Tips for Reading Scriptures for Inspiration

Here are my tips for reading Scriptures for inspiration. We can indeed read the Scriptures in such a way that our minds and emotions are stimulated to a more intense feeling or activity, that is, we are more inspired to do the things we are doing. These tips are not many in the hope that you will easily remember them. Following these tips I expect that you will no longer or will seldom experience depression and you will have alacrity in anything that you undertake.

The Experience of Being Inspired

If we are normal and have reached the age of puberty there comes a time in our life when a person of the opposite sex inspires us in our work. This person is always in the background of our thoughts and feelings inspiring us to do our work better and faster. Some call this the extension of falling in love. It is normal and it is the experience of a budding love affair.

What this experience tells us is that love inspires us to do better or to accomplish greater things. It is love that brings inspiration to our life. It is also love which enables us to find inspiration in the Scriptures.

Tip 1. Consider the Scriptures as God's Love Letter to You

This tip is not original with me. I heard it from Eliseo Soriano, the Presiding Minister of the Members of the Church of God International in one of his radio broadcasts. He was asked one time how he was able to memorize the whole Bible. The following was his answer, as I heard it then.

He said that when he was studying high school he would put under his pillow the love letters he received from his girl friend. Before sleeping he would read these love letters. After some time he memorized them. Then he reasoned: 'If I memorized the letters from my girl friend, why don't I memorize the love letters from God himself, the Bible?' Thus began his adventure of memorizing the whole Bible.

The Bible indeed contains God's love letters to us. Like any other love letter it tells us who is this who is courting our love, how he loves us to the extent of suffering and dying for us, and how happy we would we in our life with him. When we consider the Bible in this way it becomes the chief source of inspiration for our life and work. We go about living with a flame of love in our heart for the greatest suitor in the world, and we do all our activities for love of him.

Tip 2. Read the Bible in a Conversational Manner

Since the Bible contains love letters addressed to us personally, we reply to these letters as we read them. We can do this mentally only or we can also write down our reply in a journal. I do both. When we do this we notice that our subconscious will be trained to hold this conversation even when we are not reading the Bible. We will carry on this conversation as we do our daily activities. This is what is meant by walking with God. He becomes our constant companion, conversing with him always. And as a companion he never misses to inspire us although he also allows us to suffer for him and others. Thus you will really be reading Scriptures for inspiration.

Tip 3. Read the Song of Songs Again and Again

This is the book in the Bible which explicitly talks about human love. The mystics have always considered this book as a picture of God's love for us and our love for him. A characteristic that is unique to this book is that as we grow in the spiritual life this book becomes dearer and dearer to us. You may not understand the images used there. Do not try to understand them. Just feel the passions alluded to by the words and phrases there.

As you follow these 3 tips the whole Bible takes on a different color. What to others is simply great literature or a code of conduct or an arsenal of verses for defending one's own church doctrines becomes for you the most beloved book of your life, the one which gives you hope that at the end of time you will see yourself wedded to the most beautiful, most handsome, the wisest, the best and most powerful being of all, God himself. This is described in the last book of the Bible, the Revelation.

Those are my three tips to reading the Scriptures for inspiration. Follow these and you will never want to be without a Bible both in your heart and in your pocket, as I also do.

Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/devspirit

for your spiritual growth

http://bit.ly/alternativehealth

for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends

for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline

for earning some income from the Internet

Here are your links to download the e-books for FREE. To download a copy of A NEW CHRIST by Wallace D. Wattles click this website http://bit.ly/anewchrist. To download a free copy of A NEW EARTH by Eckhart Tolle click this website http://bit.ly/ebookanewearth. I hope that you enjoy reading these free e-books and profit much from them, as I have also profited greatly from them.

How to Conquer Your Enemies Through Kindness

You can conquer your enemies through kindness. But first we need to ask why you should conquer your enemies.

Why Should You Conquer Your Enemies?

Having enemies is one of the facts of life. If you do not have an enemy it is possible that you are living an abnormal life. Jesus had enemies. And he said that if we follow him we also would have enemies. We cannot be unlike him if we follow him.

