Congratulations, Mighty Warrior of God! You have made it through your first month of making your goals and objectives a reality. This word also goes out to those who may have had a good start but have also run into some snags or failures along the way. If it was today, shake it off and get back to the program. If it was last week, shake it off and get back with the program. If you had one or two days of success out of the 31 in January, I still admonish you to get back on the program.
I admonish every one of you to make a change in your vocabulary, you normal mode of speech in 2012, especially when you have had “one of those days/weeks.” I promise you it will confuse the devil, keep you in a somewhat positive state of mind and give God praise and room to work in your life. Instead of saying that you had a bad day, even if it just might be the truth, say that you had a good day although it had some unfavorable events to take place. Is that a PC way to say the same thing? I don’t think so. Call it a way to keep yourself protected from the devil who is waiting to jump on someone at a vulnerable point in life (1 Peter 5:8). No, this is not the power of positive thinking nor is this a way to psych yourself out. Think about it for a second. What does Philippians 4:8 talk about? It is a good day when you can get up in the morning, have all your faculties about you and are able to go to work and come home again. Isn’t that true? Unfavorable things can happen in a given day, given month or given year, which is talking about things honestly but it’s still a good day. If you leave home on time, you clock in on time. If you leave late, you clock in late. If you keep your cool with irate people, you just might make then calm down. If you lose your cool, you could escalate the situation and make things get heated. That sounds just, right? What’s pure is God’s grace and mercy which is new every morning and He is right there to comfort you and get you “back in the game”. Your life is lovely, YOU are lovely, God and His Word are lovely, praise and worship is lovely; the list goes on and on. And finally, saying that you had a good day although it had some unfavorable events to take place is a good report because you can think about the day, see where you could’ve done things better. See how it works?
The other thing I admonish you to do is to not be too hard on yourself if you don’t do things perfectly one day. The day that I am composing this post, I spilled hot chocolate on the sweater I had put on to be with my mother and dad at a Sunday brunch to celebrate her birthday. It was not a dark color so a spill like that is very obvious. I was devastated at first, but I knew where I could work the stain out which was the foaming soup in a OCBF restroom and, miraculously, the stain was worked out and didn’t have any attention drawn to myself after that. This could be a principle to live by when it comes to mistakes we can make along the way. Go to the One who can get you back on track and back on course. If you are trying to eat more nutritiously this year and know that you might have overindulged this weekend (which can also happen at a brunch), get back with it on the next meal. Take what Job tells us and say to yourself that you are back on it (Job 4:3-4) and remember you have someone you can truly rely on to get things back right again (Psalm 37:33-35) and that a bump in the road is just for a moment (Proverbs 24:16).
February is a new month, folks. Make it a new beginning. Your failure or stumble was a lesson on what not to do next time. It doesn’t define you, it propels you to get back up and do it over. Give God praise, somebody!
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