Michael Jordan - Remain positive !

Michael Jordan´s view on life is an imprint on optimism. Earlier in the video "To the max" he stated:

"If I can ever pass anything on to my kids it would be to be optimistic about everything in life !"



Here are his words of wisdom:

"When my father died, I had him for 32 years. I was very lucky ! I looked at it as being lucky and not as bein´disappointed that he wasn´t around any more. I was lucky that he was there when I needed him. Some kids never had that."

"People are put on this earth for a reason. And you should utilize the time when they are here. And you never now when that is gonna taken away from you. That is one thing he taught me. But why they are here is that they make an impact on someone´s life. And he made impact on my life !"

The Message for us ?

Honor your parents and appreciate the time you have with them !!!

The importance of imitating Jesus !

When I was in a country where Buddhism was popular I picked up a book on Buddha. After giving a synopsis of Buddha´s life, the book went on to describe his way of life and principles. The rest of the book contained a detailed description of how Buddha arrived at his vision of life and how his followers, in imitating him, could find their way to inner peace.

We don´t do that with Jesus:
We have endless books about whether He existed, or whether the Jesus we have learned about is really accurate and historical or mystical.We have endless complicated tracts on fine technical issues,

but we don´t explore Jesus´ way to happiness and peace, or try to understand this feelings about God and Creation or how we view relationships with God, or His attitude toward human weakness.

And when we are close to Jesus and we begin to see through His eyes, we also begin to absorb something of His understanding of His Father. We begin to see God much bigger than someone human. He once said: "Do you not realize that when you see me, you see the Father ?"

So let´s imitate Jesus and take a closer look at His attitude:

1. About our Father:

Jesus projects an image of His Father as always with Him, as the source of His strength, as the intimate partner in everything He does. He tells us that what His Father is to Him, He will be all these things to us as well if we open our hearts to Him.

2. About the Father´s love:

Jesus tries relentlessly to show us that His Father is a loving, forgiving God. God´s perfection is not about the keeping of the commandments, it is about the expression of His ineffable love. Love is the definition of God. It is His essence.
It is what makes Him God. So, in enjoying us to be perfect like His Father, Jesus is challenging us to love as completely and as unselfishly as His Father.

3. Jesus on materialism and what He has to offer:

Jesus Himself was poor, by choice. His poverty was logical for Him. Jesus was detached from material things. He simply enjoyed what He saw in nature, in His Father´s creation. What Jesus had to offer was infinitely more valuable. Freedom of spirit and the joy that flows from that freedom were essential to Jesus.
It is this spirit He passed on to those who follow Him.

4. Forgiveness

Scanning Jesus` own life for examples of forgiveness, I could not help but be amazed at all insults and daily slights that Jesus encountered. And you never see Him taking offense: "Father, forgive them, they know not what they do" seems to be the overriding attitude in Jesus´mind.

5. How Jesus viewed people:

And Jesus embraced a leper just as naturally as He embraced an official from Herod´s palace. The ability flows from His profound realization that each of us is a child in His Father´s family, and each has a equal dignity. We preach it but Jesus believed it and we see in this the form such belief takes in real life. It is stunning. It is magic in its effect on people. This grace must prompt our charity to reach out to everyone, so that no one will ever be to us a stranger.

6. To do the Father´s will:

There is another aspect of Jesus´life which is an essential facet of His spirituality. That is the realization He is here to do His Father´s will. That should not be unique to Him. It should be the hallmark of each of us. We should all be here to do our Father´s will. We belong to God and our prayer should be:

"God, I finished my job for you today. I may not have done a perfect job, Lord, but I tried. My life is to do your work. I am yours. Keep me in your love. Keep my soul at peace."

Once Jesus establishes this place in our souls, the first gift He shares is peace. Keeping ourselves that we are partners with God, and with Jesus, has an important effect on us. We know we belong to God, and He has to take care of us because we are doing His work. That gives us a feeling of security and a trust that no matter what may come up, God will resolve the problem and bring about a happy end.

It can give us tremendous stability and a remarkable feeling of confidence knowing that we are doing God´s work, and that He is also our partner, and no matter how complicated the route, we will ultimately be succesful.

7. Spirituality:

Jesus didn´t depend on showy external practices. He somehow had a hidden spirituality. Therefore He said:
"When you pray, go to your room and lock your door and pray to your Father in secret and your Father who knows what is secret will hear you."

or

"Do not your good deeds to be seen by others. Those who do such things already have their reward."

In imitating Jesus, He will give us rest. And the rest that He gives passeth all understanding.

- Excerpts from "Never alone" by J. Girzone

The need to read and a way to pray !

Reading opens our minds to the endless possibilities for spiritual growth, depending on where God is leading us and in what direction our energies drive us.

In the past spiritually minded people read the lives of the saints. There was a great benefit in that as well as enjoyment. In getting rid of saints, many modern christians deprived themselves of an army of inspiring whitnesses to faith and heroic spirituality.

Besides reading, prayer is essential. Our relationship with God grows from our constant awareness of His presence in our lives. At first it is difficult to think of Him. But as His presence becomes more real, our sense of His nearness blossoms into an intimate communing with Him in a beautiful kind of prayer. It may be a monologue, but in prayer God works on our attitudes:

- He alters our vision, our understanding of life. Over a period of time spent communing with God, we will notice our attitudes changing toward everything. We think differently about God. We think differently about material things but foremost we think differently about ourselves and others.

- We see God´s creation and everything in it as sacred. Given the time God will eventually transform our whole life. He does this so subtly we do not even know it.

This is what St. Paul meant when he wrote, "I live, now not I, but Christ lives in me."

