It’s been a while since I’ve posted but felt like sharing this through the blog site. This video presentation was my mother’s 65th birthday gift earlier this month. Very touching and well done. Sharing it in the hopes that it blesses someone else. Tootles!
#purpose
Your Personality Reveals Purpose
A way to determine how you can serve others is to ask yourself such questions as: What do I really enjoy doing most? When do I feel the most fully alive? What am I doing when I lose track of time? Do I like routine or variety? Do I prefer serving with a team or by myself? Am I more introverted or extroverted? Am I more a thinker or a feeler? Which do I enjoy more – competing or cooperating?
Examine your experiences and extract the lessons you’ve learned. Review your life and think about how it has shaped you.
Forgotten experiences are worthless; that’s a good reason to keep a spiritual journal. In the Bible, the Apostle Paul worried that the believers in Galatia would waste the pain they had been through. He said, “Were all your experiences wasted? I hope not!” (Galatians 3:4 NCV)
We rarely see God’s good purpose in pain or failure or embarrassment while it is happening. Only in hindsight do we understand how God intended a problem for good.
Extracting the lessons from your experiences takes time, but it can be for your benefit and the benefit of others. I recommend that you take an entire weekend for a life review retreat, where you pause to see how God has worked in the various defining moments of your life and consider how He wants to use those lessons to help others. This may provide clear direction on the way you can minister to, volunteer, or work with others.
Taken from Pastor Rick Warren’s Daily Devotion
#serving #purpose
Your Work as Worship
From Rick Warren’s Daily Devotional
“As you enter your Decade of Destiny, it is important that you understand your work can be an act of worship to God. In fact, if I want God to bless my finances, I must make my work an act of worship.
What I’m saying is that no matter what you do – sweeping the streets, running a corporation or the work of a stay-at-home mom — your job is more than a job. The Bible says while you are here on earth, you should use your work as an act of worship.
This means whatever you do, you are to do it with enthusiasm. If your heart is not in it, you are in the wrong job. If you are not working with all your heart, you are sinning. I didn’t say that, the Bible says it.
Why work with all your heart? Because you are working “as though you were working for the Lord and not for people.” No matter what I do, if it is to prepare a meal, if it is to sign an invoice, if it is to do an analysis, if it is to close a deal, if it is to make a sale, if it is to make delivery — whatever it is, I am to do it as if I’m doing it for God, and so it becomes an act of worship.”
Corresponding scripture reference: Colossians 3:23
#Purpose
The Importance of Meditation
From Rick Warren’s Daily Devotional
What does it mean to meditate? Well, it doesn’t mean to put your mind in neutral and go “ohm.” That’s not meditation. Meditation means seriously thinking about something.
Psalm 1 says, in part, that a person who meditates on God’s Word is “like a tree planted by streams of water which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers” (v. 2-3).
I want that to be true in your life. I want whatever you do to prosper, but the Bible says the premise for this promise is your commitment to study his Word.
Today’s action point is this: I want you to get involved in Bible study. If you already are, that’s great! Keep it up! But if you aren’t, I would encourage you to find a Bible study group and join it. You will be amazed at how much studying God’s Word in a small group blesses your life.
#meditation
Meditation
Don’t Let Limitations Limit Vision
I could not have expressed the below thoughts any better. From Rick Warren’s Daily Devotional:
God will not only use your gifts to fulfill your destiny, He’ll also use your limitations.
Consider Queen Esther: She had several big limitations that made her perfect for the role God wanted her to fulfill. She was an orphan adopted by Mordecai; she was a minority, a Jew living in a Persian country; and she was a single woman.
And God used all of these things, along with the gifts of her beauty, brains, and personality, to fulfill her destiny. Sometimes what looks like a disaster in your life is part of a much bigger plan, but you will never fulfill your destiny if you are having a pity party.
Esther could have just said, “If only I hadn’t been chosen, if only I wasn’t Jewish, if only I was like someone else.” A lot of people do that. They live their lives in resentment, always looking at people and saying, “Well it must be nice to be them.”
If you have that attitude you will never fulfill your destiny. You have to realize that the unpleasant obstacles in your life are often God-ordained opportunities to make a difference.
You might be in a situation right now where everything is going wrong and you can’t figure it out. But God knows. Nothing in your life is accidental. The pleasures and pains, the opportunities and obstacles, God can use it all. There is nothing God cannot use for good in your life if you’ll hand it over to Him – and then trust him.
#dreams #goals #purpose
Destiny
“The only person you are destined to be is the person you decide to be.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
Taken from The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson
Passionate Pursuits
When you have a righteous conviction, something about which you are absoultely passionate, inconvenience is irrelevant.
As I pondered this statement, I realized that my passionate pursuit is advocating for children who have been abused and/or neglected. For some, they share my passion, for others, it’s sharing the gospel of Christ…loving Him and making Him known, it’s working out and encouraging others to be healthy, it’s working with those in shelters, advocating for the mentally challenged, it’s making money to achieve a certain lifestyle or to be able to give more and meet needs or provide for their children. A passionate pursuit, a righteous conviction towards change and making a difference can be anything. We all have one, we just have to be willing to tap into it if we haven’t already. What is yours?
Remember: Commitment follows conviction.
#purpose
Purpose
“The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis.” Dante Alighieri
Let’s face it: We are part of the problem OR we are part of the solution. Ponder which side you are on in the present and which side you will choose in the future. Ponder…and then take action.
#purposefulpursuits #livingwithpassion #livingwithpurpose #makeadifference #purpose
Broken Crayons Still Color*
Inadequacy is not your name.
It is an emotion, a feeling.
It can be overcome because broken crayons can still color.
Delayed dreams do not have to be denied.
Live Your Dream.
Be your dream.
Broken crayons can still color.
You are purpose on legs.
You are purpose in human form.
Use your brokenness to help others in their brokenness, for eventually, He rebuilds us all to become whole.
On your path to wholeness, let your light so shine among men, for
Broken crayons can still color.
Let us see you color.
© 2016 by Dr. Connie R. Shipman
*Title and inspiration for the poem taken from a sermon by Bishop Rosie S. O’neal, Koinonia Christian Center Church.
My Therapy 