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Just as Jesus taught us to do, He will do for us the same.


English: Jesus Christ - detail from Deesis mos...

When we learn to put aside all our worries and stress we find that happiness is such an easy thing to obtain. As my mom always told me, let go and let God, thus let God handle all the stressful situations and let him be the source of your strength. Jesus taught if we see a neighbor or even a stranger carrying a heavy load that we should help that person carry the load. If they ask you to carry it a part of the way, you should carry it all the way. The compassion, fellowship and kindness in your heart should always inspire you to help others. Just as Jesus taught us to do, He will do for us the same. Jesus will help carry your load when you need it and he will counsel you when you are unable to discern which way to go.

We should practice compassion, understanding and kindness every day, for if we do not show any compassion, kindness or try to be understanding towards others how should we expect the same from God? The same goes for forgiveness, God through Jesus has forgiven us all and we should forgive others through Christ as well. If a person sins against you just remember you are a sinner as well, forgive him and pray for both his forgiveness as well as your own. Love the sinner and hate only the sin, we all have sin in us and none of us are worthy to enter the kingdom of God without Jesus. We also need to learn to forgive ourselves as well, we can not carry the weight of our sins and be forgiven at the same time. Christ died on the cross and was resurrected to wash or cover our multitude of sins. So you pray to be forgiven and truly repent then forgive yourself and forget your sin.

 All our strength, help and forgiveness comes from God through his Son Jesus Christ. We must remember this and thank God for that he has given, will give and even that which he has taken away.

Ray Barbier

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Just some Thoughts on a Friday night 9-21-12


026Smile, be at peace with yourself, your family, your friends and even those who choose to be your enemies. For we all are human and are prone to be imperfect in thought, emotion and action. We all have problems and we all have our shortcomings as well. We should remember how hard life is for ourselves when we look at others and begin to judge. For the bible teaches how we judge others is how we too will be judged in the end time. So if you must judge do so with compassion, understanding and mercy. It is so easy to point a finger or cast blame on others especially when it keeps your own faults hidden.

Worry not about what others think about you, say about you or try to accuse you of. Just worry about your words, actions and how you treat others. For what is truth always is revealed and you will be remembered by how you treat others.

just some Thoughts on a Friday night

Ray Barbier

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Music, stress and relaxation


English: music therapy

Listening to music is a good way to relax and relieve stress, especially if you just kick back, close your eyes and let the music take you away. As my fellow author would call it.. Space out…  We tend to get too much in a hurry to do everything and to get everywhere. We act like we are running out of time, though in a way that is true for we only have a short time to live our lives in this world. But to live every second trying to do everything at the speed of light leaves us in the dark to what is going on around us and also keeps us in sensory overload. We need to breathe, stretch and just chill out at times. Our jobs make that next to impossible, but outside work we can learn to manage time to where we have time to relax. Music being a very good tool for relaxation is what I usually use to relieve stress and relax the body and mind.

There is some scientific research out there that suggest music can alter ones brain wave patterns. Brainwaves tend to sync with the music tempo you are listening to, if you listen to harder faster music you become more mentally alert and the slower tempo music causes most of us to relax and can even cause us to enter a meditative state. Music also has proven to lower blood pressure, help with anxiety and depression as well.

Music is vibrational medicine for the mind, body and spirit.

Ray Barbier

More info on this subject can be found at one of these links below.
Brainwave ‘Music‘ May Soothe a Troubled Psyche | Fox News
Music Therapy – How and Why Music Therapy Is Effective
Brain Wave Music Therapy | eHow.com
Sit back and relax to brain wave music – TODAY Health – …

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Put our minds and hearts together


English: Poverty Русский: Нищенство

Between Mass media and the world-wide web it seems we are becoming a global minded society. Nothing wrong with being global minded as long as we never forget we live in our own small community as well. If we keep our minds distracted with the news of overseas conflicts and international problems we tend to forget the problems we face in our home towns. We should start at home when it comes to helping the needy, impoverished and those who can not fend for themselves. Though I fully support helping the less fortunate on a global scale as well I believe our hometowns should be our first priority. There are hungry, homeless, handicapped and many who can not do for themselves in every town and city in our great nation. Food stamps, welfare are good as temporary solutions in helping those who are able to work and is the right idea for those who are truly physically or mentally incapable of working.

