A) Our Conversation (Titus 3:9-11)
“But shun foolish controversies and genealogies and strife and disputes about the Law; for they are unprofitable and worthless. Reject a factious man after a first and second warning, knowing that such a man is perverted and is sinning, being self-condemned” (Titus 3:9-11).
What are the two main verbs used in this section?
How are they related to each other?
What are the four things that we are to avoid in our conversations with others?
Is it good to reason with others about the truth? If so, why does he seem to ask them to refrain from it?
Is it helpful to argue for the truth with others? Why or why not?
What is the place of apologetics in discussion with others?
What guidelines should we observe in our conversations from this passage?
Do you get involved in ‘heated’ arguments with others about the truth? What aspects of this lesson do you need to apply to your life?
Satan works hard at keeping God’s Word away from us. In this situation he used these issues to hold back a real understanding and love for the truth. How else has Satan held back the truth from God’s people, whether in the past or present day?
B) Our Relationships (Titus 3:12-14)
“When I send Artemas or Tychicus to you, make every effort to come to me at Nicopolis, for I have decided to spend the winter there. Diligently help Zenas the lawyer and Apollos on their way so that nothing is lacking for them. And let our people also learn to engage in good deeds to meet pressing needs, that they may not be unfruitful” (Titus 3:12-14).
What three groups of people are mentioned in Titus 3:12-14?
What was special about the first group? What was Paul trying to do through them?
What about the second group? They apparently were the official carriers of the letter ‘Titus.’ Why else might Paul have sent them?
What about the third group? What was Paul asking them to do? How might we apply this to our own lives?
How has God equipped you to help other Christians grow? What area would you like to get involved in? Does it require special training? If so, what is that training?
C) Loving Goodbyes (Titus 3:15)
“All who are with me greet you. Greet those who love us in the faith. Grace be with you all” (Titus 3:15).
What are the three last statements Paul makes?
What does the first statement, “ All who are with me greet you” say about Paul’s ties with the people where he is at?
Why might Paul have written the second phrase like that? Would you have written it that way? Why or why not?
What special insight is provided to us about this letter from the last statement. Compare with Titus 1:4.
Are you part of a community of God’s people? What is easy or hard about it?
Summary
Even from these few verses, we see how Paul is emphasizing the closeness of the community of God’s people by closely caring for it.
Discerning Conversations (Titus 3:9-11)
We need to focus on developing relationships and bringing the truth of God into the lives of people. Talking about anti-truth just will not help.
Right Relationships (3:12-14)
We, like the apostle and Jesus, need to show our value for our coworkers, family, brothers and sisters by the way we aid and train them.
Loving Goodbyes (Titus 3:15)
We need to be part of a community of God’s people. They need to be dear to us. We need to be committed to them, the church of God.
Friday, October 29, 2010
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Fourth Day: Morning - A Diary of Private Prayer: A Devotional Classic by John Baillie
Fourth Day - Morning
Almighty and eternal God,
Thou art hidden from my sight:
Thou art beyond the understanding of my mind:
Thy thoughts are not as my thoughts:
Thy ways are past finding out.
Yet hast Thou breathed Thy Spirit into my life:
Yet hast Thou formed my mind to seek Thee:
Yet hast Thou inclined my heart to love Thee:
Yet hast Thou made me restless for the rest that is in Thee:
Yet hast Thou planted within me a hunger and thirst that make me dissatisfied with all the joys of earth.
O Lord God, I praise and magnify Thy name that thus Thou hast set Thy seal upon my inmost being, not leaving me to my own poor and petty selfhood or to the sole empire of animal passion and desire, but calling me to be an heir of Thine eternal Kingdom. I bless Thee for that knocking at my heart's door that warns me of Thy waiting presence. I bless Thee for Thy hand upon my life, and for the sure knowledge that, however I may falter and fail, yet underneath are Thine everlasting arms.
O Thou who alone knowest what lies before me this day, grant that in every hour of it I may stay close to Thee. Let me be in the world, yet not of it. Let me use this world without abusing it. If I buy, let me be as though I possessed not. If I have nothing, let me be as though possessing all things. Let me to-day embark on no undertaking that is not in line with Thy will for my life, nor shrink from any sacrifice which Thy will may demand. Suggest, direct, control every movement of my mind; for my Lord Christ's sake. Amen.
Almighty and eternal God,
Thou art hidden from my sight:
Thou art beyond the understanding of my mind:
Thy thoughts are not as my thoughts:
Thy ways are past finding out.
Yet hast Thou breathed Thy Spirit into my life:
Yet hast Thou formed my mind to seek Thee:
Yet hast Thou inclined my heart to love Thee:
Yet hast Thou made me restless for the rest that is in Thee:
Yet hast Thou planted within me a hunger and thirst that make me dissatisfied with all the joys of earth.
O Lord God, I praise and magnify Thy name that thus Thou hast set Thy seal upon my inmost being, not leaving me to my own poor and petty selfhood or to the sole empire of animal passion and desire, but calling me to be an heir of Thine eternal Kingdom. I bless Thee for that knocking at my heart's door that warns me of Thy waiting presence. I bless Thee for Thy hand upon my life, and for the sure knowledge that, however I may falter and fail, yet underneath are Thine everlasting arms.
O Thou who alone knowest what lies before me this day, grant that in every hour of it I may stay close to Thee. Let me be in the world, yet not of it. Let me use this world without abusing it. If I buy, let me be as though I possessed not. If I have nothing, let me be as though possessing all things. Let me to-day embark on no undertaking that is not in line with Thy will for my life, nor shrink from any sacrifice which Thy will may demand. Suggest, direct, control every movement of my mind; for my Lord Christ's sake. Amen.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Third Day: Evening - A Diary of Private Prayer: A Devotional Classic by John Baillie
Third Day - Evening
O Thou most wise, most great, most holy, in wisdom and power and tender mercy Thou dist create me in Thine own image. Thou hast given me this life to live, Thou hast appointed my lot and determined the bounds of my habitation, Thou hast surrounded me with gracious and beneficent influences, Thou hast written Thy law within my heart.
And in my heart's most secret chamber Thou art now waiting to meet and speak with me, freely offering me Thy fellowship in spite of all my sinning. Let me now avail myself of this open road to peace of mind. Let me approach thy presence humbly and reverently. Let me carry with me the spirit of my Lord and Master Jesus Christ. Let me leave behind me all fretfulness, all unworthy desires, all thoughts of malice towards my fellow men, all hesitancy in surrendering my will to Thine.
In Thy will, O Lord, is my peace.
In Thy love is my rest.
In Thy service is my joy.
Thou art all my heart's desire.
Whom have I in heaven but Thee?
And there is none upon earth that I desire besides Thee.
In Thy presence, O God, I think not only of myself, but of others, my fellow men:
Of my friends, especially of (...) and (...):
Of those who to-day have worked or played with me:
Of those who are in sorrow:
Of those who are bearing the burdens of others:
Of those who are manning difficult stations or lonely outposts of Thy Kingdom:
O Thou who art the one God and Father of us all, be near to us all to-night and graciously keep watch over our souls. Hear my prayer for Jesus Christ's sake. Amen.
O Thou most wise, most great, most holy, in wisdom and power and tender mercy Thou dist create me in Thine own image. Thou hast given me this life to live, Thou hast appointed my lot and determined the bounds of my habitation, Thou hast surrounded me with gracious and beneficent influences, Thou hast written Thy law within my heart.
And in my heart's most secret chamber Thou art now waiting to meet and speak with me, freely offering me Thy fellowship in spite of all my sinning. Let me now avail myself of this open road to peace of mind. Let me approach thy presence humbly and reverently. Let me carry with me the spirit of my Lord and Master Jesus Christ. Let me leave behind me all fretfulness, all unworthy desires, all thoughts of malice towards my fellow men, all hesitancy in surrendering my will to Thine.
In Thy will, O Lord, is my peace.
In Thy love is my rest.
In Thy service is my joy.
Thou art all my heart's desire.
Whom have I in heaven but Thee?
And there is none upon earth that I desire besides Thee.
In Thy presence, O God, I think not only of myself, but of others, my fellow men:
Of my friends, especially of (...) and (...):
Of those who to-day have worked or played with me:
Of those who are in sorrow:
Of those who are bearing the burdens of others:
Of those who are manning difficult stations or lonely outposts of Thy Kingdom:
O Thou who art the one God and Father of us all, be near to us all to-night and graciously keep watch over our souls. Hear my prayer for Jesus Christ's sake. Amen.
Monday, October 25, 2010
Quiet time on Titus 3 (NIV)
For a quick read of Titus 3 (NIV) click the link below:
http://religionhelps.blogspot.com/2010/10/titus-3-new-international-version.html
A. Things That Need to Be, Titus 3: 1-2
“1 Remind them to be subject to rulers, to authorities, to be obedient, to be ready for every good deed, 2 to malign no one, to be uncontentious, gentle, showing every consideration for all men."
1. What does Paul tell Titus to do in 3:1?
2. How many things does he tell them to do? Is there anything odd about the list?
3. How many items address the topic of obedience? Why might he have this emphasis?
4. From this list, what positive character attributes should characterize God’s people?
5. What are some negative character traits we are to refrain from?
6. Discussion Questions: Paul is here instructing Titus on how Christians should act. Why do Christians need to be reminded about how to live? If they have the Holy Spirit, should they not naturally do what is good?
B. Things that should not be (Titus 3:3)
"For we also once were foolish ourselves, disobedient, deceived, enslaved to various lusts and pleasures, spending our life in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another."
7. Who is Paul talking about here in verse 3:3? Who is the ‘we?’
8. How does he describe our past lives?
9. What areas did you once entertain?
10.What is the difference between hateful and ‘hating one another?’ Why are they two items?
11.Use other words to describe each of the above items. If one still lives in such a way, make sure one repents and asks the Lord to cleanse.
12. Discussion Questions: Why is it that it is so common and typical that we all would live lives contrary to what is good? Can we say what is good or bad? Is there such a thing as children living in an innocent stage? Why or why not? When in life does man or child become bad? Why so?
