What are we talking about? Most days we usually communicate either by voice, text, social media or some other method. Are we positive, negative, angry, happy, spiteful, hopeful - what's in what we say?

Some folks tend to be ones intent on berating others, complainers about just about everything, or negative Nellie's about what's about to happen. Others merit sainthood because they do nothing but lift up others and communicate most effectively by their actions that help others. Most of us are somewhere in between because we are humans with flaws.

But the ones intent on hurting others, those are the ones I have a difficult time with, especially gossip. This is how the dictionary defines that word: idle talk or rumor, especially about the personal or private affairs of others.  In Psalm 41 David describes it perfectly: Whenever one comes to see me, he speaks falsely, while his heart gathers slander; then he goes out and spreads it abroad.

That's not even the worst part of it, he follows it with this: All my enemies whisper together against me; they imagine the worst for me saying, a vile disease beset him, he will never get up from the place where he lies. Sometimes we forget, even those of us who call ourselves Christians, that if someone screws up or makes a questionable decision our goal is not to shoot the wounded, but to help patch up the wounds.

This is just a reminder that Proverbs has the antidote for this attitude: Pleasant words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones. Sure, deal with a problem, but use these kind of words as an antiseptic and bandages for a discretion and do not compound it with gossip to others.

Or as Jesus said, ​let he who is without sin cast the first stone!

I heard a great sermon yesterday about how to answer some of the difficult questions people ask of Christians. Like how is God speaking to Jesus from heaven after he is baptized if Jesus is also God? Is God speaking to himself? That was from an 8 year old.

Takes a bit to answer that and some of us would be perplexed to try and answer logically. Some things we believe by faith are just that and in some cases have an incredibly difficult answer if we even have one at all.
However, the greatest answer we can give about our faith and why we believe is our personal testimony of how God has worked in our lives. Even better is the tag that draws people into asking more questions.

For example here are a few phrases in the Bible, one from John 9: One thing I do know, I was blind but now I can see. Or from the Parable of the Prodigal son: this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!

Maybe yours is all I know is that I was an addict and he made me clean. Or I was in the darkness and he showed me the light. Or possibly, I had cancer and now I am cancer free. One sentence that inspires a conversation which answers that most difficult question, "Why do you believe what you do?" The simplest answers reduce the most difficult questions to answerable.

A couple that a man named David gave in Psalm 40 work as well: I waited patiently for the Lord: he turned to me and heard my cry. Or even better is the next verse: He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire: he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm pace to stand.

Does that answer the question when we are confused how to answer? Not directly, but it gives the Why of Why I believe. And then you may answer that 8 year old with this: God is God and I am not - who am I to tell him he can't speak to himself? Or part a sea, or heal a leper, raise a man from being dead or raise himself from the dead, or make that blind man see, or any of the other thousands of miraculous things he did?

I don't know much, but I know in my heart God did it!

God is good all the time! We say these words but do we believe them especially when things get rough. If this is true then maybe God put a few of those bumpy things in front of us just to fortify our faith. And he's good to get us better because of our faith to get over that bump.

I've had my share of mine. Don't have space to recount them all but we can agree that all of us have face situations that severely tested our faith. And we may have also faced things that bought us to faith. Whatever the circumstances, if you consider the view from God down to us, it either broke us, woke us or poked us to be where we are today,

Good news, God can repair any damage if we trust and believe in him. He can give us that wake up call when our faith is stagnant. And if we have given our life to Jesus then the Holy Spirit will poke us when we need a course correction. In all, it becomes a question. Do we believe God is really good or do we believe he is out to get us for our wrongs?

Writing to all those carried into exile (insert you in here if needed who are struggling with addiction or addictive sin, or just plain doubt), Jeremiah said this to them: This is what the Lord says: When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my gracious promise to bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Jeremiah 29:10-11

God is good all the time right? Wait a minute - they had to wait 70 years to get that promise. How many of us consider God's waiting period a little too bumpy to navigate and then get tired of waiting? We like the second part of that but the first? I think that the Lord in his infinite wisdom wanted us to make the most of that bumpy time to become better in order to make the most of his promise.

Bingo! And the winner gets a return home, prosperity, no harm and a whole lot of hope for the future. Yes the road to better is always bumpy, but that road also leads to a fulfilled life!

* Credit to T.D. Jakes for the title of this blog!

What do you see yourself as? What do you see when you look in the mirror? Better question, what would that mirror reflect if it were looking at your heart?

As water reflects a face, so a man's heart reflects the man. Proverbs 27:19

Who do you have a heart to serve? Yourself, the world, your family, God? The choices we make for that can form the patterns of our heart. Is my Vision to focus on my image, my imagination or the imaging of a man or woman reflecting the love of God?

In the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous in the Chapter titled A Vision For You, it warns us that these "Four Horsemen" can take us out if our vision is misplaced: Terror, Bewilderment, Frustration, and Despair. No one wants blurred vision, but my personal experience is that losing focus can quickly turn into one of those four. And when it does, our heart reacts, usually without love.

God has a vision for us: My son, keep my words and store up my commands within you. Keep my commands and you will live; guard my teachings as the apple of your eye. Bind them with your fingers; write them on the tablet of your heart. Proverbs 7:1-5

Now that's some vision, making God and his ways the "apple of our eye" rather than all those other things that eventually become rotten apples. And if they are written on the tablets of our heart they are indelibly forged into our spirit that will reflect the greatest two commandments. Let me remind you what Jesus said:

You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important, love your neighbor as yourself. All the other commandments and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.

A heart of love reflects a vision of hope, encouragement, acceptance and forgiveness. In God's optometry that would be 20/20 eyesight focused directly on Him.

The original Big Apple!

Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. Galatians 6:9

One thing I have learned for certain in serving in addiction recovery is that people will heal, some will fail, and there will also be catastrophic losses. But yet, there will be those who not only get sober, they will also thrive and become leaders in their communities and families. For sure, God never gives up on them, and we don't either. That's why being consistent in love, acceptance, forgiveness and in presence is huge.

Like the story of The Prodigal Son, which demonstrates clearly how far God will go to love us, we too need to be God's open arms even when people turn their back on doing the right thing, going the right way. After all, we were like that in this recovery community, we came home to the open arms of a God who never gave up on us. That's why Doing Good Is Doing God.

Never stop believing in your child, or your friend, never stop doing the right thing even though everything around is falling apart, and if you understand, like us at ATB, that we may be the only "home" to come back to you keep doing good no matter what. Because doing good never relies on only feeling good, it relies on feeling God. His presence promotes patience, understanding and an attitude of those wide open arms for someone hurting so bad that they are at the very end of their rope.

We are not perfect but we reap a harvest because HE is. Pretty simple, just follow his directions!