But having too many enemies is not good for any of us. Nor is it necessary. We can turn some of these enemies into friends. By turning them into friends we have conquered them. So you need to conquer your enemies because having too many of them would indeed make your life unnecessarily miserable.

Enemies Who Will Always Remain Enemies

However there are enemies whom we can never turn into friends. They will always remain enemies. Satan and his demons will always remain our enemies. Fortunately Jesus has already conquered them by his cross. We only need to gather the spoils from them.

The same applies to the group or class of human beings who are openly agents of Satan and his demons. In the time of Jesus these were the scribes, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the leaders of the Jewish nation. Jesus never befriended these classes of human beings. He pronounced woes upon them. But he was always kind to individuals who belonged to these groups but who believed in him, like Nicodemus who was a Pharisee and Joseph of Arimathea who was a Jewish leader.

Following Jesus we can never befriend classes or groups of human beings who are openly also enemies of Jesus. In our present time this would refer to cults or organizations whose sworn objective is to destroy the institutions of genuine Christianity, like the worshipers of Satan. But we need to be kind to individual persons in these groups who are sincerely seeking for the truth.

How To Conquer Your Enemies Through Kindness

Having clarified who are the enemies whom you should not conquer through kindness, there are still plenty of enemies whom you can conquer through kindness: the neighbors who seem to always annoy you by throwing their garbage near your lot, the classmate who always depends on you for help in his homework, the relative who meddles in your family affairs, etc. These are the enemies whom you can win over by kindness.

Think Well of Them

There is always some good thing you can think that they have. Maybe it is their desire to be clean, to excel in their studies, to help sincerely. Whatever it is think well of them, find something good that they have to think of.

Speak Well of Them to Others

Nothing destroys friendship soonest than speaking evil of them in front of others. This is backbiting. But if you speak well of them before other people, they will later change their attitude towards you and they will also be kind to you.

Do Good to Them

If you do good to your enemies they will sooner or later reciprocate. I still remember the time I gave a five cent coin to a classmate whom I considered to be a possible enemy. As a result of my giving him this coin we became friends for life.

When I was taking up graduate studies a classmate of mine became an enemy because I did not obey his suggestion not to buy an electronic calculator. He wanted to do mathematical calculations by solving them on paper, not by using any machine, and he wanted me to do just like him. From the time I bought a calculator he always avoided me and never talked to me. But I continued doing good to him.

Pray for Them

Last but most important of all, pray for your enemies. More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of, said Lord Tennyson. When you pray for your enemies you will draw them nearer to the Spirit who unites us all. In due time this Spirit will make us one in our thinking and working. This is what happened with Stephen who prayed for his persecutor Saul in the story we read in the Acts of the Apostles. Saul later continued the work that Stephen left off because of this death. I can only imagine that when Saul who later was renamed Paul entered heaven Stephen was there to welcome him with a very big smile on his face, his murder by Saul forgotten forever.

You can conquer your enemies through kindness by thinking well of them, speaking well about them, doing good to them, and most especially by praying for them.

Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/devspirit

for your spiritual growth

http://bit.ly/alternativehealth

for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends

for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline

for earning some income from the Internet

Here are your links to download the e-books for FREE. To download a copy of A NEW CHRIST by Wallace D. Wattles click this website http://bit.ly/anewchrist. To download a free copy of A NEW EARTH by Eckhart Tolle click this website http://bit.ly/ebookanewearth. I hope that you enjoy reading these free e-books and profit much from them, as I have also profited greatly from them.

How to Experience Growth From Other People's Misfortunes

You and I can experience growth from other people's misfortunes. You and I have come across misfortunes in our life, some personally, others by seeing or hearing about these in the life of others. If it is a misfortune which happens to us personally, we may just say, Better luck next time. If it is a misfortune that happens to somebody else, we may simply mutter to ourselves, Too bad, that is what life is all about.

Few of us take the opportunity of intentionally experiencing growth from the misfortunes of other people. But misfortunes can help us grow. It is easy to see that misfortunes that come to us personally do give us lessons in life: to be careful later, to prepare for eventualities, to be faithful to the church, to our family, etc. But we seldom pause when we hear about the misfortunes of others and think of how these can help us grow in our life.