C. Things that should not be (Titus 3:3)
"But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared."
13.When did things begin to change for the better (3:3)?
14.Describe what happened in your own words.
15.Did God’s kindness appear to you? How so? How old? Did you see the significant change.
16. Discussion questions. In this and the following verses indicate that Jesus Christ was more than just a man; He was God Himself. What difference does it make? How is it possible?
http://religionhelps.blogspot.com/2010/10/titus-3-new-international-version.html
A. Things That Need to Be, Titus 3: 1-2
“1 Remind them to be subject to rulers, to authorities, to be obedient, to be ready for every good deed, 2 to malign no one, to be uncontentious, gentle, showing every consideration for all men."
1. What does Paul tell Titus to do in 3:1?
2. How many things does he tell them to do? Is there anything odd about the list?
3. How many items address the topic of obedience? Why might he have this emphasis?
4. From this list, what positive character attributes should characterize God’s people?
5. What are some negative character traits we are to refrain from?
6. Discussion Questions: Paul is here instructing Titus on how Christians should act. Why do Christians need to be reminded about how to live? If they have the Holy Spirit, should they not naturally do what is good?
B. Things that should not be (Titus 3:3)
"For we also once were foolish ourselves, disobedient, deceived, enslaved to various lusts and pleasures, spending our life in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another."
7. Who is Paul talking about here in verse 3:3? Who is the ‘we?’
8. How does he describe our past lives?
9. What areas did you once entertain?
10.What is the difference between hateful and ‘hating one another?’ Why are they two items?
11.Use other words to describe each of the above items. If one still lives in such a way, make sure one repents and asks the Lord to cleanse.
12. Discussion Questions: Why is it that it is so common and typical that we all would live lives contrary to what is good? Can we say what is good or bad? Is there such a thing as children living in an innocent stage? Why or why not? When in life does man or child become bad? Why so?
C. Things that should not be (Titus 3:3)
"But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared."
13.When did things begin to change for the better (3:3)?
14.Describe what happened in your own words.
15.Did God’s kindness appear to you? How so? How old? Did you see the significant change.
16. Discussion questions. In this and the following verses indicate that Jesus Christ was more than just a man; He was God Himself. What difference does it make? How is it possible?
Third Day - Morning - A Diary of Private Prayer: A Devotional Classic by John Baillie
Third Day – Morning
Lord of my life, whose law I fain would keep, whose fellowship I fain would enjoy, and to whose service I would fain be loyal. I kneel before Thee as Thou sendest me forth to the work of another day.
For this new day I give Thee humble thanks: for its gladness and its brightness: for its long hours waiting to be filled with joyous and helpful labour: for its open doors of possibility: for its hope of new beginnings. Quicken in my heart, I beseech Thee, the desire to avail myself richly of this day’s opportunity. Let me not break faith with any of yesterday’s promises, nor leave unrepaired any of yesterday’s wrongs. Let me see no fellow traveller in distress and pass by on the other side. Let me leave no height of duty behind me unattempted, nor any evil habit unassaulted. Where deed of mine can help to make this world a better place for men to live in, where word of mine can cheer a despondent heart or brace a weak will, where prayer of mine can serve the extension of Christ’s Kingdom, there let me do and speak and pray
This day, O Lord –
give me courtesy:
give me meekness of bearing, with decision of character:
give me longsuffering:
give me charity:
give me chastity:
give me sincerity of speech:
give me diligence in my allotted task.
O Thou who in the fullness of time didst raise up our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ to enlighten our hearts with the knowledge of Thy love, grant me the grace to be worthy of His name. Amen.
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Second Day, Evening - A Diary of Private Prayer: A Devotional Classic by John Baillie
Second Day – Evening
O Father in heaven, who didst fashion my limbs to serve Thee and my soul to follow hard after Thee, with sorrow and contrition of heart I acknowledge before Thee the faults and failures of the day that is now past. Too long, O Father, have I tried thy patience; too often have I betrayed the sacred trust Thou hast given me to keep; yet Thou art still willing that I should come to Thee in lowliness of heart, as now I do, beseeching Thee to drown my transgressions in the sea of Thine own infinite love.
My failure to be true even to my own accepted standards:
My self-deception in face of temptation:
My choosing of the worse when I know the better:
O Lord, forgive.
My failure to apply to myself the standards of conduct I demand of others:
My blindness to the suffering of others and my slowness to be taught by my own:
My complacence towards wrongs that do not touch my own case and my oversensitiveness to those that do:
My slowness to see the good in my fellows and to see the evil in myself:
My hardness of heart towards my neighbours’ faults and my readiness to make allowance for my own:
My unwillingness to believe that Thou hast called me to a small work and my brother to a great one:
O Lord, forgive.
Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from thy presence; and take not thy holy spirit from me. Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation, and give me the strength of a willing spirit. Amen.
Saturday, October 23, 2010
Second Day - Morning - A Diary of Private Prayer: A Devotional Classic by John Baillie
O God my Creator and Redeemer, I may not go forth to-day except Thou dost accompany me with Thy blessing. Let not the vigour and freshness of the morning, or the glow of good health, or the present prosperity of my undertakings, deceive me into a false reliance upon my own strength. All these good gifts have come to me from Thee. They were Thine to give and they are Thine also to curtail. They are not mine to keep; I do but hold them in trust; and only in continued dependence upon Thee, the Giver, can they be worthily enjoyed.
Let me then put back into Thine hand all that Thou hast given me, rededicating to Thy service all the powers of my mind and body, all my worldly goods, all my influence with other men. All these, O Father, are Thine to use as Thou wilt. All these are Thine, O Christ. All these are Thine, O Holy Spirit. Speak Thou in my words to-day, think in my thoughts, and work in all my deeds. And seeing that it is Thy gracious will to make use even of such weak human instruments in the fulfilment of Thy mighty purpose for the world, let my life to-day be the channel through which some little portion of Thy divine love and pity may reach the lives that are nearest to my own.
In Thy solemn presence, O God, I remember all my friends and neighbours, my fellow townsfolk, and especially the poor within our gates, beseeching Thee that Thou wouldst give me grace, so far as in me lies, to serve them in Thy name.
O blessed Jesus, who dist use Thine own most precious life for the redemption of Thy human brethren, giving no though to ease or pleasure or worldly enrichment, but filling up all Thine hours and days with deeds of self-denying love, give me grace to-day to follow the road Thou didst first tread; and to Thy name be all the glory and the praise, even unto the end. Amen.
Friday, October 22, 2010
First Day, Evening - A Diary of Private Prayer: A Devotional Classic by John Baillie
O Thou who art from everlasting to everlasting, I would turn my thoughts to Thee as the hours of darkness and of sleep begin. O Sun of my soul, I rejoice to know that all night I shall be under the unsleeping eye of One who dwells in eternal light.
To thy care, O Father, I would now commend my body and my soul. All day Thou hast watched over me and Thy companionship has filled my heart with peace. Let me go through any part of this night unaccompanied by Thee.
Give me sound and refreshing sleep:
Give me safety from all perils:
Give me in my sleep freedom from restless dreams:
Give me control of my thoughts, if I should like awake:
Give me wisdom to remember that the night was made for sleeping, and not for the harbouring of anxious or fretful or shameful thoughts.
Give me grace, if as I lie abed I think at all, to think upon Thee.
My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness; and my mouth shall praise thee with joyful lips; when I remember thee upon my bed, and meditate on thee in the night watches.
To Thy care also, O Father, I would commend my friends, beseeching Thee to keep them safe in soul and body, and to be present in their hearts to-night as a Spirit of power and of joy and of restfulness. I pray for (my spouse) and (my children) and (my parents/in-laws) and (siblings)... I pray also for the wider circle of all my associates, my fellow workers, my fellow townsmen and all strangers within our gates; and the great world of men without, to me foreign and unknown, but dear to Thee; through Jesus Christ our common Lord. Amen
To thy care, O Father, I would now commend my body and my soul. All day Thou hast watched over me and Thy companionship has filled my heart with peace. Let me go through any part of this night unaccompanied by Thee.
Give me sound and refreshing sleep:
Give me safety from all perils:
Give me in my sleep freedom from restless dreams:
Give me control of my thoughts, if I should like awake:
Give me wisdom to remember that the night was made for sleeping, and not for the harbouring of anxious or fretful or shameful thoughts.
Give me grace, if as I lie abed I think at all, to think upon Thee.
My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness; and my mouth shall praise thee with joyful lips; when I remember thee upon my bed, and meditate on thee in the night watches.
To Thy care also, O Father, I would commend my friends, beseeching Thee to keep them safe in soul and body, and to be present in their hearts to-night as a Spirit of power and of joy and of restfulness. I pray for (my spouse) and (my children) and (my parents/in-laws) and (siblings)... I pray also for the wider circle of all my associates, my fellow workers, my fellow townsmen and all strangers within our gates; and the great world of men without, to me foreign and unknown, but dear to Thee; through Jesus Christ our common Lord. Amen
Thursday, October 21, 2010
First Day - A Diary of Private Prayer - A Devotional Classic by John Baillie
Eternal Father of my soul, let my first thought to day be of Thee, let my first impulse be to worship Thee, let my first speech be Thy name, let my first action be to kneel before Thee in prayer.
For Thy perfect wisdom and perfect goodness:
For the love wherewith Thou lovest mankind:
For the love wherewith Thou lovest me:
For the great and mysterious opportunity of my life:
For the indwelling of Thy Spirit in my heart:
For the sevenfold gifts of Thy Spirit:
I Praise and Worship Thee, O Lord.
Yet let me not, when this morning prayer is said, think my worship ended and spend the day in forgetfulness of Thee. Rather from these moments of quietness let light go forth, and joy, and power, that will remain with me through all the hours of the day;
Keeping me chaste in though:
Keeping me temperate and truthful in speech:
Keeping me faithful and diligent in my work:
Keeping me humble in my estimation of myself:
Keeping me honourable and generous in my dealings with others:
Keeping me loyal to every hallowed memory of the past:
Keeping me mindful of my eternal destiny as a child of Thine.
