Tag Archives: God’s word

October 22, 2015 · 5:30 AM

Second Hand Religion

  
How do you know what is sin? Do you let your pastor decide that for you? Do you let your political party tell you what it is? Do you let society define it? Maybe you just go with what feels right to you. The fact is that none of these have the power to define what is right in God’s sight and what is wrong. There is only one source that defines what is sin and what is not. It’s the Holy Bible. God’s Word was written by about 40 people over the period of about 1,500 years. II Timothy 3:16 tells us that all scripture is inspired by God.

We know that even though it was written by so many people over such a long period of time, that it was all inspired by God. The beauty of God’s Word is that it stands the test of time and will remain relevant forever because human nature doesn’t change. The Bible looks at human nature, defines what sin is, but more importantly, shows us how to get forgiveness from it and how to avoid it. Romans 10:9-10 says, “If you openly declare that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is by believing in your heart that you are made right with God, and it is by openly declaring your faith that you are saved” (NLT).

To avoid falling into sin, we must first know what sin is to God. James 4:17 gives us a simple definition of sin. It says, “Remember, it is sin to know what you ought to do and then not do it.” If you know what’s right and then choose not to do it, then you’re sinning. The Bible is also filled with other things that it names as sin like lying, adultery, stealing, etc. at the heart of each of those and every other sin is that basic definition. You know there’s a right and a wrong and you’re willfully choosing the wrong.

So how do we avoid falling prey to our desire to do the things we want to do, but aren’t the right things? Psalm 119:11 says, “I have hidden your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you.” If we want to know what sin is and also to have the ability to overcome it, we must put God’s Word in our heart. We must read it, understand it, meditate on it, and memorize it so that we can live the way God wants us to. It’s not up to other people to tell you what it says. It’s up to you to read it and to understand it. When it come to your eternity, don’t rely on second hand information alone. 

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December 31, 2014 · 5:30 AM

2014: A Look Back

Thank you for an amazing 2014. Devotions By Chris had three times more visits than it did in 2013. I will be making some changes in 2015 that will continue to help more believers grow in their faith and find encouragement in God’s Word. Be sure to let me know what you think.

These were the Top 5 posts that were viewed on my site this year. Take a moment to check them out to see what God wants to say to you on this last day of 2014.

1. 2014 New Year Prayer – Thank you for 2013 and all the things that you showed me through it. Thank you for the victories and answers to prayers that you gave. Help me to continue to learn from the defeats I faced and the changes that you made in my life. I may never fully understand why things happened this year that weren’t part of my plan, but were a part of yours. Even when I don’t understand, help me to trust you still. Bring healing to the pain I’ve endured and…[continue reading here]

2. Times Of Transition – Transitions in life are hard. They mean that one part of your life’s story is over and a new one is about to begin. They are the space between where faith is tested and fear fights to creep in. They are a temporary no man’s land that we have to walk through in order to grow. As we walk through them, it’s hard to see what’s coming next. The territory is so unknown to is that we put our attention and focus on…[continue reading here]

3. Called To Do Something – We’ve all been planted in different soil and come from different seeds. Each one of us grow at our own rate, produce different fruit and have our own purpose. When we compare ourselves to others, we lose sight of who God made us to be. We each are called to do something that only we can do. We have been planted where God wants us. It’s up to us to grow and produce what He wants us to. It’s up to us to…[read it here]

4. The Best New Year’s Resolution – I had a Bible teacher in high school who had us write something in the front cover of our Bibles so we would never forget it. I’m glad he had us do it because I haven’t ever forgotten it. He had us write, “This book will keep you from sin. Sin will keep you from this book.” It strikes a chord with me as much now as it did then. In order to lead a successful Christian life…[continue reading here]

5. Worship With Our Lives – Each of us are called to do something. We are called to worship God with our lives. He has given us the tools we need and the people around us to help us accomplish it. We simply need to quit making excuses and hiding in our routines to keep from doing it. Our lives honor Him most when we fulfill what we were made to do. Our lives become worship when…[read it here]

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog.

