Living By Faith -- THE NEW BLOG

 

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God and Your Marriage

 

ACCOUNTABILITY IN MARRIAGE TO GOD

Lack of accountability to God for what you’ve been doing to your marriage and your marriage partner is one of the reasons why divorce is rampant these days.

You’re living in a world in which injustice and vengeance are rampant. Living in the midst of this storm of unfairness may cause you unhappiness and even your own lack of faith in God.

But seeing the lack of accountability in others should, on the contrary, enhance your own accountability not only in your marriage but also in your everyday living. God is forever just and will bring judgment and justice to all—at His own timeline.

An illustration

In 1984, Archbishop Valerian Trifa was deported from the United States after being accused of being a Nazi supporter, who not only had incited attacks on Jews, but also was responsible for executing many Jews in World War II.

After World War II, the former Nazi supporter came to the United States as a refugee immigrant. He assumed the name of Valerian Trifa, and he was ordained as a priest of the Rumanian church soon after his arrival in the United States. He rose quickly to the rank of bishop and then archbishop, who lived in comfort in a 25-room farmhouse on a 200-acre estate maintained by his church.

Then, a dentist, who was a Nazi survivor, recognized the Archbishop as the Nazi supporter. The case against the Archbishop was reported in the media, and then pursued for more than a decade long by some survivors of the Nazi, Jewish organizations, journalists, as well as by the Justice Department of the United States. Their joint efforts helped focus public attention on those Nazi war criminals who were living in the United States.

At first, the Archbishop vehemently denied his former identity, despite some handwriting experts had confirmed that his handwriting was identical with that in some of the execution orders he had carried out while he was a Nazi supporter. As luck would have it, with the advancement of forensic science, some experts could incredibly still retrieve some DNA from those execution orders with the Archbishop’s own saliva on them. That was his undoing, and his final judgment.

In 1982, the Archbishop was ultimately ordered to leave the United States. But he had spent two years trying to find a country that would give him refuge. In 1984, Portugal admitted him, and he finally settled in Estoril, where he died at the age of 72 of a heart attack.

So, believe that God is merciful, but also a just God, who’ll judge injustice and any wrongdoing according to His own timeframe.

So, living in the presence of God is showing your accountability to every aspect of your married life. So, be faithful to your marriage partner to receive the blessings of God in your marriage.

Getting Married to Make You Happy?

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

Money Wisdom

You are living in a world wanting wisdom. The majority of people experience the lack and not the abundance, while only a small number of people feel both the affluence and the wealth. Surviving and navigating in this world of money disparity require profound wisdom—the perspectives of human wisdom, Biblical wisdom, and the TAO wisdom from ancient China.

So, always ask yourself many questions regarding your money wisdom, given that money always plays a pivotal role in this world of both abundance and lack.

Charles Proteus Steinmetz, a German-born American mathematician and electrical engineer, once said: “There are no foolish questions and no one becomes a fool until he has stopped asking questions.”

So, continue your life journey asking yourself many self-intuitive questions with respect to your money wisdom. The spirit of wisdom demands you to ask as many questions as possible on how you view the world today based on your past and present life experiences. Your money wisdom is your individual need to think more about your money. Do not bury your head in the sand! Just be wise on all your money matters!

Asking-questions-and-seeking-answers may give you your money wisdom. Your own life experiences are often responsible for your judgmental attitudes, your bias prejudices, and your assumptive presumptions—they may prevent you from knowing your real self, as well as from separating the truths from the half-truths or the myths about your money wisdom.

The truth of the matter is that your money wisdom is all based on your own perceptions and interpretations of your life experiences. That is why your money wisdom is uniquely yours.

Your money journey in this world is forever filled with missteps and detours, irrespective of your abundance or lack. Even if it may seem to be a bed of roses to you because of your abundance, it is always filled with some thorns. So, you need your spiritual wisdom to give you hope and guidance on your money journey.

To attain that spiritual wisdom, you need your faith—which is your trust and obedience to your Creator. According to Saint Augustine, faith is to believe in what you do not see, and you will then see what you believe. So, if you believe in your money wisdom, you will then see your security in every aspect of your life, whether you have abundance or lack..

To apply your money wisdom in the material world you are living in, you need the wisdom of the TAO—which is the humility to detach yourself from all attachments that you think define who you are. With no ego, you may then become self-enlightened: perceiving the “nothingness” of all things, as well as self-intuiting your “connectedness” to anything and everyone in the world. So, you are in balance and harmony with anyone and everyone, and you are no longer at war within yourself with your fear of insecurity—that is ultimately your money wisdom.