O God, who hast been the Refuge of my fathers through many generations, be my Refuge to-day in every time and circumstance of need. Be my Guide through all that is dark and doubtful. Be my Guard against all that threatens my spirit’s welfare. Be my Strength in time of testing. Gladden my heart with Thy peace; through Jesus Christ my Lord. Amen.
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
People who influences us in their unique fields - Part 1
-- BC & Early AD--
1. Confucius (Chinese: 孔子; pinyin: Kǒng zǐ; Wade–Giles: K'ung-tzu, or Chinese: 孔夫子; pinyin: Kǒng Fūzǐ; Wade–Giles: K'ung-fu-tzu), literally "Master Kong", (traditionally September 28, 551 BC – 479 BC) was a Chinese thinker and social philosopher of the Spring and Autumn Period.
His philosophy emphasized personal and governmental morality, correctness of social relationships, justice and sincerity. These values gained prominence in China over other doctrines, such as Legalism (法家) or Taoism (道家) during the Han Dynasty (206 BC – 220 AD). Confucius' thoughts have been developed into a system of philosophy known as Confucianism (儒家). It was introduced to Europe by the Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci, who was the first to Latinise the name as "Confucius".
His teachings may be found in the Analects of Confucius (論語), a collection of "brief aphoristic fragments", which was compiled many years after his death. For nearly 2,000 years he was thought to be the editor or author of all the Five Classics (五經) such as the Classic of Rites (禮記) (editor), and the Spring and Autumn Annals (春秋) (author).
Kong Qiu (孔丘), as Confucius is commonly known, is a combination of his surname (孔) and his given name (丘), and he was also known as Zhong Ni (仲尼), which is his courtesy name. He was born in 551 BC in the Lu state (This state was in the south of modern-day Shandong Province) in the later days of the Spring and Autumn Period. Confucius was from a warrior family. His father Shulianghe (叔梁紇) was a famous warrior who had military exploits in two battles and owned a fiefdom. Confucius lost his father when he was three years old, and then his mother Yan Zhengzai (顏徵在) took him and left the fiefdom because as a concubine (妾), she wanted to avoid mistreatment from Shulianghe's formal wife. Thus, Confucius lived in poverty with his mother since childhood. With the support and encouragement of his mother, Confucius was very diligent in his studies. When Confucius was seventeen years old, his mother died as a result of illness and overwork. Three years later, Confucius married a young woman who was from the Qiguan family (亓官氏) of the [[Song (state)|Song state (宋)]]. Though he had a mild tempered wife who loved him, he left his family to strive for his ideals. Confucius sought to revive the perfect virtue of Huaxia (Chinese civilization) and the classical properties of the Western Zhou Dynasty to build a great, harmonious and humanistic society.
Confucius's works are studied by many scholars in many other Asian countries, particularly those in the Sinosphere, such as Korea, Japan and Vietnam. Many of those countries still hold the traditional memorial ceremony every year.
The works of Confucius were translated into European languages through the agency of Jesuit scholars stationed in China. Matteo Ricci started to report on the thoughts of Confucius, and father Prospero Intorcetta published the life and works of Confucius into Latin in 1687. It is thought that such works had considerable importance on European thinkers of the period, particularly among the Deists and other philosophical groups of the Enlightenment who were interested by the integration of the system of morality of Confucius into Western civilization.
The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community believes Confucius was a Divine Prophet of God, as was Lao-Tzu and other eminent Chinese personages.
2. Aristotle (Greek: Ἀριστοτέλης, Aristotélēs) (384 BC – 322 BC) was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology. Together with Plato and Socrates (Plato's teacher), Aristotle is one of the most important founding figures in Western philosophy. Aristotle's writings were the first to create a comprehensive system of Western philosophy, encompassing morality and aesthetics, logic and science, politics and metaphysics.
3. Plutarch, born Plutarchos (Greek: Πλούταρχος) then, on his becoming a Roman citizen, Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus (Μέστριος Πλούταρχος), c. 46 – 120 AD, was a Greek historian, biographer, essayist, and Middle Platonist known primarily for his Parallel Lives and Moralia. He was born to a prominent family in Chaeronea, Boeotia, a town about twenty miles east of Delphi.
"The soul, being eternal, after death is like a caged bird that has been released. If it has been a long time in the body, and has become tame by many affairs and long habit, the soul will immediately take another body and once again become involved in the troubles of the world. The worst thing about old age is that the soul's memory of the other world grows dim, while at the same time its attachment to things of this world becomes so strong that the soul tends to retain the form that it had in the body. But that soul which remains only a short time within a body, until liberated by the higher powers, quickly recovers its fire and goes on to higher things."
Plutarch (The Consolation, Moralia).
Plutarch's writings had an enormous influence on English and French literature. Shakespeare in his plays paraphrased parts of Thomas North's translation of selected Lives, and occasionally quoted from them in verbatim.
Ralph Waldo Emerson and the Transcendentalists were greatly influenced by the Moralia — so much so, in fact, that Emerson called the Lives "a bible for heroes" in his glowing introduction to the five-volume 19th-century edition. He also opined that it was impossible to "read Plutarch without a tingling of the blood; and I accept the saying of the Chinese Mencius: 'A sage is the instructor of a hundred ages. When the manners of Loo are heard of, the stupid become intelligent, and the wavering, determined.'"
Montaigne's own Essays draw extensively on Plutarch's Moralia and are consciously modelled on the Greek's easygoing and discursive inquiries into science, manners, customs and beliefs. Essays contains more than 400 references to Plutarch and his works.
James Boswell quoted Plutarch on writing lives, rather than biographies, in the introduction to his own Life of Samuel Johnson. Other admirers included Ben Jonson, John Dryden, Alexander Hamilton, John Milton, and Francis Bacon, as well as such disparate figures as Cotton Mather and Robert Browning.
Plutarch's influence declined in the 19th and 20th centuries, but it remains embedded in the popular ideas of Greek and Roman history.
4. Zhuge Liang 諸葛亮 (181-234) was Chancellor of Shu Han during the Three Kingdoms period of Chinese history. He is often recognised as the greatest and most accomplished strategist of his era.
Often depicted wearing a robe and holding a fan made of crane feathers, Zhuge was not only an important military strategist and statesman; he was also an accomplished scholar and inventor. His reputation as an intelligent and learned scholar grew even while he was living in relative seclusion, earning him the nickname Wòlóng (臥龍, literally Crouching Dragon).
Zhuge is an uncommon two-character compound family name. His name – even his surname alone – has become synonymous with intelligence and tactics in Chinese culture.
Zhuge Liang's name is synonymous with wisdom in the Chinese language. He was believed to be the inventor of the Mantou, the landmine and a mysterious, efficient automatic transportation device (initially used for grain) described as a "wooden ox and flowing horse" (木牛流馬), which is sometimes identified with the wheelbarrow. Although he is often credited with the invention of the repeating crossbow which is named after him and called the Zhuge Nu, i.e. Zhuge Crossbow, this type of semi-automatic crossbow is an improved version of a model that first appeared during the Warring States Period (though there is debate whether the original Warring States Period bow was semi-automatic, or rather shot multiple bolts at once). Nevertheless, Zhuge Liang's version could shoot further and faster. He is also credited with constructing the mysterious Stone Sentinel Maze, an array of stone piles that is said to produce supernatural phenomenon, located near Baidicheng. An early type of hot air balloon used for military signalling called the Kongming lantern is also named after him.
Some books popularly attributed to Zhuge Liang can be found today. For example, the Thirty-Six Stratagems, and Mastering the Art of War (not to be confused with Sun Tzu's The Art of War) are two of Zhuge's works that are generally available. Supposedly, his mastery of infantry and cavalry formation tactics based upon the Taoist I-Ching were unrivalled. His petition Chu Shi Biao was written prior to the Northern Campaigns and it provided a salutary reflection of Zhuge Liang's unwavering loyalty to Shu-Han. The petition moved readers to tears.
--1400s - 1800s--
1. Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (April 15, 1452 – May 2, 1519) was an Italian polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer. Leonardo has often been described as the archetype of the Renaissance man, a man whose unquenchable curiosity was equaled only by his powers of invention. He is widely considered to be one of the greatest painters of all time and perhaps the most diversely talented person ever to have lived. According to art historian Helen Gardner, the scope and depth of his interests were without precedent and "his mind and personality seem to us superhuman, the man himself mysterious and remote". Marco Rosci points out, however, that while there is much speculation about Leonardo, his vision of the world is essentially logical rather than mysterious, and that the empirical methods he employed were unusual for his time.
Born the illegitimate son of a notary, Piero da Vinci, and a peasant woman, Caterina, at Vinci in the region of Florence, Leonardo was educated in the studio of the renowned Florentine painter, Verrocchio. Much of his earlier working life was spent in the service of Ludovico il Moro in Milan. He later worked in Rome, Bologna and Venice and spent his last years in France, at the home awarded him by Francis I.
Leonardo was and is renowned primarily as a painter. Two of his works, the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, are the most famous, most reproduced and most parodied portrait and religious paintings of all time, respectively, their fame approached only by Michelangelo's Creation of Adam. Leonardo's drawing of the Vitruvian Man is also regarded as a cultural icon, being reproduced on everything from the euro to text books to t-shirts. Perhaps fifteen of his paintings survive, the small number due to his constant, and frequently disastrous, experimentation with new techniques, and his chronic procrastination. Nevertheless, these few works, together with his notebooks, which contain drawings, scientific diagrams, and his thoughts on the nature of painting, compose a contribution to later generations of artists only rivalled by that of his contemporary, Michelangelo.
Leonardo is revered for his technological ingenuity. He conceptualised a helicopter, a tank, concentrated solar power, a calculator, the double hull and outlined a rudimentary theory of plate tectonics. Relatively few of his designs were constructed or were even feasible during his lifetime, but some of his smaller inventions, such as an automated bobbin winder and a machine for testing the tensile strength of wire, entered the world of manufacturing unheralded. As a scientist, he greatly advanced the state of knowledge in the fields of anatomy, civil engineering, optics, and hydrodynamics.