Here's an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 24,000 times in 2014. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 9 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

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September 3, 2014 · 7:38 AM

Choosing A Foundation

When my wife left me for someone else, my business collapsed and I had to file for bankruptcy I struggled emotionally. I was hurt and depressed. People would say to me, “Time heals all wounds.” That isn’t what I wanted to hear because at that point, time felt like my enemy. I couldn’t see 5 or 10 years down the road yo when time would heal my wounds. I was fighting just to make it through a day or a night. Each day seemed to bring more bad news and things were compounding. Time seemed to be against me more than it did to offer healing.

I retreated to a routine to help me cope. I pulled back from people so I couldn’t get hurt. I did everything I could think of to keep my mind busy so it wouldn’t plot my demise or someone else’s. I didn’t want to be alone, but I also didn’t want to have to interact with people. I carried such a heavy weight on my shoulders that I became emotionally, physically and spiritually tired. I got to the point where I just collapsed on the floor and wept. I told God that I couldn’t do it anymore.

At my breaking point, I found mercy and grace. I found that it’s ok to be weak. It’s ok to be broken. It’s ok to hurt. In those feelings were reminders that I was human. I realized that I had done everything in my life in my own strength and in my own power for my own glory. When the flood came in, it washed everything out. I had become the foolish builder that Jesus talked about in Matthew 7:24-27. I had built my life on a foundation of sand and when the storms came, it collapsed like a house of cards.

Looking back, the good news is that it gave me the opportunity to rebuild the way God wanted me to build. I learned to give my pain and problems over to Him. I learned to build a life on a foundation I could count on. I began to spend time looking up God’s promises. I found out what it meant to really trust Him. I began to pick up my life piece by piece. I left behind the pieces that weren’t beneficial to my spiritual health. I quit going to places that hurt more than helped. I stopped hanging out with friends who held me back and found new ones who would lift me up.

Time didn’t heal all my wounds, but it afforded me the ability to rebuild the right way. I’ve still had rain, floods and tornados in my life since that time, but my life hasn’t crumbled like it did before. God’s word has secured me through them. I’ve had to make repairs, but I haven’t had to rebuild because a life that is built on trust in God’s Word will stand through storms. I’m not saying I’m perfect or that life is awesome all the time. I’m saying that I know who to run to in a storm. I know how to board up the windows when a hurricane is coming. I know God personally and have a deeper understanding of His Word because of what I went through.

If you haven’t been hit by a devastating storm yet, there’s still time to check your foundations. There’s still time to get rid of the things that aren’t from God. If you’re in the storm or have been hit, don’t let the enemy tell you it’s over. God is still there willing to share your burdens and will help you rebuild from the ground up. It’s not easy, but it’s worth it. I can tell you that with God’s help, you will survive and you will rebuild. Choose the foundation of God’s Word to build your new life on. Before long, time will no longer be your enemy and your life will be put back together the way God wants it.

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May 29, 2014 · 5:39 AM

Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth

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Have you ever purchased something that had to be assembled? How did you put it together? Did you read the instructions first and then try to do it? Did you have someone else read them to you and then you tried to build it? Or did you look at the picture and try to do it from that? I confess that I’ve been the latter more often than not. I’m getting better at looking at the instructions though. I’ve found that it’s quicker. As I age, it’s becoming more important to me to take a little longer and get it right the first time than to have the pride of building it on my own without instructions and having parts left over.

The same way we approach an assembly project is the same way many approach being a Christian. Some people want to read the directions (Bible) to find out how to do it right while they build their faith. Others prefer to have a pastor read the instructions to them and then they try to figure it out from there. Still there are those who feel they have no need to read the Scriptures. They feel like that they can figure it out as they go. They try and fail over and over again until they get it or until they give up. Either way, they either have missing parts or there are parts left that they don’t know what to do with.

