Six Key Words for Successful Living

Six Key Words for Successful Living
                                       

                                                                                         Return to Main Menu

From the Six-T's in Navigating Life

The 6 T's of living life provides a Successful Focus and Guidance on how we approach our trials and where we place out trust while in the valley of those trials.  This defines who we are as a person and the success we have in living life.  

It changes life from just breathing to successful living.

 The six T's  are:  

  Trials,    Testing,         Temptation, 

Trust,     Triumph,      Testimony

In the Trials we encounter in our living life,

we can experience the Trial 

as a Test that makes us stronger or
 we allow the Test 

to become a Temptation 

that can lead us to more weakness and sin. 

It is where we place our Trust that determines

if the outcome is a Triumph or defeat.  

In Trusting God in our Trials,

the Trial becomes a Test making us stronger

for our future opportunities (Trials).  

However, if we are not God-focused, 

a Trial 

easily becomes 

a Temptation often 

leading to sin 

resulting in

greater weakness or even death (James 1:14-15). 

Trusting God leads to Triumph 

resulting in a Testimony to God.  

Without the Trials and Tests of life

we have no Testimonies.  

In Reality, Living a Succesful Life
through our Belief and
 our Faith-our Sacred Relationship in Jesus as Lord of our lives 
boils down to one key word,
The Key is Trust

(John 14:1)

-----

Trust is one of the commands of Jesus:

Jesus Comforts His Disciples

John 14:1   "Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me."

This is not a suggestion, 

          not something to consider when you are feeling down, or 

                   something to do when you feel like it, because  

The Ressurrection of Jesus was verified by God.  

    What Jesus says is what God expects us to do!

Thanks be to God.

lonnie

For more on Trust, click here:
 
Finding Confidence and Inner Strength Through Trusting God
or
A Testimony to Testing

   Return to Main Menu

  Go to Trust Menu

==============================

Sharing these messages

You are welcome to share these messages.  You can send the links to your friends,  copy and insert the link on FB or Christian.com or you can print the message and share it with your friends.

You can print the message including this sharing message only for your friends and for non-profit.  You will have to copy and paste the message to a word processing document.   After you copy and paste add the following at the end of the message:

© Lonnie Coggins
ldcoggins@gmail.

If you desire to use any of these messages in a For-Profit manner you must contact me (email) for permission.  Typically, I will most likely give permission.

lonnie

In our day to day lives, we live in times of smooth sailing and in those times we need to prepare for the rough waters of living in our Faith- our Relationshp with God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit.  Here are some thoughts that may help you prepare for those times or even pull you out of your temptaions you may be struggling with.  Click the link and share as you feel lead to do.
http://lonnieadailythought.blogspot.com/2013/07/six-key-words-for-successful-living.html

The Power of Prayer, Part 3

The Power of Payer                  Returnto Main Menu

  Part 3                                                               Returnto Vietnam Menu

Some thoughts about prayer 

in considerations surrounding this incident described in Part 1 and 2.

Reading Part 1 and Part 2 of the Power of Prayer will make these comments more meaningful.  If you have not read “The Power of Prayer” click these links:

Click here for>> The Power of Prayer Part 1

The Power of Prayer Part 2

1.    In the writing “The Power of Prayer” there was an event of seeing soldiers with their rifles on their shoulders marching to the firing range.  This was a most fortuitous event leading to an answer to my problem and some might say a coincidence.  However, with God, there are no coincidences.  He is creative and just as a parent, wants to help His children.  God is not in the business of making things easy for His children and this is a failing of parents in their desire to make life better for their children than they had.  God will provide, supply, and see to our needs but sometimes you have to give up, look up, and open up your mind for His solution, or you just might not recognize it. 
For the longest time after that Friday morning of May 1972, I thought the idea of a gun sight to solve my navigation problem was my idea.  When in January of 2009 I began to earnestly pray often everyday, it was then I began to think otherwise about everything about accomplishments in my life.  At the very least, God gave me life, God gave me eyes to see, God gave me this brain to think, and God puts ideas in my head to follow through on.  God gives us ideas to follow through on and do His work.  The difficult part is our work, our following through on what He gives us to do.
...

