Our world is so enamored by appearance that real value in things or people often gets overlooked at best and rejected at worst. The culture of “Advertisement” has fooled us and stolen the perception of what’s most valuable.

The cover picture for this article is from a new movie release about some men who decided to take the opportunity to do the courageous thing and challenge a terrorist on a french high-speed train. The possibilities of them dying was more than real, but the opportunity to make a difference was theirs to use or throw away.

I am always trying to discover why people do what they do. Sometimes, what appears to be a good deed with no ulterior motive turns out to be a setup to persuade others to honor someone for the good deed they have done. It’s like a story that happened last year when a man running for office claimed to be a war veteran who had received a Medal of Honor. It turned out he was lying and had not even been in the military! He was using people’s respect for people who sacrificed in order to get an advantage in the voting polls. This week there was a story of a total stranger who climbed 4 stories on the outside of a building to save a toddler. The boy fell off a 5th floor balcony and was holding on for dear life on the 4th floor.

Have you ever wondered why our leaders created holidays to celebrate in America?

As a child, a holiday usually meant being out of school, or getting special presents like during Christmas and Easter. Once we became adults, we are supposed to become mature in our thinking and reflecting. Holidays were meant to honor things we value, and the sacrifice the others have made. Unfortunately,  as kids, many of the adults in our lives failed to sit down with us and explain each holiday and why people set that day aside to reflect on.

In the last article on living in fear, I talked about the fact that men and women struggle with fear in various forms, but it all goes back to creation when man walked away from a trusted relationship with their Creator and bought into the lies of Satan, thus making fear a cornerstone of his deception. All too often we try to deal with the effects of fear and not the root cause. If you haven’t read the first installment on this subject please read that first.

While attending the recent “Strong Men’s Conferences”, one of the first messages brought forth was about men needing to see themselves differently. I believe women have the same problem, although it may affect them in a different areas. The area we all seem to struggle in from time to time, to different degrees, is FEAR. We all seem to struggle with this area in different ways, but the end result is still the same. We live less than God designed us to live, which leads to less than we hoped for in life.

This weekend I had the opportunity to attend a “Strong Men’s Conference” at my church in Charlotte, North Carolina that was both inspiring and challenging. Men in particular need the challenge to rise above the day-to-day things of life and focus on one key question……Are they acting like men or lambs?

Have you ever been surprised by what comes out of your mouth or what comes out of the mouth of others? It seems we all make the mistake of talking before we think. The question is why? Why do people embrace themselves, and for that fact, why do we embrace ourselves by speaking things that are not factual or down right lies?

In our fast paced culture, there are so many voices literally screaming for our attention and trying to get us to believe and follow their advice. The problem is, how do we know which one is right? And are they right all the time? Take binoculars for instance. These devises are great and important when trying to see details from far away, but they are terrible if you’re trying to take a splinter out of your hand!

Many of us have a romantic notion about visiting a cabin in the mountains. Somehow we think that being in an old cabin with no running water or electricity will make us happy and rested. For people in the US, who actually grew up in this manner, and I know some, it was anything but romantic.  It was hard work and consumed your time with chores like going to the creek for water and cutting down trees for fire wood.