I’ve tried all three approaches to God at different stages of my life. When I was a teen, I tried to get by just by listening to my pastor and teachers. I got a decent understanding of what Christianity was about, but because I didn’t have the instructions in my hands, I didn’t have a clear picture to go by. In college and the years that followed, I tried the “who needs instructions” approach. I failed miserably. Things in my life kept breaking, parts were falling off and I was missing a lot things that I needed in order to be successful. The outside of my life resembled the picture on the box, but the inside infrastructure was missing. When I had weight applied to my life, it fell apart.

I’m a try, try again kind of person. I don’t easily give up. I may not have gotten it right in the first few tries, but I’m on the path to getting it right now. I’m spending more time reading the instructions and less time looking at the picture on the box. If I spend my life trying to create the picture on the box, I’ll never be the picture of who God wants me to be. We all have different gifts and talents which create different pictures, but our infrastructure has to come from God’s Word. We have to build ourselves up in the most holy faith as Jude 1:20 put it. We each are a work in progress guided by the Holy Spirit. If you’ve found your method isn’t working, try the original plan God had for you. Read His Word and follow the instructions He has for living this life of faith. Don’t ignore the instructions that are right in front of you.

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April 21, 2014 · 8:00 AM

Finding Good Soil

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My family and I took a road trip to west Texas. If you aren’t from Texas, that’s the part of Texas that actually looks like you imagine it. It’s how Hollywood portrays us. It’s very dry, the ground is covered with small shrubs that will one day be tumble weeds, oiled pumps dot the landscape and there are mesas that are perfectly flat on top. It’s beautiful in its own way, but as my wife out it, there’s nothing out there. She said on more than one occasion, “I don’t think I could live out here.” Even if we couldn’t, people do live there even though it’s far away from “civilization”.

We drove hundreds of miles over many hours as we headed back to east Texas. The further east we went, the taller the shrubs became, the more green the landscape became and the more abundant flowers became. As I watched the transformation, I began to wonder what made the difference. I saw a small tree growing out of a crack in a rock hill that gave me the answer. Soil. In west Texas, it was very dry. There was lots of dirt, but very little soil. Their land lacked the nutrients to grow tall trees, greenery or flowers. There was life there, but it’s growth was stunted by a lack of soil.

I then began to think, that’s where so many Christians live their lives. They choose to be planted where there is very little soil. Their growth is stunted, there’s very little water and it’s tough to live there. They struggle in their relationship with God, they get very little food from Heaven and they produce even less. They wonder why they don’t see growth like so many others. They wonder why their lives are dry and they don’t produce much fruit. They look at other believers and wish their life had that kind of growth. The answer to all that wondering is the soil they are planted in.

Psalm 1:3 says we are to be like trees planted along the riverbank, bearing fruit each season. We each choose where we want to be planted. The soil we ground ourself in is in direct proportion to the amount of Scripture we read and time in prayer. When we spend very little time with either, we lack the nutrients necessary for growth. We began to whither away when things get tough. We dry up when things in our lives hear up. We begin to die of thirst without the water of God’s Word. We wilt away because our roots are in shallow soil.

As with anything in life, you get out of it what you put into it. If you put very little effort into your growth as a Christian,you will remain in a dry land struggling to produce and to stay alive. If you put in time and effort into the things that will benefit your walk with God, you will begin the slow process of moving towards Him. You will start to grow taller, your roots will grow deeper and your leaves will be greener. Before long, you will be like that tree planted by the riverbank producing much fruit in season. It all depends on where you choose to live. Your salvation isn’t dependent on what you do, but your growth is.

As you have therefore received Christ, [even] Jesus the Lord, [so] walk (regulate your lives and conduct yourselves) in union with and conformity to Him. Have the roots [of your being] firmly and deeply planted [in Him, fixed and founded in Him], being continually built up in Him, becoming increasingly more confirmed and established in the faith, just as you were taught, and abounding and overflowing in it with thanksgiving. (Colossians 2:6, 7 AMP)

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January 24, 2014 · 8:02 AM

Free to Read the Bible

It’s Free Friday! Time to let go of the things that hold you back and keep you down.  Choose to let go today and embrace all that God has for you.  To celebrate, I’m giving away “the voice New Testament: Step Into the Story of Scripture”.  “the voice” invites story lovers to step into the story of the Bible like no translation can do.  Keep reading to find out how to win

