Do you want to know how to check your ideas or thoughts? Do you secretly question your own actions? Well, although this checklist could have been written yesterday, it was written about 2,000 years ago. It is made up of simple words yet can bring peace to your life.

I will use my liberty to paraphrase the following check list to make it even easier to understand: Let your gentle spirit be known to everyone. Whatever is true, honorable, right, pure, beautiful, of good reputation, if there is any excellence and if anything is worth praising, remember these standards to go by daily and never forget them. I’ll add peaceful to this list because at the end of the list, it says if you practice them, the God of peace will be with you.

What do you spend the most time doing in your spare time? Watching TV, listening to music? How do your choices match up with the check list?

What if these characteristics I mentioned were emphasized strongly at home, in school, and in churches while kids are growing up? I had my serious attitude for learning early in life. My parents taught us 5 kids responsibility, discipline, respect for those in authority, and enough about the Bible and the Golden Rule (how to treat people) that each of us practiced responsibility and good work ethics—and we taught our kids those qualities.

I’d love to see billboards across America with those qualities (called the Fruits of the Spirit) in large letters from the Bible in the Book of Philippians 4:5,8,9.

And, I’ll add in the Book of Galatians, Chapters 5 and 6 will remind us about morals. Society today wants us to believe that it’s okay to do whatever we like, no matter what God’s Word says. He calls those actions sin. Period.

We aren’t perfect, but we should strive to be. When we sin, we need to get on our knees and ask for forgiveness. In order to leave this earth and be heaven bound, there is only ONE WAY, and that’s through Jesus Christ, God’s Son. He was crucified for our sins, died, and rose from the dead, and went to Heaven, and He tells us one day he will come back for us to take us back with Him. We need faith to believe. We can’t work our way to heaven. We have to believe in Him. He created us for Him. He loves us and wants us to be with Him forever.

So, the Bible tells us like in the days of Noah where people lost all sense of the morals established by God, and drowned in the Flood, except Noah and his family. People who dismiss God’s teaching will be like those in the last days on earth. They will be lost. Forever.

So, by giving our life to Christ and by going by the check list for our actions in making daily decisions, will give us courage and hope to keep going.

I would like to interject that the 10 Commandments (found in Exodus 20:2-17 and Deuteronomy 5:6-21 of the Bible) was the standard in which many of our laws were established. Man! The Bible gives us so much help to live by, yet many want to dismiss it as nonsense. That’s one reason our country is slowly losing its power to uphold common sense. It’s losing its power to keep this a safe place to live. Our answer to this dilemma is right under our noses. Pray for our country. Find a church that teaches ALL of the Word in the sermons, without most of it giving funny stories or personal experiences. I’ve heard it from more than one pulpit at the end of the talk, “Now, let’s read a Scripture from the Bible to call it church.” What? Yes, really. Then, we have just wasted the past hour.

I pray we open our hearts and minds to understand our need to get back to God…. Reba McIntire’s song ‘Back to God’ explains it well. Google it.

(Remember WWJD? Google it, too!) Bless someone today and it will bless you!