bradglenn79

They say jealousy is a green eyed monster. I’d say jealousy is a thief. Jealousy steals happiness, joy, trust, and love. Jealousy can take a healthy relationship and erode every bit of good, leaving broken hearts, animosity, and sometimes hatred.

Jealousy is one of the emotions that I haven’t felt to a great degree. It’s an emotion that I have experienced though. Jealousy doesn’t hurt one person, it hurts all involved as well as others that are nearby.

What gets me about jealousy is why be with someone you don’t trust? Why hand someone your heart, that you can’t depend on to keep it safe? Why devote time and energy to a relationship that can never be forever? “Well I trust my significant other!” If that’s the case what are you jealous of?

There is no one on this planet that can be stolen if they don’t want to be. If someone thinks your girl is beautiful then smile and be appreciative. She is beautiful and she chose you. If someone thinks your man is gorgeous, he is and he chose to be with you.

I think once we realize that our partners are absolutely amazing and that’s why we are with them, and we are equally as amazing and that’s why they are with us. That is when we realize there is no place for being jealous. Be grateful for who you have, and who God has put here for you.

I love you.

This life is full of numbers. Some of them absolutely crucial and some that are as fleeting as a butterfly. The numbers start even before you are born.

Let’s start at the beginning with the number 40. That’s full term pregnancy. (I didn’t know that until I was grown) It takes 40 weeks to make a person from scratch. That is purely amazing to me, and makes it awfully hard for me to understand people that don’t believe in God.

How about the number 13. Some think it’s bad luck, some think it is just a number, and I think on average it is how many years you spend making it through school. For some of us those are some of the most wonderful years of our life, for some it is harder.

How about 24? 24 is a very busy number. In Math it is the smallest number with eight divisors. In science it is the atomic number of chromium. In Revelation 4:4 “around the throne there were 24 other thrones, seated on them were the 24 elders. They wore white with crowns of gold on their heads”. And in day to day life it is the amount of hours it takes to make up one day.

During that day we are given that time each day to make a difference. To change our lives or the lives of others. You are given 86,400 seconds in which to do good for someone. How do you spend that time? How are we spending our time to share the love of God with people around us? How many of those 86,400 moments are wasted doing something inconsequential? It literally takes less than a second to say hey, less time than that to smile at someone having a hard day, you could show God’s love in less than a second.

Today use those seconds to change someone’s life. If you do it out of love yours will almost always be the life you change. I love you.

I will start this post with a confession. However much time you spend on your “Social Media” I’m on it more. Not something I’m proud of but it is something I’m willing to admit. Depending on work load and what’s going on in my head I may spend more time before lunch with my face buried in the phone than you do in an entire day. I have zero reason to be, I’m not using it for business, I’m not using it to bring people together for a purpose, and I’m not getting paid to scroll the seemingly never ending videos, posts, and memes. Social media has taken over most of the world.

Now let me say I’m not against social media, I’m not against using it to post things you want to share with large groups( that’s how I share this blog), and I’m not against using it to stay in touch with people you aren’t able to see as frequently as you would like. At what point do we go from I can connect with everyone to disconnection from reality. We have connected with a high school friend in Spain but don’t talk to the person sitting right beside us.

A bit of self reflecting now, if people only know about my life through my Facebook, do they know my struggles? If they see the smiles posted in pictures do they know how much I hurt inside? If they see me post motivational pictures and quotes, do they realize I am struggling to keep my head above water? Look at it a different way. If you only know what your friends look like through the front facing camera on their smartphone do you see the pain in their eyes? If you only see their social media do you know what they need, how you can help, or how to love them?

We need more social and less media. We need more let’s go and do, and less check out this meme. We need more I love you and less “they reacted to your post”. We need more face to face and less FaceTime. We need less love for technology and more of God’s love.

Get in front of someone today and let them know you love them. I love you.

There are so many obstacles in life today. I would even go out on a limb and venture to say more than ever before. We are in the midst of an ever changing world, where the only constant is the change.

