I was way past my teenage years when I came to the United States of America. Like many before me, I had had countless dreams of being here, only to wake up and realize I was still in Ghana. I finally came to the US some years later, and then I realized I had to develop an identity fast before I was swept away from the current of the American society.

Many people feel like they have to adopt the way of living of the land they live in, and I have felt that pressure too. Most people go as far as to reject the language upon which they were raised on, and some even pretend they are not from where they were born into. I have, however, found myself in the middle, under a strict allegiance to where I am from, and a commitment to my new place of existence.

Everyday I wake up, I feel a sense of loyalty to myself, before I can commit to anyone else. I have found myself having to create a balance between who I am, and who I am supposed to be, yet, I am always discovered through my speech, name and appearance. My appearance is what distinguishes me from everybody else, yet, my society demands that I assimilate in order to belong. Anything I do that seems out of place makes me an outcast; not the type of outcast that has to forsake his roots, but the outcast who has to embrace a new environment first, in order to establish my identity.

I assimilated into the new culture, because this is my place of habitation, and the balance of who I was can only succeed if I understand how it fits into my new environment. I am still me, and my new environment only adds to the person I am every time I step out into the world.

The Godless Generation

The Godless Generation are not those who have not accepted or known the name of Jesus, but those who see Jesus as a convenience rather than the necessity. Jesus was very specific about how we get to God. It is important to understand that the decision in seeing God as the foundation of who we are has been absent from the lives of many people, and it is not because they do not realize they need Him, they see Him as something that is insignificant to their lives right now. They have an association to all things and nothing at all.

Nothing stays the same forever, and being Godless means faith in nothing, which means affiliation with nothing. The Godless generation are swayed by anything, because they are about what is trendy rather than what is significant.

Significance plays into your purpose in life, and the significance of direction is staying on the path that you can’t see, but God sees everything.

The Godless generation act on what they see, but they also can’t handle the pressure of obstacles. They do not understand the significance of uniqueness. The Godless generation understand trendy to be their identity, and anything that is not socially acceptable is not worth pursuing. So they yield to society’s voice, which changes by the times, forgetting that God is the same yesterday, today and forever.

Do not yield to a generational ideology without a personal identification of what constitutes as right or wrong. I made this discovery in my teenage years, yet still struggled to maintain an consistency of Godliness, pandering what society deemed as right; almost to the point that I almost lost sight of my vision and how it fit into the world I live in.

Be established in Godly life that has proven to move one beyond your personal capabilities. Stay true to who you are and whose you are.

The heart is one of the most delicate part of any person. The heart is at the center of who we are, and often a conduit for some of the decisions we make in life. However, the heart can equally be deceptive, because our hearts are also tied to our emotions, hence, many of our decisions are made based on whether we feel great about something or not.
The deception of the heart is in the disconnect between what we see and what we feel. You have to understand that the heart can be right or wrong, depending on where your heart is. When the prophet Samuel went to anoint a king over Israel, God told him that He looked at the heart and not at their physical appearance (1 Samuel 16), yet many of us fall into the deception of what we see, falling in love with what they see, and ignoring what they feel or ignoring what they see and favoring what they feel. There has to be a balance to what we see and feel, because as much as the heart is a precious element of who we are, it can lead to what we want the most that will help us in life, or what we want the most that will crush the very foundation of who we are.

The delicate nature of who you are is the reason you should be careful what or who you commit your heart to. You must understand that the heart seeks what makes it comfortable and at ease, but might not necessarily satisfy your God desire. The comfortable nature of your heart is the reason you could find yourself in a very uncomfortable situation and not even know it, especially without a thinking mechanism. If your heart cannot think, then it cannot possess the ability to process an idea, execute or even make an adjustment to suit your needs. This is the reason the heart can easily be deceptive; it feels great at something until it is met with resistance, then feels betrayed. Your mind is the part of you that determines whether what you see is appropriate to pursue or not. It is significant to be passionate about something, but it is your mind that will be useful in determining what course of action to take, or even if you should pursue it. A heart, left unguarded, can lead you into places you did not imagine.
Follow your heart, but do not be deceived by what your eyes and mind cannot confirm.

Stay blessed.

I tried it the first time and I failed, so I thought that is not my area of strength. Then I tried another thing and I failed that one too. I tried so many things and failed each one of them, and each time, I failed to realize that I was the failure. I was a failure because I did not learn from my resolve. I was excited for what I got, then I lost my desire to pursue it. I became an embodiment of entitlement, thinking to myself that the world owed me. So I stopped pursuing anything, because I thought I had done enough, thinking it was now the world’s turn to honor its agreement. So I stopped trying, because if the world was unwilling to recognize my efforts, how was I going to succeed? So I quit. Then I realized–I was the reason I failed. I abandoned the process, and with that, betrayed my ability to become successful.

Be careful not to abandon your process, because once gone, you become susceptible to anything that looks like a way out, but is rather designed to cripple your ability to establish a permanent foundation to the achievement of your goals.

Be persistent, consistent and focused, and you shall always reach your goals.

How many times have you lived inside your head, living in a fictional world and imagined it in your reality? Everything we see began with a thought and it can be disappointing when your vision moves beyond your reality. Your vision should be based on your reality.

