34 Dreams #2

You were created not to simply sleep through your dreams but to live dreams bigger than you, bolder than you.

What great battle would you love to devote your life to?  What do you want to be different about the world or about someone’s life because you lived?

And what is the next step, the next move you need to make in order to move 

toward that vision?

Who were you created to be?

What do you want?

Who are you to become?

What will you embrace?

What must you face?

Are you ready to live?

This is going to be my last entry.  I hope it has touched someone's HEART for the purpose seeing who you were created to be by God.  If I can help any of you by even just listening you can contact me at robersonchip40@gmail.com.  Thank you  

33 Dreams #1

What would you say was the best day of your life?

What memories do you hope to make with or when you have a family?

What good can come from the bad days we’ve experienced?  Explain.

If you’re going to create the life of your dreams, eventually you have to stop thinking about it, dreaming about it, imagining it, hoping, planning, or even praying, and you have to actually do something.  You have to act.  You have to execute.  You have to step into the real world and bring the change that you can only see through the eyes of believing.

Life is a work of art. 

The canvas you paint first is your life.

Then your life becomes the brush from which you paint that part of the world you touch while you are here on this planet.

What work of art will you leave behind?

What you HOPE from yourself and your life has a direct effect on what you will get out of life.

Where there is HOPE, There is Life

Sometimes our capacity to dream of a different us, of a different life, is beaten up and left broken by people and pain and disappointment.

What Do You Want?

You start with your deepest longing—the dream that seems too good to be true, the dream that seems too good to come true.

Your dreams are a product of your longings.  The dreams that fuel your life are fueled by your desires, by your passions, by your cravings.  (Remember the movies you love?)

Once the dream is in your HEART it is in your hands.

Is it possible that when we begin to find the dreams for our lives, it always involves helping others live their dreams?

You cannot even begin to live the dream until you stop caring about only yourself,

32 Getting Rid of the Gorilla #8

You can’t shake it and can’t leave it behind, so then eventually what happens is REVENGE becomes our only hope.

Have you ever really gotten REVENGE?

If so, how did it make you feel afterwards?

Revenge fixes your attention at life’s ugliest moments.  Score-settling freezes your stare at cruel events in your past.

Is this where you want to look?  Will rehearsing and reliving your hurts make you a better person?  By no means.  It will destroy you.

Describe the gentlest person you ever knew.  What kind of influence did this person have on others?

Think of someone you know whom you would describe as a revengeful, score-settling person.  How happy do you think that person is?  Explain

So may you forgive as you’ve been forgiven, may you give to others what’s been given to you, may you set someone free and find out that it was you, and may you do it today, because you might not have the chance tomorrow.

What will you do with these fears and with the unkown?  We have three choices - (1) to shrink back, as so many of us have done before, and reject the invitation to adventure; (2) to try to reach for some sort of formula that will give us a sense of control; or (3) to simply venture forward.  

This is the moment our true strength begins to be released. This is where our strength will be crystallized, deepened and revealed.  A man or woman is never more a man or woman than when they embrace an adventure beyond their control, or when they walk into a battle they aren't sure of winning.

Are you willing to RISK to free your heart and find your true strength?

31 Getting Rid of the Gorilla #7

WHAT FORGIVENESS IS

The first stage of forgiveness is the decision not to try to inflict a reciprocal amount pain on everyone who has caused hurt.  When I forgive you, I give up the right to hurt you back.

When I forgive you, I set you free from the little prison I have placed in my mind for holding you captive.  I seek to stop entertaining fantasies of vengeance in which you are tortured.

Forgiveness begins when we give up the quest to get even.  This is difficult, because getting even is the natural obsession of the wounded soul.

The next stage of forgiveness involves a new way of seeing and feeling.  One thing that happens when we get deeply hurt is that as we look at the one who hurt us, we don’t see a person—only the hurt.  

If you do not feel ready to forgive at this time, what do you think is holding you back?

When we hold fast to unforgiveness toward another person, we tend to believe only bad things about them.  We want to think of them only in terms of the hurt they have caused us.  We want to forget their humanity.  They are a product of a fallible mother and father; they are lonely or hurting or weak nearsighted—just as you are.

What do you think happened in this persons past that caused them to act that way?

Don’t wait to forgive until you feel like forgiving; you will never get there.  Feelings take time to heal after the choice to forgive is made.

This is an act of will—not a feeling.

We CHOOSE to forgive.

Forgiving is not saying, It didn’t really matter; it is not saying, I probably deserved part of it anyway. Forgiveness says, It was wrong, it mattered, and I release you.

Forgiveness does not necessarily remove negative consequences for the one forgiven, nor does it automatically grant trust and reconciliation.

Can we forgive somebody without being able to be around them?