We need to focus on offering those able to work training to do jobs and also offer them state and/or federal jobs doing community service. At least they will be on the right track back to being independent and self efficient individual. Most of those who are on some kind of governmental assistance usually prefers to work for their living but find it hard to get a job which pays enough to support themselves or their family. So if we offered them training and/or a job with the government doing something constructive for their money they would gladly accept one if not both options.

In the Appalachian region a lot of coal miners are finding themselves unemployed due to the greener America movement and the lack of permits being issued for mining. The idea of greener technologies and alternative energies is a great idea, but if you get a greener America at the cost of the jobs of Americans then how will that be a better America? We need to bring in more industries and jobs into the region and retrain coal miners to do the new jobs before we start forcing coal mining to shut down.  It doesn’t only affect the coal miners and their families it affects the whole community and the communities surrounding it. Food stores, shopping malls, restaurants and many small business will get hit hard by the loss of coal mining jobs. They rely on the coal miners for their income and business.

This is just some of the issues happening here in our own back yard and for some their front yard as well. It is time for communities to start coming together as a community and start dealing with the problems here at home. Together we can overcome any challenge as long as we put our minds and hearts together . Turn off that television, radio, mp3 player and any  other time-consuming distraction device  and tune in to what is going on in your own town for a day. Take a little time to help out your neighbors and your fellow citizens and see how just a little help can go a long way.

Ray Barbier

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spacin’ out


So.. my good friend Ray invited (or dared) me to blog a bit….. I suppose I had better introduce myself…. My name is Simon, i’m 42 years old… I originally come from England but now live in Denmark, I own my own computer business and only work to pay my way…. ( I don’t subscribe to th corporate world and materialism, at least not anymore…) I’ve had my share of hard times and have been through the school of hard knocks like Ray and alot of other people….
So what do I wan’t to blog about… well so many topics come to mind, but one keeps coming back….. lets call it “the power of spacing out”…. so here we go….
Having been just another “worker bee” for many years I decided to start my own business 4 years ago (right in the middle of the economic collapse)…. When I used to work for “the man” I was not at all happy… don’t get me wrong.. I had plenty of money and used more than I had… but my happiness was out the window… my wife used to complain about me being a “grumpy old git”….
I started my business 4 years ago.. and my salary was cut in half…. but… I was the boss… I could decide if I wanted to do anything or not…. for the first time in 10 years I felt ALIVE !…. I have done so many things around the house that were left for dead…. I will never regret starting my own business… it turned me into a completely different person…. All of a sudden i learnt the value of money because i didn’t have any….
where’s the “spacing out” bit i hear you say…. well I’m on my way…. actually I “re-learned” spacing out and doing nothing after i quit the rat race… You really need to feel the power of sitting down, staring into a flame or into space without and kind of interruption and thinking about everything and nothing… it’s pure catharsis for the soul…..
loadsa people ask me why I take so long doing stuff… (like repointing my house)… well now… I tend to repoint around 3 sq feet and the sit down space out and enjoy looking at what I have achieved…. why I hear you say… well I’ll tell you why… I don’t get tired of repointing the house day after day after day… because I space out…
If you haven’t learned to space out… you should try it…

L8R PPL

 

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The only person who can change you is yourself


041The only person who can change you is yourself, the only one who can make you happy is once again yourself. We tend to look to others for change and also for happiness, when the one who controls it all is ourselves.  If we have a bad habit the only way to get rid of it is to either stop cold turkey or to replace it with a good habit, either way no one else can save us from our bad habits and negative thinking but ourselves.  Some things we may not be able to face without help from others and help from God. Asking for help is once again one of the things we must do for and by ourselves. We have the power to change almost every aspect of our behavior and thought processes. It is all up to the individual if they chose to change or improve who and what they are as well as the situations they are living in.

