Love and Goodness (eBook)

God, You, and Helping Others

Michael L. Nelson (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025 | 1. Auflage
188 Seiten
Ballast Books (Verlag)
978-1-966786-80-1 (ISBN)

Infos

If there is a formula for living a meaningful and successful life, love and goodness are its two key ingredients. Love and Goodness is a heartfelt and empowering guide to living with faith, compassion, and purpose. In his latest work, four-time author Michael L. Nelson explores how God works within each of us through 'love signals'-gentle nudges that call us to respond with goodness. With clarity, humility, and the support of fifteen inspiring real-life stories, Nelson shows how even the smallest gestures can completely transform lives. Readers will discover practical wisdom on recognizing God's love signals, awakening their Spirit of Goodness, and making choices that reflect their faith in action. Whether you're seeking to deepen your spiritual journey or become a more generous and intentional person, Love and Goodness will encourage you to live each day with the mission to make the world a better, kinder place.

Michael graduated from the University of Mississippi and worked for IBM in Memphis, Tennessee, for the first ten years of his business career. He went on to become a partner in a technology related leasing company and to serve as the president of a large technology services organization in Chicago, Illinois. In addition, Michael served on the board of a Mid-South bank for over ten years. Michael and his wife, Betty, have two grown children, both with MBAs and very successful in their own right. In addition, they have three wonderful grandchildren, all with college degrees and now making some good choices of their own. Michael has written three other books: Good Choices Good Life, Living by Choice, and Life and Choices. All are currently available on Amazon. Michael has come to strongly believe that God works primarily through people. The most important spiritual influences in our lives, he believes, are provided by God via love signals in our hearts and are supported by our God-given Spirit of Goodness, which motivates us and helps us respond to the love signals that God provides. As he has thought about God's presence over the years, he has come to realize the almost unbelievable importance of our choices. Our choices provide a pathway for us to follow the love signals provided by God and to help others in some special way.

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If there is a formula for living a meaningful and successful life, love and goodness are its two key ingredients. Love and Goodness is a heartfelt and empowering guide to living with faith, compassion, and purpose. In his latest work, four-time author Michael L. Nelson explores how God works within each of us through "e;love signals"e;-gentle nudges that call us to respond with goodness. With clarity, humility, and the support of fifteen inspiring real-life stories, Nelson shows how even the smallest gestures can completely transform lives. Readers will discover practical wisdom on recognizing God's love signals, awakening their Spirit of Goodness, and making choices that reflect their faith in action. Whether you're seeking to deepen your spiritual journey or become a more generous and intentional person, Love and Goodness will encourage you to live each day with the mission to make the world a better, kinder place.

Textauszug

CHAPTER 1

LET’S STOP AND THINK
ABOUT THINGS

Opening Thought

As we go through life, it’s beneficial to stop now and then and think about things, especially those issues that have a significant impact on our lives. Therefore, I’m starting this book with the suggestion that we do exactly that—in this case, stopping to think more deeply about God’s role in our lives.

Over the years, I’ve thought a lot about this question: How does God work in our lives and in the world? It seems to me that this is one of the more important questions we will ever have a need to answer. That’s because having an answer, especially one that makes sense to us, can significantly improve the way we live our lives.

I’ve also been thinking about another question: Why is the quality of life declining while crimes and conflicts are increasing in almost all parts of the world? Clearly, people throughout the world are not as happy as they used to be, and many live day to day in fear.

There seems to be a connection between the answers to these two questions. It appears to me that the further we move away from God, unintentionally or otherwise, the more stress and difficulties we have in our personal lives as well as throughout the world.

We need a better understanding of God’s role in our lives and how God can help us live in a more effective and satisfying way. We need to get our thinking straight about how God’s spiritual guidance can help us have a better life and a better world.

The happiness of your life
depends on the quality of your thinking.

MARCUS AURELIUS

Our Outside Lives and Our Inside Lives

In effect, we live two lives: our outside or external lives and our inside or internal lives. Our outside lives include what we say and do each day; our work, school, and exercise activities; and our efforts to look good to others. Our inside lives include the love we feel for those close to us, the thoughts we have that determine the choices we make, and our caring and concern for other people.

We have parents, teachers, managers, and significant others who help us with our outside lives, where most of us focus as we go about our activities each day. We tend to spend much less time working on our inside lives, as we can’t see them or touch them. Therefore, it’s essential for us to stop, think, and determine how well we are doing in managing our inside lives. An honest assessment in this regard can lead us to make some important improvements in the way we are living each day.

Almost every one of us needs to focus more and work more diligently on the management of our inside lives. Our inside lives, without question, are the most important, as they include our spiritual experiences when we communicate with God and connect more closely with God’s presence in our lives. Not only can God help us improve our inside lives, but when we do so, our outside lives are improved as well.

