A New Beginning, another opportunity to make the known necessary changes in my life. Could this be my last chance? We are not privilege to that information. God alone holds our life in His hands.
My responsibility is to change the things in my life that need changing. He won’t do that for me…there has to be ACTION on my part. He wants to see my intentions become more than mere words or thoughts. Active consistency…a determined effort and desire to make those life changes, he will honor. He desires our response to Biblical commands of living, not end of year resolutions written down (usually the same ones year after year), but a real response to His Word and our knowledge of what we know to do! Honestly now, we do know!
What’s the old quote: It takes 21-days to develop a habit…and so, conversely it takes 21-days to break one too!
The soon ending of a year of my life always puts me in a contemplative mood. My thoughts move through idealistic dreams and goals…to the pattern of real life and on to the attempt of combining the two into something feasible and realistic. We will never accomplish anything if we stay in the unreal world of idealism! Hiding our heads in the sand does not diminish or make the real world disappear!
REAL LIFE is an everyday challenge!
Ever feel like a Zombie? And no, I’ve never seen the movie, nor do I know much about the Zombie groupies/phase. But I have seen the photos of the lifeless Walking dead with the blank stare, just going through the perfunctory motions of life. How boring…to be emotionless and without feeling, numb to life!
Have you ever looked deeply into someone’s eyes and saw NO LIFE there, blank eyes, no sparkle, no interest in their surroundings… robotic body movements? Speaking in general phrases…no depth of thoughts or emotion…just there…body is there…but mind/spirit is disengaged!
What causes this to happen? Tragedy, complicated life situations, loss of HOPE, loss of trust, unfulfilled desires…?
I think loss of HOPE and TRUST are the biggest issues causing zombie living. Next, is the inability to follow through with intentional living. Consistency of intentional living…it’s so easy to fall back into old habits…consistency is the key…and when that is not accomplished then the hopelessness of never changing becomes a weighted albatross. The feeling that change can’t be accomplished becomes the norm and hope disappears into the black cloud of zombie-ism!
I recently read an article about Zombie Bees!
The parasitic fly lays eggs in a bee’s abdomen. Several days later, the parasitized bee bumbles out of the hives often at night on a solo mission to nowhere. These bees often fly toward light and wind up unable to control their own bodies. After a bee dies, as many as 13 fly larvae crawl out from the bee’s neck. The bees’ behavior seems similar to that of ants that are parasitized and then decapitated from within by other fly larvae from the Apocephalus genus.
“When we observed the bees for some time the ones that were alive we found that they walked in circles, often with no sense of direction,” Andrew Core, a graduate student who works with Hafernik and a co-author on the new paper, said in a prepared statement, describing them as behaving “something like a zombie.” (Read about other parasites that turn their hosts into zombies in the article “Zombie Creatures.”)
It made me think about the parasitic influences we are bombarded with daily and how they can become buried deep within causing us to lose our sense of direction …walking in circles, directionless, becoming Zombie-like instead of Christ-like! Floundering off-track influenced by worldly parasites. The adversarial parasite uses us as a host, laying the larvae of joylessness, bitterness, prayerlessness, a what’s-the-use attitude, incubated in our very being until the larvae is ready to spew forth its sinful dialogue! Leaving us drained of life, debilitated, a Zombie, a shell of what we once were. The adversary knows exactly what he is doing!
I refrain from continuing the Zombie thought, (I have more notes on the subject) but I refrain because I KNOW THE ONE who says WE CAN BE OVERCOMERS. ALL HOPE is NOT lost!
This is not one of my typical NEW YEAR greetings… I truly am happy to be ALIVE and entering the year 2012! I feel this is going to be a crucial year for The Church body…we need to be ready, not lacking in our prayer, fasting, absorbing the WORD (our nourishment), drinking in the LIVING WATER! We need to be on guard, watchful and walking on the straight path. Staying ALERT and keeping our directions in hand!
There will be OVERCOMERS…those who have endured! Many Overcomer’s have left us this past year. Those who led us in the path called straight! Will we continue to follow?! I plan to keep on keeping on…how about you! I’m not promised my next breath…but I am promised a home in glory if I endure to the end.
LORD JESUS, Come Quickly!
Many Blessings in 2012,
Pam (Heartwhispers)
Greetings my Sister in Jesus name, Looking to connect with pentecostals out there in cyberspace. My name is Paul I’m a missionary from Wales which met the one God truth in 99 while in Waco Tx preaching a gospel I thought was truth. Enought about me! I’m jus here to say thank’s for the thought provoking blog I like the thought of “Intentional living” I could feed on that for the next 40 days.
The Lord bless you and your family in Jesus.
Paul