Are you locked in pessimism??

Good morning everyone!! I hope this is a wonderful day for you. May Christ be at the head of all you do. Tell someone about Jesus. When confronted will you: a. be silent b. agree c. deny or
d. humbly, yet boldly stand up for Jesus

I looked up the scripture and I believe J. David Hoke says it very well. Today and tomorrow will finish up part of the study of this scripture. We will finish Philippians 3:13-14 next week.


We must not only develop a divine amnesia in terms of forgetting the past; but also engage in a deliberate activity in the present. Listen to the words of the Apostle, "One thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead." In order to deal with the past effectively, we must live in the present actively.

One of the keys to living in the present is the need for replacing pessimism of the past with optimism. It’s very hard to face failure in your own personal life and come away with an optimistic attitude. Pessimism seems to reign.

Most pessimism is unhealthy. It creates a cycle of despair. Many times, we become locked into pessimistic ways of thinking, and we end up bound mentally by these patterns of thought. Past failures may suggest to us that we will never succeed. After all, we have tried and failed. But often that is not the reality of the situation. There was an experiment done with the Great Northern Pike where the fish was placed into a tank with its favorite food, minnows. The problem was that a glass divider was inserted into the tank between the Pike and the minnows. Every time the Pike went for the minnows, he bumped his nose into this glass divider. Finally, convinced that the minnows were beyond reach, he gave up. When the divider was removed, the Great Northern Pike did not go for even one minnow. Sometimes, we are like that Pike. We’ve been convinced that we could never break free from the patterns of defeat and failure that have bound us. But that is not true.

God is an optimist. Thank you for reading. Tomorrow – the optimist and our role. Love you all.

In Christ’s Love and Grace

Johnny