We do not need more national development; we need more spiritual development.

We do not need more intellectual power; we need more spiritual power.

We do not need more knowledge; we need more character.

We do not need more law; we need more religion.

We do not need more of the things that are seen;

we need more of the things that are unseen.

CALVIN COOLIDGE

Our Need to Stop and Think

Many people go through life without ever giving much careful thought to God’s presence and influence in their lives. I know because I was one of those individuals who, for many years, was more concerned about my career, the size of my house, and my outward success than in achieving any spiritual understanding and insight. Fortunately for me, and maybe for you as well, God never gives up on us and continues to be at work within us, helping us to live better lives.

I’ve attended church regularly over the past fifty-plus years and have listened to hundreds of sermons containing various explanations of where God is and what God is doing. However, like many others, I’ve tended to simply accept what was being said and seldom stopped to question or think through the details that were being presented.

However, since retiring, I have had the time and the opportunity to write three books: Good Choices Good Life, Living by Choice, and Life and Choices. As I developed these books, God’s potential role in our lives popped into my thinking many times. As a result, I devoted a small part of my previous books to my view of God’s role and influence in our lives.

Recently, I decided to round up my thinking about God’s presence in our lives. I am devoting this book to explaining how I believe God works in the world, as well as the role our choices play in allowing God to provide guidance and direction to our lives.

Here are four of my long-thought-about feelings about God’s presence in our lives that I have now come to believe. Hopefully, they will help you as you think about God’s presence in the world and how God works in your life as well.

#1. God Guides Us Through Love

I believe that God is at work within each of us and is the sponsor of the love we feel in our lives. This can be our love for another person, our love for our family, our love for our vocation or what we want to do with our lives, our love for our country or where we live, or our caring and concern for someone we don’t even know—especially those in need or down on their luck in some way. In other words, God guides and directs us through the love in our lives.

Because our feelings of love are reflections of God’s presence and influence in our lives, we need to pay close attention to the signals love creates. You may not have considered the source of these feelings as such, but if you have experienced feelings of real love in your life, I believe you have felt God’s presence within you. Our challenge in life is to make the personal choices needed to follow where God’s love signals direct us to go.

After we have recognized that we are all undeserving

creatures who have received the love of God,

who can but respond and show it in their own life?

EDGAR F. ROMIG

#2. Our Spirit of Goodness Motivates Us to Act

As explained further in Chapter 3, I believe God has instilled in each of us a Spirit of Goodness to motivate us to be helpful as a result of the love we feel. While God is the “head coach” overseeing the development of our preferences and desires, our Spirit of Goodness is, in effect, the “offensive coordinator” that motivates us to make helpful choices and do positive things as a result of the love and concern we feel. God works through our heart and what we feel; our Spirit of Goodness works through our head and the choices we make concerning what we say and do.

The love signals in our lives are very important, but it is the action we take as a result of the feelings they create that determines the impact those love signals have on both ourselves and others. It’s one thing to be concerned about the family whose home has just burned down; it’s something totally different, and so much more, to pack up and deliver much-needed clothes to help them get back on their feet. For that reason, I believe our personal Spirit of Goodness is key to a successful life because it motivates us to act in support of the love signals God provides.

I also believe that God and our Spirit of Goodness are with you and me right now, no matter what we have done or how we have lived our lives. We didn’t have to do anything special to earn their presence in our lives. Instead, as a result of God’s abundant love, they have been part of us since the very beginning of our lives. It is up to us, however, to heed their directions and follow where they lead us to go.

We are not human beings having a spiritual experience.

We are spiritual beings having a human experience.

PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN

#3. Love and Goodness Are Special Life Ingredients

Love, created within us by God, and goodness, actions we take as a result of that love, are special life ingredients that work together to stimulate and help us improve our lives as well as the lives of others. Love and goodness are the qualities that make our lives work—and work well. The better we are at prioritizing love and goodness, the better our relationships with others will be and the happier we will be in our daily lives.

• Love is that feeling of caring and concern created within us by God. Such love can range from a romantic love for someone close and special to a caring or concern for an individual with certain needs whose name and history we may not even know. Love signals are the primary way God directs our lives.
• Goodness is the action we take as a result of the love and concern we feel. Goodness is what we say or do in response to the love God has placed or inspired within us. Goodness comes to life in the words we say or in the actions we take to show kindness or to help someone in a special way in response to God’s love.

I believe the primary objective of life is to share our love and goodness with others. The challenge for you and me, however, is twofold: first, to be willing to acknowledge that the love we feel inside has, in fact, been given to us by God to direct our lives in...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 11.11.2025
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Religion / Theologie ► Christentum
• ISBN-10: 1-966786-80-8 / 1966786808
• ISBN-13: 978-1-966786-80-1 / 9781966786801