I said before that we are defined by how we react to the challenges. We are judged by the color of our skin, the kind of car we drive, the size of our bank account, and the life we put on display. That’s what I am struggling with today.

We hear from preachers and religious types that God will “turn your mess into a message.” I don’t doubt that for a minute, in fact I know it to be a guarantee. What I ask myself is what kind of message am I sending? Jeff said this morning that our message is important, what is more important is how that message is perceived. If you are sending the wrong message but you have a big circle of influence how much damage are you doing?

While we are working through life, dealing with struggles, and climbing your mountains, be wary of the message you’re sending. Remember perception isn’t always reality but for more people than not it is received that way. No matter your struggle remember to be kind. It takes almost no time and exactly no money to be a good person. There is no greater message than Love.

I love you.

We tend to miss the miraculous, caught up in the mundane. I have read that many times over and even heard it in church Sunday. It is a very true statement. We get so focused on our everyday that we miss the things around that would give us joy.

I’ll propose the same statement in a little different way. How often do we miss the beauty because it doesn’t come the way we expect it to? We are so used to seeing beautiful people on magazine covers, on tv, or on the internet. We are so accustomed to seeing beautiful art, photography, paintings, sculptures in museums. We are so convinced that the most amazing music comes only at the price of admission to your favorite concert.

There is zero doubt that beauty is found in all of those places but I know for a fact it’s not the only places. Some of the most amazing art is when a child learns to write their own name. One of the most amazing forms of music is achieved when someone learns to play an instrument they have longed to play their whole life. The most beautiful image I have ever seen is that of the first smile of a baby right after birth.

Since we sometimes miss these examples, how often do you think we miss the little things God uses to bless us. How many times have we asked for a prayer to be answered and then stepped over the blessing we asked for? How many times have we asked for our hearts to be filled with joy, and then overlooked an opportunity to be good to someone? We need to always be looking for our blessings in the everyday, and beauty in the broken.

I love you.

In my industry you hear that slogan all of the time. Sometimes we tend to overlook it because it is everywhere. That is until someone gets hurt. Where I used to work technician safety was a big part of my review and how they knew if I was doing a good job.

As I am leaving one of the jobs I work on there is a sign. It says “Take Safety Home With You”. This is something I am not sure we are as good at. At work it is second nature to make sure you work safely. For everyone there is a different reason, for me it’s because I have a family that I need to be around for. But taking safety home, I guess I never thought about that.

While thinking about safety at home I have come up with tons of things I can do. Things I can use to limit hazards, techniques we can start doing to make day to day less stressful physically and rules we can implement to keep everyone SAFE.

What about really being safe? Safe and secure in knowing I am on the right path. Safety in knowing my kids are living the way they should live. The security of knowing just where I am going when I am done on earth. Why is this the part of safety we tend to overlook? Why do we only seem to be concerned with what happens here on this planet, when eternity is so much longer than the time we stay in this physical form?

So today I will take safety home with me, and there is no safer way than to take time to get into the word of God, get into praising him, and get me out of the way.

Lord as I go through my day please stay with me keep me spiritually safe, physically safe, and allow me to walk with you through this journey you have placed me on. Amen

I love you.

When you think about where you want to go, what is in the way? When you think about what you want to become, what obstacle do you see most challenging? When you think about the desires of your heart, what is stopping you?

There are many ways to look at this question. For some it is quite literal “What is in the way?” My pastor will get fired up on stage and he will talk about people driving slow in the left lane. In this situation it is an object or person impeding your way. Jeff’s a busy guy he’s got to get there in a hurry so those people are what’s in the way.

For other people their goal is change, it is growth, it is a new life, and the object in the way is Fear. Fear can be an insurmountable obstacle for some. Change as I have talked about before can be terrifying and can breed fear inside that people may have trouble getting through. Fear can control their lives and cause them to stay still when all of their body wants to get out and move.