2.    Heavy emotional events in our lives requiring solutions often come in profoundly low spiritual moments.  It is then we are equally more open to listening and confessing we are helpless, useless, and without hope.   I am thankful for perhaps the first moment in my life I truly felt hopeless and I submitted to asking for His help.

It is when:

we in that helplessness we submit ourselves to His grace,

in our acknowledgement of helplessness and in His grace we

     become our greatest in the Kingdom,

when we acknowledge that we are helpless to solve our 

     problems that we are more ready to 

    clearly open our hearts to Him,

and we are humbly in acceptance of His will, then

     it is in these spiritually low and “poor in spirit’ conditions

     we are most ready to receive the abundant Grace 

     of His solutions in His kingdom; and

he will provide abundant solutions, 

often just barely on time. 

God wants for us to have hope, faith, and patience; He will take care of consequences.  He did with Abraham, He did it with Moses and King David, He did it with the Jews of Jesus, Martin Luther, and others; and, He will do it with you.  

...

3.    Parental guidance and living their faith all their life led me to remaining in church.  Even when I did not seem to be spiritually fed, I continued my practice of going to church.
...

4.    In and through your faith, in your prayers focus your concern on others and pray more for them rather than yourself.  You will find your concerns diminish and your sinful worry far less intrusive in your life.  Just as it did for me, humble prayer will open your mind to solutions.  Just remember, your solutions to important projects are often inspirations within you but not of or from you.
...

5.    In my prayers in those days of war, I found my humble prayers the most powerful when I prayed to be in God's will.  I learned to end my prayers just like Jesus did, "Not my will, but your will be done."  Pray everyday for God to show you His Plan, His Will, and His Way for your life.  Pray for the Holy Spirit to provide you the guidance to recognize what God has for you.
...

6.    Asking God to show me the solution was a humble moment and as like most people, we humans like to do things for ourselves.  I firmly believed and submitted to God that the only way this airdrop problem would be solved was for God to show me.   The “show me” came in the form of a question concerning the rifle carrying soldiers.  I firmly believe my knowledge and experience initiated the details of the solution, but it was the inspiration of the question that caused me to realize that solution.  Man can do things, God inspires great things.
...

7.    Inspired solutions can come in the form of a question as it was with me.  The sad part, I did not fully realize until many years later that the question was truly an inspirational event.  I prayed for God to show me a solution and His answer was by putting a question in my mind the next day.  It was a question I thought came from within me.  When the Holy Spirit inspires, it is up to us to respond and recognize the inspirations come not from within ourselves but from the Holy Spirit.  This is hard to accept, deal with, and incorporate into our thinking as society teaches us to depend on ourselves.  Self-dependence and self-confidence is a myth perpetrated by society through selling books, videos, and other assortment of self-help instructions.   True confidence comes in our dependence on the Lord and through the Guidance of the Holy Spirit.
...

8.    A result of prayer beyond the outcome of the request is the peace of mind that comes through humble submissive prayer.  On this and other occasions of great stress, my experience, my witness, my Godly realization is that my stress level is reduced and clarity in thinking is enhanced through prayer.  I have learned too, that there is scientific evidence in the studies of the activity of the brain during prayer that bears this to be true.

Thanks be to God

lonnie (c)

                                                                                         Return to Main Menu

© lonnie coggins

   Return to Main Menu

==============================

Sharing these messages

You are welcome to share these messages.  You can send the links to your friends,  copy and insert the link on FB or Christian.com or you can print the message and share it with your friends.

You can print the message including this sharing message only for your friends and for non-profit.  You will have to copy and paste the message to a word processing document.   After you copy and paste add the following at the end of the message:

© Lonnie Coggins
ldcoggins@gmail.com

If you desire to use any of these messages in a For-Profit manner you must contact me (email) for permission.  Typically, I will most likely give permission.

Please email me if you find any broken links in this message.

lonnie

Publication  0087

The Power of Prayer, Part 1

The Power of Prayer                              Return to

 My Testimony                              Vietnam Menu

                                                                                                                            -----

  Part 1                                    Return to Main Menu

As you will see, I am a strong believer in the power of prayer.  Prayer is the single most important connection we have with God and fellow Christians.  Just like parents, God is sad when He does not hear from us.  