Growth is Shedding Off and Accumulating

That growing is a matter of shedding off and accumulating is most easily seen in the physical aspect of our growth. We know that the cells in our body die, some after a week, others after a year, and are replaced by new cells. We shed off the old cells and we accumulate new cells which in the course of time are themselves shed off and replaced by new ones.

Mental growth is also like physical growth. We leave off old ideas which we have acquired in earlier days and we acquire new ideas to help us live in the present. When we were children we really thought that the sun rose in the morning and set in the evening. Then in school we learned that this only appears to be so, the real truth is that the earth is turning around its axis.

We grow also in our skills. As children we did not know how to type. As we grow we learned typing and later we learned to type on a computer and to process data. Some older people do not want to grow in their skills. They do not want to have anything to do with computers or mobile phones.

We also grow emotionally. Where before we only have I.Q. or Intelligence Quotient, now we have E.Q., or Emotional Quotient. Some children have the habit of crying at the least provocation. When they grow older they shed off this habit and try to behave maturely, crying only when there is a real reason to be sad about.

We also grow spiritually. Again this involves a process of shedding off and accumulating new insights in the spiritual life. Many children were trained to fear God. As they grow older and experience the love of God they shed off this fear and realize God is not such a fearful person.

How Other People's Misfortunes Help Us Grow

We can experience growth from other people's misfortunes only if we take time to reflect on such misfortunes and relate the insights we get from this reflection to our life. Whether the misfortune is minor such as bumping on a glass door or serious such as death, we can always reflect on such an event and experience growth through this reflection. We shed off old ideas and old feelings and accumulate new ones.

Growth in Understanding. We can reflect on the cause of the misfortune and grow in our understanding. We become wiser. A friend of ours who habitually smokes gets cancer of the lungs. Now we really know, not just from hearsay, that smoking does cause cancer and we become careful in inhaling the smoke spewed out by other people. We get rid of old ideas like smoking is fashionable and does not kill and get hold of the new idea that smoking does cause an early death through cancer.

Growth in Empathy. We can feel what the people who experience misfortunes feel, not exactly as they feel, but in our own way. Doing this we grow in our feelings. Some people harden their feelings as they grow old. We are not supposed to do that. As we grow old in years, our feelings are supposed to grow in their clarity, depth and refinement.

Growth in Compassion. This is related to growth in empathy. But the emphasis here is not just feeling the way other people feel over their misfortunes. As the etymology of the word indicates we suffer with them. We take steps to alleviate the suffering. Maybe it is providing food for children on the other side of the globe. Maybe it is entertaining a neighbor next door who has lost a member of the family. When we help, we grow in our compassion. We become more and more like God who is all compassionate. The hardness in our heart is taken away and a softer heart is given us to grow with.

Growth in Love. This is the highest level of growth, to grow in love. It means not only caring for others. It means that we realize that all of us are joined by bonds that are stronger than any ties we can think of. This comes from reflecting that the misfortunes which befell other people are in a sense misfortunes which befell also on us because they and us are really one. In a sense we get this insight more easily from reflecting on misfortunes than on successes such as in a victory of a game. Experiencing this insight we can truly understand what John Donne said in his poem NO MAN IS AN ISLAND, that we do not ask for whom the funeral bell tolls because we know that it tolls for us. We die with each death of other people. We shed off our old self to take in a newer self. This is growth, real growth for us.

We can experience growth from other people's misfortunes by reflecting on them. Through such reflection we grow in understanding, in empathy, in compassion, and most especially, in love.

Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/devspirit

for your spiritual growth

http://bit.ly/alternativehealth

for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends

for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline

for earning some income from the Internet

Here are your links to download the e-books for FREE. To download a copy of A NEW CHRIST by Wallace D. Wattles click this website http://bit.ly/anewchrist. To download a free copy of A NEW EARTH by Eckhart Tolle click this website http://bit.ly/ebookanewearth. I hope that you enjoy reading these free e-books and profit much from them, as I have also profited greatly from them.

Scriptures For Confidence - Messages For Improving Yourself

Are you looking to the Scriptures to give you confidence? Are you searching for messages there for improving yourself? Maybe you do not feel confident in conversing with others, in addressing a crowd, or in attempting to do something. You feel your palms are cold and your knees seem to shake when you face people. There is hope for you from the Scriptures.

