Life’s simple things are best described as the moment makers. They don’t cost anything, and you can’t plan for them.

It is like when a small child raises their arms for you to take them and hugs you tight. When you walk out of your house and the grass looks greener and the sky more beautiful and the breath you take in is sweeter. It is like when you are driving with no music, no emails, no texts, and you are just at peace and realize that it is a rare moment.

The things that hinder and impede these simple moments are strife, anxiety, anger, sin in your life, confusion, envy, etc. You get the picture. These are the things that kill these simple moments; these emotions keep you from experiencing God’s simple grace and God’s simple gifts that he wants you to experience.

A quick test to see if you have any of these emotions operating in your life is if you have a conversation with yourself in the morning before the day starts. You are standing at the mirror and saying things that you should have said in the real conversation yesterday or you are telling someone off about how they treated you. Have you ever noticed that you always win the arguments when it’s just you? Ha.

I am sure no one reading this blog post has ever had this happen to them. Oh, you too? So, we have all been there!

You will never get to the place in life where you no longer feel hurt or slighted or angry. It happens to all of us from time to time. If it happens to you every morning, then you may want to look deeper and fix the problem through forgiveness. Yes, forgiveness.

Forgiveness is one of those incredible simple acts that you and only you control. It has such great impact on your life and your joy. Withholding forgiveness only hurts you and your own health and your peace.

Years ago, I had an uncle who wanted to trade cars with me. We decide to trade, and I took my car to meet him with my title in hand. When I got there, my uncle told me he would get me the title to his car he was trading once he paid off the loan. I trusted him and said sure that would be fine.

The next week, he took the car I traded and the title I gave him and he sold the car and kept the money. He left me with the car that he still had a loan on. I had to give him back the car he had the loan on because it was no good to me and then I had to go out and get another car that I could own because I now didn’t have a car.

This all happened at a time when we were so broke and were struggling to make ends meet. To say that I was angry would be an understatement. I literally wanted to go to his house and take the value of my car out on him. Had I done that, I wouldn’t be writing this blog today.

A few days later after the incident, my sister was at our house, and I walked her out to the car and it was one of those God moments that neither she nor I expected. She pointed her finger at me and said, “you need to forgive this man or it is going to ruin your life.” At that moment, it was like God was speaking through her to verbally tell me what to do. I almost fell to my knees in the driveway because the words impacted me so strongly.

I went back in house and wrote my uncle a letter where I basically told him I forgive him, he owes me nothing, and his debt to me is forgiven.

Well, his life from that point has been everything but good. God took my life and has blessed me immensely.

In this situation, I came very close to altering my life over strife that would have had an incalculable impact on my wife and children. Rather, I choose to heed the words from God through my sister.

I suppose sometimes you just have to forgive others and choose in the forgiveness act to move forward with your own life.

So in closing, when life’s simple things come your way and you see the beauty of that moment, never ever take it for granted. It is those moments that are the simple things, but also the life-changing things. KT

When you think of the word “settled,” it can be interpreted several ways. It can mean to conform, be complacent, and just settle for where you are in life. It can also mean to have a settled spirit as well as be calm and at peace with where you are going.

I am speaking of the second one. Anxiety destroys calmness and peace. Being settled is part of that thought process. It is like the peace that comes over you by knowing you are where you are supposed to be and doing what you are supposed to do. I am not sure we ever reach the finish line and say, “ok, I have made it and I am complete.” Rather, I believe as long as we are alive there are reasons and purposes for our lives.

Father’s Day was yesterday, and it was a fantastic time to be with my girls, their husbands and my precious little granddaughters. We were at church yesterday, and I was thinking about time and how fast it seems to be going. I saw a father with two little daughters in grade school and middle school, and it seems like that was me just last year. Yet, the last 15 years have escaped me and now my little girls are grown women with their own families.

I think much of life’s joy is about embracing what life stage you are in and having objectives, hopes, and plans about your future.  I think the objective is to be moving forward, regardless of the life stage you are in. Not forward via anxiety, but forward via having your heart settled that you are going where God wants you to be going. KT

If you want to have a real self-assessment, ask yourself the question, “who am I meant to be and am I on track to be that person?”

Many people live their entire lives without ever knowing the real “who” they were meant to be. It is like standing on a street and looking at a house; we want to paint the shutters, trim the yard, fix the mailbox, and basically making the house look good for others to see. What we fail to do is fix the foundation that is cracking. It looks good, but it is a surface image only.

I’m not saying I have this figured out entirely for my own life, but I do take this inventory from time to time. What I can tell you is that knowing you are doing what you are supposed to be doing is actually a very freeing experience. The paint and shutters may still look bad, but in your heart you know that fixing the foundation will eventually allow you to make the outside appearance line up with the inside.

It is much like the difference between joy and happiness. Happiness is surface and joy is deep. Happiness will only last so long and then the real you shines through. With happiness, you don’t have joy, but when you have joy, you almost always have happiness.

Ask God to give you a vision of who you are supposed to be. Everyone is not meant to be the President of the US or the founder of a company like Facebook. Many times, just being who you are supposed to be brings a peace and inner joy that is immeasurable.

If we took a survey of the top 10 things people really want, we would find that joy, peace and contentment are often on the top of the list. The worldly possessions don’t seem to be very important when you are at the 5-yard line of life. What is important is the relationship you have with God and your family.

Some of the most confident and joy-filled people I have ever been around were not wealthy or heads of companies, but were simply who they were meant to be. The Bible says that where envy and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work. Satan uses envy and strife to keep us from being who we were meant to be.

The message for the day is to start being and seeing who you are meant to be. KT

Very few times in history do you have the opportunity to witness a leader that is spectacular. For me, that was the first time I heard Ronald Reagan speak.

In 1980, we had just built a new house and interest rates were at 18%. Can you imagine? We got the loan on our house at 12.75% right before it shot up to 18% and I thought I was the smartest guy around. Most people cannot even envision those kinds of interest rates, but our economy was in steep dive in 1980. Ronald Reagan steps on the world stage and says he is going to change the way Americans think about freedom and economics. I was so captured by his straightforward leadership, and he seemed larger than life. He was the man for that time in America history like Lincoln was for the Civil War period and FDR was for the late 1940s

Reagan was, simply put, an amazing leader and an amazing President. He literally changed the course of history both nationally and globally.

Six years after he left office, Reagan he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. The following is an excerpt from what I believe was his final press conference.

‘Sunset of my life’

In a letter to the nation nearly six years after leaving office, Reagan announced that he was “one of the millions of Americans who will be afflicted with Alzheimer’s disease.” Reagan closed the note on a characteristically optimistic quote.

“I now begin the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life. I know that for America there will always be a bright dawn ahead.”

There are imitators of leaders and then there are real leaders. Reagan was the real deal. KT