Growing up in a fairly strict Lutheran Church in the 1950's and 60's I heard many prayers.  Maybe, I even said a few.  I can remember private prayer time in the mornings at a church camp where we were suppose to pray.  I may have prayed some then, but that was 50+ years ago as of this writing.  Mother would pray with me on most nights when I was small, say less than 10 years old.  When I hit my teen years she must have thought all her prayers for me would be enough.  And, as it has turned out, maybe it was; but I should have been praying too.   The bottom line, at 24 years old, private praying had not been a part of my daily or even monthly routine for over 14 years.  I was hearing prayers at church all those years, but a personal prayer life just never kicked in.  

But, in time, training and a mother's good example, however small or long ago, prayer training paid off. 

Background Information

Please bear with me as I describe what many soldiers went through during the late Vietnam era.

In 1969 I won the lottery, the draft lottery or another way to see it, the lottery to see which lucky people would be forced into the military for Vietnam duty.  On national TV, all the birthdays were picked just like the lottery we see on TV now for Powerball.  The birthdays, all 366 of them were on ping pong balls and they came out of the cage, just like the lottery on TV today.  My birthday was the 35th one picked, but it was the same as winning.  I was a college senior 'living' in a dorm.  I was notified about seven days later that in June of 1970 I would be drafted into the Army if I did not volunteer.

For almost eight years the dread of the Vietnam war hung over me.  I had years of thoughts on being drafted, my thoughtful plan was, "Find something that requires a lot of training, the longer the better, and maybe the war will be over before I am fully trained."  The war was winding down from two years earlier and I thought maybe it will be over by the time I could be trained.  In February, 1970, I joined the Air Force to fly and navigate air planes, two years training at a minimum.  My plan was set.  It is sad, I never talked to God about it.

As time went by, my plan was working.  The war continued to wind down as I went through Officer training and then Navigator training.  22 months after my entry into the Air Force, I was a combat qualified navigator for a C-130 cargo plane.  By Spring 1972, there were about 700 active C-130 navigators in the Air Force and only 40 in S.E. Asia.  My prospects of going to Vietnam in March of '72 looked slim.  My plan had worked, there was even talk of a reduction in force, and people were being forced out of the Air Force!  That was good for me, my plan of nearly 10 years was working, and things were looking great ...... until.

Plan A fails, time for Plan B

The bad part of Plan B, there was no Plan B.  About a week after I was combat qualified, the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) sent about 200,000 regular troops into South Vietnam.  About 40,000 surrounded a small but important crossroads town of An Loc about 60 miles North of Saigon.  All of a sudden my Plan A was going down in flames.  But, praying was still not on my mind.  At no time did I ever pray about anything during those years, until early May, 1972.

It was Thursday, the first week of May in 1972 when I was "volunteered" to form a crew to assist the Army with testing a new air drop technique.  "Air drop" consists of placing the plane in the proper spot in the air to push out a 2000 lb bundle and that bundle lands on a predetermined spot on the ground.  I was fully qualified to do this at 1200 feet above the ground.  But, things change, especially in war.

A little town in S. Vietnam changed the needs for air drop.  With 40,000 NVA soldiers surrounding that little town of An Loc and wanting to overrun and control the town and its crossroads the Air Force was called to the task.  It became the requirement of the Air Force to resupply the town from the air.  The problem, a gigantic problem was air drop from only 1200 feet.  40,000 bad guys (NVA soldiers) shooting at you from only 1200-1500 feet is not healthy for a C-130 airplane and crews, likewise the new hand carried surface to air missle, SA-7.  Our planes were getting badly shot up with simple small arms fire from the ground as the Air Force was trying to resupply 300 of our surrounded soldiers in An Loc.  The new requirement was air drop from 6,000 feet and the drop zone being a soccer field.  The target for the first bundle from the airplane was the goal net area of the soccer field.  