Many of us get lost in thought, often fantasizing about things we wish we could have or possess, and we sometimes obsess about those things, to the point that it cripples us from enjoying the reality we live in.

Vision and Mind projection are two different things, the latter of which I became a victim. I tried to project what I saw in my mind, and tried to force it to become my reality. It caused me to neglect every bit of my God-given talent. Every time I asked God why what I was seeing in my head was not my reality, He will remind me of what is inside me.

Vision is important, but do not allow it to prevent you from pursuing the things that are in your life now, because when I allowed the vision in my head to distract me from pursuing what I had going on, I ended up pursuing nothing at all.

Break down your vision from its roots to its applicability until it connects to where you are in your life right now, because when God brought you into the location or place you are, He meant for you to begin something that will eventually bring you to a place of purpose. I almost ended up not pursuing anything because I thought that my vision was something that was mine to own now, even though I did not not have what it took to possess it now.

Understand where you are now, how it applies to the vision of where you are in your mind, and make a plan that will lead you, but do not abandon what you have now, especially when it is your gateway to realizing the manifestation of your vision.

Remain blessed and focused.

Choices are important in every area of life, and it does not matter how old you are. What is the foundation upon which you make your decisions? Most of us make decisions to create our own path in the world, but no decision comes without a reason. So, what if you make a decision meets resistance? Or what if you make a decision and someone decides they do not agree with you, and the only way he/she will accept your choice is if it is according to what they want? A better question is, are your decisions based on what society sees as acceptable or what you see as important to your purpose in life? I believe most of the chaos surrounding what is acceptable comes down to everything being classified as right. What is acceptable is now based on what feels good. So, people make decisions to feel good, not because it is right, and when their choices meet resistance, the resistor is considered an enemy.

What is considered to be ‘right?’ Right is defined as something that is morally correct, just, or honorable. So, if no one is around, would you make a morally correct? I think that certain decisions that are immoral gain ground because of the whole freedom of choice, and as much people have a right to make personal choices, should people be forced to accept the choices of others? We live in a world where morality has been overruled by freedom of choice. People make choices and expect the rest of the world to accept those choices, even if those choices are dishonorable.

Choices are always going to be made, and for whatever reason, your choice will be based on your need to accomplish something. Your choices come to define your present and your future, and I believe God has given each of us a role to play, and the choices you make play a huge role in your success. When faced with adversity, do you push ahead or do you compromise to be accepted? The choices you make in life will lead you somewhere, and you have to know where you are going, and what you have to do, so you do not accept anything.

Accepting the unacceptable does not mean accepting every choice, but understanding that your choices should be specific to who you are, where you are going and to where you are headed. Moving through this world, you will encounter situations and events that will challenge your belief and influence your choices, but do not change if they have nothing to do with where you envision yourself going.

Everything might be doable, but not everything is acceptable.

God bless you.

I think that when people’s current situations run contrary to where they envision themselves at, some give up, and find another thing to move on to. Some people move on, not because what they are involved in is wrong, but because they did not anticipate what they might encounter. While no one can predict what lies ahead, you can prepare yourself for your journey by assessing your strengths and your weaknesses. Knowing what you are capable of is only part of the process; developing the skills to pursue your skills no matter what you may experience is another thing.

There is the beginning and the end, and in between is the process. The process is how you get from your beginning to your end, and in between, you have to make a lot of decisions that will either propel you or derail you, and it is important to understand that how you react to challenges will determine whether you succeed or not.

The process is different for every person, and everyone handles it differently. There are those who see challenges, take the necessary steps to overcome it; there are those who see challenges as a negative thing, and work their way to avoiding it; and there are those who change their final destination due to the challenge they face. Which one are you? If you see a challenge, and address it head on, you need to understand where your handling of the challenge will lead you to. If you see every challenge as negative, and try to avoid it, you never experience growth, because the more you overcome, the better you become at addressing the challenges that may come your way. There are some challenges that are actually negative, but you need to know the challenge that is designed to help you to grow, and the challenge that comes to destroy what you are pursuing in life. What you can do, is develop a vision to recognize what is designed to destroy and what is designed to propel you to greater heights.

The final group I will address are those who change what they are pursuing every time they meet a challenge, and it is not an inability to handle the challenge, but the fear of failure, so they change their mind to pursue something else. I do not mean to be cruel, but challenges are part of life, and the process. Ask yourself: in changing my purpose, am I destroying my chances of succeeding at something that was designed for me? If what you are pursuing is something you are passionate about, good at, and will help you get to your destination, trust in God and in your ability. You have come this far, and you are capable of more beyond what you are currently experiencing.

No one can predict what he/she will experience on the journey of life. All you have control of is where you are and where you envision yourself being, but the process, no matter how experienced you are, you will encounter a process you are not familiar with. Know that your ability that got you to where you are now makes you qualified to be on this level, and as you have matured into this level, you will need to upgrade yourself to handle whatever this level demands.

When faced with an impossible or uncertain situation, there is always a way out. The answer is within you. Search within yourself and apply yourself, and you shall be able to be able to go through every process, coming out stronger, and with more success than you imagined. Stay the course.

God bless you.