God of hope, I look to you with an open heart and yearning spirit. During this Advent season, I will keep alert and awake, listening for your word and keeping to your precepts. My hope is in you.

Freedom is not simply the circumstances that allow you to do whatever you want. Freedom is not only the opportunity to choose. Freedom is the strength of character to choose and to do what is right. With that in mind, our age is not an age of freedom, but an age of slavery. It is subtle, but it is real. The foundation of freedom is not power or choice. Freedom is upheld not by men and women in government, but by people who govern themselves.

Your weaknesses are the key to the unimaginable bigger future that God has envisioned for you. Your strengths are probably already bearing all the fruit they can. They will continue to bear those good fruits in your life, but at some point they will begin to plateau. Your richer, more abundant future is intimately linked to your weaknesses.

God does not want to control you, or stifle you, or manipulate you, or force you to do anything you don't want to do. Quite the opposite. God will let you do whatever you want to do, whenever you want to do it, with whomever you want to do it, and as often as you want to do it. When was the last time God stopped you from doing anything?

You will learn more from your friends than you ever will from books. Choose your friends wisely

Thought determines action. Do not let your whole life be a reaction to the things that happen around you each day. Let your life be an action.

Who you become is infinitely more important than what you do, or what you have.