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“Moment by moment, day by day, year by year, decade by decade, choices create a direction.”

A thought by Henry Cloud, from his book, The Law of Happiness: How Spiritual Wisdom and Modern Science Can Change Your Life (The Secret Things of God) (p. 12). Howard Books. Kindle Edition. (Click on the book title to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.)

They do, they really do.

Henry goes on, “Or deciding on a direction will dictate each choice. And that direction of how we invest our lives is under our control. We all have the choice to invest ourselves in living in ways that produce happiness or continuing down a road that experience and science has shown will never fulfill us.

“But it does bring up a question. If spending all of our time pursuing the 10 percent (as if it is going to be the key to happiness) does not work, then why in the world do we do it? Why do we think that ‘if I only had . . . then I would be happy?’”

He later says, “When we are not eating the fruits of the good life that God has created and think that we know what is going to satisfy us instead, we will continue to go hungry. Unsatisfied. Unhappy. Unfulfilled. But because we do not see how we get seduced into thinking the human race can play God and figure it out on our own, we continue to not see the trees with the good fruits that are available right in front of us. We fall prey to the temptations of advertising, the media, culture, materialism, sensuality, or faulty comparisons with others, among other things . . . It is the temptation to not live life in accord with the design that God wired into all of life, not investing in the real trees that are fruitful.

“And I don’t know about you, but for me, following spiritual truths is always hard. I know God’s principles and yet I hear the Serpent say, ‘But . . . you are only one more gadget away from contentment,’ or other such lies. So, it is nice to remind myself that this is not just theology or Sunday School. It is also empirical data. Science says that when we do the activities that the Bible tells us to do, we are better off for it.

“So, that is our challenge. Live life investing in the ways that it was designed to be lived. When we do, as we shall see, happiness will follow.”

And that is what we want isn’t it? 

Yes, yes!

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