For still others the thing in the way is themselves. I know the most about that one because that is me. I struggle with what my heart desires versus what my brain thinks I should have. My heart longs to make a difference in people’s lives but my brain says you haven’t got your own life together. My heart wants to bring a little of heaven to earth through love, kindness, and friendship. My brain has convinced me that this will never happen because I am not worthy of love. My heart wants to do great things, all the while my brain has me convinced nothing good will ever come from me.

As these thoughts creep into my head they limit my ability. They cause me to pull back to keep from coming up short. They keep me where I am not allowing me to achieve my goals. I have to take a step back and look at it as a whole. Then a peace comes over me and I know that I can do all things through Christ. After all they once said “Nothing good can come from Nazareth.”

I love you.

I struggle with a lot of things in life. Like I have said repeatedly life is hard. I have come to the realization that what happens to you is life, how you react to it is who you are.

I have reacted, over reacted, and failed to react at every possible wrong time in my life. I have reacted out of anger and hostility, when the reaction needed at the time was a kind word. I have lashed out violently, where there should have been a gentle touch. I have done nothing, while I knew I should be standing up for someone. I have allowed people to feel unloved from my lack of any reaction at all.

What I failed to realize is that in this life how you react is more important than what happens to you. What happens to us is how we grow, how we react is how we see how far we’ve come. It’s also how the world sees us and knows who we are.

I heard today “reaction determines your reach”. That hit me hard, it never crossed my mind but how you react can limit or increase your audience. When we think about how we react and react out of love and not anger our audience grows. When we use the love God have us to deal with the situations people from the outside will see God through you. When we are slow to anger and more willing to give love people are going to be drawn to you like a magnet. When we love like Jesus did we can reach the whole world.

Lord today let me be willing to react not out of my feelings, but out of the Holy Spirit. Let the troubles of this world be my triumphs for your glory. Let people see you through me. Amen.

I love you.

If jealousy is a sin and I am trying to walk a Christian life, then why am I so jealous. Not jealous of things or people, I don’t want what anyone on this earth has. I work hard for what I have, both material things and relationships.

I have written about loss a lot because it’s something I struggle with. Having the people in your life pass on is so difficult. They have moved on from this world to a place where there is no sadness, no pain, no suffering. They are in the presence of our God and experiencing love like we can only imagine. I am so happy for my loved ones that have left the earth.

But I am flesh and bone, merely a man so with that being said I am jealous. They are in paradise and we are here on earth. They have no struggle no sadness, and some of us fight sadness to get through the day. They have no pain and I have friends that have to take medicine that destroys their body just to be able to function through the day.

I’m not jealous about them making it to paradise where they don’t hurt, don’t cry, don’t want for anything. What I am jealous of is that they found a way to be happy without me.

I love you.

This isn’t a post about Geometry. It’s a post about life. We are taught early on that circle is a shape, there is no end, and no beginning. I happen to know that circles can be so much more than just a shape.

The wheel, arguably one of the most amazing man made inventions is a circle. It has allowed this world to grow and thrive. The basketball goal is a circle, unless you’re at the fair, that has carried people out of poverty into prosperity and allowed them to give back to their families and communities. Then there is the circle of life, the way the world keeps going with birth, life, and death.

The circle I am talking about today is your circle. Your circle of friends, your circle of influence, the social circle in which you travel in. That is quite possibly the most important circle of them all. This circle is where we have all of the people we hold most dear. The family and friends that we know we can count on through everything.

One thing I have found is that this circle tends to get neglected unless we need something. This circle ends up being lower on the list when we want to praise and encourage someone. Most of the time I think that’s because we feel like the spikes in this wheel have their stuff together. Sometimes that couldn’t be farther from the truth. In this circle there is someone who needs you, they need to hear it’s going to be ok, they need to know they’re doing a great job, they need to hear I love you. My best advice is if that person isn’t you today, take the first step, a simple text, an email, call them on the phone, or swing by and let them see your smiling face. Because if you are not that person today, you will be soon and you’ll be looking desperately for that smile. “You mean more to me than you know.” Is eight words that can change someone’s world.

Get out there and love someone because God loves you.

I love you.