2. René Descartes (31 March 1596 – 11 February 1650) (Latinized form: Renatus Cartesius; adjectival form: "Cartesian"),[2] was a French philosopher, mathematician, physicist, and writer who spent most of his adult life in the Dutch Republic.
He is best known for the philosophical statement "Cogito ergo sum" (French: Je pense, donc je suis; English: I think, therefore I am; or I am thinking, therefore I exist), found in part IV of Discourse on the Method (1637 – written in French but with inclusion of "Cogito ergo sum") and §7 of part I of Principles of Philosophy (1644 – written in Latin).
3. Sir Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount Saint Alban, KC (22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626) was an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, lawyer, jurist and author. He famously died of pneumonia contracted while studying the effects of freezing on the preservation of meat. He served both as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England. Although his political career ended in disgrace, he remained extremely influential through his works, especially as philosophical advocate and practitioner of the scientific method and pioneer in the scientific revolution.
Bacon has been called the father of empiricism. His works established and popularized inductive methodologies for scientific inquiry, often called the Baconian method or simply, the scientific method. His demand for a planned procedure of investigating all things natural marked a new turn in the rhetorical and theoretical framework for science, much of which still surrounds conceptions of proper methodology today. His dedication probably led to his death so bringing him into a rare historical group of scientists who were killed by their own experiments.
Bacon's works include his Essays, as well as the Colours of Good and Evil and the Meditationes Sacrae, all published in 1597. His famous aphorism, "knowledge is power", is found in the Meditations. He published Of the Proficience and Advancement of Learning, Divine and Human in 1605. Bacon also wrote In felicem memoriam Elizabethae, a eulogy for the queen written in 1609; and various philosophical works which constitute the fragmentary and incomplete Instauratio magna (Great Renewal), the most important part of which is the Novum Organum (New Instrument, published 1620)
In 1623 Bacon expressed his aspirations and ideals in New Atlantis. Released in 1627, this was his creation of an ideal land where "generosity and enlightenment, dignity and splendor, piety and public spirit" were the commonly held qualities of the inhabitants of Bensalem. In this work, he portrayed a vision of the future of human discovery and knowledge. The plan and organization of his ideal college, "Solomon's House", envisioned the modern research university in both applied and pure science.
4. Sir Isaac Newton FRS (4 January 1643 – 31 March 1727 [OS: 25 December 1642 – 20 March 1726]) was an English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher, alchemist, and theologian who is considered by many scholars and members of the general public to be one of the most influential people in human history. His 1687 publication of the Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (usually called the Principia) is considered to be among the most influential books in the history of science, laying the groundwork for most of classical mechanics. In this work, Newton described universal gravitation and the three laws of motion which dominated the scientific view of the physical universe for the next three centuries. Newton showed that the motions of objects on Earth and of celestial bodies are governed by the same set of natural laws by demonstrating the consistency between Kepler's laws of planetary motion and his theory of gravitation, thus removing the last doubts about heliocentrism and advancing the Scientific Revolution.
Newton built the first practical reflecting telescope and developed a theory of colour based on the observation that a prism decomposes white light into the many colours that form the visible spectrum. He also formulated an empirical law of cooling and studied the speed of sound.
In mathematics, Newton shares the credit with Gottfried Leibniz for the development of the differential and integral calculus. He also demonstrated the generalised binomial theorem, developed Newton's method for approximating the roots of a function, and contributed to the study of power series.
In a 2005 survey of members of Britain's Royal Society asking who had the greater effect on the history of science and made the greater contribution to humankind, Newton or Albert Einstein. Royal Society scientists deemed Newton to have made the greater overall contribution on both.
Newton was also highly religious, though an unorthodox Christian, writing more on Biblical hermeneutics and occult studies than the natural science for which he is remembered today.
5. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German writer and polymath. Goethe is considered by many to be the most important writer in the German language and one of the most important thinkers in Western culture. Goethe's works span the fields of poetry, drama, literature, theology, philosophy, and science. His magnum opus, lauded as one of the peaks of world literature, is the drama Faust. Goethe's other well-known literary works include his numerous poems, the Bildungsroman Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, and the epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther.
Goethe was one of the key figures of German literature and the movement of Weimar Classicism in the late 18th and early 19th centuries; this movement coincides with Enlightenment, Sentimentality (Empfindsamkeit), Sturm und Drang and Romanticism. The author of the scientific text Theory of Colours, his influential ideas on plant and animal morphology and homology were extended and developed by 19th century naturalists including Charles Darwin. He also served at length as the Privy Councilor of the duchy of Saxe-Weimar.
Goethe's influence spread across Europe, and for the next century his works were a major source of inspiration in music, drama, poetry and philosophy. Early in his career, however, he wondered whether painting might be his true vocation; late in his life, he expressed the expectation that he would ultimately be remembered above all for his work on colour.
6. Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882) was an American lecturer, essayist, and poet, best remembered for leading the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champion of individualism and a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society, and he disseminated his thought through dozens of published essays and more than 1,500 public lectures across the United States.
Emerson gradually moved away from the religious and social beliefs of his contemporaries, formulating and expressing the philosophy of Transcendentalism in his 1836 essay, Nature. Following this ground-breaking work, he gave a speech entitled The American Scholar in 1837, which Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. considered to be America's "Intellectual Declaration of Independence". Considered one of the great lecturers of the time, Emerson had an enthusiasm and respect for his audience that enraptured crowds.
Emerson wrote on a number of subjects, never espousing fixed philosophical tenets, but developing certain ideas such as individuality, freedom, the ability for man to realize almost anything, and the relationship between the soul and the surrounding world. Emerson's "nature" was more philosophical than naturalistic; "Philosophically considered, the universe is composed of Nature and the Soul."
While his writing style can be seen as somewhat impenetrable, and was thought so even in his own time, Emerson's essays remain one of the linchpins of American thinking, and Emerson's work has influenced nearly every generation of thinker, writer and poet since his time. When asked to sum up his work, he said his central doctrine was "the infinitude of the private man."
-- Recent Famous People --
1. Confucius (Chinese: 孔子; pinyin: Kǒng zǐ; Wade–Giles: K'ung-tzu, or Chinese: 孔夫子; pinyin: Kǒng Fūzǐ; Wade–Giles: K'ung-fu-tzu), literally "Master Kong", (traditionally September 28, 551 BC – 479 BC) was a Chinese thinker and social philosopher of the Spring and Autumn Period.
His philosophy emphasized personal and governmental morality, correctness of social relationships, justice and sincerity. These values gained prominence in China over other doctrines, such as Legalism (法家) or Taoism (道家) during the Han Dynasty (206 BC – 220 AD). Confucius' thoughts have been developed into a system of philosophy known as Confucianism (儒家). It was introduced to Europe by the Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci, who was the first to Latinise the name as "Confucius".
His teachings may be found in the Analects of Confucius (論語), a collection of "brief aphoristic fragments", which was compiled many years after his death. For nearly 2,000 years he was thought to be the editor or author of all the Five Classics (五經) such as the Classic of Rites (禮記) (editor), and the Spring and Autumn Annals (春秋) (author).
Kong Qiu (孔丘), as Confucius is commonly known, is a combination of his surname (孔) and his given name (丘), and he was also known as Zhong Ni (仲尼), which is his courtesy name. He was born in 551 BC in the Lu state (This state was in the south of modern-day Shandong Province) in the later days of the Spring and Autumn Period. Confucius was from a warrior family. His father Shulianghe (叔梁紇) was a famous warrior who had military exploits in two battles and owned a fiefdom. Confucius lost his father when he was three years old, and then his mother Yan Zhengzai (顏徵在) took him and left the fiefdom because as a concubine (妾), she wanted to avoid mistreatment from Shulianghe's formal wife. Thus, Confucius lived in poverty with his mother since childhood. With the support and encouragement of his mother, Confucius was very diligent in his studies. When Confucius was seventeen years old, his mother died as a result of illness and overwork. Three years later, Confucius married a young woman who was from the Qiguan family (亓官氏) of the [[Song (state)|Song state (宋)]]. Though he had a mild tempered wife who loved him, he left his family to strive for his ideals. Confucius sought to revive the perfect virtue of Huaxia (Chinese civilization) and the classical properties of the Western Zhou Dynasty to build a great, harmonious and humanistic society.
Confucius's works are studied by many scholars in many other Asian countries, particularly those in the Sinosphere, such as Korea, Japan and Vietnam. Many of those countries still hold the traditional memorial ceremony every year.
The works of Confucius were translated into European languages through the agency of Jesuit scholars stationed in China. Matteo Ricci started to report on the thoughts of Confucius, and father Prospero Intorcetta published the life and works of Confucius into Latin in 1687. It is thought that such works had considerable importance on European thinkers of the period, particularly among the Deists and other philosophical groups of the Enlightenment who were interested by the integration of the system of morality of Confucius into Western civilization.
The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community believes Confucius was a Divine Prophet of God, as was Lao-Tzu and other eminent Chinese personages.
2. Aristotle (Greek: Ἀριστοτέλης, Aristotélēs) (384 BC – 322 BC) was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology. Together with Plato and Socrates (Plato's teacher), Aristotle is one of the most important founding figures in Western philosophy. Aristotle's writings were the first to create a comprehensive system of Western philosophy, encompassing morality and aesthetics, logic and science, politics and metaphysics.
Aristotle's views on the physical sciences profoundly shaped medieval scholarship, and their influence extended well into the Renaissance, although they were ultimately replaced by Newtonian physics. In the zoological sciences, some of his observations were confirmed to be accurate only in the 19th century. His works contain the earliest known formal study of logic, which was incorporated in the late 19th century into modern formal logic.
In metaphysics, Aristotelianism had a profound influence on philosophical and theological thinking in the Islamic and Jewish traditions in the Middle Ages, and it continues to influence Christian theology, especially the scholastic tradition of the Catholic Church and some strains of Eastern Orthodox thought.
