Loud, but no effect!

There are lots of people today who are so desperate to be noticed, recognized and honored. Their lives are so noisy. The noise they make is bigger than the effect they produce. There are people who have more publicity than productivity. When I say this, I don’t intend to draw your attention to Politicians only, who most of the time fall under this bracket, but most often the common people too who are desperately trying to be loud in order to be recognized.

There are two basic things involved in a noisy life - the presentation of the life and the reality of the life. A life of noise is one in which the life is louder than reality

Some people have invited unnecessary hostility, enmity, and adversity because of the kind of attention they wanted to generate. You don’t have to actually. The commercial world may keep telling you to sell yourself effectively or may even warn you that you will not be remembered. But the point is, if you are genuine as a person, honest in all your dealings, clean in the way you do the business you will definitely be noticed and remembered too. You don’t have to blow a trumpet about who you are.

Don’t you forget that you are already a unique creation of God and blessed with unique talents and gifts. Let me remind you that there were 108 billion people who have lived throughout history. 93% of them are dead yet there are many whom we still remember because of the amount of impact they have created in history.

Jesus who made an immense impact in history by the way he was born and resurrected from the dead after the gruesome death he went through, makes a statement which is recorded in the Bible and it says, “You are the light of the world. A City situated on a hill cannot be hidden” and it further adds by saying, “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.”.

More than the noise be a light to illuminate the life of someone. You will be remembered anyway.

You can follow us on Twitter

All about me!

Nobody has fully conquered "self". In fact, most people haven’t even dealt with it at a conscious level! God doesn’t just kill you and remove self out of His way. He expects you to exercise self-control surrendering your will to Him.

Have you consciously dealt with your own selfishness? What do you do when someone comes against you? Who do you think of first? Do you consider the other person, or are you consumed in defending yourself?

Most of the time it is all about “I”, “me” and “mine”. We wanted to be treated fairly, benefit the most and get all the  best possible opportunities. The lists are endless. But if you notice, most of the time people want all the privileges at the cost of others and sometimes at the cost of paying back harshly because they think they were not fairly treated therefore want to retribute shrewdly.

People for whom the end goals is making money they choose any path that's convenient for them, either just or unjust. Bible warns it by stating, “Wealth obtained by fraud will dwindle, but whoever earns it through labor will multiple it.”. Money is not a blessing in itself; we have wrongly understood that. Many are restless even after gaining a lot. God is not a vending machine – He is Lord and King! You can’t just insert a coin, push His button, and take out whatever you want, whenever you want it. Prosperity wasn’t provided for you to consume it upon your own lust.

Your necessities are added to you as byproducts for seeking God and loving one another. If you concentrate on blessing others, you’ll be blessed in the process. Create a community where people will learn to care for each other without any selfish motives. Jesus' words are so powerful when He said this, "Love others as you love yourself". This is not a religious caption but a way of life.

You can follow us on Twitter

“What do you want to be remembered for?”

Work is an integral part of human life. We don't just work for mere survival. God has gifted us with dreams and passion to excel and exhibit the God given abilities in our work place. Do we enjoy what we do? I know we are all aware of the fact, that the demands of work and the nature of work has drastically changed from what it was a decade ago, but we still have a sacred responsibility to be able to give our best.

The Bible has these lines that not only encourages how we contribute in the work zone but also to give our best. Follow these verses, “Whatever your hands find to do, do with all your strength.” and another verse says, “Whatever you do, do it from the heart, as something done for the Lord and not for people.”. Working with all honesty and giving your best brings blessings from above.

You are not a machine just to accomplish what is given to you by any means. Harvard business review says it is very important to build an ‘ethical career’. The first step requires shifting to a mindset we term moral humility—the recognition that we all have the capacity to transgress if we’re not vigilant. Moral humility pushes people to admit that temptations, rationalizations, and situations can lead even the best of us to misbehave. It encourages them to think of ethics as not only avoiding the bad but also pursuing the good.

Consider these two questions the management guru Peter Drucker asked, which is worth pondering:

“What do you want to be remembered for?” and

“What do you want to contribute?” 

David Brooks in his book “The Road to Success” distinguishes between résumé virtues (skills, abilities, and accomplishments that you can put on your résumé, such as “increased ROI by 10% on a project”) and eulogy virtues (things people praise you for after you’ve died, such as being a loyal friend, kind, and a hard worker). Although the two categories may overlap, résumé virtues often relate to what you’ve done for yourself, whereas eulogy virtues relate to the person you are and what you’ve done for others—that is, your character.

Character and Competence has to always go hand in hand. Is your devotion to God translating to honesty in your work place? Give your best and stay blessed.

You can follow us on Twitter

Being human is better than sainthood!

Finally, we have arrived into the New year, a privilege, which few have missed. Survival of life is a gift from God and it is not impacted by caste, creed, color and status but purely by the Grace of God. Wishing you all, an enriched life with peace, happiness and joy. We all know that the exciting moment of new year does not necessarily sustain us, it may to an extent but what sustains us is the lasting peace and happiness in our heart.

I am glad to be part of my school group who are at times cynical, naughty, religious but seem to live a life full of fun and laughter. This one quote from my friends sounded humorous and skeptical but made sense too, to some extent, “Don’t be too excited about this New Year stuff. Only the calendar will change. The spouse, job and targets remains the same.”.

Years don’t bring good fortune; years are not good or bad per se. The Bible cites, “You crown the year with your goodness.”. God created the universe of time, space and matter. He did it instantaneously by His own omnipotence and spoken will. And here we are under time, space and matter. Therefore, It is not logical to say 2020 will be good or bad compared to previous year.

You may not have accomplished all you had set for 2019 but you survived and it just means that God is not done with you yet, I mean the good things you are supposed to deliberate and create the momentum of goodness and happiness to one another. This is possible only by the sovereign God who is all powerful and all loving and willing to transform you to be a better person who could illuminate light where darkness is.

We live in times where people are becoming insanely savage, hunting down innocent lives, raping young children and babies, taking the law into their own hands for their personal benefits and misusing power for their selfish cause. Do you think Laws and Government would be successful to impact? Maybe to some extent, but solely depends upon how individuals learn to live. You don’t have to be a saint, but at least be human. Let’s impact people to be human.

Religion, government, mysticism & laws were not successful so far in the world because they are all man made. All were misused and abused time and again. You need a Savior who could transform you so that you remain to be Human, a better Human. In the Bible God invites people to approach him to be transformed.

You can follow us on Twitter

A personal Assessment of 2019

If you have to look back at 2019 and take stock of your greatest achievement or loss what would that look like? To know which will make its ways on the top in terms of all your greatest achievement can be a difficult exercise, and for some very personal too. The challenge to do an analysis like this is that for every individual the parameters and how they define their achievements and losses are sometimes relative and varied.

Generally, people count their ‘havings’ and ‘possessions’ as greatest achievements. Anything that has a monetary value gives people a temporary sense of satisfaction. In human standards people find meaning in life in what they possess. The more stuff they have, they more it possesses them. Young people consider the year to be successful and a year of fun by the amount of time they were able to hang around with friends, partying and making some money in the course of time.

Usually the understanding of achievements is confined to abundance. Abundance in things and material. Little do all know that what disorients people is not the scarcity but abundance. Nicholoas Taleb American essayist and scholar puts it beautifully “Abundance is harder for us to handle than scarcity.”. If you look around at the madness created in our nation, it is not from the people of the middle class or below poverty line, but from people who are tycoons and the famous making a mess in the country with their atrocities and deception. What does that say?

Leonard Woolf, the great British man of letters, husband of Virginia Woolf, the essayist, says, “It seems like I’ve done perfectly useless work for the last five to seven years.”. “Meaning is found in something you create, experience or change.” Or, “Meaning is found in something you do, someone you love, and something you hope for.”.

Relationship with God, I mean the personal relationship, is the greatest achievements because that transforms us to be a better person God intended us to be. May God help you to unfold the purpose of God in our lives. The Bible says “What does it benefit someone to gain the whole world and yet lose his life?”. Make your life worthy of living and spread kindness and humaneness everywhere and that can happen when you accept not His teaching alone but consider building a meaningful relationship. Wishing you a great year ahead.

You can follow us on Twitter

loneliness & Restlessness!

As human being we all happen to be lonely at some point of time. Especially, when our loved ones go far away from us, or in some cases when they leave the earth permanently. The other areas can include loss of job, broken friendship, broken marriage, altercations, comparing ourselves with someone who is materialistically sound and feeling miserable. This is particularly common among children and young people. Also, among the old in some cases.

History and other field of science go with the Biblical model of creation due to its compatibility. If you follow the story on the creation of the first man Adam it is recorded that God found man to be lonely and therefore, He found the need to create Eve. The woman was designed for companionship and to be a helper to man. God established family, put all of us in setting of a community in order keep us intact with each other. We are not created to operate from ourselves, and live within ourselves.

Today instead of Eve, the woman, man is finding "Steve", a man for himself and trying to replace woman. Does it give him a long-lasting happiness? Some may agree, yes it does, but do they truly know the reality? Happiness is not in finding something new and different. Man has continually tried to invent and find something new and glory on it.  And then, very soon the excitement extinguishes, he finds himself back to loneliness again. "Steve" has not made a difference in his life.

Materialism and temporary pleasures don't give permanent happiness. It does for a very very short time and then people start hunting for something else. The law of pleasure tells that each time one goes to find the illegitimate pleasure in wrong places he may have to go much deeper, but it is less satisfying. And then the aftermath effect is even more devastating because you become the victim of guilt and loneliness. 

Today most of the people are suffering with some serious guilt and feeling lonely and restless. And to get rid of the same they entangle themselves with wrong things as part of fun activities doing things publicly and most of the time privately.

The problem is personal and to do with person hood. Therefore, you and I need a personal God. Well I am not pointing to a season of Christmas or Santa Claus because that cannot save us from our loneliness too. Religion and festivals have less lasting effect on human being. It cannot deliver us and give us peace and internal happiness.

We need a savior and Christmas is all about relationship, forgiveness, humaneness, love and care. Would you consider finding lasting happiness for your soul and live a fulfilled life? The Bible records by saying, "I came that they may have life and life in abundance." God bless you and have a fulfilled life.

https://knowgod.com/en/fourlaws

You can follow us on Twitter

Handling Crucial communication!

When it is comes to communication, the biggest challenge for all of us is to know how we handle an important conversation with grace and maintain a cordial relationship. Sometimes we witness a conversation becoming shrewd, aggressive, deceptive and we wish if they were honest in what they just said. Most of the time we think the content of the message should be good, Not true completely. “Intent precedes content”, meaning when your intentions are right and mutually benefiting then for sure your conversation becomes pleasing.

How do we typically handle crucial conversation?

We can avoid them,

We can face and handle them poorly,

We can face them and handle them well.

Have you noticed when it matters most, we do our worst, that is because our emotions don’t exactly prepare us to converse effectively? We are our worst enemies—and we don’t realize it.

First focus on what we really want?

Anytime a conversation turns to be selfish then for sure the disagreement level gets higher resulting to contempt. “When we are not prepared for a healthy communication we move to a silence or violence mode"

What do we mean?

Silence

Masking: consists of understanding or selectively showing our true opinions. Example Sarcasm and couching

Avoiding:  involves steering completely away from sensitive subjects.

Withdrawing: means pulling out of a conversation altogether

Violence

Controlling: where we use all power to control the conversation and turn it to our favor.

Labeling: when we label a person with a negative remark in order to show us superior or turn things to our favor.

Attacking: When all effort is taken to attack with words in order to win the situation and get the person out of the track.

The quality of your communication depends upon the state of your heart and that again depends upon your relationship with God and with people. Thomas Merton puts it beautifully, “We are not at peace with others because we are not at peace with ourselves, and we are not at peace with ourselves because we are not at peace with God”. Let us be conscious to be graceful yet assertive.”. Bring positivity and healing through your communication

You can follow us on Twitter