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Archive for the ‘Quotes’ Category

“All the days of the afflicted are evil: but he that is of a merry heart hath a continual feast.” — Proverbs 15:15

Secular thinkers have discovered an important fact known by the sages long ago — Happiness is found before not after “success”.

“The formula is clear: Work harder, then you’ll be successful, then you’ll be happier. When I asked some of my Harvard students, their answer was easy: “I’m working … now so I can be happy when … [fill in the blank with a six figure banking job, make a scientific breakthrough, get into medical school, etc.].”

But here’s what these brilliant students often forget: Getting into Harvard was supposed to make them happy….

It’s hard to find happiness after success if the goalposts of success keep changing.

Now for the good news … If you reverse the order of the formula, you end up with greater happiness and greater success rates … If you cultivate happiness while in the midst of your struggles, work, at school, while unemployed or single, you increase your chances of attaining all the goals you are pursuing, including happiness.” — Shawn Achor in “5 Ways to Turn Happiness Into an Advantage (Read Shawn’s full article “here.)

Christ provides what we really need to be happy — complete acceptance, an enduring purpose, and bright future.

“[W]e know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose … What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?” — Romans 8:28,31b / Psalm 118:6

— fritz@langgang.com

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“[T]here is no new thing under the sun” Ecclesiastes 1:9b

Technology is often pointed to as refuting the Bible’s statement about change.

I found interesting what Steve Jobs, technology leader and Apple CEO now retiring due to ill-health, said:

“[T]his stuff doesn’t change the world. It really doesn’t. I’m sorry, it’s true.

Having children really changes your view on these things. We’re born, we live for a brief instant, and we die. It’s been happening for a long time … technology is not changing it much — if at all …

[I]t’s a disservice to constantly put things in this radical new light — that it’s going to change everything.[Wired, February 1996]

Only Jesus can affect real change – a change of heart, motives, and action.

— fritz@langgang.com
Also see: “Fluff” – March 22, 2011

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“Finally, brethren, pray for us, that the word of the Lord may have free course, and be glorified, even as it is with you: – 2nd Thessalonians 3:1

I’m sure glad I’m not the only one who thinks this way — the logic goes like this:

  1. God lives outside of time, it is all now to him;
  2. God acts on prayer from us;
  3. So why can’t my prayer now affect events in the past as easily as the future?

Logically there is no reason why not but how can they if they have already happened? When Paul or Jesus in the Bible asks believers to pray for something is it not biblical for me to pray now?

Philip Yancey in his book on prayer thinks through the same thing, finding help from C.S.Lewis

“How does God’s timelessness affect prayer? C.S.Lewis decided it altogether reasonable to pray at noon for a medical consultation that might have been conducted at ten o’clock as long as we do not know the final result before we pray. “The event certainly has been decided — in a sense it was decided ‘before all worlds.’ But one of the things taken into account in deciding it, and therefore one of the things that really cause it to happen, may be this very prayer that we are now offering.” – Prayer, by Philip Yancey quoting C.S.Lewis, Miracles pg. 185-6

Prayer:“Father I pray for the Apostle Paul, as he requested so many years ago, that your words spoken through him will have free course to spread, glorifying God in my life and in my world! Amen!”

— fritz@langgang.com

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