His ethics, though always influential, gained renewed interest with the modern advent of virtue ethics. All aspects of Aristotle's philosophy continue to be the object of active academic study today. Though Aristotle wrote many elegant treatises and dialogues (Cicero described his literary style as "a river of gold"), it is thought that the majority of his writings are now lost and only about one-third of the original works have survived.
What we today call Aristotelian logic, Aristotle himself would have labeled "analytics". The term "logic" he reserved to mean dialectics. Most of Aristotle's work is probably not in its original form, since it was most likely edited by students and later lecturers. The logical works of Aristotle were compiled into six books in about the early 1st century AD:
1. Categories
2. On Interpretation
3. Prior Analytics
4. Posterior Analytics
5. Topics
6. On Sophistical Refutations
The order of the books (or the teachings from which they are composed) is not certain, but this list was derived from analysis of Aristotle's writings. It goes from the basics, the analysis of simple terms in the Categories, the analysis of propositions and their elementary relations in On Interpretation, to the study of more complex forms, namely, syllogisms (in the Analytics) and dialectics (in the Topics and Sophistical Refutations). The first three treatises form the core of the logical theory stricto sensu: the grammar of the language of logic and the correctness rules of reasoning. There is one volume of Aristotle's concerning logic not found in the Organon, namely the fourth book of Metaphysics
3. Plutarch, born Plutarchos (Greek: Πλούταρχος) then, on his becoming a Roman citizen, Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus (Μέστριος Πλούταρχος), c. 46 – 120 AD, was a Greek historian, biographer, essayist, and Middle Platonist known primarily for his Parallel Lives and Moralia. He was born to a prominent family in Chaeronea, Boeotia, a town about twenty miles east of Delphi.
"The soul, being eternal, after death is like a caged bird that has been released. If it has been a long time in the body, and has become tame by many affairs and long habit, the soul will immediately take another body and once again become involved in the troubles of the world. The worst thing about old age is that the soul's memory of the other world grows dim, while at the same time its attachment to things of this world becomes so strong that the soul tends to retain the form that it had in the body. But that soul which remains only a short time within a body, until liberated by the higher powers, quickly recovers its fire and goes on to higher things."
Plutarch (The Consolation, Moralia).
Plutarch's writings had an enormous influence on English and French literature. Shakespeare in his plays paraphrased parts of Thomas North's translation of selected Lives, and occasionally quoted from them in verbatim.
Ralph Waldo Emerson and the Transcendentalists were greatly influenced by the Moralia — so much so, in fact, that Emerson called the Lives "a bible for heroes" in his glowing introduction to the five-volume 19th-century edition. He also opined that it was impossible to "read Plutarch without a tingling of the blood; and I accept the saying of the Chinese Mencius: 'A sage is the instructor of a hundred ages. When the manners of Loo are heard of, the stupid become intelligent, and the wavering, determined.'"
Montaigne's own Essays draw extensively on Plutarch's Moralia and are consciously modelled on the Greek's easygoing and discursive inquiries into science, manners, customs and beliefs. Essays contains more than 400 references to Plutarch and his works.
James Boswell quoted Plutarch on writing lives, rather than biographies, in the introduction to his own Life of Samuel Johnson. Other admirers included Ben Jonson, John Dryden, Alexander Hamilton, John Milton, and Francis Bacon, as well as such disparate figures as Cotton Mather and Robert Browning.
Plutarch's influence declined in the 19th and 20th centuries, but it remains embedded in the popular ideas of Greek and Roman history.
4. Zhuge Liang 諸葛亮 (181-234) was Chancellor of Shu Han during the Three Kingdoms period of Chinese history. He is often recognised as the greatest and most accomplished strategist of his era.
Often depicted wearing a robe and holding a fan made of crane feathers, Zhuge was not only an important military strategist and statesman; he was also an accomplished scholar and inventor. His reputation as an intelligent and learned scholar grew even while he was living in relative seclusion, earning him the nickname Wòlóng (臥龍, literally Crouching Dragon).
Zhuge is an uncommon two-character compound family name. His name – even his surname alone – has become synonymous with intelligence and tactics in Chinese culture.
Zhuge Liang's name is synonymous with wisdom in the Chinese language. He was believed to be the inventor of the Mantou, the landmine and a mysterious, efficient automatic transportation device (initially used for grain) described as a "wooden ox and flowing horse" (木牛流馬), which is sometimes identified with the wheelbarrow. Although he is often credited with the invention of the repeating crossbow which is named after him and called the Zhuge Nu, i.e. Zhuge Crossbow, this type of semi-automatic crossbow is an improved version of a model that first appeared during the Warring States Period (though there is debate whether the original Warring States Period bow was semi-automatic, or rather shot multiple bolts at once). Nevertheless, Zhuge Liang's version could shoot further and faster. He is also credited with constructing the mysterious Stone Sentinel Maze, an array of stone piles that is said to produce supernatural phenomenon, located near Baidicheng. An early type of hot air balloon used for military signalling called the Kongming lantern is also named after him.
Some books popularly attributed to Zhuge Liang can be found today. For example, the Thirty-Six Stratagems, and Mastering the Art of War (not to be confused with Sun Tzu's The Art of War) are two of Zhuge's works that are generally available. Supposedly, his mastery of infantry and cavalry formation tactics based upon the Taoist I-Ching were unrivalled. His petition Chu Shi Biao was written prior to the Northern Campaigns and it provided a salutary reflection of Zhuge Liang's unwavering loyalty to Shu-Han. The petition moved readers to tears.
--1400s - 1800s--
1. Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (April 15, 1452 – May 2, 1519) was an Italian polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer. Leonardo has often been described as the archetype of the Renaissance man, a man whose unquenchable curiosity was equaled only by his powers of invention. He is widely considered to be one of the greatest painters of all time and perhaps the most diversely talented person ever to have lived. According to art historian Helen Gardner, the scope and depth of his interests were without precedent and "his mind and personality seem to us superhuman, the man himself mysterious and remote". Marco Rosci points out, however, that while there is much speculation about Leonardo, his vision of the world is essentially logical rather than mysterious, and that the empirical methods he employed were unusual for his time.
Born the illegitimate son of a notary, Piero da Vinci, and a peasant woman, Caterina, at Vinci in the region of Florence, Leonardo was educated in the studio of the renowned Florentine painter, Verrocchio. Much of his earlier working life was spent in the service of Ludovico il Moro in Milan. He later worked in Rome, Bologna and Venice and spent his last years in France, at the home awarded him by Francis I.
Leonardo was and is renowned primarily as a painter. Two of his works, the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, are the most famous, most reproduced and most parodied portrait and religious paintings of all time, respectively, their fame approached only by Michelangelo's Creation of Adam. Leonardo's drawing of the Vitruvian Man is also regarded as a cultural icon, being reproduced on everything from the euro to text books to t-shirts. Perhaps fifteen of his paintings survive, the small number due to his constant, and frequently disastrous, experimentation with new techniques, and his chronic procrastination. Nevertheless, these few works, together with his notebooks, which contain drawings, scientific diagrams, and his thoughts on the nature of painting, compose a contribution to later generations of artists only rivalled by that of his contemporary, Michelangelo.
Leonardo is revered for his technological ingenuity. He conceptualised a helicopter, a tank, concentrated solar power, a calculator, the double hull and outlined a rudimentary theory of plate tectonics. Relatively few of his designs were constructed or were even feasible during his lifetime, but some of his smaller inventions, such as an automated bobbin winder and a machine for testing the tensile strength of wire, entered the world of manufacturing unheralded. As a scientist, he greatly advanced the state of knowledge in the fields of anatomy, civil engineering, optics, and hydrodynamics.
2. René Descartes (31 March 1596 – 11 February 1650) (Latinized form: Renatus Cartesius; adjectival form: "Cartesian"),[2] was a French philosopher, mathematician, physicist, and writer who spent most of his adult life in the Dutch Republic.
He is best known for the philosophical statement "Cogito ergo sum" (French: Je pense, donc je suis; English: I think, therefore I am; or I am thinking, therefore I exist), found in part IV of Discourse on the Method (1637 – written in French but with inclusion of "Cogito ergo sum") and §7 of part I of Principles of Philosophy (1644 – written in Latin).
3. Sir Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount Saint Alban, KC (22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626) was an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, lawyer, jurist and author. He famously died of pneumonia contracted while studying the effects of freezing on the preservation of meat. He served both as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England. Although his political career ended in disgrace, he remained extremely influential through his works, especially as philosophical advocate and practitioner of the scientific method and pioneer in the scientific revolution.
Bacon has been called the father of empiricism. His works established and popularized inductive methodologies for scientific inquiry, often called the Baconian method or simply, the scientific method. His demand for a planned procedure of investigating all things natural marked a new turn in the rhetorical and theoretical framework for science, much of which still surrounds conceptions of proper methodology today. His dedication probably led to his death so bringing him into a rare historical group of scientists who were killed by their own experiments.
Bacon's works include his Essays, as well as the Colours of Good and Evil and the Meditationes Sacrae, all published in 1597. His famous aphorism, "knowledge is power", is found in the Meditations. He published Of the Proficience and Advancement of Learning, Divine and Human in 1605. Bacon also wrote In felicem memoriam Elizabethae, a eulogy for the queen written in 1609; and various philosophical works which constitute the fragmentary and incomplete Instauratio magna (Great Renewal), the most important part of which is the Novum Organum (New Instrument, published 1620)
In 1623 Bacon expressed his aspirations and ideals in New Atlantis. Released in 1627, this was his creation of an ideal land where "generosity and enlightenment, dignity and splendor, piety and public spirit" were the commonly held qualities of the inhabitants of Bensalem. In this work, he portrayed a vision of the future of human discovery and knowledge. The plan and organization of his ideal college, "Solomon's House", envisioned the modern research university in both applied and pure science.