Parachute Load being Positioned in the Plane

My crew and I arrived at the Army Testing Lab at Pope AFB in North Carolina on a Thursday afternoon and learned of our assignment.  It was to make perfect the capability to drop a 2000 lb bundle from 6,000 feet and hit within 10 meters/yards of a soccer goal. "General, this is impossible, you are nuts", was my first thought.  I had a few other choicey words I choose not to publish.  But, a lieutenant does not tell a General he is absolutely stupidly crazy.  He told me, "Lieutenant, it is your job to determine how to put the plane in the air to hit within 10 meters of the intended soccer goal from 6,000 feet."  My perspective on this requirement was this: my training was at 1200 feet, where an acceptable error was 300 yards/meters and a great score was 100 yards/meters, all this on Fort Bragg's Holland drop zone nearly a mile wide and three miles long.  My honest belief,  a drop error of only 10 meters and a drop zone the size of a soccer field at 6000 feet was absolutely, unconditionally, without exception, totally, and completely mission impossible!

Green Light, Out Goes the Load

On Thursday, we made three test drops. The first drop had a error of 600 yards, six times the length of a soccer field and sixty times the intended margin of error. My second drop was 500 or so yards to the left of target. My third drop was, well.... it totally missed the mile wide by three miles long drop zone! I completely missed the whole, entire three square miles of the Holland drop zone. I was right! This was mission impossible! But, with God, I was going to truly learn that "an impossible mission" is quite possible.

I went home that night thinking I am the wrong guy in the wrong place at the wrong time to figure this out, but my squadron commander told me I knew more about how not to do it than anyone in the Air Force and would not replace me.

Load in Free Fall

Doom and Gloom
was setting in.

Thanks be to God
lonnie  (c) 

=======================

In Part 2,  the success of the project is discussed and why my first bedtime prayer in 14 years yielded the successful results.

Click here:   The Power of Prayer, Part 2  

                                                                                         Return to Main Menu

© lonnie coggins

   Return to Main Menu

==============================

Sharing these messages

You are welcome to share these messages.  You can send the links to your friends,  copy and insert the link on FB or Christian.com or you can print the message and share it with your friends.

You can print the message including this sharing message only for your friends and for non-profit.  You will have to copy and paste the message to a word processing document.   After you copy and paste add the following at the end of the message:

© Lonnie Coggins
ldcoggins@gmail.com

If you desire to use any of these messages in a For-Profit manner you must contact me (email) for permission.  Typically, I will most likely give permission.

Please email me if you find any broken links in this message.

lonnie

Publication  0085

The Six T's in Living Life - Part 3

The Six T's in Living Life    Part 3

Navigating Life from

Trials to Triumph and Testimony

                                    Return to Main Menu

I encourage you to read Part 1 and 2 before Part 3

Click Here for Part 1,       Click Here for Part 2

Knowing if you are in a test or a temptation.

Finding Joy in our Trials

Was Jesus really tempted?

Abraham Tested  Genesis 22:1-3

1Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, "Abraham!" "Here I am," he replied.2Then God said, "Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about."3Early the next morning Abraham got up and saddled his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about.

I did not give high school a good effort.  Easily earning A's and B's in math and science helped my 83 overall average for the four years.  You can imagine my grades in English, history, and other humanity courses where I should have studied.   

When I started college I came to a change of attitude about study so I could stay.  By the third semester I was making all A's and B's because I studied!- Hard!  The library was my best study buddy from 7:00 am to 10:00 pm.  The Trial of college, the hard difficult work, the impossible odds of staying in college, and the achievement of excellent grades taught me the Joy of the Trial in passing Tests.  As I struggled through college, even in my last year, I would get discouraged during the semester, but remind myself of the results of hard work and the joy it would bring!  In that, I even found joy learning to side step professors’ discouragement they would sometimes put on us.  In the end, I more than passed the Tests of the semester.

Caring About Your Trials

In our trials, we truly should care to know the difference between a test and a temptation and be especially aware that any trial begins with a test and can easily slide into a temptation.  It is about preparation and attitude prior to the trial.  Based on an individual, a trial may be a test for one person and a temptation for the other.  As you will see below, a test is a very positive trial. But when we are in a trial, a test can become a temptation easily leading to sin, and in sin, life can become deadly.

I was raised to tell the truth and be honest in all that I do.  The Joy I found in the Trials and Testing of college is that I can truthfully say that I never fell into the temptation of cheating.  I was tested but I can never remember being Tempted to cheat and succumb to temptation for better grades.  Now, with that said, imagine trying to say the last two sentences with just one word for 'test', 'tempted', and 'temptation'.  Such is the way in the ancient Biblical manuscripts.  One word is used for the verbs and associated nouns of 'to test' and 'to tempt'.