If you haven’t done so yet, I’d like you to take a moment and watch the video below.  These are Christian leaders in China who are getting their very first Bible.  Up to this point in their lives, they have never had their own Bible.  Before this, they used pages of a Bible that they had hand copied and used those to preach and study from.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LcEDPRfHMY

This is a powerful video and reminder that we need to cherish God’s Word.  Each day when it’s time to read it, we make excuses as to why we’re too tired or promise ourselves that we’ll do it tomorrow.  Our Bible collects dust on our night stand and our walk with Christ slows to a crawl.  We spend our time doing other things that require our attention and then wonder why God never speaks to us.  We have silenced God in our lives by keeping our Bible closed.

A couple of years ago, our church was raising money to buy Chinese Bibles to send to ministers in China.  They challenged us to count the number of Bibles in our houses to see how many we had.  I had over 20 Bibles.  I had surrounded myself with God’s Word, but was living in silence because not one of them had been opened in years.  I had taken God’s Word for granted and put it on a shelf next to other books.  I treated it as if it was just another book.

After watching this video, I decided to free myself of the excuses keep me from God’s Word.  I began to dig into it daily.  I got up earlier to make sure I had time to read it.  Instead of making it the last thing I did each day, it became the first thing I did.  If God wanted the “first fruits” of my income, why not give Him the first fruits of my time? I quit reading a chapter a day.  I read until I heard from God and found a Scripture I could apply to my life.

A radical thing began to happen.  My outlook on life changed.  My crawl turned into a walk and eventually a run.  The silence from God was broken.  His voice came through loud and clear.  I was able to make the right decisions and resist temptations that had beaten me every time.  I grew stronger in my faith and put it into action.  People noticed a difference in me.  It all began when I quit letting my Bible collect dust.

Where is your Bible right now?  Do you know where it is?  How long has it been since you opened it?  How long has it been since you opened the Bible app?  How are things going in your Christian walk?  It’s not a coincidence that the two are related.  The more you are into God’s Word, the more vibrant your life will be.  Let your excuses collect dust instead of your Bible.  It’s time to value what so many have given their life for.  It’s time to appreciate what you’ve been freely given.  It’s time to love God’s Word again.

If you would like to win “the voice New Testament” and see the Bible in a fresh, new light, go to my Facebook page here and “like” it.  I will randomly pick one person tomorrow (January 25, 2014) who has liked my page and give them the Bible.  If you have already liked my page, you are automatically entered.  If you like these daily devotions, please share my page with your friends so they can receive daily encouragement from God’s Word too.

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January 20, 2014 · 7:55 AM

Decisions, Decisions, Decisions

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Today, as a nation, we celebrate the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. He is best remembered for his work in the Civil Rights movement and his “I Have a Dream” speech. Having studied his life, his speech and the Civil Rights movement, I’ve learned a lot about him. Just like you and I, he had many flaws, he made some poor choices and at one point lacked direction in his life. His father was a minister and felt like he was supposed to go into the ministry too, but King wanted to be a lawyer or a doctor. As a young man coming out of college, he struggled with his faith and his future.

After thinking about it, he decided that the Bible had many profound truths that he could not escape. He decided to go to seminary in order to become a minister. Those years in seminary helped shape his public speaking and understanding of Scripture. I believe they gave him the ability to say what so many were feeling and didn’t have the ability to express. They gave him the means to energize a people who had been emancipated for a hundred years, yet hadn’t seen a day of freedom since. Because of that decision to go to seminary instead of being a doctor or a lawyer, he changed the course of a nation and a people.

You and I are faced with struggles and difficult life decisions too. You may not think that you will change the course of a nation by the decisions you make today, but you could. I’m sure he didn’t think it mattered as much as it did what he studied as a post graduate. Our decisions have lasting impacts. Sometimes they change us or our family, but they could change our neighborhood, our city, our state or our country. What you do in life matters. The decisions you make shouldn’t be made lightly. Imagine a world where he would have been a doctor. He still would have saved lives, but not nearly as many.