- From the book "Never alone" by Joseph F. Girzone

Never alone - a personal way to God !

The one thing that is absolutely necessary if we are to develop a spirituality based on Jesus´ life is that we open our hearts to the Person of Jesus Himself, and allow Him to come into our lives to befriend us and guide us. He promised, "I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you... He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him."

This is the essence of Jesus in our souls. He is there, not as a dummy, neither hearing or speaking, but as an active partner in our lives, guiding and comforting us when we need Him. It is the this mystical friendship with Jesus that is the core of Christian spirituality, and makes Christian Spirituality a unique costum-designed journey fashioned after uniqueness of each individual person.

Once we open ourselves to God and show a willingness to follow His grace in our lives, we want to see immediate results. Many people feel they have to shed their old selves when they enter the spiritual life, and become saintly over night. It doesn´t work that way.

We don´t grow physically overnight. Neither do we grow emotionally or mentally over night. Growth consists of long involved processes. It is the same with the spiritual life. We grow gradually, over a lifetime.

He does, however, need our cooperation, and when we give Him our goodwill and open our hearts to Him, He sets in motion all the machinery that we need to fulfill the task He has planned for us. That is always exciting and rewarding, because the gifts and talents He has given us are perfectly adapted to the work He has designed for us. That is the perfect blueprint for success, happiness, and fulfillment.

What is important is that we leave ourselves open to God each day so He can use us as He sees fit. To be at his disposal is our responsibility. Humility has to be a fundamental condition of our relationship with God. But we can be sure that He will use us and His using us will always be exciting and always an adventure.

My own life became a whirlwind when I made up my mind that I was not going to forge my own way through life but instead would let God guide me. And it makes good sense. God didn´t create us haphazardly. He made each of us for a purpose and He is determined that we accomplish that purpose.

- From the book "Never alone!" by Joseph F. Girzone

How to develop a healthy self-worth

Discover your worth !

Self worth is not a thing, it is a perception.
Just as a gymnast begins a routine with ten points and receives deductions for each mistake, so you began your life with a natural, complete sense of self-worth. Have you ever met an infant with self-worth issues ? This should be another reason to follow Jesus´command of becoming like children.

But as you grow up, you serve your own judge, deducting points when you misunderstand the nature of living and learning. When you forget that you are a human in training and that making mistakes and having slips of integrity and mediocre moments are a part of life and not unforgiveable sins.

We may have a difficulty with this, because all of us are only too conscious of our many failings and feel we do not have a right to God´s kindness toward us. But that is precisely what makes God´s love so beautiful. It does not spring from the goodness he sees in us, but from the overflowing goodness of His own love and the compassion.

In order to develop a healthy self-worth we have to recognize the need for God in our lives, and placing ourselves in His hands with complete trust, confident of the tenderness of our Father´s love for us.

And the next time you feel that something good can´t last, remind yourself that evolution moves in an upward spiral and that life can, and usually does get better over time. You live and learn, stumble and fall, rise and fall. If you pay attention and develop a good relationship with God you become stronger, clearer, wiser and move up.

Life is a process of rediscovering your worth and the worth of all of God´s children.

The key is to remember that even though we don´t feel very kind, or brave, or even deserving, the roof over our head continues to shelter us from storms, the sun shines upon us even when it´s cloudy, our chairs keep supporting us, and so does God. That is in essence the Grace of God which is found in Jesus Christ.

The following poem is an excerpt from a sermon from Martin Luther King Jr. and expresses the worth of everything in God´s creation:

If you can´t be the highway,
just be the trail.
If you can´t be the sun,
be a star.

´Cause it isn´t by size that you win or fail,
just be the best in whatever you are.

Barack Obama

One of the greatest speeches I´ve ever heard. Take the time and listen to this great man, his values and profound knowledge.

One thing comes to my mind when I listen to it:
The thing that impresses me the most is that he recognized that we can only reach our goal of a peaceful world by trusting in each other, working together as allies and standing as one. Unity is not only a christian principle.

Take a glance at this great speech. And if you happen to have no time at all, I picked some quotes and wrote ´em down below.




- Tonight I don´t speak to you as a candidate for president. I come to you as a proud citizen of the United States and as a proud citizen of the world.

- Berlin, the city of all cities knows the dream of freedom. The people of Berlin refused to give up.

- People of the world, look at Berlin: Where Germans and Americans learned to work together and trust each other less than 3 years after facing each other on the field of battle.

- Look at Berlin where a wall came down and history proved that there is no challenge too great for a world that stands as one.

- The greatest danger of all is to allow new walls to divide us frome each other. The walls between races and tribes, natives and immigrants, christians, muslims and jews can not stand. These now are the walls we must tear down.

- Partnership among nations is not a choice. It´s the only way, the one way to protect our common security and advance our common humanity.

- This is the moment when we must renew the goal of a world without nuclear weapons !

- Let us resolve that we will not leave our children to a world where oceans rise and the famines spread and terrible storms devastate our lands.

- Our (the U.S.) allegiance has never been to any particular tribe or kingdom. Indeed every language is spoken in our country, every culture has left its imprint on ours.

Heavenly Rap !

Excerpts:
A place where death doesn't reside, just thugs who collide
Not to start beef but spark trees, no cops rollin by
No policemen, no homicide, no chalk on the streets
No reason, for nobody's momma to cry

Cause one day we'll all be together, sippin heavnly champagne
where angels soar, with golden wings in thug's mansion

Picture a place that they exist, together
There has to be a place better than this, in heaven
So right before I sleep, dear God, what I'm askin
Remember this face, save me a place, in thug's mansion