Rules to Live By

A simple set of rules not only for our kids and grandkids to live by but rules for all of us to apply to our lives.

Rule #1 Pray Always

Rule #2 Be thankful

Rule #3 Take responsibility

Rule #4 Choose to be happy

Rule #5 Go to bed with a forgiving spirit

Remember: There are no giants, only mountains yet to climb, so take action!


Pray always. Praying always to God keeps us in touch with our Lord and Savior. Our purpose in life is to establish a good relationship with the Lord and we do that thru communication. If we tried talking to our parents or the teach at school only once a week for an hour or two they wouldn't like it. No relationship can be built on the lack of communication and our relationship with God is no different.

Be thankful. As human's we have the tendency to not be thankful. Tendency?! Wrong word we are flat out very ungrateful people. We can find an excuse to grumble about anything. Instead of looking at what we do have we would rather reflect on what we don't have. Instead of being thankful for the things other people are doing for us we would rather find fault in the things we think we could do better.

Take Responsibility. Too often we fail to take responsibility for our actions. We would rather blame our parents, our teacher, our siblings, the full moon, or the change in the atmosphere for our behavior instead of taking responsibility for it. When we do something whether its good or bad we need to take responsibility for our actions. Own up to what we have done. It's not that good of a thing we have to "own up to" then we need to use this moment to correct whatever it is inside of us that made us do what we did. Spouting off at the mouth and saying, "Well I own up to it, that is just the way I am" is not a good attitude to take. We need to step down off our high horses and our thinking that we are the ones that rule our lives and that everyone gets to do whatever they want in life, good or bad.

Choose to be happy. Daily we need to make the choice to "choose to be happy." Circumstances, people, money, or anything else is responsibility for making us happy. It's a choice we make for ourselves. Many relationships have broken up over the fact that one of the people in the union wasn't being made happy by the other person. That is our job to choose to be happy. It comes from our attitude, our choice to look at things in a positive manner. It's not something we can rely on others to supply us with. Indeed others can make us very happy but its not their responsibility. If our attitudes weren't correct in the first place whatever they did would never have worked. It comes from us.

Go to bed with a forgiving spirit. The best thing we can do for ourselves is to go to bed with a forgiving heart. Doing this forces to deal with things immediately like they should be done instead of sulking over them only to get madder and madder. It's best to take care of it and deal with your differences now instead of later. Hanging on to our anger and hatred for someone is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. It just doesn't happen, we are the ones who wind up injured from our anger.

Remember, there are no giants, only mountains yet to climb, so take action. Too often we look at things and think they are too big for us to deal with. We get scared at the tasks ahead of us instead of stopping long enough to just move forward in faith, faith in our Lord and Savior that tells us he will never leave us nor forsake us. The only way we can access that promise is through faith. We need to be looking at the size of God not the size of the task in front of us. Instead of holding ourselves back from accomplishing great things we need to take action knowing we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us.