Does your level of comfort control you?
Does your quality of life control you?
Does your fear control you?
Do your feelings and emotions control you?
Did you know that either you are in control or you allow something else to control you? And we shouldn't always be ashamed of giving up control, because we will all falter at times, but you should ask yourself, most often than not, who or what is truly in control.
What is the foundation upon which you stand when adversity knocks at your door?
Did you know that you are being watched?
Every day, someone is watching you and learning from you.
Someone is watching how you act and how you react to the circumstances of life around you. All of us have people who look up to us and watch us. Some of us have children who look up to us. Or grandchildren. Even if you are an absent parent, your child will still learn from you; hopefully they will learn something positive.
"Your character will be the chameleon with which your children and the next generation might very well emulate, because it is what you have chosen to allow to cultivate."
Josh C. Jones
Having a solid foundation on which to stand is vital to surviving the adversity of life. It is vital in order to claim standards by which you try to live. It is vital to claim any sense of morality. It is vital to hold true values. It is vital to be able to accurately declare what is wrong and what is right in life.
As I say in my book Volume I: The Foundation To Your Success:
("Building a Strong Foundation for Success: The Importance of Life and Moral Values")
“Our foundation is the soil in which all we do and achieve and pass on to the next generation is planted, grown, and harvested.”
We all have a foundation upon which we attempt to stand, and it is this chosen foundation from which we make our decisions.
Is a life sacred? Does life have intrinsic value? What determines the beginning of life? Is it okay to lie, cheat, and steal for "the greater good"? What is the meaning of life?
These are just some of the questions we all answer with our decisions, and our foundation will determine which path we take.
In the Bible, there is a story about a king named Ahab, which is a good and sometimes mirrored example of our own society and culture.
In this story, the protagonist, king Ahab, did not stay firmly rooted in a strong and absolute foundation. He had the understanding of one, like a lot of us, but "knowing about" and "knowing" are two different things. (We might discuss this at another time.) Anyway. He wavered, compromised, rationalized, and caved to evil. He is a great example of how all of us sometimes and many of us often handle adversity and confrontation in our own lives.
If you read the Bible, then you know that the Israelites often gave into their selfish desires, their emotions, their feelings, and their fear (this might have been the most pestilent of all, even for us today), and they gave in to sin—they gave in to wickedness. They would forget all the good God did for them and all the promises and would get impatient and fearful.
Sometimes they, just like us, even gave in to threats. They said yes to coercion, yes to intimidation, yes to abandoning their values, principles, standards, duties, and God, and yes to evil. This is exactly what king Ahab did, and it is what we all have done and some of us continue to do.
Think about the deep fear injected into people or the big push to strip them of God-given rights, liberty, and freedom.
What led to that? Time has proven that the truth is not the correct answer.
My podcast Episode 048: The Great Wisdom of...#3 (FEAR) speaks more about how fear is used to manipulate and control people.
Think about the mandates, the firings, the loss of freedom to travel, open a business, go to service, provide for your family, and more.
“You can give in to portions of an angry mob, to evil, to your oppressors, to thugs, but if you even deny them one thing, they will punish you severely. For complete suppression and submission is the ultimate end goal, not the first inch or even the first mile.”
Josh C. Jones
There were many points in the Bible and in history where civilizations were flipped upside down and destruction befell all in that society, not because of outside forces but because of the society, the nation, and the culture that was allowed to be cultivated and passed on to the next generation.
What was good was now bad; what was bad was now good; God was now indecent, dishonest, hate speech, and wrong; the Devil was now virtuous, wholesome, truthful, and right; society, culture, and laws were upside down; and the people cheered their own emotionally selfish desires, praised their perverse actions, sacrificed their children to false idols, and abdicated accountability, responsibility, and consequence for their very own actions and choices. Life became meaningless and valueless. Then again, when this life is all there is and all there is is randomness, meaning is absent, and enjoying the pleasures of this life by any means becomes the goal.
"You can't build a great building on a weak foundation. You must have a solid foundation if you're going to have a strong superstructure."
Gordon B. Hinckley
Comments