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The Heart the Seat of Your Soul

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And he answering said, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself. Luke 10:27 (AKJV) I spent several years working in medical devices companies that build cardiac devices for patient care. I had to learn all about the physical heart and how it functions. One interesting fact is the heart doesn't need a body. The heart actually can still beat after being removed from the body.  This pulsing occurs because the heart generates its own electrical impulses, which cause it to beat. As long as the heart continues to receive oxygen, it will keep going, even if separated from the rest of the body.   When Jesus commands us to love God with all our heart. He is not speaking of the physical heart, but the non-physical heart that you cannot see or hear.  The term "heart" is never used in the New Testament to refer to the physical organ of man. Oswald Chamber...

A Ram In the Bush

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"The Spirit of ADONAI is upon me; because he has anointed me to announce Good News to the poor; he has sent me to proclaim freedom for the imprisoned and renewed sight for the blind, to release those who have been crushed, to proclaim a year of the favor of ADONAI." Luke 4:18-19 (CJB) Dr. Alicia Britt-Chole has been my mentor for several years.  I met her for the first time when I  planted Chi Alpha Campus Ministries in 1995 at SUNY, Binghamton, NY. She and Barry were sent from the General Assembly Office in Missouri to train me and the student leaders in Discipleship by Design.  In 2012, I went through her mentoring program called Leadership Intensive Institute. It shaped my life and my ministries.  One of the exercises was to chart our Life Scroll from the time we were born to the present.  There are no conjectures written, just what and when, the facts, which is what you want when you are writing about your life. When I finished the scroll,  I could...

Grace Is Built To Last Forever

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My husband and I are both Computer Scientists by profession. We both have our M.B.A.s and M.S. in Computer Science degrees. I have been bi-vocational for over 40 years, working both in ministry and in the field of Science and Technology, where I was a Leader on  numerous research and development projects.  There is a book that came from our leadership training and M.B.A. courses, called  "Built to Last". The book is about 18 great companies that had CEOs who were Visionaries and built a company that would last. I have worked for 3 of those major companies (IBM, Motorola and GE) on the list.  Almost half of the visionary companies on the list have slipped dramatically in performance and reputation, and have faced serious questions about their leadership and strategy.  No man on earth can build anything that will last forever! No matter how intelligent and wise they may be. We cannot put our trust in people or companies. The only thing that is b...

How To Achieve Self-Control Through Emotional Intelligence

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"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering   (patience) , kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. " Galatians 5:22 (the italicized is mine)  Self-control is restraint exercised over one's own impulses, emotions, or desires. It is the ability to control one's own desires or impulses. I once had an employee who was highly intelligent but had little emotional intelligence. He was unable to control his emotions or reactions especially under stress.  He often made critical decisions for the project team that was based more on his emotions than what was best for the team.  Unfortunately, I had to put him on a performance plan. That plan required him to take the Emotional Intelligence course that was based on Daniel Goleman's book    "Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ (New York: Bantam Books, 2005)".  80 percent of vocational success is related to emotional intelligence. Only, 20 percent...

Mind, Body and Soul

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" Listen, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD alone. And you must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength." Deut. 6:4-5(NLT) The soul is our mind, emotions, and will. The mind and the brain co-produce our lives. It is the mind and brain together that produces conscious awareness. The deeper parts of the brain, the brainstem is exceptionally delicate and vulnerable. The mind is responsible for one's thoughts and feelings. It is the seat of the faculty or reason or the aspect of intellect and consciousness experienced as combinations of thought, perception, memory, emotion, will and imagination, including all unconscious cognitive processes.  The brain is the organ of the mind just as the lungs are the organs for respiration. The mind cannot be localized to particular areas within the brain. It is not physical and investigateable in the the world of science.  Yet, the mind is what the brain does. It can be retrained to ch...

Put Out The Fires and Calm The Storms

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As a  woman in leadership, I found that my life could have many moving parts in one day. This included solving many people's problems.  I was once asked, how did I survive such a busy schedule with children, spouse, executive leadership for large and mid-size companies, university adjunct professor,  and an Associate Pastor at a local church?   I have always been in a "non-typical" woman's role. In 1978, I went to Houston,Texas. I became a computer scientist working on the Space Shuttle computers at NASA. In 1988, I became a minister and an associate pastor in a mainstream denomination church while still keeping my regular secular jobs (bi-vocational). There were many problems to solve and many fires to put out.  The fires were one thing, but the storms of life were an entirely different situation to handle. The storms came fiercely with no warning.  I was having my 15 to 30 minutes of prayer time as suggested when you have a busy schedule. Howeve...

You Have Free Will!

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All praises to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessings in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ. Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us to be holy and without fault in his eyes. God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do and it gave him great pleasure. Ephesians 1:3 -5 (NLT)  God, the Father, ca n do anything He wants to do, but He will not overrule your free will or make you serve Him. People  are often angry at God for what the y perceive as abandonment or neglect, because He didn’t answer or respond the way they expected Him to answer. Because He doesn’t respond in a matter that is expected, they give up on God or they believe God doesn’t ca re, so why should they.  Obviously, it’s your choice to decide what you want to do.  You can choose to obey or not obey, believe or not believe,...

Praying For You!

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“ as you pray at all times, with all kinds of prayers and request, in the Spirit, vigilantly and persistently, for all God’s people.”  Ephesians 6:18 (CJB) Once, I asked my Mama to pray for me to achieve something that was very important. I asked her for help and walked away. I had perfect peace in my heart and mind that she would do it. I could trust her to pray. She prayed often, and it was not just at a particular time. She prayed while cleaning, cooking, and alone in her room. She was the picture of the Apostle Paul’s instructive words in Ephesians 6:18. The Apostle even asked the Ephesus Church to pray for him! We all need prayer! She was always praying for our Daddy and her nine children. Her prayers sustained me throughout my life. Romans 8:26-27(CJB) says that the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we don’t know how to pray the way we should. But the Spirit himself pleads on our behalf with groanings too deep for words, and God who knows all hearts, know...