Table of Contents Chapter 1.Christ and Culture: The discipline required to overcome it and be God's best 2.Burying your Hatchet in the Ocean: Another view of forgiveness that can help you sore as an Eagle 3.From Fossil to Coal to Diamond: Courage, Discipline, Patience, Endurance, Faith, love and Hope (The Fruits of the Spirit) 4.Where Did the Love Go? 5.Why He Still Loves Me 6.Religious Symbols and What Makes Them Meaningful 1 Christ and Culture: The discipline required to overcome it and be God's best. Before Christ ventured out to achieve his God given mission in life, He had to make very hard choices. These choices were distractions that the devil exposed him to, with the only purpose of derailing him from His course. As we are all aware, the devil tempted Christ three times. The first was about his physical sustenance, which he quickly rebuffed with the word of God. He them moved to the pinnacle of the Church, which represents religion and our relationship with God. Christ again rebuffed it with the word of God, whiles the devil was also trying to trick Him with the same word. The third temptation was about worldly powers and desires. Again, Christ saw them as distractions, and stayed away from all of them. All the time, God's plan for our lives is to become the best He has endowed us to be but it takes discipline, not just desires, to get us there. Culture has so many elements which places a lot of demands and expectations on us. Some of these demands fit into our God given roles in life, and some are just pure distractions. Some of these elements put us in direct conflict with our mission in life and the expectations of the custodians of our culture, be it political, social or religious. Even Christ had a gripe with that as a well. It was rather unfortunate that the most notorious opposition to His message of hope, peace and love was the custodians of religion. His mission was very clear of evil and had nothing but the good of society in mind, yet He faced a daring opposition because of peoples' selfish grip on power, and fear of losing it should the norms and customs they were used to changing. In as much as the normal dynamics of culture is quite slow, it is rather unfortunate that out of greed, avarice and power hunger, people will do anything to decelerate the rate of progress in an unfamiliar ground, regardless of its merit to society. Atrocities, persecution, scare tactic and all kinds of strategies including murder are used to kill great ideas which threaten the grip to power of the custodians of our culture. Christ, though, was very resolute, firm and determined to achieve His goals. He was very honest in expressing His opposing views to the cultural norms, and also respected authority. He said that we should give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and to God what belongs to God. He was humble in all His ways till death. He stayed on course, and did His very best to do what God sent Him to do. Looking at Christ's life, it took intense discipline and diligence, determination and commitment to achieve his goal. Of course it ultimately took the spirit of God in Him, and being an incarnate God, to achieve his goals. But being God and man, he also demonstrated lots of great qualities that need to be emulated. I think discipline is at the pinnacle of it all. It is discipline, not desires that help us to achieve greatness, or any good thing in life. Most often, God's desire for our lives requires a lot of us, and it takes a much disciplined person to get there. If life was all about going to work and getting paid, day in and out only, I do not think it will require much of us. This kind of life, however, just facilitates existence. The question therefore is, what are you living to accomplish in life? What are your goals? What difference do you want to make in your life and that of others?......