by Herbert J. Keener | Aug 1, 2014 | Reflections
As I bent over and my lips were close to her ear, my thoughts were blank. I believed I had so many things to tell her, so many things in my head that I wanted her to know. I wanted my goodbye to be so special that I would carry the memory of it to my own end. I wanted to talk about all the funny things that had happened and laugh with her about them again. I wanted to tell her how sorry I was that we were not going to be able to travel together, like we had talked about, or create new memories that we could reminisce about later.
So many things I wanted to say and my mind was a complete blank.
All I could see was a person so special to me that I had no way to express it. All I could think of was that I had such a short time to say it. Thoughts of all the things that I wanted to tell her seemed trivial. A waste of time.
What we had in the past was gone. What we planned for the future was never to be.
But GOD, being GOD, did what He always does. In that moment, He brought to me the most important words to whisper in her ear. I was at a total loss for words to describe the time that God had allowed us to be friends. It seemed so long since we first met, but now that time was compressed to moments. Whatever I had to say that represented our total friendship from the beginning had to fit within that time. I had never considered there would be an end.
Six words were forming in my mind. They were more important to me than anything I could think of from the past and anything I could say in the future. I looked at her and I said the only thing I could feel was important at that moment.
Perhaps, by God’s grace and in His wisdom, they were the words she needed to hear. These words were: “DO YOU KNOW I LOVE YOU?”
This entry was posted in Reflections and tagged how to say I love you, saying goodbye on August 1, 2014.
by Herbert J. Keener | Oct 24, 2012 | Guidance
Your past defines who you are today. What you do today defines who you will be tomorrow. If you are happy with who you are today, embrace and live today as if it was your last and plan for tomorrow as if it will be forever.
If you are unhappy with who you are today, increase the love and compassion you show to others. Begin to be who you want to be and do it today.
No matter what comes into your mind about yesterday, every morning you are born again into another day. God has allowed you to breathe His air into your life not to be miserable but to receive a gift from Him. He wants you free to look at this world as it is. He wants you to be what He created you for, not to be miserable but to love, be loved, and show the world that misery comes from the dark side of life. There is no joy there.
You may be the only light of joy that someone may see in this world. And if only that one is able to see the joy of the Lord in you because of who you are, you have done a great work for God. Light comes from the unconditional love of God. From love comes peace, and from peace comes joy.
No matter what the rest of the world is doing or the condition of your life, do not let the dark things of this world define who you are today or who you will be tomorrow. Be who God made you to be – “A light in a dark and dying world.”
“Jesus said, ‘I am the light of life: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life’” (John 8:12).
by Herbert J. Keener | Oct 17, 2012 | Reflections
I need a life-changing experience. My life was not meant to be one struggle after another. As a Christian, I am not prospering. I also know it is not God holding back the blessings. It is me, and I need to change my way of doing things.
Do you react positively to change? Do you even notice it? Were the results of the change effective? Can you live with the results of your actions?
I have struggled with life since 1999 to try and prosper. I struggled just to maintain an existence. It seems that the only thing in my life I do not struggle with is my precious wife, Shirley. With everything else, I work hard and long and find myself merely surviving until the next struggle.
I have come to the realization that everything I ever tried to do to prosper was tied to another person who had an agenda; their contribution to my task always made it even harder to accomplish.
I am one year into my own projects. I still work hard and long and I am making strides toward prospering, but still feel that it is nothing compared to the effort I put out.
Yet I write this because of a vison, or perhaps a dream, which made me aware that I need a plan that changes the way I approach and deal with opportunities that come into my life.
I believe God gave me the order in which to do this:
- Information
- Evaluatio
- Consideration
- Action
- Results
- Effect
- Impact
These are the seven steps, and I believe God meant for me to use all of them. My way has not worked. It is time to try God’s way.
by Herbert J. Keener | Oct 16, 2012 | Daily Thoughts
I sometimes feel like I have no past. Like there cannot possibly be any future, for everything I have done has become nothing.
I find that the same decisions I made in the past, I am now making in the present. But if I make the same choices now, my future will be the same as the past. I don’t want that. I try so hard to prosper by doing what I think is right but I realize to reinvent myself, I have to change not only how I make decisions, but also change the reasons why I make them.