Ray Barbier

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Inspirational Photo (9-12-12)


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Give the battle to God and Begin serving God.


MP900321192 The Job, The Kids, your favorite TV show, even your battle with sin can be distractions from serving God. We allow ourselves to get consumed if not overwhelmed by every day life and the challenges we face each day and that makes it next to impossible to serve god. If we are devoting all of our energy, time and mental abilities to the world we leave very little to give to serving God. Of course we have to deal with everyday life and the challenges it brings, but there are a lot of things we could let go of or that we could hand off to others if not to god himself in order to make time to Serve God and help others.

jesus-christ-in-prayer_w725_h725 This world is stressful and can be quite exhausting, the enemy always tries to keep us occupied with what ever he can so we are to consumed by life to serve, worship or know God. Not only does the enemy use distraction he also tries to deceive you into believing there is no hope for you and that you can not be saved. He wants us to be lost and confused so we can not find our salvation and or serve our father and our savior. Through faith, prayer and serving God we strengthen ourselves and through reading the scripture we learn to focus on the will of God not our own.

MP900427741 (1) If you are in a battle with sin in your life stop fighting it on your own, Give the battle to God to fight. Begin serving God by helping others and being kind to others. The more you focus on doing things that are good the less you think of the things that are sinful or that you lust for. The more you dedicate yourself to serving God and doing his will the less hold on you the sinful nature will have. It is a life long battle that we must wage against our sinful natures but the war was already won upon the cross and by the blood.

 If serving God is your first and last thought of the day, then Serving God you will do throughout the day.

Ray Barbier

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we are the masters of our own thought, actions, words and emotions


65241To be happy one has to learn not to worry and stress over the things that we can not change. We should only worry over the things we have control over and change them if we are able. The things out of our control are going to be what they are destined to be so no reason to fret or worry over them. Those are the things we leave in the hands of God and have faith that he will take care of them or help us through them. Life is far less complicated than we humans make it out to be. We complicate our lives by over thinking situations and overreacting to circumstances. We should learn to be a little more carefree and definitely a lot less stressed out.  We need to learn happiness or the lack of happiness is all in our own hands. No one but our own selves controls if we are happy or not, it’s all within our own perception and our reaction to reality that makes happiness and/or any other emotion. We choose how we feel in reaction to the circumstances around us, no one else can choose for us how we feel. Others only can throw things at us we tend to react negatively to and from there we choose to be sad, angry, happy or even indifferent.  Though a lot of our reactions to external stimuli are programmed in us from our youth we can change the programming so we react differently. The bottom line is that we are the masters of our own thought, actions, words and emotions and we alone can choose to be happy or not.

 

Ray Barbier

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No matter who wins


Washington State Capitol - Olympia_1549a

It’s that time again, presidential election season. The time that all the major networks both on air and cable seem to be obsessed with the upcoming elections. So much spin, lies and words taken out of context it is hard to know what lie to believe next. I would love to see just one time a real campaign based on the issues and not on the misleading advertisements against the other candidate. Too little emphasis on fixing the problems and being truthful in modern politics and way too much mud-slinging and word bending. The last 20 years of politics has me sick to my stomach, not saying we didn’t have a few good presidents or even a congress that at one time would work for the good of the citizens, just that there is less reality in Washington politics than in a science fiction novel. They really need to get off of the mud-slinging and twisting of words and get down to the bare facts about the true issues at hand. No matter who wins this upcoming election, my hope is that the congress will get a grip and start working together on the problems our country faces and stops playing around with their party based agendas. Well God help us in 2013 and beyond, for I feel we will need all the help and blessings we can get if the congress continues to be like it has for the last 4+ years.

Ray Barbier

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