By Christian Ray Flores – Austin, TX, USA Not most of us, but all of us will experience stress throughout our lives. It’s woven into our existence whether we like it or not, like bad pop music. You can try to escape it; it will make its way into our ears. The trick is differentiating between good stress that grows you and bad stress that harms you. If we avoid all stress – we’ll never grow. If we tolerate bad stress – we’ll eventually hit a wall. If we keep tolerating it long-term – we end up with burnout. Today, I’ll unpack two powerful techniques to destress your life instantly, one of many I use to help people get unstuck and thrive for life. How is good stress good anyway? The apostle James seemed to think that good stress helps us grow. Since James was an apostle, I choose to agree with him and look to understand how this works. “Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles of any kind come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. For you know that when your faith is tested
SPIRITUAL RENOVATION Fresh thoughts about following Jesus You need to forgive and move on. Right? Or maybe it’s actually very wrong. Someone has said terrible things to you, accused you, treated you harshly, possibly spiritually abused you in a church setting and now you are being told to forgive your perpetrator, because, … you know, forgiveness is what Christians are supposed to do. This scenario has played out on more than one occasion . It’s common! So how to deal with it when it comes your way? The first thing to recognize is that this kind of language is very simply an extension of the original abuse. It is a simple bid to excise the perpetrator from any repentance or restorative action. It’s a lot easier to trundle out these seven words than to perform any serious introspection. Hey, if it works five times out of ten it’s worth it. If it works one time out of ten it’s still worth it. Avoiding accountability for actions has a big payoff. But, holy smokes… the carnage. The damage.
Dear Christ lovers, Cricket lovers gathered for an exciting day of showcasing their in depth cricket talent on the Day of 77th Independence of our country India. It is always exciting and fascinating to talk about cricket to our talented cricketing disciples in our family of churches. August 15th was an awesome and an incredible day where the Dindigul church in South Tamil Nadu organized a 4 team Tennis ball Cricket Tournament in Don Bosco seminary center ground. It is so patriotic to start the event with India Flag hoisting & singing National Anthem. A short message from the Bible - Galatians 5:1 on freedom in Christ shared to take the event more uplifting to each other. Disciples teams from Nagercoil, Erode, Madurai and the host Dindigul combining Theni participated and showed their power packed players performance with sky rocketing sixes which left many in a shock to witness such a spirited games. League matches held for all teams facing each other once and top 2 teams