30 Getting Rid of the Gorilla #6

FORGIVENESS

The time has come for us to FORGIVE.  For what?  You know better than I.  For the wound—or wounds.  For the ways you have been failed.  For things done and said and for things someone did not do or did not say.  FORGIVENESS is far more real and meaningful when we are specific about what we are FORGIVING.

FORGIVENESS is setting a prisoner free and then discovering the prisoner was you.

Letting go of resentment toward an abuser feels like letting go of justice; it may also feel like letting the abuser win.

We must forgive those who hurt us.  The reason is simple: Bitterness and unforgiveness set their hooks deep in our hearts; they are chains that hold us captive to the wounds and the messages of those wounds.  Until you FORGIVE you remain their prisoner.  Unforgiveness and bitterness can wreck your life and the lives of others.

BITTERNESS

the slow suicide

To harbor bitterness toward someone is like swallowing poison and then waiting for that person to die.

An ungrateful HEART always sees what’s wrong with life.  The longer we live without thankfulness, the more embittered we become.  The more embittered we become, the more we find ourselves overwhelmed with depression.  Bitterness in the end leads to hopelessness.

Bitterness requires that you live in the past; hope requires that you live for tomorrow.

The original wounds were not of your doing, but no one but you keeps choosing to go back there. Your whole life can seem to be defined by less than a half dozen memories, but the memories are all negative.  

Memories have a way of defining not only who you were, but who you are and who you will become.

Give a time you were FORGIVEN.

Have you ever wanted to be FORGIVEN, but the other person stayed mad?  How did you feel?

What makes it hard to FORGIVE?

29 Getting Rid of the Gorilla #5

Would the people who know you best say that you are an angry person?  Why or why not?  Do you think it is possible to conceal your anger so well that those who know you best have no idea what’s percolating inside you?  What makes you say that?

Whether we like to admit it or not, those of us who struggle with an unforgiving HEART also carry around a tremendous amount of anger.  Anger and an unforgiving HEART always go hand in hand.

What about rage? Rage is an abnormal and a unbalanced response to hurt.  Rage exceeds the harshness of the abuse we experience.

Rage is one of the best ways to know whether we’ve been spending too much time with the GORILLA.

RAGE is toxic.  I hate being consumed with RAGE; I hate being angry all the time.  I hate knowing that someone else had some part in making me this way.  I’m angry because someone changed me and left me to clean up the mess.  I’m angry that I’m angry.  We couldn’t help getting angry when we were hurt; we had no choice in the matter.  We can, however, make a decision about whether we’ll allow that anger to turn into RAGE.  That is a decision we do have control over.  Anger is something that happens naturally; RAGE is something that we help manufacture.

There isn’t anything more freeing than FORGIVENESS. FORGIVENESS is the only force strong enough to heal relationships damaged by hatred and betrayal. 

The secret behind FORGIVENESS'S power is that it has the ability to set you free from—your PRIDE.

Both accepting and extending FORGIVENESS can be one of the most difficult things you face.

Why should I FORGIVE?  What if the other person doesn’t deserve it?  I might get hurt again.  FORGIVENESS looks like a pretty risky business.

We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive.  He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love.  There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us.  When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.

Martin Luther King Jr.

Is there a person you find difficult to FORGIVE because you fear that you will have to have a relationship with him or her?

28 Getting Rid of the Gorilla #4

GETTING RID OF THE

Gorilla

Freedom is useless if we don’t exercise it as characters making choices . . . We are free to change the stories by which we live.  Because we are genuine characters, and not mere puppets, we can choose our defining stories.  

We can do so because we actively participate in the creation of our stories.  We are co-authors as well as characters.  Few things are as encouraging as the realization that things can be different and that we have a role in making them so.

If you had permission to do what you really wanted to do, what would you do?

Don’t ask how; that will cut your desire off at the knees.  How is never the right question; how is a faithless question.  

Don’t ask yourself what the world needs, ask yourself what makes you come alive because what the world needs are  people who have come alive.

What is written in your heart?  What makes you come alive?  If you could do what you’ve always wanted to do what would it be?  You see, your calling is written on your true heart, and you will discover it when you enter your deep desires.

Living with an unforgiving HEART is like living with a gorilla.

If we don’t find a way to release and pardon the people who hurt us, our pain and anger settle at the bottom of our souls.  Then without knowing it, they find each other and begin to grow.  Over time the rage and tears of others hurts takes on a life of its own.  That is when the gorilla comes to live with us.  Now he’s larger, more powerful—overwhelming.

Living with the gorilla changes everything about us.  Nothing in our lives goes untouched.  An unforgiving HEART affects everyone and everything we touch.

Divide your life into 2 periods: BG (before gorilla & AG (after gorilla).  How did you view people before the gorilla came into your life?  How did that perspective change after he moved in?  Write down the words that describe your perspective in each of these periods.