Click here to ge your paperback, and click here to get your ebook.

NORA WISE

Copyright © Nora Wise

Healthy Posture and Healthy Vision

Science has attested to the close connection between the body and the mind. As a matter of fact, your body organs and systems are all inter-connected. Accordingly, your vision is inter-connected with your body posture. Therefore, to improve your eyesight, you must also improve your body posture.

Vision health is holistic health, that is, it includes the health of the body, the mind, and the spirit. Eyesight is an integral part of vision. Your eyesight determines how you see the world at large; your perception is your reality. Therefore, your perception becomes the raw materials of your life experiences, which will directly or indirectly affect your physical, mental, and emotional well-being. By the same token, your physical, mental, and emotional health will have an impact on your vision health, and hence your eyesight.

According to Dr. William Bates (1860 - 1931), the founder of natural vision improvement, poor vision is the result of eyestrain, due to mental and physical stress on the eye, and hence the distortion of the eye shape, causing nearsightedness and farsightedness. Dr. William Bates strongly believed that eye relaxation holds the key to improving vision. As a matter of fact, stress is the major underlying cause of most human diseases. It is important to reduce, if not remove, the stress factor in your life. 

But eye relaxation begins with the mind first, and not the eye. The mind must be completely relaxed before it can relax the body, and then the eye, which is only one of the organs of the body. Posture health is overall health because poor posture affects different parts of your body in many different ways, such as back pain and breathing, among others.

Good posture improves your breathing. Incorrect breathing results in compromised lung functioning, leading to inadequate oxygen intake by all body organs and tissues, and hence a host of health issues, including vision health. Improve your posture to optimize breathing for your vision health.

Good posture helps you avoid debilitating body pain, such as back pain, neck pain, leg pain, and even headaches. In addition, an arched back exerts undue pressure on the joints and nerves, causing joint pain and rheumatism. Due to poor body posture, all the muscle groups supporting the crooked spine may become stretched and strained, causing wear and tear, resulting in lower back pain. Chronic body pain often interferes with natural sleep, which is a major factor in relaxation of the body and the mind, in particular, the eye. Therefore, it is important to have good posture for eye relaxation to improve eyesight.

To successfully improve posture, you must develop an acute awareness for good posture at all times.

Good posture does not mean "jamming your shoulders back, tucking in your tummy, and standing stiff"; this posture does not align your body, nor is it practicable in that you can maintain that position over an extended period. To learn how to maintain good posture. Visit my web page: Healthy Posture Resources.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

Losing Your Money

Making money is all about your being and your doing: being who you are and doing what you can with what you have.

Not knowing your true self and not doing what you are supposed to do, and yet wanting your money, and even lots of it, leads to your “money fantasies”, such as becoming a professional gambler, lining up for hours to get your Power Ball, and even engaging in burglary or bank robbery.

No matter what, you may lose your money at some point in your life, and that is a reality. Remember, the opposite of "gain" is "loss", and what goes up must also come down, and this is a universal truth.

LOSING

Even if your life is a bed of roses, it must also have some thorns to go with it. What goes up must also come down. Gains are followed by losses. That is the natural cycle of all things.

While pursuing your careers, you might have encountered your discharge or unemployment, and while making your money in your businesses or financial investments, you might also have been overwhelmed by your money losses.

Freedom

Free yourself from “money miseries”—living from paycheck to paycheck; not making both ends meet; always seeing your lack and deprivation when compared with others.

Remember this: Even wealthy celebrities went broke, and you are not alone. For example, Mike Tyson, a boxing champion, earning over $300 million dollars, ended up in bankruptcy in 2003; and Michael Jackson, a recording artist, dancer, singer, and songwriter, earning over $500 million dollars, was heavily in debt when he died in 2009.

So, fight the good fight to recover, restore, and rejuvenate yourself from the bondage and wreckage of losses. 

Bondage

Money is emotional, especially when always feeling the lack of it. Yes, money can cause many mental problems, including depression.

With more money, you can live rich. But even with less money, you can still live richly, and free yourself from the bondage of lack.

But how to live richly if you have less money? The answer is thrift, which is an alternative lifestyle to consumerism, materialism, and over-consumption in this material world you are living in.

