We are really enjoy­ing the Com­mands of Christ and Char­ac­ter Qual­i­ties! One goal that we have while study­ing these is to med­i­tate on how Christ per­fectly embod­ied the qual­i­ties. Then they become a point of wor­ship, instead of just good char­ac­ter goals. So, this morn­ing, as I was look­ing at this new com­mand to Go the Extra Mile and the new Char­ac­ter Qual­ity of Def­er­ence, I was ask­ing myself, “How did Christ embody these?”

Here is an excerpt from my jour­nal this morning:

No greater love has any man than this that He would lay down His life for a friend! The Cross is the ulti­mate exam­ple of def­er­ence; Jesus “putting our eter­nal wel­fare ahead of His own per­sonal plea­sure or will”. He said, “Not My will, but Thy will be done.” Jesus also showed def­er­ence when He would, while attempt­ing to retreat and be with His Father, be moved with com­pas­sion and stop to heal the sick and teach the mul­ti­tudes. Matthew 14:13, “when Jesus heard it (speak­ing of John’s death), He departed from there by boat to a deserted place by Him­self. But when the mul­ti­tudes heard it, they fol­lowed Him on foot from the cities. And when Jesus went out He saw a great mul­ti­tude; and He was moved with com­pas­sion for them, and healed their sick.”

This week as we focus on Going the Extra Mile and prac­tic­ing Def­er­ence, let us med­i­tate on how per­fectly Christ embod­ied these. Praises be to His name!

If you would like to down­load the desk­top images for this week, feel free. Here’s one for the big screen and one for your lap­top.

At the onset, this seems like a no-​​brainer. We would pre­fer the truth told to us than a hurt­ful lie. I think we can all agree that telling the truth is bet­ter than lying. But when we get into exag­ger­a­tion, half-​​truths and omis­sions, it’s not being truthful.

So many Bible verses talk about the impor­tance of telling the truth. Psalm 151:1 – 4 says those who walk uprightly, work right­eous­ness and speak truth in his heart — even to his own harm are the ones who can abide in God’s taber­na­cle and dwell on His holy hill. Psalm 101:7 says liars can­not be in His sight let alone stay within His house. On and on the Bible gives these warn­ings. Worst of all, Rev­e­la­tion 21:8 says liars will have their eter­nal home in the lake of fire, which is the sec­ond death.

I don’t want any part of deceit­ful­ness — even if it seems harm­less. God views false­hood on a com­pletely dif­fer­ent level. So for this week, Liz and I are going to focus on truth­ful­ness. If you’d like to join us, sub­scribe to the daily suc­cess emails, or down­load the desk­top for the week, here you go: One for the big screen and one for the lap­tops.

Well, it’s a new week and as such, we have a new med­i­ta­tion focus. Fol­low­ing the com­mands of Christ given through the ser­mon on the mount, this week we high­light Matthew 5:29 – 30 and the issue of lust.

In our cul­ture today, lust has taken claim to most prod­ucts in adver­tis­ing. If it isn’t sex­ual, then it’s other form, cov­etous­ness, takes it’s place. It would make you believe life isn’t the same unless you have this, eat that, take this or enjoy what­ever. While you can­not con­trol the heart responses that tran­si­tion from a legit­i­mate need to cov­etous­ness, it’s my per­sonal goal to never adver­tise with the spirit of lust as an asset. Cre­at­ing desire for a prod­uct where there is a need is one thing. Stir­ring up dark­ness within peo­ple is some­thing com­pletely different.

So, with that in mind, I have these two desk­tops avail­able if you want — 2560 x 1600 (desk­tops) and 1920 x 1200 (lap­tops). In this design, I did not want to illus­trate a spirit of lust to then cre­ate a ten­sion to fight it. If I can find another image that would relate but not ensnare, I may alter the design. But for now, here we go. Let’s fight the good fight and keep the charge in front of us.

Med­i­tat­ing on God’s word is one of the keys to trans­form­ing our spir­its. Not only was it a com­mand of the LORD for the kings of Israel, but it is vital to keep our minds on things above.

In order to facil­i­tate this desire, Liz and I started get­ting emails from Bill Gothard from his Daily Suc­cess email cam­paign. Each week, a new char­ac­ter qual­ity and med­i­ta­tion verse are issued. And each day, we receive a lit­tle devo­tional sup­port­ing that char­ac­ter qual­ity from the Bible. So at the begin­ning of the week, we write down every­thing on the glass plate boards so we keep it in mind.

Well, that worked for a lit­tle while but I end up look­ing at my com­puter screen more than star­ing off across the room at the board. So, I decided to start mak­ing desk­top images so I have them on my com­puter while I work. They key for me is to make them look good. If it looks good, you want to look at it. And when you encounter text, you auto­mat­i­cally begin to read it — well, that’s my theory.

I’ll attach my desk­tops from time to time. I don’t know if any­one who reads this will want to do this too but, if so, here’s the one for this week. The char­ac­ter qual­ity is “Respon­si­bil­ity.” Here’s one for the big screen and one for the lap­top. Enjoy.

So, yes­ter­day Liz and I met some­one who was sell­ing some exer­cise equip­ment on craigslist. While review­ing the equip­ment, we began some small talk. He said he went to our web­site, dcpos​i​tive​.com, and asked if we were mainly print-​​based. When I said “yes,” he said, “Yeah, I could tell.”

I’m not 100% how I feel about that but I feel the burn. I’ve known that my web­site isn’t up to par for a long time. Fur­ther­more, I haven’t made efforts to learn the web design field. As more and more projects go to the web, and clients want them­selves rep­re­sented online. I want to design and code for the web. (Sigh) It seems impos­si­ble to start now but who knows? Maybe not. Maybe not.

The mighty town of Osgood had it’s annual fire­work dis­play last night at the fair grounds. Liz and I joined Ed and Karen at their truck for the front row seats. For a small town, we had a pretty decent dis­play. I took my cam­era to try and cap­ture the show. Here’s what I was able to take between the long expo­sures and the dig­i­tal image pro­cess­ing. It isn’t much but it was fun none the less.