Archive for the ‘Ron’s Dash’ Category

Rush Limbaugh Got It Right!

Thursday, February 16th, 2012

You may or may not be wondering or even saying to yourself, “What does Rush Limbaugh have to do with “What’s Your Dash.” Well I am not sure how many, or if any of you listen to Rush. I have listened to him off and on since 1990 when I was going through flight training in Milton, Florida. I can’t even tell you the last time I listened to his show but there I was in church on Sunday listening to a sermon about “Keeping up with the Jones’” and it hit me. Pastor was quoting passages from Proverbs 6:8 “yet it stores its provisions in summer and gathers its food at harvest.” 10:4-5 “4 Lazy hands make for poverty, but diligent hands bring wealth. 5 He who gathers crops in summer is a prudent son, but he who sleeps during harvest is a disgraceful son.”

Well, those of you who have listened to Rush have probably heard him you the words, “With talent on loan from God.” You may be asking yourself what does Proverbs and Rush Limbaugh have in common. I don’t know but I do know if you take Rush’ words….I assume Rush came up with the phrase but if he didn’t, he is the first person I heard say it and I can’t remember anyone else ever saying it. When I have commented on his “With talent on loan from God” when talking with people, a lot of them have the opinion that he is arrogant, full of himself, conceited, has a high opinion of himself, you get the picture. But then for some strange reason, during a church service, it hit me. “Rush Limbaugh Got It Right!”

What did he get right? Everything we have is from God. It isn’t ours to keep and hold onto for eternity. We are just holding onto it for God and doing with it what God intends for us to do. Yes we “work hard” and get paid. We buy nice things. We donate. We help others and do a heck of a lot of things with the “fruits of our labor” as we go through life. In the end, it is all God’s. We can’t take it with us. We can leave it to our children and if we taught the correctly, our legacy of doing God’s work will continue. That is what we want. Use our gifts and talents to do God’s work, to live out his will for us.

In Financial Peace University, Dave Ramsey provides a teaching moment where he brings two men up on stage. He demonstrates to the audience how we earn our money, deposit it in a bank, and entrust the bank to keep our money safe and use it wisely so when the time comes, the money we deposited and possibly more, is there for us. He then shifts the example and points out to look at ourselves as the bank and God as entrusting us with His money. God has given us our talents to be used in life. We are supposed to take the money and everything else in life and use them as God intended. He is entrusting us with His stuff, yes, all of it. It all belongs to him.

We have been entrusted by God with all of our talents and should be using them to the best of our ability and to honor Him. We can use them to help people, build magnificent things, provide for our families, and help people in need or hundreds of other things. They are all gifts from God. We may not realize what our greatest talent is or even think we have any talent. We all do. Some people make lots of money in their life and hold onto every penny. Other, like Bill and Melinda Gates, are using their talents, and a heck of a lot of their money, to help thousands, perhaps millions, of people around the world. Bill isn’t an evil, rich man with lots of money; he is a great philanthropist who is spending the rest of his life helping others. You see, Bill made billions of dollars creating and running Microsoft but at some point in his life he transitioned from running a multi-billion dollar company to using his great talent and wealth to help others.

Very few of us will ever be able to do what the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation does but each of us has a talent which can be used to help others and glorify God. If you don’t have money to give or items to donate, you may just have time to help another or be a good listener. Sometimes people just want to be able tell you something and that is it. Use the talents which were entrusted to you by God to serve him and live out the purpose you were created for. You don’t have to know what your talents are, do things from the heart and it will shine through. By living this way, “Your Dash” will speak for itself.

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Yes, You really do have a choice

Wednesday, March 2nd, 2011

                Have you ever met someone who always seems to be in a grumpy or bad mood?  What about the person who seems to blame others for the misfortunes in their lives.  I am sure most, it not everyone has a friend or at least knows someone like this.  Along the way, I have learned a few “catch phrases” I would like to share:

                What you focus on expands. 
                You reap what you sow.
                Everyday you have a choice.

                What you focus on expands.  Think about it.  Have you ever noticed whatever you seem to be spending the most time on tends to go the way you are focusing?  I know someone who spent years trying to get out of debt.  They spent their time looking at all bills, credit cards, loans, payments and trying to figure out why they never seemed to be making any forward progress.  They were focusing on where they were, not how they got there in the first place.  When they focused on the debt, which was all they saw, they went further into debt.  A simple change to their focus, from debt to saving, helped turn them around.  When they focused on debt, they couldn’t see the forest through the trees.  They paid no attention on how they got there and what was keeping them there.  You can’t get out of debt if you don’t save money.  Once they started working on saving money and cutting back on their expenses, the debt began to go down.  They looked at every purchase they were about to make and asked themselves one basic question, “Do I really need to buy this right now?”  When the answer was no, they began to save money.  By focusing on saving money, spending went down which was followed by their debt.

