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Put Joy in your Life!
Updated March 29, 2026
Make Your Life More Meaningful!
Focused Planning has changed. Read on for direction and enjoyment....
Welcome to Focused Planning
I have retired and no longer offer Life Coaching. Now I offer you something different.
As Humans we are very caught up in our day to day lives. Living here in North America we are only marginally aware of the war and plunder that affects a lot of the bigger world around us. This has been going on as long as history was recorded but there are changes in the world today that are new to us: Billionaires have become commonplace and are getting steadily richer while financial life for the working man is getting steadily more challenging. House prices have put the dream of owning a house out of reach of many and groceries, gas, cars and clothes are steadily going up in price. Wages not going up much. The leadership of the country to the South of Canada is different from any we have ever seen before. This in itself is one thing but what is worst is that many of the people in that country still support this leadership. Another way of saying all of the above is that greed is rampant and out of control.
While we live our busy lives, we rely on the news to keep us informed and we struggle with busyness. Many of us, in fact, are too busy to consider that we are in a physical world and that there may also be a spiritual world in our same space. As a young man I once played a Ouija board with several others and from that experience I knew that a spiritual world exists with us. That was a negative spiritual world. As an adult now I also know that there is a positive spiritual world run by the guy we call God.
Click out now if you must but if you are a thinking person, try reading on for a bit. The Bible is not an easy thing to read and you may have tried churches and found them unsatisfactory. Fist here I will tell you that I am a believing Christian, and have been for some while but I am still learning about the Bible all the time. Right now I'm reading a book by Watchman Nee called the normal Christian Life and am amazed that I have never understood the book of Romans better.
Here is what I think I now Know. For you and me I will try to be very simple: Jesus died on the cross for us. When we are baptized now, we go under the water and die with Him. Symbolically but also spiritually. We then come up out of the water and are born again. The Holy Spirit is now in us and will remain in us: We are now in Christ and He is in us. However we still have the old self in us, the sinful self. From here on every issue or potential problem that we try to solve on our own will be solved by our sinful self. From experience we already know that likely won't go all that well. However, again, if instead we pray and tell God what we are about to do, that it will be difficult and that we don't think we can do it well: We than tell Him that we trust Him to see us through. "You told Him before you set out that in yourself you could not but fail, and you asked Him for all that was needed." (Watchman Nee) If we do this, and believe He will intercede for us, it will be well, and go well.
Earlier in "The Normal Christian Life," page 144 in my copy, Nee says :"The difference between victorious Christians and defeated ones is not that some have the spirit while others have not, but that some know His indwelling and others do not and that consequently some recognize the divine ownership of their lives while others are still their own masters." More to come, still under construction.
Why did the Pharisees crucify Jesus? God creates miracles on earth every day. Why do we discount them and then forget them? The Pharisees watched Jesus heal people
and then crucified Him. Like the Pharisees, we people are set in our minds and we each have our own little world in order. The Pharisees were expecting the Messiah to
enhance their world with acceptance of them and military might, but instead Jesus criticized their self focus and preached love and acceptance, not
dominance and control. Most Atheists today have their worlds in the order they want to suit themselves. They, like the Pharisees, are in charge and don't welcome change. God does His
miracles on earth today and we ignore them or write them off as coincidence or anything else. Often
we complain by saying, why does He allow this or that. The Pharisees were
badly frightened by Jesus and wanted Him gone. The atheist of today may or may not be frightened but is motivated to ignore, ridicule and discount Him.
Is Christian belief fragile for Christians? . Only when they're not paying attention. Some many years ago Moses led the enslaved Israelites out of Egypt. God paved the road for them over and over again, to the point of drowning the pursuing Egyptian army in the Red Sea. He fed them Manna, a nutritious flat-bread, every day. About the third day they needed water and complained bitterly to Mosses. Clearly not paying attention or they would have realized that God was looking after them all the way. So the moment that one thing, the drinking water, is not perfect they become upset and demanding with Moses.
Hundreds of years later, the Apostle Paul, who had been imprisoned and whipped and beaten many times, said, "I Have learned to be content whatever the circumstances . . . I can do everything through Him who gives me strength." Philippians 4:13. Clearly Paul is paying attention. He knows that God is there and is looking after him. He has built up in his mind a perpetual reserve of faith. James 6 in the Bible says, It is important to us that "we believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind." He is not pleasing to God. From this I conclude that the Christian with a fragile belief system is not paying attention. He is drifting along. Hard to know where his mind is focused but possibly he is feeling sad that his life is not easier. God doesn't promise us an easy life on earth.
What drives an atheist? Lots of things. Pride is certainly a part of it. Very often, people don't want to be told what to do, they just want to do their own thing. Believing in God involves following his commandments and being accountable to him. Pride can make us spiritually blind. "Don't tell me what to do!"
Atheists can range from being righteous to very ungodly but most share a willingness to "spread error concerning the Lord," in a bunch of different ways including presenting arguments that suggest that God can't really exist. Sometimes these belittle the Bible in different ways. What can be funny here is that very often these people know very little about the Bible, and very much don't want to know about it.
Think about that for a minute. It's like you or I running down life on Mars, without knowing much about Mars or space travel: Do atheists wonder where life on earth started from: Did it just come out of nowhere or did it come from life itself. If the "Big Bang theory is correct, how did life itself happen? Atheists just seem to live their lives under a rock in this respect. Like the Ostrich burying its head in the sand. Likely you know that the Ostrich story is truly just a joke and not a reality, while Atheists, on the other hand are real. Uninformed, but real.
Is Christian belief fragile for Christians? . Only when they're not paying attention. Some many years ago Moses led the enslaved Israelites out of Egypt. God paved the road for them over and over again, to the point of drowning the pursuing Egyptian army in the Red Sea. He fed them Manna, a nutritious flat-bread, every day. About the third day they needed water and complained bitterly to Mosses. Clearly not paying attention or they would have realized that God was looking after them all the way. So the moment that one thing, the drinking water, is not perfect they become upset and demanding with Moses.
Hundreds of years later, the Apostle Paul, who had been imprisoned and whipped and beaten many times, said, "I Have learned to be content whatever the circumstances . . . I can do everything through Him who gives me strength." Philippians 4:13. Clearly Paul is paying attention. He knows that God is there and is looking after him. He has built up in his mind a perpetual reserve of faith. James 6 in the Bible says, It is important to us that "we believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind." He is not pleasing to God. From this I conclude that the Christian with a fragile belief system is not paying attention. He is drifting along. Hard to know where his mind is focused but possibly he is feeling sad that his life is not easier. God doesn't promise us an easy life on earth.
What drives an atheist? Lots of things. Pride is certainly a part of it. Very often, people don't want to be told what to do, they just want to do their own thing. Believing in God involves following his commandments and being accountable to him. Pride can make us spiritually blind. "Don't tell me what to do!"
Atheists can range from being righteous to very ungodly but most share a willingness to "spread error concerning the Lord," in a bunch of different ways including presenting arguments that suggest that God can't really exist. Sometimes these belittle the Bible in different ways. What can be funny here is that very often these people know very little about the Bible, and very much don't want to know about it.
Think about that for a minute. It's like you or I running down life on Mars, without knowing much about Mars or space travel: Do atheists wonder where life on earth started from: Did it just come out of nowhere or did it come from life itself. If the "Big Bang theory is correct, how did life itself happen? Atheists just seem to live their lives under a rock in this respect. Like the Ostrich burying its head in the sand. Likely you know that the Ostrich story is truly just a joke and not a reality, while Atheists, on the other hand are real. Uninformed, but real.
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