can do about that since most of us need the money to survive. However we do have the ability to speak out against hatred, anger and wicked ways. And away from work we can chose the people we associate with. I chose you.

Psalms 1:

1 Blessed is the man
who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked
or stand in the way of sinners
or sit in the seat of mockers.

2 But his delight is in the law of the LORD,
and on his law he meditates day and night.

GOD grant me the strength and wisdom so speak out against the evil in this world.

Amen

Have a Blessed day,
Greg

The power of Prayer

I was feeling a little down this morning but I went to the gym anyway. While there, I ran into my spinning instructor Mary. She asked what was wrong and I told her some of my troubles. We talked briefly about life, church, God and prayer. She must be praying for me because I am feeling much better. Things are also begging to turn around from my weekend.

Have a Blessed day,
Greg

Turning negative into positive.

Any good mathematician will tell you that two negatives make a positive. And physically the positive sign (+) is made up of two negative signs(-,-)All you have to do is turn one on its side, put it on top of the other and there you have it....Positive. The point is this. There are negative things all around us and it is up to us to bring the positive to the top. We have to "accentuate the positive" as the song goes.

On this of all days it is easy to slip into the negative mode. With so much negativity that happened on that day, those horrible images are burned in our head and may be there forever. However on that day there were also many positive things that happened. There were miracle stories of survival, brave people who gave it all, people helping people and more people praying than ever before. We should never forget the things that happened that day and we probably never will but we can remember the hero's like firemen, policemen and everyday citizens who did so much help out that day.

Have a Blessed day,
Greg

My new T-shirt

Ok I have a design all planned out in my head. Now all I have to do is get it down on paper and then have it transferred to a t-shirt. I am going to keep it a surprise to my readers but I will say it is going to have my Hope theme on it along with some other things that I love. I think you will like it. Wish me luck on my drawing.

Have a Blessed Day,
Greg

I need help

If you haven't read my post at Gregs General Store I encourrage you to do so. It is an uplifting story which involves people helping people. But what I need help with is this; I want to design an uplifting t-shirt. Something that will reach out and touch people where in counts; In the Heart. What prompted this is seeing so many negative ads on T-shirts. If they can display their negativity we should be able to display our happiness. It sounds reasonable anyway. So I am taking ideas if anyone has them.

Have a happy day,
Greg

"Thought for the day"

It's easy to thank God when everything is going well but do you thank Him on bad days too?

I try,
Greg

Just a reminder:

I can't say thank you enough to Edie who sent me a lovely package of goodies. As I mentioned on my other blog, my favorite thing is a magnet with the following verse on it:

Genesis 2:15

The LORD God took man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.

Thanks again Edie. I think I need to read Genesis again.

Greg

Focus

Are you using the gifts that God gave you? Each of us has special gifts from God but not everyone chooses to use them. Many times we are just too busy going about our day to day lives to focus on our special gifts.

As I went to take these photos of the flowers I grew, I noticed that the lens was cloudy. It was that way because I took the camera from inside in the AC to outside where it was about 85 deg. As I went to take the first photo, I noticed it. I was about to completely clean the lens but then I realized that it would make a pretty photo to only partially clear it. So that is what I did.




God gave me the ability to grow things like these flowers. I know that it is a God given gift because not everyone can grow things. For some reason, it comes easy to me.



I also have a knack for arranging the flowers so that is what I did. We will sell them at the market this weekend if the weather holds out.



So focus on your talents and use those gifts that God has given you. It will make you and Him happy.

Have a Blessed day,
Greg

Psalm 118:24

"This is the day the Lord has made; Let us rejoice and be glad in it."

Lets make it a great one!!!
Greg

Share the love

As I mentioned before, I try to always think positive. Even on cloudy days, I like to focus on the silver lining because I know that just above the clouds, the sun is shining. But simply thinking positive isn’t enough. I also try to be positive. By that I mean letting my light shine and letting everyone around me know that I am happy.

Yesterday morning at our morning meeting, I made it a point to keep a smile on my face. Nothing particularly positive was going on, I just decided to smile. I can tell you that of the 12 people in the meeting, I was the only one with a smile on his face. All the rest of the people were frowning. It took all of 15 seconds for someone to ask why I was so “Darn happy.”

In a very happy voice, I just said “I am just happy to be here.” Silence filled the room and everyone stared at me. So I continued: “we all have great jobs and they pay us well. I like my job too which is why I am happy.” A few people made snide comments and there was some whispering going on after that so I just dropped it and continued to smile. They now all think I am crazy but in a happy kind of way. I can live with that.

Share that happy feeling,
Greg

Faith, Hope and Love

Not too long ago I heard someone say that faith, hope and love were for weak people. This person said that faith was a crutch used by people who couldn’t stand on their own two feet. He also said that hope was for people who couldn’t deal with the reality of today. And he went on to say that love was a non manly emotion used by people who couldn’t express true emotions.

Just recently I heard about a scientific study with quite different results. This study found that strong people were more likely to have a strong faith in God. The study went on to say that people with a strong sense of hope were more likely to be happy and content with their lives. And these same people, being that they were happy and content were more likely to show their true emotions when it came to love.

So I have decided to expand the scope of this blog a little to include not only happiness but also include faith, hope and love. Because after all;

I Corinthians 13:
13 So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

Let’s all have a happy day,
Greg

Our Mission

This Blog was created to promote HOPE. In this case, HOPE stands for Happiness of People Everywhere. With all the doom and gloom in the world today, this is going to be a santuary for happy thoughts and feelings. Everyone is welcome here but please leave your negative thoughts and comments at the door. Have a Happy Day,

Greg