Thrift may help you work less, and not more. Many people are not paying with their money; instead, they are paying with their time from their lives. Are you one of them? Are you doing two or more jobs just to earn that extra money to spend more? 

Thrift may promote your positive consumption values. Are some or most of your purchases aimed at your instant gratification, or just enhancing your self-esteem, making you feel rich, such as wearing a designer’s dress?

Thrift may encourage your savings. It may give you more space to save, thereby instrumental in protecting you from negative income shocks, such as an unexpected unemployment.

Yes, living richly with thrift may turn you from bondage to freedom.

FREEDOM with BONDAGE shows you how to free yourself from your bondage to the flesh that gives you the "freedom" to make the wrong choices and decisions in your everyday life.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

Dealing with Emotional Pain

Human life is never pain or sorrow free—that is life, whether you like it or not.

Human pain is intensified by the human mind, which seeks to deny and to avoid it. To alleviate the pain, focus the mind on the present moment. Accept it, and cope with it, instead of fighting against it.

Suffering, pain, and misery are necessary for the co-existence of contentment, pleasure, and happiness, just as sickness and health are at the far ends of that same phenomenological spectrum. According to TAO wisdom (the ancient wisdom from China), these extremes in human experience are not only temporary but also unnatural; they are just the cycles of nature in which the pendulum swings back and forth from one end to the other. Therefore, it is human folly to attempt to avoid or to resist experiencing these swings; by doing so, man throws himself out of balance with nature, and thus not only intensifies but also unduly prolongs his suffering. According to TAO, acceptance holds the key:

“Accept misfortune as the human condition. . .

What do you mean by

‘Accept misfortune as the human condition’?

Misfortune comes from having a body.

Without a body, how could there be misfortune?”

(Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Chapter 13)

The TAO solution to human pain and suffering is non-judgment through focusing on the present moment.

Emotional pain often leaves behind a residue of pain that continues to live on in you. Combined with the accumulated pain in the past, the new emotional pain begins to merge with that in the past, giving it a newer dimension with greater intensity.

To illustrate, we often find ourselves burst into uncontrollable anger when triggered by an unpleasant incident, and begin lashing at the aggressor with outbursts of past grudges and grievances that have nothing to do with the present incident. Our emotional pain can only feed on past pain, and thus creating more pain—a vicious circle of misery and suffering.

Staying in the present moment may enable you to confront uour subconscious identification with the past thoughts deeply embedded in your subconscious mind. Maybe you are not the person you think you are, and you are simply afraid to face the pain that lives in you. As long as the fear is not overcome, you will continue to think you are the person you think you are, and you will continue to experience the past pain for the rest of your life.

Remember, emotional pain is caused by emotional thoughts, which generate negative energy that causes body-and-mind pain.

For example, through the subconscious mind, angry thoughts on what someone did to you become “you” because you identify them with you. The emotional pain then becomes “you” because where there is anger there is also pain.

The wisdom of TAO is to use the present moment to dis-identify yourself from your mind; by shattering the deceptive mind identification, you begin to see the light and the ultimate truth. It is like the Biblical wisdom expressed by Apostle Paul when he said: “Everything is being shown up by being exposed to the light, and whatever is exposed to the light itself becomes light.” (Ephesians 5:13)

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

The Basics of Aging

Knowing the Basics of Aging

If you wish to live to 100 and beyond, you need to know  the basics of mortality: aging, premature aging, and longevity.

Aging

The passage of time is inevitable and eternal. Aging begins as early as from young adulthood (around age 20 to 40) to middle adulthood (around age 40 to 65), and continues to old age (beginning at the age of retirement, approximately at age 65). Aging occurs throughout most of one’s lifespan. The aging process is an accumulation of changes, which may be subtle or sudden, and even drastic, that progressively lead to disease, degeneration, and ultimately death. Truly, you cannot die merely of old age; your ultimate demise is caused by advancing age itself, as well as by the diseases and degenerative conditions that accompany it.

Aging is difficult to define, but you will know it when you see it, or experience it firsthand yourself. In brief, aging is a steady decline in health and wellness, instrumental in shortening lifespan; and the aging process is the duration during which such changes occur.

The hard facts of aging

Whether you like it or not, your biological clock is ticking, and this will happen to various systems in your body:

Your heart will pump less blood, and your arteries will become stiffer and less flexible, resulting in high blood pressure—a common health problem that often increases with age.

