"Do you ever feel like you’re squeezing a size 12 life into a size 7 day?"

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The federal unemployment rate is up so there are more people out of work now. And if you are working, you’re probably doing the work of at least three people. You’re so busy making a living that you aren’t making a life, at least not beyond work.

But you have to work, right? So you have to figure out which half of your life to give to work, and which half to keep to make a life.

Maybe you’re like the fellow who was hauled into a Mexican court for contributing to an accident. The judge asked him, "You saw the other car coming toward you…why didn’t you give him half the road?"

"I was going to," the fellow said, "as soon as I figured out which half he wanted."

Today stop trying to squeeze a size 12 life into a size 7 day. Figure out which half of your life belongs to making a living and which half to making a life. How do you do that? Listen to your life today for what God has to say.

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"You don’t always listen when you should, do you?"

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A husband was looking through the paper when he read a study that said women use more words than men. He showed his wife the study results, all excited to prove to her that he had been right all along when he accused her of talking too much. The study results read, "Men use about 15,000 words per day, whereas women use about 30,000 words per day."

The wife read the results that her husband showed her, and thought for a while. Then finally she said to her husband, "It’s because we have to repeat everything we say."

And her husband said, "What?"

Whether you’re a woman or a man doesn’t matter because you don’t always listen like you should, do you? And that means somebody has to do more talking to get their point across. That somebody includes not only your spouse if you’re married, but God as well. Don’t you say, "What?" to God sometimes?

Avoid just talking to God. Ask God to talk to you. Say, "God, you talk first this morning" and listen to your life and maybe God can use fewer words.

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"Have you decided to let God hold your problem?"

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A New York City businessman decided to avoid a service charge by replacing a seven-foot fluorescent tube himself. He smuggled the new tube into his office. But then he had to figure out what to do with the burned-out tube. He remembered a large dumpster at a construction site near his subway stop. So he decided to dump it there.

He got on the subway that night, holding the tube with the end resting on the floor. More and more passengers got on the train and took hold of the tube thinking they would steady themselves during the ride.

When the businessman got to his stop, he turned loose of the tube, got off the train, and left the other passengers holding the tube.

It’s easy to get other people to hold your problems, to blame someone else, to make "their fault," but that doesn’t solve anything, does it? It just sets off a frenzy of problem-passing; a game of seeing who’s the quickest to blame and leave someone else holding the tube.

God is the only one who will hold your problem with you and fix it. So make a life, not just a living today as you give God your problem.

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"So when will you be happy?"

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We convince ourselves that life will be better after we get married, have a baby, then another. Then we are frustrated that the kids aren’t old enough and we'll be happier when they are.

After that, we're frustrated that we have teenagers to deal with. We will certainly be happy when they are out of that stage.

Then we tell ourselves that our life will be complete when our spouse gets his or her act together, when we get a nicer car, when we’re able to go on a nice vacation, or when we retire.

Then we decide that when we recover from heart surgery or get cancer-free or have a knee replacement, that’s when we’ll be happy.

The truth is, there's no better time to be happy than right now. If not now, then when?

Life is always filled with challenges. So go ahead and admit this to yourself and decide to be happy anyway. Ask God to help you live each day to the fullest by listening to life and making a life, not just a living today.

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"Does anything much happen around where you live?"

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Sometimes, it seems like all of the world’s significant activity happens somewhere else, doesn’t it? And nothing much happens around where you live, does it? Or, does it? I guess it depends on what you’re looking for and how you’re listening to life.

In 1925, the New York World celebrated the birthday of Abraham Lincoln with a cartoon that has two Kentucky farmers, talking over a picket fence. One farmer asks, "Anything new happen lately?" And the other farmer says, "Nothing much. A new baby was born over at Tom Lincoln's place, but nothing much ever happens around here."

Do you have an attitude of "Nothing much ever happens around here?" If you do, remember: you just never really know who’s being born next door, do you? A leader of your country or a Nobel Prize winner or the researcher who cures cancer or the negotiator of world peace could be born in your community. Despite your attitude of "Nothing much ever happens around here," it could...and today could be the day! So listen to your life today and watch some amazing things happen.

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