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The real world VS. The internet
I realize that I frequently make references to this subject matter in my posts, but with each post it doesn’t become less relevant. Here’s the way I see it, even if just one person reads it and it helps them focus on the things that truly matter in real life like their family, relationships, hopes, dreams, and goals? It was well worth it.
The internet is a tool and too many people have allowed it to become the dictator of their reality. Too many people are starved for real human to human interaction and many don’t even know how to communicate socially face to face without discussing the internet. When was the last time you had a personal conversation and absolutely no references were made to some sort of online activity? Have you been to a store lately? Most cashiers have their phone in their hand. Most people can’t even enjoy a social gathering without checking their phone.
What’s more disturbing is that there is crisis everywhere in the world and people forget about disaster as soon as a new post flies through their feed. People (human beings) are lost, sick, struggling, and hurting all over the planet and most people are too busy posting their comments about it instead of actually getting involved or at least trying to be an agent of change. If you found yourself in the middle of a crisis or you have loved ones that are, I’m sure you appreciate the people who have decided to put down their phones long enough to get involved.
You are not “woke”, a revolutionary or any other sort of agent of change if all you do is fall into the peanut gallery comment section of the internet. Stop allowing yourself to be so self absorbed and distracted. Get involved, do something that matters, & enjoy your real life.
#WednesdayWisdom Build or Destroy
You are either a builder or destroyer. You either spend your time building people up or tearing them down.
You either mostly talk about people or talk to them.
You are a person who speaks life into others or you are a person who speaks death.
Do your words line up to how you desire to live your life? Are you behaving in a manner that communicates the kind of person you want to be?
Wheat and Weeds
The testing, trials, & suffering the people of God face is so the unbelieving can see how the wheat ones handle it from the weed ones. See, there’s good and bad in every kind under the sun. There are a lot of people that say they love God but their actions are far from Him. The only way an unbelieving person would ever know that God loves them, is if you love them (and it will work that way for whatever parts of God’s character you’re trying to witness about). If you want to tell somebody that there is freedom in Christ, even in your struggles then your most effective tool for communicating that message is to let it be alive and well inside of you. “Let both grow together until the harvest, and at the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, “First gather together the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them, but gather the wheat into my barn.” Matthew 13:30
Compliments
I don’t live for people’s compliments. If I did, I would die when they criticized me.
We all need a compliment or an encouraging word every now and then but we cannot live for those things. It’s far better to be a God pleaser then a people pleaser. God loves you unconditionally, every day, even at your worst. People? People are imperfect so we can’t rely on them more then we rely on God. There are time’s when we find ourselves alone and we have got to fight ourselves out of a corner and back to life, not roll over and die. If we allow our self-worth and self-esteem to be based solely upon what other people think or say instead of what God has already said & declared over our lives then when people deliver a criticism instead of a compliment, we’re gonna get messed up.
#Relationships101 When love is toxic by @queentheprophet
#Relationships101 When Love is Toxic
Can “love” be poisonous? ….. This is a question asked by many and I will do my very best to explain.
Love is a word often tossed around too loosely and not everybody actually understands it. I remember the first time I thought I was “in love” and when people told me I was too young to know what that meant I immediately rebelled against it, as most young people do. The truth is, most people confuse lust, sexual attraction, and emotions as love and that has nothing to do with love actually is. The best definition of love that you’re ever going to find is:
1 Corinthians 13:4-8New King James Version (NKJV)
4 Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; 5 does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; 6 does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; 7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.8 Love never fails.
It doesn’t matter if you’re a bible fan or not. Really read that. It is the description of what love actually is. It does not mean that relationships are perfect, but love is and it never fails. Committed love is NOT a feeling, it is NOT an emotion. It is a decision. Staying in a relationship with a person who cheats or beats on you is not love or “long suffering” as mentioned above, it’s actually a lack of self-love. I am going to speak on this because I not only have enough personal experience to make your head spin and do a few back flips, but for those who that won’t be good enough for, I also have the formal educational background (which of course was obtained AFTER the personal mishaps).
If a pot has a hole in it, can it fully hold water or will it leak out? It will leak of course. Does it mean that the pot can’t be fixed? Nope. But until it is, you’re never going to be able to boil water in it and cook dinner. Too often we have broken people jumping from relationship to relationship and they honestly don’t have a clue what they’re looking for, what they’re doing, or what a healthy relationship is even supposed to look like frankly because most of us didn’t get to see to many as role models growing up. Most people find themselves in “situation-ships”. Just because you are sleeping with someone does not mean its love. How many relationships have we all seen or been in ourselves that were just wrong? Wrong are those relationships FILLED with drama. Who’s hitting who, who’s cheating, who’s lying, make up, break up, tearing each other apart to other people, etc. These relationships not only slowly poison the two people in it, but it spreads like a cancer and starts to negatively impact the people around you. For those in these kind of relationships with children it’s even worse. These innocent babies see your dysfunction and they will grow up doomed to repeat it unless you as a parent give them a better example.
Believe it or not, God is not going to bless your mess. People can’t and do not “change” for other people. If the change is real they will change for themselves and it will have nothing to do with their partner. Change is most effective when an individual gets sick and tired of themselves and or their situation; it’s a very personal matter. Unfortunately, most people hop from one bad situation to another and sadly many people experience that for their whole life because they never take the time to fix the pot before they start cooking. People accept the love they think they deserve, and that is the saddest yet most honest thing I can say to you and if you are honest with yourself (you don’t have to be honest with me because I’m nobody that important) but be honest with YOURSELF.
