circumstances on Changing Habits

What Determines Happiness?  Imagine a movie theater full of a hundred people. These hundred individuals represent the full continuum of happiness: Some are exceptionally happy, others less so, and ...

When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.

The circumstances we ask God to CHANGE are often the circumstances God is using to CHANGE US.

Attitudes are more important than facts

I want to change my circumstances. God wants to change me.

Sometimes the circumstances at hand force us to be braver than we actually are, and so we knock on doors and ask for assistance. Sometimes not having any idea where we’re going works out better than w...

God doesn’t want to keep changing your circumstances; he wants to change you.

What do you think would make you happier? Take a moment to consider. Might it be . . . A relationship? More flexibility at work? A new job that better provides for you and your family? An extra bedroo...

Happy people look beyond their circumstances to someone so big that by his grace, even great difficulties become manageable—and provide opportunities for a deeper kind of happiness.

While taking a flight in a small plane in Washington state, marriage counselors Les and Leslie Parrot were given some interesting information from their pilot: We crossed over the islands of Puget S...

Circumstances which we have resented, situations which we have found desperately difficult, have all been the means in the hands of God of driving the nails into the self-life which so easily complain...

Notes on the Passage Besieged from All Angles:  The context of this passage is best summed up with the words recorded throughout the letter: Trouble, Distress, Suffering, Hardship, Death at work, Ja...

Most of us recognize that self-deception hampers our ability to grow and live healthy lives. The Arbinger Institute takes it a bit further in their best-selling book Leadership and Self-Deception ...

Where transformation is actually carried out is in our real life, where we dwell with God and our neighbors. . . . First, we must accept the circumstances we constantly find ourselves in as the place ...

[Contemporary Research suggests there is] little correlation between the circumstances of people’s lives and how happy they are.

My whole outlook upon everything that happens to me should be governed by these three things: my realization of who I am, my consciousness of where I am going, and my knowledge of what awaits me when ...

Everything can be taken from a man (or woman) but one thing: To choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's way.

Preaching Commentary Besieged from All Angles The context of this passage is best summed up with the words recorded throughout the letter: Trouble, Distress, Suffering, Hardship, Death at work, Jar...

In times like these, it helps to recall that there have always been times like these.

We confess our sins to you, today, O Lord. We confess that we sometimes find it difficult to believe that you are actually involved in our day-to-day experiences, that you actually impact our circumst...

The novel Martin Chuzzlewit , written by Charles Dickens, is one of his least successful works, though Dickens himself commented to a friend that he believed it was his greatest work up to its pu...

If you let your circumstances define the way you see God, you are a prisoner of perspective. Or worse, a prisoner of your past mistakes! But if you let God define the way you see your circumstances, y...

On a daily basis we’re faced with two simple choices. We can either listen to ourselves and our constantly changing feelings about our circumstances, or we can talk to ourselves about the unchanging t...

Perhaps the most intense place to experience drifting is commonly known as the EAC, the East Australian Current. If you’ve ever seen the Disney Pixar film Finding Nemo, you’ve been exposed to the EAC,...

Gratitude magnifies the spirit and promotes well-being. In good times and bad, authentic appreciation creates perspective, literally stepping back from the distractions of the moment and affirming som...

Most alarming is the absence of peace among our youth. Research from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) is showing an epidemic of mental health problems among eighteen- to twenty-four-year...

I have read that each of us experiences a relatively significant crisis on an average of once every six months or so.

“It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who li...

Christian leaders tend to use the Bible as their exclusive source for framing Christian speaking and living. Yet only through a kind of “thick description” of our present circumstances, being attentiv...

Preaching Commentary Summary of the Text What is the role of prayer on life’s journey? For James, its role is central. A letter that has been historically bashed for an emphasis on “works” over “fa...