                You reap what you sow.  In Galatians 6: 7-9 it says: “7: Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.  8: For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting.”  Have you ever known someone who is very sarcastic?  We all know one of them…..some just have to look in the mirror. Look at their friends and people they associate with.  Isn’t there a pattern of sarcasm among them and there is usually one person who always seems to take it just a bit too far.  What about the person who is always happy, never seems to have a bad day, and is always able to cheer you up when you are having a bad day.  Don’t they tend to have friends who are happy? Aren’t they infections?  If you have ever seen the movie or read the book “The Secret” that is what the author is talking about.  If you are positive and happy, you attract positive and happy people.  If you are sarcastic, sarcastic people tend to want to hang around.   

                Everday you have a choice.  When you wake up every morning, you make a choice to have a good day or a bad day.  No one else can make that choice for you.  It is yours and yours alone.  If you spend the majority of your day or life thinking about how life could be different, you really aren’t happy with what you have and you won’t present yourself in a delightful and pleasant way.  Life is always a series of choices.  There is never just one option.  Think about it.  Just because you had an argument with one of your kids before school doesn’t mean you have to carry the emotions with you all day long.  You can choose to let them go or to hold onto them and grow angrier and angrier all day long.  In Joshua 24:15 it says, “choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.”

A long time ago, Jesus chose you.  He accepted your sins to bring you eternal life and grant you access to his kingdom in heaven.  Ask for his forgiveness. Believe in your heart.  Choose you this day to accept Christ as your savior.  The choice is yours.

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Regretting Past Decisions

Friday, December 17th, 2010

Have you ever thought how much worse your life would be if a decision you made earlier in life was different?  You would probably have to think on it for a while.  But, if I asked you to remember a decision you made earlier in life that, if made differently, would have dramatically improved the life you live today, you and most people would be able to rattle off a few.

Let me put it this way, have you ever heard people say things like:

     “Life would be so much better if I would have done this.”
     “If I would have finished college, I would have….
     “If I would have gotten a four year instead of a two year degree.”
     “We would be so much better off if I would have gone back for my master’s degree.”
     “I wonder what life would be like if we didn’t have kids.”
     “If I would have done this in my marriage years ago, we wouldn’t have these problems today.”
     “If I would have done this, I would have a better job and get paid more.”

Think about all those people who you know have said similar things. How many of them have families and love their wives and kids?  Did they ever stop to consider the implications of what appear to be seemingly innocent statements?  I don’t think so.  Life happens whether we like it or not.  Like one of those statements attributed to Confucius, Patrick O’Leary, or Buckaroo Bonzai, “No matter where you go, there you are.”

By asking those questions, you can only come to one conclusion, regret.  When you questions a decision you made earlier in life, it leads to one thing, regret.  Think about it, focusing on the “what ifs” of the past is regret.  Chances are, if you finished your degree, you wouldn’t have been in that exact place and time where you met your future husband or wife. 

Instead of thinking something like, “If I didn’t go to that dance in high school, I would have never met my husband or wife,” we, as humans, tend to focus on statements like these:

     If you didn’t have that one last drink, you would have been there to help him. 
     If you would have taken their keys, they would not be in jail.
     If you would have studied more, you would have a better job.
     If you would have turned left at the light, you would have missed all the traffic.
     If your parents had more money, you could have gone to college.
     If you hadn’t dropped out of college to raise your son or daughter, you could have been successful.

Did you ever stop to think that if you didn’t drop out of college to have and raise your son or daughter and finished your degree, that very kid you cherish, love, and would die for, may not be here today? You may not be married. You may have divorced from the pressures of trying to finish college and raise a family.  You could have had an abortion.  The father could have been a highly paid doctor, lawyer, or engineer if he could have finished graduate school instead of only finishing his undergraduate degree….but you could have just as easily ended up divorced and he could have been one of those “dead beat dads” as well.

You just can’t focus on a specific question regarding a past event, time or action.  It is not that simple.  Very few decisions in life can be broken down that simplistically.  There are many thoughts, actions and questions that went into those very decisions of the past.  In the example above, the questions weren’t as easy as, “should I finish my degree or not.” It was probably a series of questions which had to be answered to get there.  Questions like:

     “Do I want my child to be brought up by someone else?”
     “Do I want to be a stay-at-home-mom?”
     “What’s in the best interest of this child?”
     “Can we both go to college full time and raise a child?”

In Philippians 4:5-8, God tells us not to worry about the “what ifs” in life and pass those cares and anxieties onto him. Focus on what you know.  Focus on what is true. Focus on what is pure.  He willingly accepts all your concerns and will carry the burden for you.

Life’s past decisions can not be broken down to just one questions.  Life is not that simple.  That one decision you made, was made after a series of other decisions in your life.  Life is not simple and is not about just one decision.  

In Numbers 6:24-26, God tells us to pass on our worries to him; our concerns, and our cares.  Take him up on his offer

There is only once decision I can think of that is really “that simple” and can be made easily and without regret. That decision is to believe in the Lord, Jesus Christ and that he was born, died, and resurrected to save us.

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