4. Sir Isaac Newton FRS (4 January 1643 – 31 March 1727 [OS: 25 December 1642 – 20 March 1726]) was an English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher, alchemist, and theologian who is considered by many scholars and members of the general public to be one of the most influential people in human history. His 1687 publication of the Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (usually called the Principia) is considered to be among the most influential books in the history of science, laying the groundwork for most of classical mechanics. In this work, Newton described universal gravitation and the three laws of motion which dominated the scientific view of the physical universe for the next three centuries. Newton showed that the motions of objects on Earth and of celestial bodies are governed by the same set of natural laws by demonstrating the consistency between Kepler's laws of planetary motion and his theory of gravitation, thus removing the last doubts about heliocentrism and advancing the Scientific Revolution.
Newton built the first practical reflecting telescope and developed a theory of colour based on the observation that a prism decomposes white light into the many colours that form the visible spectrum. He also formulated an empirical law of cooling and studied the speed of sound.
In mathematics, Newton shares the credit with Gottfried Leibniz for the development of the differential and integral calculus. He also demonstrated the generalised binomial theorem, developed Newton's method for approximating the roots of a function, and contributed to the study of power series.
In a 2005 survey of members of Britain's Royal Society asking who had the greater effect on the history of science and made the greater contribution to humankind, Newton or Albert Einstein. Royal Society scientists deemed Newton to have made the greater overall contribution on both.
Newton was also highly religious, though an unorthodox Christian, writing more on Biblical hermeneutics and occult studies than the natural science for which he is remembered today.
5. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German writer and polymath. Goethe is considered by many to be the most important writer in the German language and one of the most important thinkers in Western culture. Goethe's works span the fields of poetry, drama, literature, theology, philosophy, and science. His magnum opus, lauded as one of the peaks of world literature, is the drama Faust. Goethe's other well-known literary works include his numerous poems, the Bildungsroman Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, and the epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther.
Goethe was one of the key figures of German literature and the movement of Weimar Classicism in the late 18th and early 19th centuries; this movement coincides with Enlightenment, Sentimentality (Empfindsamkeit), Sturm und Drang and Romanticism. The author of the scientific text Theory of Colours, his influential ideas on plant and animal morphology and homology were extended and developed by 19th century naturalists including Charles Darwin. He also served at length as the Privy Councilor of the duchy of Saxe-Weimar.
Goethe's influence spread across Europe, and for the next century his works were a major source of inspiration in music, drama, poetry and philosophy. Early in his career, however, he wondered whether painting might be his true vocation; late in his life, he expressed the expectation that he would ultimately be remembered above all for his work on colour.
6. Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882) was an American lecturer, essayist, and poet, best remembered for leading the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champion of individualism and a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society, and he disseminated his thought through dozens of published essays and more than 1,500 public lectures across the United States.
Emerson gradually moved away from the religious and social beliefs of his contemporaries, formulating and expressing the philosophy of Transcendentalism in his 1836 essay, Nature. Following this ground-breaking work, he gave a speech entitled The American Scholar in 1837, which Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. considered to be America's "Intellectual Declaration of Independence". Considered one of the great lecturers of the time, Emerson had an enthusiasm and respect for his audience that enraptured crowds.
Emerson wrote on a number of subjects, never espousing fixed philosophical tenets, but developing certain ideas such as individuality, freedom, the ability for man to realize almost anything, and the relationship between the soul and the surrounding world. Emerson's "nature" was more philosophical than naturalistic; "Philosophically considered, the universe is composed of Nature and the Soul."
While his writing style can be seen as somewhat impenetrable, and was thought so even in his own time, Emerson's essays remain one of the linchpins of American thinking, and Emerson's work has influenced nearly every generation of thinker, writer and poet since his time. When asked to sum up his work, he said his central doctrine was "the infinitude of the private man."
-- Recent Famous People --
1. Robert Lee Frost (March 26, 1874 – January 29, 1963) was an American poet. He is highly regarded for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech. A popular and often-quoted poet, Frost was honored frequently during his lifetime, receiving four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry.
"The Road Not Taken" is a poem by Robert Frost, published in 1916 in the collection Mountain Interval. It is the first poem in the volume and is printed in italics. The title is often mistakenly given as "The Road Less Traveled", from the penultimate line: "I took the one less traveled by".
The Road Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference
Frost intended the poem as a gentle jab at his great friend and fellow poet Edward Thomas, with whom he used to take walks through the forest (Thomas always complained at the end that they should have taken a different path) and seemed amused at the interpretation of the poem as inspirational.
According to the popular interpretation, the poem is inspirational, a paean to individualism and non-conformism. Popular interpretations take the last two lines literally, as meaning that the speaker was a courageous nonconformist in taking a road few other people had taken.
The ironic interpretation, widely held by critics, is that the poem is instead about personal myth-making and rationalizing our decisions, whether with pride or with regret. In this view, "The Road Not Taken" "is perhaps the most famous example of Frost's own claims to conscious irony and 'the best example in all of American poetry of a wolf in sheep's clothing.'
2. Margaret Mead (December 16, 1901 – November 15, 1978) was an American cultural anthropologist, who was frequently a featured writer and speaker in the mass media throughout the 1960s and 1970s.
She was both a popularizer of the insights of anthropology into modern American and Western culture, and also a respected, if controversial, academic anthropologist. Her reports about the attitudes towards sex in South Pacific and Southeast Asian traditional cultures amply informed the 1960s sexual revolution. Mead was a champion of broadened sexual mores within a context of traditional western religious life. She was married three times and while Margaret Mead never openly identified herself as lesbian or bisexual, the details of her relationship with Ruth Benedict have led others to so identify her. In her writings she proposed that it is to be expected that an individual's sexual orientation may evolve throughout life. She spent her last years in a close personal and professional collaboration with anthropologist Rhoda Metraux, with whom she lived from 1955 until her death in 1978. Letters between the two published in 2006 with the permission of Mead's daughter clearly express a romantic relationship.
On January 19, 1979, President Jimmy Carter announced that he was awarding the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously to Mead. U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young presented the award to Mead's daughter at a special program honoring Mead's contributions, sponsored by the American Museum of Natural History, where she spent many years of her career. The citation read:
"Margaret Mead was both a student of civilization and an exemplar of it. To a public of millions, she brought the central insight of cultural anthropology: that varying cultural patterns express an underlying human unity. She mastered her discipline, but she also transcended it. Intrepid, independent, plain spoken, fearless, she remains a model for the young and a teacher from whom all may learn."
3. Stephen William Hawking, CH, CBE, FRS, FRSA (born 8 January 1942). is an English theoretical physicist and cosmologist, whose scientific career spans over forty years. His books and public appearances have made him an academic celebrity. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a lifetime member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, and in 2009 was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States.
Hawking was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge for thirty years, taking up the post in 1979 and retiring on 1 October 2009. He is also a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge and a Distinguished Research Chair at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario. He is known for his contributions to the fields of cosmology and quantum gravity, especially in the context of black holes. He has also achieved success with works of popular science in which he discusses his own theories and cosmology in general; these include the runaway best seller A Brief History of Time, which stayed on the British Sunday Times bestsellers list for a record-breaking 237 weeks.
Hawking's key scientific works to date have included providing, with Roger Penrose, theorems regarding gravitational singularities in the framework of general relativity, and the theoretical prediction that black holes should emit radiation, which is today known as Hawking radiation (or sometimes as Bekenstein–Hawking radiation).
Hawking has a neuro-muscular dystrophy that is related to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a condition that has progressed over the years and has left him almost completely paralysed.
Hawking was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge for thirty years, taking up the post in 1979 and retiring on 1 October 2009. He is also a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge and a Distinguished Research Chair at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario. He is known for his contributions to the fields of cosmology and quantum gravity, especially in the context of black holes. He has also achieved success with works of popular science in which he discusses his own theories and cosmology in general; these include the runaway best seller A Brief History of Time, which stayed on the British Sunday Times bestsellers list for a record-breaking 237 weeks.
Hawking's key scientific works to date have included providing, with Roger Penrose, theorems regarding gravitational singularities in the framework of general relativity, and the theoretical prediction that black holes should emit radiation, which is today known as Hawking radiation (or sometimes as Bekenstein–Hawking radiation).
Hawking has a neuro-muscular dystrophy that is related to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a condition that has progressed over the years and has left him almost completely paralysed.
4. William Butler Yeats (13 June 1865 – 28 January 1939) was an Irish poet and dramatist, and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, in his later years Yeats served as an Irish Senator for two terms. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival, and along with Lady Gregory and Edward Martyn founded the Abbey Theatre, serving as its chief during its early years. In 1923 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for what the Nobel Committee described as "inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation." He was the first Irishman so honored. Yeats is generally considered one of the few writers who completed their greatest works after being awarded the Nobel Prize; such works include The Tower (1928) and The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1929).
Yeats is generally considered to be one of the twentieth century's key English language poets. He can be considered a Symbolist poet in that he used allusive imagery and symbolic structures throughout his career. Yeats chose words and assembled them so that in addition to a particular meaning they suggest other abstract thoughts that may seem more significant and resonant. His use of symbols is usually something physical which is used both to be itself and to suggest other, perhaps immaterial, timeless qualities.
Unlike other modernists who experimented with free verse, Yeats was a master of the traditional forms. The impact of modernism on his work can be seen in the increasing abandonment of the more conventionally poetic diction of his early work in favour of the more austere language and more direct approach to his themes that increasingly characterises the poetry and plays of his middle period, comprising the volumes In the Seven Woods, Responsibilities and The Green Helmet. His later poetry and plays are written in a more personal vein, and the works written in the last twenty years of his life include mention of his son and daughter, as well as meditations on the experience of growing old.
5. Albert Einstein (14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a theoretical physicist, philosopher and author who is widely regarded as one of the most influential and best known scientists and intellectuals of all time. A German-Swiss Nobel laureate, he is often regarded as the father of modern physics. He received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect".
Near the beginning of his career, Einstein thought that Newtonian mechanics was no longer enough to reconcile the laws of classical mechanics with the laws of the electromagnetic field. This led to the development of his special theory of relativity. He realized, however, that the principle of relativity could also be extended to gravitational fields, and with his subsequent theory of gravitation in 1916, he published a paper on the general theory of relativity. He continued to deal with problems of statistical mechanics and quantum theory, which led to his explanations of particle theory and the motion of molecules. He also investigated the thermal properties of light which laid the foundation of the photon theory of light. In 1917, Einstein applied the general theory of relativity to model the structure of the universe as a whole.
