Don't Let Life Pass You By

There's nothing worse than an unfulfilled life. That's nothing that my momma or daddy told me; it's something I've learned. Many of us let grand opportunities for personal, financial, educational, career, and spiritual successes slip by because of fear. Sometimes, we fear of being successful because of what others will say or think about us. Or maybe that these successes require much work after achieving to maintain them. So many factors we can weigh in to make since of our foolishness. That's including me. I remember growing up how I used to see the old schools play with us young bucks countless games of 21. Back then, I used to wonder, why are they scrounging to make ends meet for themselves? Why are they providing or attempting to provide a better life for themselves and their families? Easy answer, they let life pass them by. At that time, they were trying to relive their glory days through pummeling us at games of 21 taps (dudes from Raleigh know what I'm talking about). Lately, I've found myself thinking and thinking hard about my own life. God, haven't I let my 32 years of life pass me by. Being caught up by foolishness around me. Being distracted and embattled by drama. Allowing fear, doubt, and procrastination hinder various forward movements to obtaining the five areas of success. But today, I've made up in my mind be and do what God has laid out for me. As I learned earlier, you can't be afraid to be you because God has predestined you to do and be something above all you can ask or think (Ephesians 3:20). Wow, what a statement. Here's the kicker. We've got to make the choice of not letting our lives go to waste. As Paul would say, not frustrating the grace of God. Jesus is the perfect example of not letting his life pass him by. Every opportunity, every moment he took hold of and became extremely successful. No matter how the Pharisees tried to throw him over cliffs. No matter how many times the disciples said or did things out of selfish ambitions. He continually moved forward and became the greatest success story of our world history. My question is to you, will you let life pass you by? Or will you waste and later on be filled with regrets? I hope this makes you think. I know it does for me.

Til next time (and not a long time from now, my friends, I promise) dgwo

References:

Acts 10:38

When Bitterness Goes Away

Man, I won't lie, I did an honest introspection of my life this year and most of it was feelings of bitterness. As human beings, we have the tendency to get bitter when life doesn't go the way we planned. Sometimes, we beat ourselves up because we made a big mistake here and there and can't learn to forgive ourselves. At times, we tend to blame others for our own shortcomings never taking responsibility for the choices we made. That's us and I'm a part of that pool, too. Bitterness just like any other human flaw or emotion can lead to various other problems resulting in living in darkness (sin). I recall a part in the Bible about a woman named Hannah. She was married to a man named Elkanah, who also had another wife by the name of Penninah. Hannah was childless but Penninah had a lot of them. To bring it up to speed in 2012, some of us are broke, tired, weary, childless, homeless, friendless, and the list goes on. There may be others in your life that everything is flowing for them easily. Hmmmm. What makes it worse, just like Penninah did, they throw their successes in your face mocking you. May e it's not one person or people around, maybe it's society in general. You've got to have a lot of money, an iPhone 5, a nice car, and nice clothes to be somebody and if you don't you're nothing. So these type of these can leave us bitter. But one thing I admire about Hannah is that she didn't stay in the place of bitterness where it led her to do something stupid. Her used her bitterness as a stepping stone in her prayer life. One part of The Lord's Prayer says "Give us this day our daily bread." She not only wanted God to bless her with a child, she also wanted the bitterness of soul to go away. She didn't stop praying until God blessed. The same thing happened for Jacob. He got tired of running from his past, falling over his mistakes. He wanted a new lease on life and wanted the bitterness of his life to go away. Job lost everything he had and talked about how bitter he was to his judgmental friends. But these people have one thing in common, they prayed to God and He heard their cry. And just as He did then He is still doing now. God doesn't want us to. Live our lives in bitterness. He wants us to live free from it and all the other evils that come with it. All we have to do is come boly before His throne of grace that we may get favor and help in our time of need (Hebrew 4:16). Lately, my friends, I picked my prayer life back up and begin to come clean about my pent up bitterness. It was leading to a life of unforgiveness, hatred, irritability, and lifelessness. But when I began to cry out and reveal myself before Him that's when things in my life started happening. That's when hope was birthed through my place of pain. And today my friends, I encourage you to pray to The Lord Jesus, for He knows the impact of bitterness. Don't let it break you, you allow God to break it when you come before Him in prayer. But if we don't, the kids that bitterness produces are catastrophic.

Til next time, gdow.

