Good morning everyone,

Proverbs 4:23-Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.

If we started with the assumption that most, if not all of our issues start with the people we claim to love the most, we then can probably conclude that are attitude towards those outside our "loved ones" are misplaced. For example a "cranky" waitress, teacher, store clerk, etc. There are times you want to simply tell them to handle their "issues" at home before they come to "serve".

Yet how many of us think about our everyday lives with Jesus in the same way? Before we misplace our attitudes and issues onto the people we love and strangers, we should handle our issues with Christ and honor Him as having first place in our hearts. So many issues arise from not handling things with Jesus, and we make other people be "the anchor" of our soul, and who can bear that?

In His Love, Ld

On Jul 4, 2012 1:18 PM, "Soong-Yol Hong" <soongyol> wrote:

Happy 4th! Praise God for this country!

– Worldly joy is due to favorable circumstances. – Godly joy is in spite of unfavorable circumstances.

– Worldly peace is due to health, bank account, and insurance.
– Godly peace is in the midst of a chaos.

– Worldly love is only for those deserving.
– Godly love is for the undeserving.

How can we attain godly joy, peace, and love? Only when we fix our eyes on the God who is outside of this world, who transcends this world and its problems.

Where does your love, joy, peace come from? Relative health, job security, savings account, lovely features, etc? If so, they will be short-lived. Anything that depends on our circumstances can only be short-lived since ALL of our circumstances will turn toward decaying and deterioration – it’s called aging…

"All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field… The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God stands forever." Isa. 40:6,8

All men are like grass. If I don’t water my grass for 3 days, they turn brown. The tulips planted in my backyard bloomed for 2 weeks and they are long gone. We will be gone before anyone remembers us. Do not put so much effort on nor agonize so much over "petty" things. Remember God and His Son and their majesty. Go for godly joy, peace, and love!

PH