On the eve of World War II in 1939, he personally alerted President Franklin D. Roosevelt that Germany might be developing an atomic weapon. As a result, Roosevelt advocated uranium research and the top secret Manhattan Project, which led to the U.S. becoming the only country to possess nuclear weapons during the war.
Einstein published more than 300 scientific along with over 150 non-scientific works, and received honorary doctorate degrees in science, medicine and philosophy from many European and American universities; he also wrote about various philosophical and political subjects such as socialism and international relations. His great intelligence and originality has made the word "Einstein" synonymous with genius.
6. Sri Lankabhimanya (a title) Sir Arthur Charles Clarke, CBE, FRAS (16 December 1917 – 19 March 2008) was a British science fiction author, inventor, and futurist, most famous for the novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, written in parallel with the script for the eponymous film, co-written with film-director Stanley Kubrick; and as a host and commentator in the British television series Mysterious World. For many years, Robert A. Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and Arthur C. Clarke were known as the "Big Three" of science fiction.
7. Alvin Toffler (born October 4, 1928 in New York City) is an American writer and futurist, known for his works discussing the digital revolution, communication revolution, corporate revolution and technological singularity.
Toffler explains, "Society needs people who take care of the elderly and who know how to be compassionate and honest. Society needs people who work in hospitals. Society needs all kinds of skills that are not just cognitive; they're emotional, they're affectional. You can't run the society on data and computers alone." Toffler also states, in Rethinking the Future, that "The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn."
Sunday, October 10, 2010
God Has a Plan for Your Life
God Has a Plan for Your Life
All the days ordained me were written in your book before one of them came to be. (Psalm 139:16)
How can we be assure of becoming a success in this life of our?
• By doing things God’s way!
Why must we do God’s way?
• It’s because God has developed a perfect plan for our life.
• A plan which IF FOLLOWED, will lead us to a fulfilled and a meaningful life!
• A life in which we will have contentment and joy in everything we do.
So what exactly is success?
• One definition could be: “success is the continuing realization of a worthwhile goal.”
What does continuing realization mean?
• Each day as we take a step (no matter how big or small it is) forward toward realization of one of our objectives or goals, then, we are already successful for that particular day! With this as our definition of success, each of us can be successful every sing day for the rest of our lives!
What is a worthwhile goal then?
• Worthwhile, could simply relate to the objectives and goals we set for ourselves because they are reflective of the things God really wants us to do!
Why should the goal be reflective of the things God really wants us to do?
• Because God knows what is best for us!
Overcoming Procrastination and Inertia
There are 2 areas where we need to overcome before we can discover and live by God’s plan! They are: a) PROCRASTINATION and 2) INERTIA.
The Dangers of Procrastination
• Put off doing one thing and another thing gets piled on top of it, on and on until you have a mountain of things to do!
• Inertia will sets in!
The Dangers of Inertia
• We are so overwhelm from the pile of works to be done (because of procrastination) that we do not know where to begin!
• So we simply do not start to solve the problem and inertia sets in!
• Before long, anxiety becomes a factor!
Both procrastination and inertia were leading to stagnation and defeat! Do not underestimate the dangers of procrastination and inertia!
How do we take actions to overcome procrastination?
First, Make a List
The first step to overcome procrastination:
• Identify those areas in our life where we have been procrastinating.
• Begin by making a list of the various areas of our life.
• Examples are: God, Family, Jobs, Relationships, Finances, Future Ambitions.
The second step would be:
• Make a list of all the things we have left undone in the key areas of our lives.
Other possible hurdles and challenges that will stop us from taking the first step:-
• The Pain of acknowledging some of certain affected key areas of our lives could be intense that we cannot even put them on a list!
• Denial that we are not procrastinating.
• Lying to our self that we do not have this problem.
How do we overcome this?
• Ask God to help us begin to be honest with our self.
A: Areas of procrastination which would relieve the most pressure.
B: Areas of procrastination that do not give the most or the least pressure
C: Areas of procrastination that would relieve the least pressure.
1: The Highest Priority to be carried out
2: Neither Highest nor Lowest Priority to be carried out
3: The Lowest Priority to be carried out
First identify all the areas of procrastination by A, B, and C.
Then set a priority number to the Abs, and follow to the Bs and Cs.
Now Move into Action
• After identifying the areas of our life that are bogged down due to procrastination, we need to CODE IT so that we know what needs priority and what needs not!
• The next step now is to decide WHAT to do and WHEN to do them!
• Look at all the A-1 areas of procrastination, develop a plan for doing all of them within a certain time frame
• Tackle those items which take relatively little time quickly.
• After resolving them, the achievements would be a source of encouragement to get them done and out of the way!
• The key with each one is to take the first sep and then decide what other next step is and when we will take them and overcome procrastination one step at a time!
• As we move through the list, we will gain more and more confidence and encouragements.
• Note: we might discover that some of the tough items are not so tough at all! Or those that we set as high priority are not as important as we thought! Or certain things should not even be on the list to be done at ALL!!! So we need to decide wiser when we list down the next day list to overcome!
What is the key to success in overcoming procrastination for life?
• We need to set aside the time in advance to deal with each areas of our life that are affected by procrastination.
• Dedicate a certain time each day, at the same time, to clear the list!
• Once we gain traction and a sense of momentum, we need to maintain it! This is called discipline!
The fruits of overcoming procrastination
• We know the relief and pleasure that come from overcoming procrastination
• We became more diligent in getting things done first thing first
• We are more focus in our day-to-day planning
• We can free more time to do other more rewarding things
• We are free to move forward in obedience to the plan God has prepared for us.
Remember: Procrastination is always dangerous – in the realm of the spirit and everywhere else!
Setting Goals: Signposts to the Future
Once we have overcome procrastination, the next step is to SET GOALS which we believe to be consistent with God’s plan for us.
How do we define “goal”?
• Our definition is, “a very specific objective, measurable in time and quantity.”
• The more measurable it is, the more effective it will prove to be a device to move us in our intended direction!
• Goals are MOTIVATORS OF LIFE! It is something that keeps us moving forward instead of stagnant like what procrastination did.
• It is the setting and pursuing of goals which move us from KNOWING God’s will to DOING His Will.
What is the difference between a PURPOSE or OBJECTIVE and a GOAL?
• When we have a general idea of what we want to do, that is generally our “Purpose”.
• As we put our time, resources, hand and feet to that general idea, we would be able to get more FOCUS.
• As we focus more and more on the details of what is involved to accomplish the purpose, we tend to identify various GENERAL OBJECTIVES or THINGS to be achieved.
• Here, we would define some VERY SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES which are measurable in time and quantity.
• These are the SPECIFIC GOALS, which will lead us to the fulfilment of our PURPOSE!
• Without GOALS and achieving them within certain time frame, the PURPOSE or OBJECTIVE would continue to be something that we intended to do, not something that we had done!
Applications
• Purpose is to write a Blog
• I then broke that purpose down into specific GOALS (i.e. develop an overall outline of the book by a specific date; first draft; certain amendments, etc) all within a specific time frame.
• All of the GOALS are aimed at the same PURPOSE, to write a BLOG!
• So we need to go through the PROCESS of determining what should be OUR GOALS, because we are not going to discover what would and would not work that could achieve our PURPOSE realistically!
Exceptions!
• It is important to note that just because we set particular goals did not necessarily mean we had to achieve them!
• We might find that some were not realistic, some were not advisable, and some were just not necessary!
Why do we need to set GOALS?
• It is because the way God works is that He gives us little parts of the puzzle of life.
• Then as we begin to work on one part, he gives us another.
• We never have the really big picture, although we are likely to have increasingly large glimpses as the pieces of the puzzle come together.
What are the specific elements or requirements of a GOAL?
1. It needs to be in WRITING.
• Write a “goal statement” in which we commit our goal to paper as accurately and succinctly as possible.
• Spell it out so we know exactly what it is we hope to achieve!
2. It ONLY has ONE OBJECTIVE.
• To focus in the achieving each goal and moving on to the next goal in line!
3. It needs to be SPECIFIC and MEASURABLE.
• So we know when it has been achieved and if not, WHEN can we achieve it!
4. It must have a DEADLINE attached
• The purpose of the deadline is to assist us in knowing when we’ve PLANNED to act or accomplish or achieve something.
• This should increase our ability to identify and work toward achieving God’s Plan at the correct pac.e
5. It has to be REALISTIC
• The objective and the deadline must bear some semblance of reality ot the ability of the person to achieve the goal!
• All goals should be ACHIEVABLE!
--
How to Set Goals for Your Life
• In order to know the answer we must first discover what Scripture calls “the desires of the heart” that God has placed within our self.
• These are things we want to do or be or become that GOD wants us to do or be or become
• They are tied to God’s long-range plans for our lives, and as we identify them and set goals to move toward them, we’ll be moving toward reaching our God-given potential.
How do we know if they are God-given?
• Those that are not from God-given could come from either: 1) Desires of the Flesh or 2) Satan’s manipulation.
What are some desires of the heart from God?
• Marriage, work, callings in serving your home church are some of the desires of the heart that are God’s inspired!
• Take them before God to determine if they are from HIM! Affirm them!
• Ask God about each desire in prayer
• Check it against God’s Word to make certain it is not inconsistent with Scripture.
• After we have determined that our idea, thought, or desire is not inconsistent with Scripture, we need to determine whether we have “the peace... which transcends all understanding” (Philippians 4:7) with respect to it.
• A simple rule of thumb. If in doubt, don’t do it!
After acknowledging they are from God, what then?
• If the desire is consistent with Scripture and you have peace with respect to it, then you may safely proceed to plan and achieve the goal associated with the idea.
What happen if we no longer have the desire or lose peace after God did says it is from Him?
• You may have to decide whether God wants you to persevere in order to overcome obstacles, or whether He wants you to re-evaluate your direction.
