My Life, Your Story.

(Extracted from Dr. Don Raunikar's Choosing God's Best.) Take some time to read this if u can.. =)

Knowing you're still good when others say you're bad.

"I was driving in the car recently, listening to a radio talk show targeted to parents of troubled teens. A psychologist was counseling the mother of a 16-year-old teenager.

"How would your son fill in the blank at the end of this sentence?" he said. "'I only count when ___________.'" The implication was that the answer would reveal the driving force behind the teenager's decisions, actions, and behaviors.

That question reminded me of a woman named Dev who thought she didn't count without her boyfriend. She gave in to his demands for sex ("say yes or I'm gone") because in her mind she felt as though she was nothing without him. She feared being rejected and abandoned. One demand led to another, and she gave in again when she felt forced by her boyfriend to have an abortion.

Years later, Deb went through a radical transformation after a faith conversation. When her view of God changed, so did her view of herself. "Self-esteem can't come from anywhere but Jesus," Deb now says. "He will love you in spite of your failings. If your self-worth is based on your looks, your parents' love, or the sense that you're great, it will fail. All that will pass."

Like Deb or the troubled 16-year-old, we're all searching for what makes our lives count, for the person or the something that will keep us from feeling worthless. Far too many of us base our personal worth on what we believe the most important people in our lives think about us. We're constantly looking to someone else just to be told we are significant. We look around to see who's looking at us and spend far too much time wondering what they think. We may be making eye contact with someone, but will that someone bring us a lasting significance that won't walk out the door when they do?

The Bible makes an interesting statement about eye contact when it says in Psalms 32:8b, "I will guide thee with mine eye" (KJV). How can that be? How can God guide guide a person with His eyes? If the eye is silent and makes no noise, the only way we could receive guidance from God’s eye is to be looking directly at Him.

Somehow that 16-year-old and all the rest of us must come to the point of viewing ourselves as whole and complete people based on our relationship with Christ, not our own value to someone else or even our marital status. The longer it takes to get that point, the more opportunity we have for making damaging decisions that can affect our lives forever.

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It's a strange thing about happiness. The people who look for it the most rarely find it. Why? Because happiness is the by-product of something else, and only a sovereign God who has planned a good work for us can guide us with His eye that "something else." Without the eye contact, we will spend our lives pursuing what we don't have and can't find. No marriage, relationship, job, education, or hobby will ever be enough.

Not only do we have to look for God for His guidance in moving us toward circumstances that only He knows will give us joy and contentment, but we also have to realize that happiness is elusive. It's dependent on circumstances. Joy, on the other hand, is based on the relationship with the Lord. We can't have one without the other.

When we turn to the New Testament, we find that Paul and Silas were cruelly beaten at Philippi and put in jail under maximum security with their feet chained in stocks (Acts 16:19-40). No one could be happy under those circumstances, but the Bible says that they were praying and singing praise hymns to God while the other prisoners listened. We can understand prayer in such circumstances, but can we understand praise?

Throughout our lives, our circumstances will be both good and bad. If they weren't, we'd already be in heaven. Because happiness depends on our circumstances, our happiness level will rise and fall according to what's happening to us. However, our joy can be consistent and abundant in the Lord no matter what the circumstances. Our fellowship with Him can transcend our worldly trials, just as it did for Paul & Silas.

Even more important, God can use our difficulties to build character in us. That is why we can "consider it pure joy" when we "face trails of many kinds" (James 1:2). Instead of trying to change our circumstances to be happy, we should concentrate on letting God work through our circumstances to change us and build godly character in our lives.

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Most marriages fall apart because the partners have not developed godly qualities that actually serve as foundational pillars in a marriage. The ability to love your mate, serve, sacrifice is not a character quality God bestows on you the moment you say "I do." You can't learn to sacrifice, serve, or love by taking a course or reading a book. The only way you can develop those qualities is by being in such close fellowship with God that His love flows through you. Each time you apply His loving truths in a real-life circumstance, you take another step toward building godly character. It becomes more important to you to be an attentive, supportive spouse than to have one.

By focusing on your fellowship with God, you'll not only be fulfilling the work God has for you but you'll also be preparing to be God’s choice for someone else. You'll become the right person for another person. Your relationship with your future spouse will be only as strong as your fellowship with God.

As a Christian, your relationship to God will never change. Because of Jesus' death on the cross, you are and always will be a child of the King. What can and will change is your fellowship with God. To understand this, think about your relationship with your earthly father. He is and always will be your father. That will never change. What will change is your fellowship with him as you mature physically and emotionally and as a multitude of activities compete for your time. In a similar way, your spiritual growth and sin nature will affect your fellowship with God. You will either grow closer to Him or slip further away.

Just as your fellowship with your father never stays at the same level all the time, neither will your fellowship with God. You'll always be moving one-way or the other. Your life will reflect the quality of your fellowship.