Encourage Yourself!

Yesterday I talked about encouraging others. Today I’m talking about you encouraging you!

Yes, we can and many times will have to encourage ourselves. There will be times you have to stand alone. Others will not be there for you. They will not see what you see. They will not have your vision, your principles or motivation. You will have to hold the line by yourself. Take courage! This will build fortitude (another word for strength) so you can go further, become stronger, last longer, endure more – (that doesn’t sound fun, it sounds like hardship involved!!!)

We’ll have to chew our own meat – no ground up baby food involved. But I’ve heard it said meat is for the strong. No carnivore diet spoken of intentionally here, but meat makes strong muscles and we’ll need them to weather our storms, mental, emotional, spiritual and physical.

So, you had the idea to build the first lighthouse at sea alerting ships to steer clear and not get dashed to pieces in the dark. ‘How are you going to do that’, somebody said. ‘You can’t, the surf is too strong, water too deep, tide comes in, you’ll get washed out’… and on and on.

Yet! Somebody kept at it. They planned and planned and thought and thought and tried and finally the first successful one was built and saved many lives. ‘I could never do that!’ Maybe not your area of expertise, but there is something that you and you alone can and need to do. You – yes you – plan and think and try things out until you succeed. Begin to encourage yourself more!

Now back to the lighthouse. No one built it completely by themselves, but there had to be an idea, maybe guarded at first until it could develop and ‘build up steam’, and then others became involved. It began with them.

Today I am not giving up on my plan, thought, dream to ….

Why the Lighthouse?

I mentioned the lighthouse in a previous post.

What is it about a lighthouse that is so endearing?

Besides their unique structural stability and charm, they represent something else.

Valiant men have risked their lives and died building lighthouses to save lives…that ships at sea might not crash, be broken and sink because they couldn’t see the danger there.

Said James Ward Hyland III, President and Founder of the Lighthouse Preservation Society of Newbury Port, Massachussetts:

Lighthouses appeal to the interest and better instinct of man because they are symbolic of never-ceasing watchfulness, of steadfast endurance in every exposure, of widespread helpfulness. The building and the keeping of the lights is a picturesque and humanitarian work of the nation.”

Somehow, just knowing that someone cares for you, is watching out for you, makes life easier to live. We all need those somebodies. We all need to be those somebodies.

These characteristics in people are what make a nation great and bring out the best in each other.

Loving, Kindness, Courage, Care….Let these be found in me.

Please join with me.

Picked By God

Everyone of us peoples… if you are alive then you are a people, has been created, not just made, but created…thought up, thought of, pondered over, uniquely, individually, skillfully, wonderfully (don’t stop reading because of the word ‘wonderful’…it’s true about you) created by the hand of God, Himself, who does not make any mistakes, is un-bribable, doesn’t change His mind mid-stream, or quit when things are difficult.

If you are reading this, and even if you are not reading this, you are in the ‘picked by God’ category.

God picks us and then gives us the choice to pick Him back.

The Bible says many are called but few are chosen. It is not up to us to decide who is and who is not. Our decision is to choose back– in accordance with God’s first choice—that He picked us, gave us the ‘want to’ to seek and find Him and say, “Yes, God, here I am. I want to be one of your chosen and live in your camp and be one of your tribe.”

And He will say back, “He that comes to Me, I will not cast away.” We may be cast-a-ways to the world, but not to our great big wonderful God. He has a secure fishing net that can draw us in out of the shipwrecks of our lives and place us on an island of safety that has a lighthouse on it so we can climb up and look out for others who might need help.

In this world of many men and women and too little of God, we need to know the power and love of the God who created, called and picked us. Sorry…we can’t get any credit for being good enough to get picked by God. He picked us because He made us and wants us and loves us, just like an earthly father would pick and love his child, because he came from him….not because of anything the child did, but just because he belongs to him.

Let God pick you. Then pick Him back, and live safe on His island in this world.