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“Our capacity to live in denial about the law of consequences is huge and is damaging to the soul.”

A thought by John Ortberg (2014-04-22) from his book, Soul Keeping: Caring For the Most Important Part of You (p. 91). Zondervan. Kindle Edition. (Click on the title to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.) It is so easy to live in a state of denial isn’t it?   Such as… …I can eat a dozen Cinnamon Rolls from Winchell’s and it won’t affect my weight. …I can have an affair but it won’t hurt my marriage. …I can let my temper fly and it won’t hurt my relationships. …I can have an attitude at work and get away with it. …I can spend, spend, spend and I won’t get into debt. …I can never go to church or never read my Bible and it won’t hurt my relationship with Christ. But no matter how much you believe those statements your denial of the law of consequences will be huge and damaging. Now there is also a positive side to this law of consequences.   If I live by or use the law of consequences for my good then it will have a positive effect in my life.   Such as…  

“When my mind focuses on that which is good, the integrating power of the soul calls to my will to choose it, and my body to live it.”

A thought by John Ortberg (2014-04-22) from his book, Soul Keeping: Caring For the Most Important Part of You (2014-04-22). Soul Keeping: Caring For the Most Important Part of You (p. 77). Zondervan. Kindle Edition. (Click on the title to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.) Here we see the importance of focus and how it can make such a difference in our behavior and how we handle life. John tells of an experiment with 450 students at UCLA.   “Researchers divided them into two groups and asked one group to remember some trivial memory: ten books you had been assigned to read in high school. They asked the other group to try to remember the Ten Commandments. The students in the ten books memory group engaged in typical widespread cheating. The students in the Ten Commandments group did not cheat at all. Merely the act of trying to remember the Ten Commandments made them think, ‘I was made for something better.’ This despite the fact that not a single student in the Ten Commandm

“The greatest predictor of mortality among senior citizens in our day ends up being their grandchildren…”

A thought by John Ortberg (2014-04-22) from his book, Soul Keeping: Caring For the Most Important Part of You (p. 74). Zondervan. Kindle Edition. (Click on the title to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.)   Here is the end of this thought, “…ends up being their grandchildren’s GPAs.   Let me show you what he is talking about.   “Sin’s ability to disintegrate the soul is the subject of a book by a Duke professor named Dan Ariely. In The Honest Truth about Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone — Especially Ourselves , Ariely is astounded by how widespread people’s tendency is to cheat, be self-centered, lie, and be deceitful. He discovered that we are driven by two primary motivations. One, we want to receive selfish gain. We want to avoid pain. We want it so much that we are willing to lie or cheat or deceive for it. We want what we want, and we’re willing to cheat to get it. Two, we want to be able to look in the mirror and think well of ourselves. That means we all want to

“If the Devil can’t make you sin, he will make you busy, because either way your soul will shrivel.”

A thought by John Ortberg (2014-04-22) from his book, Soul Keeping: Caring For the Most Important Part of You (p. 59). Zondervan. Kindle Edition. (Click on the title to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.) John continues, “Our world will divert your soul’s attention because it is a cluttered world. And clutter is maybe the most dangerous result, because it’s so subtle.”   And then, “The busy soul gets attached to the wrong things, because the soul is sticky. The Velcro of the soul is what Jesus calls ‘desire.’ It could be desire for money, or it could simply be desire for ‘other things.’” Oh I know there are situations, priorities that takes time to do.   But the key is, do we use them as an excuse and in turn let them slowly rob our soul of its closeness to God.   “I’m too busy to have a quiet time.”   “I work so hard during the week so I don’t have time to spend in a focus time at church.”   And our soul slowly shrivels even without us realizing it. “I am working so hard

“We mistake our clutter for life.”

A thought by John Ortberg (2014-04-22) from his book, Soul Keeping: Caring For the Most Important Part of You (p. 59). Zondervan. Kindle Edition. (Click on the title to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.) I understand that.   I was talking with a friend today about the difference in my life today.   The fact that I am retired means that I have more control over my life.   I now do what really matters to me.   What about you?   Are you doing what really matters to you?   You can do that and still get paid.   It is all about priority. As John puts it, “If we cease to be busy, do we matter? A person preoccupied with externals — success, reputation, ceaseless activity, lifestyle, office gossip — may be dead internally and not even recognize it. And our world has lots of ‘other things.’ You can get them from infomercials; you can buy them online; you can collect them in your garage and put them in your will. It takes a little, such a tiny little uncluttered space to give the seed

“I am so wrapped up in the hurt I have received that I do not notice the hurt I inflict.”

A thought by John Ortberg (2014-04-22) from his book, Soul Keeping: Caring For the Most Important Part of You (p. 55). Zondervan. Kindle Edition. (Click on the title to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.) I appreciate John’s honesty in this thought.   The total thought is, “The world diverts my soul-attention when it encourages me to think of myself more as a victim than as a human. I am so wrapped up in the hurt I have received that I do not notice the hurt I inflict.”   And I know if we are also honest we could say the same thing about ourselves. We get so self-focused but there are little things that we can do that can change this focus.   He says, "A friend of mine sent me a few sentences from an article she saw online on 'How to Stay Christian in College': . . . make small sacrifices. Make a vow to wake up and go to breakfast every morning, even if your first class isn’t until eleven a.m. Choose a plain cheese pizza rather than pepperoni. You’ll be surprised

“Despite the rise of the mental health profession, people are becoming increasingly vulnerable to depression.”

A thought by John Ortberg (2014-04-22) from his book, Soul Keeping: Caring For the Most Important Part of You (p. 46). Zondervan. Kindle Edition. (Click on the title to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.) A Study in The Journal of the American Medical Association showed that in the twentieth century, people who lived in each generation were three times more likely to experience depression than folks in the generation before them.   Now why is that?   John writes, “Martin Seligman, a brilliant psychologist with no religious ax to grind, has a theory that it’s because we have replaced church, faith, and community with a tiny little unit that cannot bear the weight of meaning. That’s the self. We’re all about the self. We revolve our lives around ourselves. Ironically, the more obsessed we are with our selves, the more we neglect our souls.” Now there are chemical imbalances that bring about depression.   That needs to be checked but a self focus goes a long way to bring i

“Somebody said that if you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room.”

A thought by John Ortberg (2014-04-22) from his book. Soul Keeping: Caring For the Most Important Part of You (p. 21). Zondervan. Kindle Edition. (Click on the title to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.) We want so much to impress other people.   To show them that we are the smartest but in reality that is a waste of time.   The key is to learn, to be challenged to grow not for us to impress or to bring others down. John spent some time with Dallas Willard who was a philosophy professor at the University of Southern California and a great Christian writer.   Dallas told him that, “Toward the end of one of his philosophy classes a student raised an objection that was both insulting toward Dallas and clearly wrong. Instead of correcting him, Dallas gently said that this would be a good place to end the class for the day. Afterward, a friend approached Dallas: ‘Why did you let him get away with that? Why didn’t you demolish him?’ Dallas replied, ‘I was practicing the discipli