The Root Cause of Lack of Confidence

The root cause why we lack confidence is because we do not have a genuine, real knowledge of ourselves, or some would say, a good self-image. We do not really know ourselves. Once you know who and what you are and are thoroughly convinced of this knowledge, you will have all the confidence that you need.

Our family and teachers have the tendency of inculcating in us a false knowledge of ourselves. Most of them have drilled into our consciousness that in order to be of any value to the world we have to go to school, to obey our parents and teachers, to read books and study well. The list can go on and on. They built into our consciousness a poor self-image. They do not tell us that even before doing all the things they tell us to do we have already an infinite value, one that is greater than all the universes created or possible to be created.

But once we know ourselves as God knows us we will have all the confidence in the world.

A Way of Life, Not a Matter of a Few Verses

You may have thought that memorizing some verses which would bolster your self-confidence and recalling these verses when you feel to lose confidence would be the cure to give you confidence in what you say or do.

There are so many verses which you can use for this purpose but they will not give you constant, increasing confidence, one that grows organically with you.

You cannot have a confidence greater than that which is in God himself. God is absolute confidence. This is because God can do all things, except to contradict himself.

What I suggest is for you to take up a way of life such that you always have this confidence and you grow in this confidence. As you grow in this confidence you will constantly improve yourself, because you know you can improve yourself.

Genuine, Real Knowledge of Ourselves

Before I thought that in order to know myself better I have to study my physical, mental, and spiritual composition, my heritage from my parents, my tendencies, my idiosyncrasies, etc.

I found out that this way of knowing myself will only make me inward looking and make me more self-conscious and thus lead me to lose self-confidence.

The path to genuine, real knowledge of ourselves is the path that leads to the perfect person. Knowing more and more of this perfect person is knowing more of ourselves because whether we know it or not, whether we acknowledge it or not, our real self is in him and in him alone. This perfect person invited us to learn of him in Matthew 11:29. And the reason why our real self is in him is because he created us and he alone knows us best and if you are a Christian he lives in you. Learning more of him then enables us to know more of ourselves. As we learn of him he teaches us who and what we are.

To accept this invitation in Matthew 11:29 is to engage in a lifestyle in which we constantly learn of Jesus and learning more of him we know more of ourselves and knowing more of ourselves we believe more in the capacities put there by the creator himself.

The two more verses which I want to mention here are also statements of Jesus himself. The second verse is taken from Matthew 19:26, that with God all things are possible. The third verse is from Mark 9:23 where Jesus says that all things are possible to him who believes. The second and third verses will simply operate in your life if you live out the first verse I mentioned here, namely, Matthew 11:29. Those are the Scripture passages for confidence, messages for improving yourself.

Instead of just memorizing some verses which give you a temporary push to be self-confident what you need is a way of life that makes you confident all the way through. The ideal is to have the self-image of the Christ, since he lives in you through his Spirit if you are a genuine Christian. He is your real life. That is why Paul the apostle said that he can do all things through him who strengthened him in Philippians 4:13.

Improving Yourself

Once you live out this lifestyle of always learning of Jesus you will inevitably improve yourself. The reason for this is you become more and more like him. And you cannot improve yourself better than this God who became a human being.

That is how I also developed my self-confidence. I learn more of the Christ daily. No matter whom I am facing I know he is less than God and God is with me. In a sense I am more than him because God is with me. I suspect that the confidence that Mahatma Gandhi had in successfully opposing British power came also from a habitual reading of the Gospels, learning more of the Christ.

If you live out, not just memorize, these three verses from the Scriptures cited here, particularly from the Gospels, you will have all the confidence in the world and you will go on improving yourself because you are going to become more and more like God himself.

Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/devspirit

for your spiritual growth

http://bit.ly/alternativehealth

for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends

for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline

for earning some income from the Internet

Here are your links to download the e-books for FREE. To download a copy of A NEW CHRIST by Wallace D. Wattles click this website http://bit.ly/anewchrist. To download a free copy of A NEW EARTH by Eckhart Tolle click this website http://bit.ly/ebookanewearth. I hope that you enjoy reading these free e-books and profit much from them, as I have also profited greatly from them.