Anytime you step outside God’s plan for your life, you are putting yourself at-risk to get whatever the world starts dishing out. People often times are actually subconsciously attracted to their equal opposite on a negative scale until they have that pivotal change within themselves when they recognize their worth. If you are a man with low self-esteem nine times out of ten you’re going to subconsciously attract a woman who is going to be a control freak maniac who uses this self-esteem issue of yours to run you and the relationship and vice versa. Self-esteem is a whole other issue because healthy self-esteem has nothing to do with taking nine thousand selfies and posting “cute” pictures of yourself. Women that grew up with parental issues nine times out of ten automatically are drawn to men that will reject them, men that grow up with a mother who is always drunk or on drugs often have severe anger management issues, hit girls, and most of the time have a healthy criminal background. Girls that grow up without Father’s can often times be attracted to older men, or they get so desperate to find love and affection that they will take it from anywhere that even offers a glimpse of it.
It’s not easy. I know… believe me, I KNOW. Here’s the truth, you deserve to be loved. Will everyone experience it? Sadly, the answer is no but you don’t have to let it be you. Sometimes people hold off on ever finding healing because they are waiting for an apology that they may not ever get. It doesn’t matter what your situation is, God is still in the miracle working business and you can really experience love in the fullness that you were meant to but you have got to make a personal decision and commit to that decision. Even if you have never seen a “healthy” relationship, it doesn’t mean that you can’t have one. Love? Love is not poisonous, it’s not toxic. Lust, soul ties, habit, and situationships can be destructive, draining, and toxic, but never love.
#Relationships101 Keeping the flame lit by @queentheprophet
Greetings Fam!
Some of you may or may not know that I am an actual relationship counselor / marriage educator but in my opinion since I’ve had so many of my own personal disasters in relationships, it well qualifies me to speak on the subject. I see something with couples over and over and over again that quite frankly it is purely annoying. Have you ever noticed when couples break up, all of the sudden they have a new lease on life? Everybody’s in the gym, getting make-overs, etc. ? I know I’m going to step on some toes, but seriously think about this… did you ever stop and think maybe if you did those things while you were in your relationship you’d still be in one?
Fam there are some relationships that need to be over, don’t mistake what I’m saying. There are some relationships that both parties have done so much dirt, there really is no healthy way to recover. For some reason most people are under the impression it is the other person’s job to make them happy. It’s not. Your happiness is your job. A good portion of this is people have no idea how to be single. Being single successfully means that you find meaningful activities in life that you enjoy all by yourself. You know how to take care of you and your business without someone’s help. Ideally, you then should consider these things in a partner before getting involved. Two half people don’t and won’t ever make one whole person. The key to being successfully single is becoming a whole person on your own before you find yourself engaged with another person.
In a healthy relationship there is mutual love, respect, trust, and decision. Decision means the decision to love & commit. Nobody feels in love all the time and anyone that says they do is a liar. Commitment is a decision. Sometimes it’s a decision we have to remind ourselves of all the time, especially when the flame of love is burning dim. No relationship is perfect and every relationship goes through hard times. There are things though that you can stay on top of in order to help that flame keep burning.
- ADMIT WHEN YOU NEED HELP- Asking for help is not a sign of weakness. If your relationship is in trouble, get help. The first relational example people have is their parents. Nobody’s parents are perfect, but if you have never had a good role model of what a healthy relationship looks like, chances are it’s very difficult for you to nail down what you should be doing. We are products of our environment and we need to be mature enough to realize that consciously or not, it affects us.
- KEEP YOURSELF RIGHT- Lots of people get too comfortable in relationships. Just because you’re in a committed relationship now, does not mean that you now have a pass to be a slob. If you and your partner were both always slobs, then slob away. In most cases though, the consistent complaint for both men and women is that their partner does not take care of themselves anymore. Your health and appearance should be a concern of yours. You don’t have to be a runway model or posing for GQ, but you should keep yourself neat, clean, and comb your hair.
- DATE NIGHT- Even if you have kids, you have to schedule a date night. If money is an issue, go for a walk. Couples need couple time. Family time is different.
- OUTSIDERS- Stop bringing everyone into your relationship! Married people: STOP ASKING SINGLE PEOPLE OR PEOPLE WHO HAVE NEVER BEEN MARRIED FOR ADVICE! I’m not even going to explain that because if you can’t figure out why that’s the worst idea ever, you may just need to learn on your own.
- THE FAM- Be very careful what you tell your family & friends. YOUR Family and YOUR friends are always going to be on YOUR side. It’s not necessary to tell your Sister every time your husband does anything that annoys you because then it automatically annoys her and she’ll be less forgiving because it’s not her husband. ( Any form of abuse is a whole other story) When you do this, it also puts you at high risk of absorbing someone else’s problems. You ever have that one co-worker that hates work, then all of the sudden before Friday there’s now a clan of people who hate work? Misery loves company.
- HOW YOU GET EM, IS HOW YOU KEEP EM. – This is my own personal theory. If you’re a guy who calls every morning and every night, you have now set the bar in the relationship that you will always be a communicator. If you’re a woman who cooks for him every night, you have now set the bar that you’re someone who cooks. The beginning of a relationship is crucial time that you unknowingly or not set the standard for what the other person can expect. This works in reverse too though. If the woman doesn’t keep her house decent as a girlfriend, don’t expect her to be a wife or a mother now and magically keep house. If he’s a jobless boyfriend most of the time, don’t expect an employed husband.
I always get chewed out for this comparison at first, but it’s the God’s honest truth. Relationships (all kinds) are business decisions. That relationship is going to be an asset or liability. When an insurance company picks your rate, they give you that rate based on the evidence they have in front of them about you as a driver. Before getting into a relationship, look at what you already know. Some of us could and could have saved ourselves a lot of time and trouble had we done this.
“Relationships are gardens. You can’t expect to harvest what you don’t plant. “- QTP
Be Blessed-
Q
QueenTheProphet.com 