When it came down to it, he made his decisions based on the truths of the Bible. That means he read it for counsel. You and I should be doing the same thing when it comes to our decisions. Instead of finding out what God thinks, we go and ask family and friends what they think. Instead of wondering about the spiritual impact to our lives, we base decisions on the monetary impacts. God’s calling on your life may not make sense at the time, it may take a while to fulfill or even seem so big that you could never accomplish it. That’s ok because He’s not asking you to accomplish what only He can. He is looking for your obedience.

What decision is weighing you down today? Have you looked to God’s Word for help or the wisdom of man? You don’t have to be afraid when you act in obedience to what God told you. Don’t look for others to try to give you every reason why you shouldn’t do what God called you to do. Look to God for guidance on your next step and trust that His decisions for your life are far better than the decisions you could ever make for yourself. Who knows, the decisions you make today regarding your calling could change the nation tomorrow.

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January 2, 2014 · 7:47 AM

The Recipe for Success

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I was raised on the tradition of eating cabbage and black eyed peas on New Year’s Day. My Facebook feed is filled every year with photos from all of my friends who also partake in this tradition. The black eyed peas are meant to bring you good luck and prosperity while the cabbage is supposed to bring you wealth. Everyone is looking for something to bring them a better year than the year before and more success. I can personally tell you it doesn’t come from following this tradition.

One of my favorite scriptures in the Bible actually talks about how to be prosperous and successful. The recipe is simple, but hard for us to follow for some reason. It’s found in Joshua 1:8. It says, “Study this Book of Instruction continually. Meditate on it day and night so you will be sure to obey everything written in it. Only then will you prosper and succeed in all you do (NLT).” This was God speaking to Joshua as he was about to lead the Israelites into the Promised Land. He was telling him all he needed to do to be prosperous and successful.

The first thing God said in this recipe was to study scripture continually. If you ever went to school, you know that studying is hard work. I remember reading the chapters over and over, looking over notes and writing things down on flash cards to help me remember things. If I wanted to be successful on the test, I had to put in the work ahead of time. If you want to be successful in life, you are going to have to put in some work on the front end. It will not just happen. It takes time and discipline. It also means you have to have an understanding of the material God provided to help you live.

The next part of this recipe is to meditate on scripture day and night. God doesn’t want us to check off a box each day by reading a chapter or two. He wants us to read it and then to think about it both day and night. He wants us to think through how we can apply His word to our lives and how we can out it into action. He wants us to know what He said so that when the time comes, we’ll obey what He says instead of what the world says. He doesn’t want us fooled by trick questions, so He encourages us to know the material inside and out.

Obedience is probably the hardest part of this recipe. It’s the secret ingredient to prosperity and success though. When you look at everything God requires of us, it all boils down to obedience. We have to choose our will or His. If we substitute our will into the recipe, it won’t come out right. Only through obedience does the recipe work. If we can learn how to be obedient to His will we will find success in all we do. The only way to be obedient is to follow the first two steps. We have to know what God says first and then understand it. Success comes from reading God’s word, meditating on it and obeying it not from eating cabbage or black eyed peas. I pray you find much success and prosperity this year.

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October 16, 2013 · 8:01 AM

God’s Flashlight

One of my son’s favorite songs right now is from Psalms 119:105. He marches around singing how God’s Word is a lamp to his feet and a light to his path. He doesn’t really know exactly what all he’s singing means, but I do. Him singing that song is a great reminder of when we’re lost, can’t see the future or in a dark place, that God’s Word is the light we need in order to see.

I like how the Message puts it. It says, “By your words I can see where I’m going; they throw a beam of light on my dark path.” I like to know where I’m going. I like being able to see what my next step is before I take it. I can tell you from experience that it’s easy to get hurt when you walk in the dark. It’s easy to get tripped up when you can’t see what’s in front of you. It’s the same in the physical as well as the spiritual. We need light to be able to see. Yet, how many of us put that light in us?

