Hope for your financial life and beyond

The Best Advice From God About Playing Video Games

I have a confession to make – I LOVE playing video games. In fact, even today at age 43 – I have to keep myself from playing them because it’s so easy for me to get sucked into their grasp. I can still play all day if I let myself go.

Technology propels society forward perhaps like nothing else. I came of age in a decade where the video game industry saw leaps and bounds like never before. I was seven in 1980 when perhaps the greatest video game of all time was released. Want to take a guess which game that was?

That’s right – Pac-Man.

But the 1980s saw even greater innovations that propelled the numbers of kids and adults playing video games to new heights.

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Is Your Perspective On Life Limiting You?

Enjoy this guest post from Don who writes for Breath of Optimism, a personal development site that helps readers to be the best person they can be in this life.

How do you see things in life?  Through a glass half empty or a glass half full? If you are one that tends to see the negative side of things, I urge you to change your ways as your perspective can be limiting you in life. Maybe you aren’t where you thought you would be because of how you view things. If you could change your perspective, you could see a great change in your life.

Every Situation Has Two Sides

In life, we tend to only focus on one side of the coin, either the positive side or the negative side. For whatever reason, most of us are wired to look at the negative. As such, we go through life always focusing on the negatives, finding fault in everything.

When we view life in the negative, we have added worry, stress and unhappiness in our life. But when we view life in the positive, we have little to no worries and we live each day to its fullest.

For me, I’ve been someone that tends to look at the bright side of life. I can remember a big decision I had to make at a young age that illustrates this perfectly.

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3 Principles from the Bible that Will Help You Build Wealth

The following is a guest post from ESI who blogs at ESI Money. He’s a 50-something early retiree who has amassed a multi-million dollar net worth by following three simple steps to build wealth — earning, saving, and investing (ESI).

As most Christians know, the Bible has a wealth of information and advice about handling money and the ability to build wealth. The book of Proverbs alone provides enough guidance to fill many personal finance books.

build wealthOf course the Bible doesn’t focus on becoming wealthy for wealth’s sake, but to bless others. That said, if you apply the principles in the Bible, you can’t help but become wealthy.

Over the past 25 years I have applied three simple steps to become wealthy. At the same time, my knowledge of what the Bible says about money has grown. Somewhere along the way I realized that my actions mirrored what was in Scripture. And even better, as I changed my actions to better reflect the Bible’s teachings on money, I prospered even more.

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Some Say There Is No God. What If They Are Wrong?

I recently published an article highlighting some short Bible verses that hold tremendous meaning. For a couple of weeks, I promoted that post on Facebook. The article was well received, generating over 1.3k likes. But of course, as Facebook goes there are always dissenters. I had some fairly interesting comments posted on my page from people asserting that there is no God.

there is no godI don’t mind. I’m used to that kind of stuff.

I’ve always been fascinated by people who claim there is no God. Questioning whether there is a God is one thing. At least that person is thinking it through. But to deny the possibility altogether seems unimaginative.

I had a professor in grad school who fit this description. He thought we Christians in the class were shallow and narrow-minded. He scoffed at our belief that there is one God who oversees the entire universe. To him, we needed to open our minds and embrace other philosophical and scientific realities.

I always found that ironic. He chastised our singular vision and wanted us to be more open. Yet he himself was never open to the possibility that we might be right.

Which brings me to ask this question to anyone reading this right now:

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3 Reasons Kids Should Watch Every Moment of Olympic Coverage

Today my kids will drag themselves out of bed and head back to school. Unfortunately, our back to school season is clashing with another major world event happening right now – the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. So there will be no more 10-hour, lying on the couch veg-out sessions, flipping back and forth to the many channels of Olympic coverage.

I have to admit I love the summer Olympics. I can do without the opening and closing ceremonies, which I know many people love. But I’ll take anything and everything else that happens. The Olympics are a sports enthusiasts dream.

My love affair with the Olympics started in 1984 when they were hosted by Los Angeles. I was 11 years old and still remember being in awe of the athletic performances. If you are under the age of 25 and have never heard of Carl Lewis, Edwin Moses, Mary Lou Retton, Greg Louganis or the Zola Budd collision you need to spend some time on YouTube. Great athletes with great performances in a great atmosphere.

Now I’m raising four kids who are growing up in an age where there is a greater variety of Olympic events and they have greater access to them. There weren’t 7 stations broadcasting the competitions in those days. And we certainly didn’t have streaming options via computer or mobile phone app.

So far my kids are eating this up. There have only been a few days of Olympic coverage but they are fixed in the TV room, cheering the USA on at every turn. I’m usually one to limit TV and computer viewing because I don’t think it’s healthy for kids to be looking at a screen all day.

But here is why until the Olympics are over I’ll be stretching the viewing limits and bedtimes a little farther even with school being in session.

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Living Through Tragedy When There Are No Answers

I find myself again writing the most difficult of posts. Three years ago it was about one of my high school students who chose to take her own life. This time tragedy struck in our church youth group as on Tuesday we lost a 16-year old girl to the most unlikely of things for someone so young – cardiac arrest.

Her name was Elizabeth and she was a sweet, sweet girl. She was so pleasant to be around. Smiles adorned her face at every turn. And such a committed follower of Jesus.

So young…so healthy…so just getting started on life.

And then she was gone in a heartbeat.

You can read the account as shared by her mother on her Facebook page. As a parent it will make you want to hold your kids tight and cherish the moment. I sure did when my wife and I returned from the hospital.

