Deception is defined as a trick, falseness, guile, hypocrisy, fraud, or causing one to believe what is not true. In our world today, there is so much deception; people are being deceived constantly. One of the reasons for this is our lack of knowing. However, truth reveals deception. People seem to be easily deceived these days, whether they are being tricked, they want to ignore the truth, or they don’t want to know the truth. You may hear this statement, “I just don’t want to know.” When I hear this, I am always amazed at how people don’t want to hear the truth; even when they do, they don’t want to believe it. It doesn’t matter what the situation is. Maybe people do not want to know the truth because knowing the truth will hurt or cause one to have to make some sort of decision.

Some people will avoid pain at any cost. Others choose to be self-deceived. This describes a person that denies or rationalizes away the relevance, significance, or importance of opposing evidence and logical argument. In other words, they just don’t to want to know the truth. They believe that if they don’t know, then they cannot be held responsible. The way to prevent deception or being deceived, in our lives, is to love truth and honesty. In a sense, preventing deception means that you are willing to be responsible and truthful. I have found that those who are deceived are looking for something to get hurt about or they just do not want to change. Some choose to hear one side of a story and come to a conclusion. We must hear both sides of a situation and seek the truth, before making a decision. To do otherwise, only leads us down a road of deception.

Just A Thought,

PSS

Legacychurch.com

True friendship is difficult to find, but when you do, you should do everything you can to keep it. One friend, that we should all have, will be the closest friend we will ever have. He is the one who will love us no matter what, and who will overlook our faults and shortcomings. He is the one who will never be offended. The friend that is being described is God, the one who created us all. He is the Father of our Lord Jesus. Outside of that friendship, it is said that if you have two really close friendships, consider yourself a lucky person. Now it is true that you will have different relationships at different stages of your life. The friends that you have in high school may be different than your friends in college. Your friends in college may be different than your friends when you enter your career and get married. However, if you are lucky enough to have two close friendships, work to keep them. Every relationship goes through ups and downs, so be quick to forgive and let things go in order to preserve the friendship. In other words, don’t take a friendship for granted because you may not find another one like it. Some of you are lucky to have five, true friends in your lifetime; whatever number it is, it is likely to be a very small one. Be sure to work at your friendships, be quick to forgive, and quick to repent. The one friend that we all have, if we believe, is one that will stick closer to us than a brother, and that friend is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Just A Thought,

PSS

Legacychurch.com

In this life, we will all have some moments of adversity that will test the strongest among us. Diversity is defined as a state or instance of serious or continued difficulty or misfortune. Someone once said, “He learns to welcome misfortune, learns that adversity is the prosperity of the great.” We will all have to face challenges, but how we face them, how we act, and respond to these moments will make the biggest difference in our lives. You may be between success and failure, moving forward, or getting stuck in your past. The greatest thing about dealing with adversity is that you get to choose how you will respond. Do you allow it to hinder your life, destroy your beliefs, your family, or destroy your future? Or do you face it, look it in the eye and say, “I will overcome you, I will not allow you to hurt me to the point that I quit in life, quit believing for the best, quit believing things can and will improve.” You must believe that this difficulty shall pass. For most of us, adversity is not permanent; it is only temporary, unless you allow it to become a permanent fixture in your life. It’s up to you; adversity can make us stronger or we can allow it to become something that remains hurtful to us. We are overcomers; we have been given that ability, but of course only you can make the decision to overcome in your life. Let’s choose to work through adversity.

In order to grow and develop we must remain teachable. For you to be teachable, you need to be able and willing to learn by being taught. Someone once told me, “Read the newspaper, read a book, as long as you are learning something new every day.” No matter how good we are at something, we can always become better at it. Learning is something that is never finished. What we thought was impossible yesterday, has become possible today. The person that thinks they know it all is the person who has quit growing. Even God can’t teach the unteachable. Being teachable, I believe, is the key to being successful and productive.

We must be willing to recognize that there is always something new to learn, and a new way of doing things. It’s what will keep us moving forward at times, striving for excellence, growing, developing ourselves, our businesses, and our relationships. It’s your responsibility to grow, no one else’s. You have to learn and grow on purpose. Good healthy growth doesn’t, for the most part, come by accident. We have to purpose to grow and learn. If you are willing to learn, you will begin to see, in a greater way, the endless possibilities around you.

Just A Thought,

PSS

Legacychurch.com

Double mindedness is what causes people, at times, to not make a decision. The decision could be concerning any number of things in our lives. It is also why people don’t stay committed to a decision, once one has been made. To be double minded means that you are wavering in mind, undecided, and vacillating; a double minded man is unstable in all his ways. We need to be single minded and people of commitment, not wishy-washy people who say one thing one day and something else the next. We also do not want to be the type of person who believes one thing one day and believes something else the next.

People who are double minded tend to be frustrated as well. Why? It is because they can’t or won’t make up their mind on something. Make a decision and stick to it. If for some reason you find out that you have made a mistake, then change it. Let’s be people of our word and keep the commitments that we make. It is not good to be unstable. We can’t control most things in our lives, but we can control our attitude and our decisions.

Let’s be known as someone who keeps their word and that others can count on.

Just A Thought,

PSS

Legacychurch.com