References:
Ephesians 4:31
Hebrews 4:16
Matthew 6:9-13
1st Samuel 1

For The Men: Happy Wife, Happy Life

I'm so in love with my beautiful wife Dionn aka Mrs. Williams. She has been there for me through the thick and thin. She's been there to understand me all the way through when no one else does. I know that we are one in spirit, soul, and body. I know that she is a gift from God I must cherish for the rest of my days. This weekend, we will have the opportunity to reconnect and cherish one another. One thing I've learned in our almost 9 years of being together is to make sure my wife is happy. When she's happy life is happy and vice versa. One thing that makes my wife happy is when I listen to what she has to say. I know that I have a virtuous woman in my house. She always gives it to me straight. Whether it's telling me how to fold clothes, how to wash clothes, how to present her plate to her at dinner time, how to dress for success, and just plain old manners. I have to listen to her because she has wisdom within her that will take me far if I would just listen. I actually learned this from a good friend of mine, Mr. Dirk Bailey. Back in 2008, he shared with me this phrase, "Happy Wife, Happy Life." It's true. Now he and his wife Mrs. Bailey have a beautiful family, in fact one is in college now (Congrats Bria, represent!). Many of my close friends have great marriages resurrected from painful memories, indiscretions, turmoil, and other issues. Many of them have told me, David, you better take care of your wife. Not only is she your best friend, she is your wife, your rib, the one who will keep your together. So some of you guys are like, what is Ol' Dave talking about now? I'm noticing dudes that we take our wives for granted. We treat them any ol' type of way. Most of us only show our wives respect and love when we want to get them in between the sheets like Ron Isley (it's true, don't front). A lot of us think we're supposed to be the man's man, meaning we control everything including our wives as we treat them like government property. We treat their opinions, thoughts, and actions as sub-human from taking the title "head of the household" too far. We suffocate our wives from being who they are supposed to be, heirs with us of the same inheritance in Christ (1st Peter 3:7). We believe our wives are supposed to walk behind us when in God's eyes they are supposed to walk beside us. We're physically, spiritually, emotionally, mentally, and sexually abusive to our wives because we have little patience and compassion with them. Shoot, half of us don't even have a heart to heart talk with our wives, showing our weaknesses before them. We're not even best friends with our wives. That's not what God intended marriage between husbands and wives to be. He wants us to be the best of friends. My dad always tells me that he wouldn't be who he is today without my mom. He knows the power of unity between a husband and wife. So where did all this mess we as husbands come from concerning how we look at our wives? Why do we always blame our wives when all Hades breaks loose in our lives? We get it from Adam. Instead of taking the wrap for his family's hang-ups, he blames Eve, his wife. But it was he who allowed certain things in his life to take place. Just recently, I've had to own up to lot of things happening in my home and stop trying to put my wife at fault (I'm just being honest). My behavior, my treatment of her, my ideologies, my selfishness, my short temper, me, me, it's been me. But thank God for the new me and he is going to love and cherish his wife more and more. When she smiles, when she feels secure, when she feels loved, when she feels she is reaching her purpose in life, then I've done my job as a husband. So take not brothers, stop looking at our wives as just somebody holding you down from being successful. That's a bunch of garbage. Our wives elevate us but when we tear our good women down, then we are definitely going down. Another thing, stop looking at her faults. She's not perfect, shoot, we're probably worse off because of our pride issues. Love them with God's love, which sees past the faults to take care of the needs. Rub their feet, take them to a movie. Talk with them. Sometimes, we got to our busy lives down and spend time with our wives. If they want to get a job, let them get a job. Let them get their education. Let them preach if God has called them to preach (more than just singing, doing testimony services, & looking pretty). Mistreatment of our wives will cause us to lose our favor with God and with men. There are many men I know personally that have made the terrible mistake of throwing away their virtuous women. They lost their favor and now someone else has them. It's a shame but it's true. Why I wrote this blog, it must be God working on this wretched heart. Remember these words from Solomon. The grass ain't greener on the other side. It's better to learn to love our wives as God loves us.

Proverbs 18:22:


"Whoso findeth a wife findeth a good thing, and obtaineth favour of the Lord."

Say this with me, My wife is my favor. I treat my favor wrong I might lose it (ask Nabal - 1st Samuel 25).

Til Next Time, dgwo.

Reference:

1st Samuel 25
Songs of Solomon
Proverbs 31
Ephesians 5:25-33