"What do you assume?"

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Bubba walks into a doctor’s office and the receptionist asks him what he has. Bubba says, "Shingles." So she writes down his name and address, copies his insurance card, and asks him to have a seat.

About fifteen minutes later, a nurse’s aid comes out and invites back, and asks him what he has. "Shingles," Bubba says. So she takes down his height, weight, and vitals, does a medical history on him, and asks him to wait in the examining room.

A half hour later, a nurse comes in and asks Bubba what he has. He says, "Shingles." So she draws some blood, does an EKG, and tells Bubba, "Take off your clothes and wait for the doctor."

So about another hour later, the doctor knocks and walks in to find Bubba sitting patiently naked. So he asks Bubba, "What do you have?"

Bubba says, "Shingles."

The doctor says, "Where?"

And Bubba says, "Outside on the truck. Where do you me to unload ‘em?"

Ask God to help you listen to life and assume nothing today, okay?

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"Got an opportunity?"

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A friend runs into the grocery store just to pick up a few items for lunch. His shopping list is extremely limited and he plans to be in there for just a minute. He reaches down to pick up the very last item on his list and out of the corner of his right eye, he sees white writing on the back of a black T-shirt. So he raises up and reads the shirt just before the stranger walks around the corner and out of sight.

The shirt reads, "The weak wait for opportunities to come along and the strong make them."

Now what you don’t know about my friend is that his company downsized about half of its employees shortly before this shirt appeared.

So what did my friend hear as he listens to life and makes a life while unemployed? That God is still with him even if he doesn’t know how he’ll make a living. That God has a message for him even in the grocery store, a message of hope that he can be strong and make opportunities even though he feels weak.

I don’t know what you’re facing today that’s causing weakness, but listen to my friend’s story and know that opportunity is yours to make now.

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"Do you usually wait?"

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A coaching client and I were talking about prayer one day.

"One of the things I get frustrated with is having to wait to pray," he said.

I asked, "Why do you wait?"

"Well," he said, "I don’t want to bother God all day long."

"Has God ever told you not to bother ringing heaven’s phone so much?" I asked.

"Well no, but I just figured God has more important things to work on than my problems. So I just wait," he said.

"And how long do you wait?" I replied.

"Well, until bedtime…or the next morning," he said.

"I can’t remember that long," I told him.

"Yea, most of the time I forget, too," he said.

I encouraged him to pray on the spot for the next week, not waiting, but just breathing a prayer for someone or himself in the moment and let’s see what happened.

The next week when we talked, he was so excited and said, "I can’t believe how much better my outlook is, how much improved my attitude is, and how great I feel. All because I pray on the spot. And I’m not bothering God!"

Try praying on the spot as you make a life, not just a living today.

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"Who's watching you?"

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My wife was shopping with our daughters when they were much younger. They checked out, my wife paid cash, the cashier gave change back, and off they headed to the next great shopping adventure.

So as they walk along, my wife realizes that the cashier gave her too much change back. "Come on girls. We’re going back. The cashier gave me too much money back in change," she says.

Of course the girls wanted to know what that meant so my wife explained it and why they had to go back. They returned to the same line as before and when it was their turn, my wife handed the cashier the extra change back and explained the situation. "Oh, you could have just kept it," the cashier said. "No one would have known."

And my wife replied, "Yes they would have. I would have known and so would they" and she pointed to our daughters.

Our daughters still remember that experience today. You see, someone’s always watching you as you listen to life and make a life, not just a living.

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"What do you imagine?"

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The older I become, the more I enjoy being around children. My grandfather always said, "Once a man, twice a child" and I believe its true.

The reason I love being around children is they have so much fun using their God-given gift of imagination. I mean, they create the most wonderful games out of their imaginations. One minute a little boy has picked up a stick that fell from a tree and his imagination converts it into a sword to fight a dragon that’s guarding a castle where the beautiful princess is imprisoned. Another minute a little girl discovers a couple of bird’s feather and imagines that she can fly and she’s looking down on all of us and she says, "Joey, you look so small because I’m flying so high." Children use their God-given imagination to create fantastic stories from virtually nothing.

What do we adults use our God-given imagination to create? Mostly life situations to worry about—"What if this or that happens?"

Use your God-given imagination to create something wonderful and make a life today.

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