The toughest part about being with the family at the hospital and helping them work through the funeral arrangements this week was that there are no answers. There are no answers to the “Why did this happen?” question. There are no answers to the “What happened (physically)?” question. There are no answers really at all to how this happened to a perfectly healthy young girl.

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What Should I Do For My Birthday Today?

Birthdays come but once a year. Today just so happens to be mine. And with it comes the obligatory question, What should I do for my birthday?

Some birthdays seem bigger than others. When I was a child, my birthday ranked right behind Christmas as the most important day of the year. I’d look forward to March 7th each and every year because it meant parties and cake and presents. I mean, what child doesn’t like to have those things on Christmas or their birthday or on any given day of the year?

what should i do for my birthdayNow, at 43, there is not so much gifting. There are fewer parties. Sometimes there is cake or perhaps a night out – if a babysitter can be found. More than likely though, the kids just come along on said night out.

The decade birthdays draw a bit more attention like when I turned 40. But for the most part I’m finding birthdays in middle age pass quietly without much fanfare.

And I’m OK with that.

A few months ago I spent some time with my grandfather, just a few weeks before his 102nd birthday. As we sat down to dinner one night, the conversation turned to a discussion about things that had occurred during the last year that we were thankful for. I’ll never forget his response when it came time for him to answer.

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102-Year-Old Says You Are Never Too Old to Celebrate

You may be too old to become an astronaut. Your age can hinder you from driving a car or starting another family. Many of the things you used to do when younger may be no longer feasible. But this one thing is surely true – you are never too old to celebrate living into a new year.

you are never too oldHow do I know this?

Because I just spent last weekend with my soon to be 102-year-old grandfather and he has no intentions of slowing down.

Don’t get me wrong. He moves slower than he used to. His hearing isn’t what it used to be and he eats slower than the rest of us.

But his mind is alert and he knows exactly why he is still here…to live and impact people, whomever he can.

At the dinner table Sunday night, my aunt asked each of us to share our biggest highlight of 2015. We each told of an experience this past year that meant something to us. When it came time for my grandfather to end the conversation, he said something I’ll never forget.

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Money in the Bible: 99 Topics That Will Move You to Action

When I began Luke1428, the main purpose was to share all that I’d learned about money in the Bible. After reading through the Bible in a year, I had recorded all the verses about money I could find. It was my goal to use those for a series of articles that would teach people what God thought about money and inspire them to take action.

I called this money in the Bible series “Hidden Nuggets.”

digging up hidden nuggets about money in the bibleIt’s called Hidden Nuggets because sometimes things aren’t obvious when you read the Bible. Usually you must dig to understand what God is trying to say. Like a piece of gold that is waiting in the earth to be discovered by a metal detector or a miner, so are many Bible verses. The truth is there waiting to be exposed to those who want to search out the meaning.

God has revealed to me more than I could have imagined through my study of money in the Bible. Many things I thought I knew I realize now I didn’t really know. So it is when you begin to dig for the truth – it stretches you to examine your faulting ways of thinking.

I’ve come to a very exciting milestone in my Hidden Nuggets series about money in the Bible. This is my 100th article for the series that dates back to July 14, 2013 with the publication of This Little Light of Mine. To commemorate this, I’d like share with you what I believe are the best 25 posts in the series.

My Top 25 Posts About Money in the Bible

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How to Eat, Drink and Be Merry the Right Way (Luke 12:13-21)

Hidden Nuggets Series #98 – “And I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years; take your ease; eat, drink and be merry.” – Luke 12:19

eat drink and be merry“Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die” is a popular refrain you may have felt or expressed at some point in your life. If you are like me maybe you said it as a joke when you were downing a pint of ice cream swirled with chocolate sauce. As some in recent years have expressed, “You only live once, right?”

Truth is there is great seriousness in the statement and the consequences of adopting this attitude are serious.

There are two basic elements to the “eat, drink and be merry” philosophy towards life:

1) we are all going to die, sooner rather than later and…

2) since #1 is true, then we should live for the moment, enjoying whatever pleasures we can.

But the issue goes even deeper than those two concepts. When we opt for the eat, drink and be merry philosophy we are choosing laziness, neglect of our responsibilities and a forfeiture of the future. We are resting on what we have accomplished and counting on that to sustain us indefinitely.

You may not know the phrase has its origins in the Bible, taken from a story Jesus told of a rich fool.

The Parable of the Rich Fool

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What Happens When You Seek First the Kingdom of God (Matthew 6:33)

Hidden Nuggets Series #97 – “But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.” – Matthew 6:33

When your eyes crack open in the morning what is it you seek? What is the first thing on your mind?

seek first the kingdom of GodIf you are like me it’s probably the last thing you thought about the night before. Sleep never seems to wash away what we are passionate about. It’s always there the next day, front and center in our mind.

However, the answer to the question will reveal your priorities.

So many things vie for priority #1 in our lives that sometimes it’s a struggle to keep them in perspective. What seems important one day fades into the rearview mirror the next. New challenges, opportunities and attractions replace the old, and so on and on goes the cycle.

In the Bible, Jesus addressed our focus on priorities one day in a discussion about worry. Evidently some around him were fretting over what they might eat and drink and over what clothes they might wear. Not fretting like how you or I might have trouble deciding between steak and chicken for dinner or what to wear on any given Sunday to church. Theirs was a literal concern over not having any food or clothing as basic necessities of life, a dire circumstance to be in for sure.

As only Jesus could, he brought clarity to what they should seek first each day. As we’ll see the benefits received from putting his suggestion priority #1 actually spoke to their most pressing daily needs.

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