The Bible is not just a book of rules and regulations. It’s a book of light for our lives. If we aren’t consuming it, we are wandering in darkness. It prepares us for the road ahead of us and shows us what is right in front of us. I saw a photo the other day of hikers going up a mountain at night. The side of the mountain was dotted with little, white lights from top to bottom. I thought to myself that it was a great image of what the Christian life is all about.

We are all on this journey in life seeking the summit in the dark. So many try to find the top of the mountain without any light. They try to get through without knowing what’s in front of them and they have no direction. God’s Word provides direction, light and peace. It’s what we need in order to find our way through steep inclines, low valleys and when we’re walking on the edge. God didn’t want us to walk this life alone in the dark. He wanted us to learn to trust Him so He gave us a light. The problem is we don’t use it as often as we should.

Are you in a dark place right now? Are you not sure which way to go? Let me encourage you today to get into the Bible. It will cast a light on your path and be a lamp to your feet. It will give you the wisdom you need to make the decisions ahead of you. It will show you people who took the wrong path and how God helped them. It will remind you that even if you’ve stumbled in the dark, God is still there willing to help you get back up and to point you in the right direction. Just like a flashlight is useless unless you turn it on, God’s Word can’t help you unless you open it up and read it.

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August 1, 2013 · 8:03 AM

Avoiding the Slow Fade

The question was asked last night at church, “How can staying humble keep you from sinning?” We began to discuss how when you think you’re above sinning that’s when you’re at the most risk. Each one of us has sinned and will sin. None of us are perfect or are capable of living a life without sinning. There are things we can do to help ourselves from making sin a habit in our lives though.

One of the ways you can help to keep yourself from sin is by reading and understanding God’s Word. I Peter 5:9 tells us to withstand the devil. The Amplified version says, “Be firm in faith against his onset – rooted, established, strong, immovable and determined.” When we have our roots in God’s Word, we recognize the truth from lies. When temptation arises, we recognize it and combat it with the Word of God. That’s how Jesus fought temptation, and that’s how we should too.

That same chapter reminds us that the devil is searching for someone to devour. He’s not waiting idly by for us to slip up and fall. He’s stalking us, staying hidden until the right time. He wants to pounce on us when we least expect it in order to cause us to sin and to bring guilt to us. Peter described him as a lion and that’s a great metaphor of how he hunts us down as his prey. He’s not content with you sinning. He wants to devour you, your life, your testimony a d your hope.

That’s why in verse 8 he told us to be alert, “vigilant and cautious at all times.” We shouldn’t let our guard down. We should always be on the lookout for temptations that would come in and seek to destroy us. We shouldn’t think we’re above being tempted in certain things. That’s where the humility comes in to play. When we’re humble, we don’t think of ourselves higher than we should. We recognize our weaknesses and move about cautiously.

Casting Crowns has a song out called “Slow Fade”. It warns us that our enemy doesn’t just come in and get us to jump into a life of sin. It’s a slow fade from where God wants us to that life away from Him. The enemy comes in and chips away little by little to draw us away. Before we know it, we have left a life of complete surrender to God and have walked into a life that is a slave to sins. That happens when we aren’t being alert and vigilant. That happens when we aren’t humble like God called us to be.

I’ve experienced the slow fade in my life. I’ve drifted far from God because I let myself believe one little lie after the other. I walked a long way from where God had intended for me to be. I had let my guard down, thought I was above certain things and found out I wasn’t. Because I did know God, I knew the way home. I sought God’s forgiveness and repented from the life I had begun to live. I walked away from it. I’m still tempted every day. I still mess up and sin, but I’m more vigilant now. I catch the lies a lot faster and move back to where I belong.

You can too. It’s not too late. You’re not too far away. Forgiveness is waiting. Don’t believe the lies any longer. Get in God’s Word. Learn the truth so you can recognize the lies. God’s Word will help you to stay grounded, firm, rooted, established, strong, determined and immovable like Peter said. Don’t become a victim of that lion who is seeking you. Be aware of who is and where he is. When you do, you take away the element of surprise that he counts on and he leaves you.

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