• Suffice it to say that if you continue to have the desire and the peace, and if you do not become aware of an inconsistency with Scripture, you may continue to assume that you are hearing God’s voice and proceed on that basis unless and until He tells you to the contrary!
What if you know God want you to do something, but you don’t have the desire to do it?
• Ask Him to give you that desire.
• The first thing would be to focus on the objective that you are motivated to achieve and which you believe is reflective of God’s will for you.
• You want this objective with all your heart, and you know beyond question that God wants it for you.
• Focus on the objective of obtaining an attitude of obedience in the area of disobedience.
• Spend certain time with the Lord over a number of days a week.
• During this time, specifically ask Him to give you a desire to be obedient and read the Bible.
All the days ordained me were written in your book before one of them came to be. (Psalm 139:16)
How can we be assure of becoming a success in this life of our?
• By doing things God’s way!
Why must we do God’s way?
• It’s because God has developed a perfect plan for our life.
• A plan which IF FOLLOWED, will lead us to a fulfilled and a meaningful life!
• A life in which we will have contentment and joy in everything we do.
So what exactly is success?
• One definition could be: “success is the continuing realization of a worthwhile goal.”
What does continuing realization mean?
• Each day as we take a step (no matter how big or small it is) forward toward realization of one of our objectives or goals, then, we are already successful for that particular day! With this as our definition of success, each of us can be successful every sing day for the rest of our lives!
What is a worthwhile goal then?
• Worthwhile, could simply relate to the objectives and goals we set for ourselves because they are reflective of the things God really wants us to do!
Why should the goal be reflective of the things God really wants us to do?
• Because God knows what is best for us!
Overcoming Procrastination and Inertia
There are 2 areas where we need to overcome before we can discover and live by God’s plan! They are: a) PROCRASTINATION and 2) INERTIA.
The Dangers of Procrastination
• Put off doing one thing and another thing gets piled on top of it, on and on until you have a mountain of things to do!
• Inertia will sets in!
The Dangers of Inertia
• We are so overwhelm from the pile of works to be done (because of procrastination) that we do not know where to begin!
• So we simply do not start to solve the problem and inertia sets in!
• Before long, anxiety becomes a factor!
Both procrastination and inertia were leading to stagnation and defeat! Do not underestimate the dangers of procrastination and inertia!
How do we take actions to overcome procrastination?
First, Make a List
The first step to overcome procrastination:
• Identify those areas in our life where we have been procrastinating.
• Begin by making a list of the various areas of our life.
• Examples are: God, Family, Jobs, Relationships, Finances, Future Ambitions.
The second step would be:
• Make a list of all the things we have left undone in the key areas of our lives.
Other possible hurdles and challenges that will stop us from taking the first step:-
• The Pain of acknowledging some of certain affected key areas of our lives could be intense that we cannot even put them on a list!
• Denial that we are not procrastinating.
• Lying to our self that we do not have this problem.
How do we overcome this?
• Ask God to help us begin to be honest with our self.
| Areas of Procrastination | Priority | |
| A-C-B | 1-2-3 | |
| 1. | | |
| 2. | | |
| 3. | | |
| 4. | | |
| 5. | | |
| 6. | | |
| 7. | | |
| 8. | | |
| 9. | | |
| 10. | | |
| 11. | | |
| 12. | | |
| 13. | | |
| 14. | | |
| 15. | | |
| 16. | | |
| 17. | | |
| 18. | | |
| 19. | | |
| 20. | | |
A: Areas of procrastination which would relieve the most pressure.
B: Areas of procrastination that do not give the most or the least pressure
C: Areas of procrastination that would relieve the least pressure.
1: The Highest Priority to be carried out
2: Neither Highest nor Lowest Priority to be carried out
3: The Lowest Priority to be carried out
First identify all the areas of procrastination by A, B, and C.
Then set a priority number to the Abs, and follow to the Bs and Cs.
Now Move into Action
• After identifying the areas of our life that are bogged down due to procrastination, we need to CODE IT so that we know what needs priority and what needs not!
• The next step now is to decide WHAT to do and WHEN to do them!
• Look at all the A-1 areas of procrastination, develop a plan for doing all of them within a certain time frame
• Tackle those items which take relatively little time quickly.
• After resolving them, the achievements would be a source of encouragement to get them done and out of the way!
• The key with each one is to take the first sep and then decide what other next step is and when we will take them and overcome procrastination one step at a time!
• As we move through the list, we will gain more and more confidence and encouragements.
• Note: we might discover that some of the tough items are not so tough at all! Or those that we set as high priority are not as important as we thought! Or certain things should not even be on the list to be done at ALL!!! So we need to decide wiser when we list down the next day list to overcome!
What is the key to success in overcoming procrastination for life?
• We need to set aside the time in advance to deal with each areas of our life that are affected by procrastination.
• Dedicate a certain time each day, at the same time, to clear the list!
• Once we gain traction and a sense of momentum, we need to maintain it! This is called discipline!
The fruits of overcoming procrastination
• We know the relief and pleasure that come from overcoming procrastination
• We became more diligent in getting things done first thing first
• We are more focus in our day-to-day planning
• We can free more time to do other more rewarding things
• We are free to move forward in obedience to the plan God has prepared for us.
Remember: Procrastination is always dangerous – in the realm of the spirit and everywhere else!
Setting Goals: Signposts to the Future
Once we have overcome procrastination, the next step is to SET GOALS which we believe to be consistent with God’s plan for us.
How do we define “goal”?
• Our definition is, “a very specific objective, measurable in time and quantity.”
• The more measurable it is, the more effective it will prove to be a device to move us in our intended direction!
• Goals are MOTIVATORS OF LIFE! It is something that keeps us moving forward instead of stagnant like what procrastination did.
• It is the setting and pursuing of goals which move us from KNOWING God’s will to DOING His Will.
What is the difference between a PURPOSE or OBJECTIVE and a GOAL?
• When we have a general idea of what we want to do, that is generally our “Purpose”.
• As we put our time, resources, hand and feet to that general idea, we would be able to get more FOCUS.
• As we focus more and more on the details of what is involved to accomplish the purpose, we tend to identify various GENERAL OBJECTIVES or THINGS to be achieved.
• Here, we would define some VERY SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES which are measurable in time and quantity.
• These are the SPECIFIC GOALS, which will lead us to the fulfilment of our PURPOSE!
• Without GOALS and achieving them within certain time frame, the PURPOSE or OBJECTIVE would continue to be something that we intended to do, not something that we had done!
Applications
• Purpose is to write a Blog
• I then broke that purpose down into specific GOALS (i.e. develop an overall outline of the book by a specific date; first draft; certain amendments, etc) all within a specific time frame.
• All of the GOALS are aimed at the same PURPOSE, to write a BLOG!
• So we need to go through the PROCESS of determining what should be OUR GOALS, because we are not going to discover what would and would not work that could achieve our PURPOSE realistically!
Exceptions!
• It is important to note that just because we set particular goals did not necessarily mean we had to achieve them!
• We might find that some were not realistic, some were not advisable, and some were just not necessary!
Why do we need to set GOALS?
• It is because the way God works is that He gives us little parts of the puzzle of life.
• Then as we begin to work on one part, he gives us another.
• We never have the really big picture, although we are likely to have increasingly large glimpses as the pieces of the puzzle come together.
What are the specific elements or requirements of a GOAL?
1. It needs to be in WRITING.
• Write a “goal statement” in which we commit our goal to paper as accurately and succinctly as possible.
• Spell it out so we know exactly what it is we hope to achieve!
2. It ONLY has ONE OBJECTIVE.
• To focus in the achieving each goal and moving on to the next goal in line!
3. It needs to be SPECIFIC and MEASURABLE.
• So we know when it has been achieved and if not, WHEN can we achieve it!
4. It must have a DEADLINE attached
• The purpose of the deadline is to assist us in knowing when we’ve PLANNED to act or accomplish or achieve something.
• This should increase our ability to identify and work toward achieving God’s Plan at the correct pac.e
5. It has to be REALISTIC
• The objective and the deadline must bear some semblance of reality ot the ability of the person to achieve the goal!
• All goals should be ACHIEVABLE!
--
How to Set Goals for Your Life
• In order to know the answer we must first discover what Scripture calls “the desires of the heart” that God has placed within our self.
• These are things we want to do or be or become that GOD wants us to do or be or become
• They are tied to God’s long-range plans for our lives, and as we identify them and set goals to move toward them, we’ll be moving toward reaching our God-given potential.
How do we know if they are God-given?
• Those that are not from God-given could come from either: 1) Desires of the Flesh or 2) Satan’s manipulation.
What are some desires of the heart from God?
• Marriage, work, callings in serving your home church are some of the desires of the heart that are God’s inspired!
• Take them before God to determine if they are from HIM! Affirm them!
• Ask God about each desire in prayer
• Check it against God’s Word to make certain it is not inconsistent with Scripture.
• After we have determined that our idea, thought, or desire is not inconsistent with Scripture, we need to determine whether we have “the peace... which transcends all understanding” (Philippians 4:7) with respect to it.
• A simple rule of thumb. If in doubt, don’t do it!
After acknowledging they are from God, what then?
• If the desire is consistent with Scripture and you have peace with respect to it, then you may safely proceed to plan and achieve the goal associated with the idea.
What happen if we no longer have the desire or lose peace after God did says it is from Him?
• You may have to decide whether God wants you to persevere in order to overcome obstacles, or whether He wants you to re-evaluate your direction.
• Suffice it to say that if you continue to have the desire and the peace, and if you do not become aware of an inconsistency with Scripture, you may continue to assume that you are hearing God’s voice and proceed on that basis unless and until He tells you to the contrary!
What if you know God want you to do something, but you don’t have the desire to do it?
• Ask Him to give you that desire.
• The first thing would be to focus on the objective that you are motivated to achieve and which you believe is reflective of God’s will for you.
• You want this objective with all your heart, and you know beyond question that God wants it for you.
• Focus on the objective of obtaining an attitude of obedience in the area of disobedience.
• Spend certain time with the Lord over a number of days a week.
• During this time, specifically ask Him to give you a desire to be obedient and read the Bible.
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