Are my decisions made on a logical basis? Or are they made on the premise of daydreams? Do I own who I am and the decisions I have made? Or do I shift the blame, and the power, to someone else?
If you answer such questions from deep within who you are, you will come up with a true answer to any dilemma you are dealing with. You can begin to pursue a dream that is a reality, not just a pipe dream of maybes.
My entire life has been lived with a daydream-chasing mentality. I have always had good ideas and usually could make them happen, but at the end they were never feasible. They were always tied to someone else’s brain or desire, never birthed from my intelligence or my God-given purpose. I felt like I always had the counterfeit of ideas. In turn, I had to struggle, work harder, and receive less than I felt I deserved.
It was as though I came in late and missed the reality of things. Or that I left too early because of lack of knowledge to make something happen. So the dream would fail and I would chase after another un-achievable project because someone told me how great it was and that I would prosper beyond belief. That part would be true, because it was always just another puff of smoke after the forest fire.
Life was not given to be wasted. Rather, we are to adhere to a simple set of rules as soon as we are born. The first rule is to breathe. After that, you are pretty much on your own. How you learn the rest of the rules depends on the people that come into your life. What you learn from them will shape your thoughts and actions according to what they teach you in your early years, but there will come a time when you have to decide who you are and what is the moral thing to do. All the teaching, ideas, and convictions of the ones you received your knowledge from will serve as a tool chest of sorts.
But remember, it is other people’s thoughts and ideas. Yes, they will play into your decision-making process, but you have to be accountable for your actions, thoughts, and wisdom. You use the knowledge you have received from others. You use your integrity or lack of it. All this results in decisions made by you.
You now are in control … or out of control. Whether you become wealthy or poor depends on you. It is your choice whether you want to become wealthy at the price of your integrity, or use your integrity, keeping your morals intact and do what is right to be the best you can be.
I love who I am and my integrity, I believe, is intact. At the same time, I feel a great loss. In my formative years, I thought education was a waste of time. I now know education is the main tool to help you decide not only what you want out of life, but education will also give you the blueprint to build your dreams and the knowledge to acquire the tools with which to build.
You will then have to supply the integrity, moral goodness, love, and compassion to do the building. Then and only then will you be able to look at the past with pride, look forward with anticipation to the future, and love the present that you’re in.
by Herbert J. Keener | Oct 15, 2012 | Declarations
I have gone through trying to be what others would have me to be and what they would have me to do. I have gone through hurting and disappointment with family, and have overcome the hurt, the pain, and the loneliness.
I have been through disappointment in the people that came into my life as a positive and ended up being a negative. I went through trying to love people, only to discover that they did not even like me, much less love me. I have suffered the ups and downs of people brought into my life by me, not God.
Through it all, God revealed a question in my mind this morning. It took a few minutes for the question to sink in and for my thinking capabilities to catch up with it. I know the question was from God, and the question He asked was, “Are you ready to be and do what I created for you to be and do?”
In an instant, I felt a release. A release of all the thoughts and fears of pleasing people in my actions and words and life. I began to imagine what peace would come from being what God created for me to be and do.
Am I ready?
Yes, I feel I am ready. But only I can make that decision.
Am I tired of being who I am according to someone else’s thoughts? Am I tired of other people’s opinions developing the things I choose to do? Am I tired of trying to please other people to the point of bringing pain and discomfort to myself and my wife? Am I tired of being me according to someone else?
Is this the day? Is this the time to be who God created me to be?
I have spent 70 years living life according to circumstances and conditions. My environment has been determined by other people whose only concern was something other than my best interests. All this has created great heartache, financial loss, and loneliness.
As I own the thought, I realize they might have been the reason, but they were never the cause. The decisions were made by me. I am the one who created the problems; they were just part of the results.
Am I ready?
Do I believe that God is sovereign, that He can take the good and the bad, the right choices and the mistakes, and create something beautiful?
Yes! I want the power of God to create in me the promise made at my birth. I am ready to be the me that is according to God’s will, with the mind of Christ. I am ready to trust in all that God is going to provide through Christ Jesus. I am ready to live in the power that the Holy Spirit brings upon me and my wife, Shirley.
Time will tell whether I truly live according to this declaration, and only God will be my judge.