With less oxygen and nutrients from the heart, your lungs will also become less efficient in getting and distributing oxygen to different organs and membranes of your body.

Your brain size will slowly and gradually reduce by approximately 10 percent between the age of 30 and 70. Loss of short-term memory will become increasingly more acute and evident.

Your bone mass will reduce, making it more brittle and fragile. Your body size will shrink as you lose your muscle mass.

Your biological clock is continuously ticking, whether you are conscious of it or not. Your mortality has been pre-programmed into your biological organisms and your body cells. Theoretically, you may have an indefinite lifespan through the division, the rejuvenation, and the regeneration of your body cells and organisms—if they are still healthy and fully functional. Although your genes may have pre-determined the speed of your biological clock, you can still slow down the speed of aging—if you still have good health.

So, what is good health? Is being healthy synonymous with the absence of disease?

According to the United States Public Health Service, good health is “preventing premature death, and preventing disability, preserving a physical environment that supports human life, cultivating family and community support, enhancing each individual’s inherent abilities to respond and to act, and assuring that all Americans achieve and maintain a maximum level of functioning.” This statement probably sums up what you need to do in order to be younger and healthier for longer; it says everything about aging.

Premature aging

The truth of the matter is that you age, just like everyone else does. The point in question is how you can delay that aging process in order to make you not only feel but also look younger and healthier for longer—or, at least, not making you age more quickly than you are supposed to.

Unfortunately, many of us have fallen victims to the accelerated aging syndrome, or premature aging.

Accelerated aging syndrome

According to Steven Masley, M.D., the former medical director of the Pritikin Longevity Center in St. Petersburg, Florida, you may have the potentials for accelerated aging, if you have just any three of the following:

A fast blood sugar level of more than 100 mg/dl

A blood pressure higher than 130/85

A waist larger than 35 inches for women and 40 inches for men

Good cholesterol level (HDL) less than 40 mg/dl for men, and 50 mg/dl for women

Triglyceride (a certain type of fat in your blood) levels greater than 150 mg/dl

Factors contributing to premature aging

There are several factors that increase the predisposition to accelerated aging:

Your diet: you are what you eat, and you become what you eat.

Your lifestyle: life on the fast lane often leads to faster aging.

Your physical inactivity: immobility brings about stagnation and degeneration.

Your stress level: stress kills your brain cells, predisposing you to premature aging.

Your disease and physical pain: disease and pain have a devastating impact on both the body and the mind

Damaging free radicals

Your body is composed of many different types of cells, made up of many different types of molecules.

Free radicals are molecules that contain unpaired electrons. Since electrons have a very strong tendency to co-exist in a paired rather than in an unpaired state, free radicals indiscriminately pick up electrons from other healthy molecules close by. This chemical reaction converts those otherwise “healthy” molecules into free radicals, and thus setting up a chain reaction that can cause substantial biological damage to cells. Free radicals are highly reactive, damaging not only cells but also chemicals in your body, such as enzymes (for digestion), making them less effective and efficient.

Aging causes oxidation, which literally means “rusting.” Free radicals cause oxidative damage to cells and tissues. Free radicals do not make you younger and healthier for longer; quite the contrary, they age you prematurely and contribute to many diseases, including cancer and heart disease, among others.

Free radicals occur naturally as byproducts of oxidation, such as during respiration and other chemical processes. For example, during your breathing, life-giving oxygen is produced while harmful carbon dioxide is released; digestion is another oxidation process, in which your body obtains its energy from food through oxidation, during which free radicals are also generated in the form of waste buildup. Ironically, what gives life may also take away life indirectly.

Free radicals are normally present in your body in small numbers, without causing too much harm. However, over the long haul, the accumulation of these free radicals may cause irreparable damage to your body cells and tissues, if such accumulation is unchecked.

In addition, free radicals can also be caused by external factors, such as alcohol, nicotine, chemicals from foods and toxic pharmaceutical drugs, heavy metals, such as cadmium and lead, from the environment, radiation from the sun and other sources.

Longevity

The word “longevity” has its origin from the Latin word “longaevitas”, which comes from the word “longus” or long, and “aevu” or age. 

Genes do not cause aging but they do indirectly affect longevity in that they may pre-determine the rate of division, rejuvenation, and regeneration of body cells and organisms.

Consciousness of longevity involves your awareness of preventative intervention and detection of early signs of medical conditions that could potentially affect longevity.

Your Death and Your Destination

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau