25 February 2024
Two-Minute Features | 03 March 2024 | 18 February 2024

Getting Up Early Creates Freedom, Part 1 (TMF:2300)

Friday, March 01, 2024
Peace to Live By: Getting Up Early Creates Freedom, Part 1 (TMF:2300) - Daniel Litton
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       Most days I like to get up early. In fact, you will find if you study some of the world’s most successful people, they usually get up early. So, it appears to be one of the keys to great success no matter who we are. Why is getting up early good? I like to get up early because 1) I make sure I get my devotional time in, 2) it gets the day off to a good start, and 3) I get more done that way. These are the three things I have identified in my own life related to getting up early. That has been my experience. Truly, when we get up early, it guarantees that we will get our precious devotional time in. We will read something helpful, something that gets our thoughts started off in the right direction. We will be thinking about good things, helpful things, and not rushing out of bed and trying to start our day off on the wrong foot. After we have read whatever good thing we decided (the Bible, a good book, whatever), we will spend some time in prayer with God (or perhaps we pray first). That prayer time allows us to spend essential time with the most important person in our lives.

Choosing Happiness is the Way Out, Part 2 (TMF:2299)

Thursday, February 29, 2024
Peace to Live By: Choosing Happiness is the Way Out, Part 2 (TMF:2299) - Daniel Litton
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       For us, the singular fact that we are in good relationship with God makes us completely happy. If it doesn’t, perhaps we are not totally surrendered in everything, and that is something we will really want to correct. Anyway, at the point we are totally surrendered, we can expand that happiness in our lives. We want our families to be happy. We achieve that by following God’s principles, for they themselves lead to happiness. We want good health. That requires us to take care of ourselves and not do things that give us poor health. We also want a happy career, or at least, I think most of us do. I mean, who wants to go into work dreading it everyday? Yet, I think I a lot of people do dread their jobs. If that is the case for us, perhaps we need to make a change. After all, we are pursuing happiness, so why would we want to spend 40 hours a week of our lives doing something that we dread? I don’t think so. If we are doing that, we are truly wasting our lives for the most part. And this will depend on the particular person.

Choosing Happiness is the Way Out, Part 1 (TMF:2298)

Wednesday, February 28, 2024
Peace to Live By: Choosing Happiness is the Way Out, Part 1 (TMF:2298) - Daniel Litton
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       According to Thomas Jefferson, one of the pillars of life is the “pursuit of happiness.” It’s embedded into our Declaration of Independence, and I believe it to be true. Getting to the root, at the core fundamental level, wasn’t that why God created Adam in the Garden to begin with? God created Adam because God himself wanted to be happier. It is true that God doesn’t need a relationship with any human being in order to be ‘happy.’ That being said, I think it’s also true that be being in relationship with humans, God can himself be ‘happier.’ And, I believe that we as humans can only achieve happiness by being in right relationship with the Creator. So, if we accept that we are to pursue happiness, what does that mean? Once we have established our good relationship with God, we know that everything else is secondary. For us, the singular fact that we are in good relationship with God makes us completely happy. If it doesn’t, perhaps we are not totally surrendered in everything, and that is something we will really want to correct.

Cutting the Grass in Your Head, Part 3 (TMF:2297)

Tuesday, February 27, 2024
Peace to Live By: Cutting the Grass in Your Head, Part 3 (TMF:2297) - Daniel Litton
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       In that case, I have to decide not to care. I have to say to myself, “It’s okay if they do that, and it’s okay if they don’t do that.” Or, I could say, “It’s okay if people like me and respect me, and it’s okay if they don’t.” How and why can I say those things? Well, in reality, I don’t want the person to criticize me toward others. And, I also want other people to like me. At the end of the day, however, what really matters to me is what God thinks about me. In that case, holding God in perspective, what another thinks or others think doesn’t matter. What really matters to me is God. So, in surrendering the desire to be liked and approved of, I can free my mind of all the negative thinking that those desires produce. And in surrounding that desire, what I usually find is that people do in fact like me. It allows for them to do so, because I am not blocking the fulfillment of the desire by holding onto it too strongly. God can work to make me look good when I am not too eager to do so myself.

Cutting the Grass in Your Head, Part 2 (TMF:2296)

Monday, February 26, 2024
Peace to Live By: Cutting the Grass in Your Head, Part 2 (TMF:2296) - Daniel Litton
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       And like the dog, the thought comes back wanting attention. It wants us to really think about it and become miserable. Surely, the old part of us, our old self, still wants us to be miserable if possible. That’s what the sin-nature does to us. It tries to pull us down into its ways, to get us to do things in a way that isn’t beneficial for us. So, if pushing a thought out of the way doesn’t work, what does work? The best thing I have found is to face the thought head on, no matter what it is. So, what I have to do is allow the thought to come up in my mind and observe it without judgment. In the case of the person who said something against me, I have to give up the perceived threat that that thought imposes. It may be that I’m afraid that individual will criticize me toward others, as they criticized me to my face. In that case, I have to decide not to care. I have to say to myself, “It’s okay if they do that, and it’s okay if they don’t do that.” Or, I could say, “It’s okay if people like me and respect me, and it’s okay if they don’t.”