Understanding Biblical ‘testing’ / ‘temptation’,

New insights to Jesus being tested or tempted

In the Bible, from Genesis 22 when Abraham was tested about using his son Isaac as a sacrifice, to Jesus being tempted in the wilderness, and in James, Chapter 1, writing about being tested, the same basic Greek and Hebrew equivalent verb is used.  That word is 'peirasmos', pronounced 'pi-rad'-zo'.   The challenge in understanding 'Testing' and 'Temptation' in the ancient Greek, is that peirasmos can be used to convey tempting and to mean testing.   Based on how the Greek verb is used and in the context of the writing determines what the verb's meaning is in that context.

The translation of peirasmos resulting in "tempt/tempted/temptation" of the Greek  word is done in the following manner.  If the trial is where a person is being (1)- maliciously or craftily enticed/seduced to sin, or (2)- to be made to fall or become hurt, or (3)- to be made weaker physically or mentally, or (4) to be pulled from God's purpose, then in these cases, the verb tempt and the noun temptation are used in the translation. 

Contrarily, a person is in a trial in a positive manner if the person's trial is (1)- judgment for fitness for a specific job, or (2)- tried to be strengthen, or to be made stronger (physically, mentally, or spiritually, or (4)  being evaluated or refined for pureness,  wisdom,  and/or correctness, or (5)  an attempt or endeavor to achieve a worthy goal, then, the 'peirasmos' is translated as testing.

How ‘peirasmos’ applies to us,

One person’s test is another person’s temptation

A simple example of how a trial can be a test or a temptation depending on the individual. A teacher announces an evaluation of knowledge commonly known as a test.  For all of us in school, tests were/are a trial!  One student studies and comes prepared, but another student of similar intelligence does not.  The prepared student comes to the test with a more positive attitude about what the outcome will be.  With being prepared and careful test taking, the student completes the test with no need to look around for answers.  But, the unprepared student begins the test becoming immediately challenged and starts looking elsewhere for answers.  In the "looking" the trial of being tested becomes a temptation to cheat.  Upon finding an answer from another person’s paper, the temptation continues with more cheating.

Few evaluations in school result in death, but if in temptation a person continues to cheat, the result can be getting caught.  In being caught enough, expulsion from school can occur.  It is not death, but life, if the situation is desiring money, one has many choices.  Some of those choices are temptations and in executing those temptations the result can be death, such as robbing a store and being shot by the owner of the store.

So, a test can be a positive trial with just a test or it can result in temptation, temptation leading to death.

Eliminating Temptation

We should want to eliminate temptation from our lives.  It begins by depending on God and the guidance of the Holy Spirit.  We have to prepare ourselves for trials so that the trial is only a positive test resulting in some level of success.

When we depend on God, we build up a trust in God in moving from one trial to the next, and one level of trial to a higher level of trial as we prove ourselves of worth .  As long as we are depending on Trusting God then we have a Firewall to Temptation.

In Part 4, the testing of Abraham will be discussed, and the temptation of  Jesus will be compared to Abraham in Part 5.  During these discussions we must keep in mind the temptations of Jesus and wonder to what extent, "Was Jesus really tempted?"  The answer just might cause you to keep your life's focus on a greater Trust in God!  After all, He was the Perfect Leader and He did set the Perfect Example for us to follow.

Something to Think About

Can we fall into temptation without succumbing to temptation, meaning can we in the trial slip over to being tempted and return to just being tested?  How can we plan and seek to avoid temptation?  These are great questions to answer before serious trials come to our lives.

Thanks Be To God

© lonnie coggins

   Return to Main Menu

==============================

Sharing these messages

You are welcome to share these messages.  You can send the links to your friends,  copy and insert the link on FB or Christian.com or you can print the message and share it with your friends.

You can print the message including this sharing message only for your friends and for non-profit.  You will have to copy and paste the message to a word processing document.   After you copy and paste add the following at the end of the message:

© Lonnie Coggins
ldcoggins@gmail.com

If you desire to use any of these messages in a For-Profit manner you must contact me (email) for permission.  Typically, I will most likely give permission.

lonnie

0071