It's a Gift. Be Thankful.

TIME FACTS:
One Minute: 60 seconds
One Hour: 3600 seconds
One Day: 86,400 seconds
One Week: 604, 800 seconds
One Month: 2 629 743.83 seconds
One Year: 31, 556, 926 seconds

There are Thirty One Million, Five Hundred and Fifty Six Thousand, Nine Hundred and Twenty Six seconds in one whole year. Times it by your age and see the number and think, how much time you had. I'm 20 so my result is 631 138 519 seconds.
I was just thinking, God gave us the gift of Life, Time, Love, Emotions, Family, Friends, Money, and we as humans take advantage of it. We take all these things for granted and one thing we take for granted which I am very deeply ashamed of is Our GOD.

LIFE
It gets complicated sometimes. It becomes hard for us to overcome and accept at times. It's God's biggest and greatest things that he has ever given us. We don't hold our lives in our hands, it's god that holds our lives in HIS hands. People take lives and people take their own lives. People believe that they have the right to shoot, stab and murder someone or themselves, but our lives are borrowed. This life is meant to be our test for the real world which is Eternal life. Whatever we do in this life, reflects on how and where we're going to be when this life ends. We take this life for granted so much. It was a present, be thankful to God.

TIME
Just like the beginning of this blog post, there are Thirty One Million, Five Hundred and Fifty Six Thousand, Nine Hundred and Twenty Six seconds in one whole year. That's a huge number. but to think, when I actually times that number by my age and I saw the result, I was simply amazed. Within those 20 years, within those 631 138 519 seconds, I sometimes think, I probably wasted nearly half of that result. By drinking, partying, having fun, rebelling against my parents, with relationships with girls, with making all these regretful mistakes, within all my sins and the bad things I did, I wasted a lot of my life. But of course the other half of that result was wasted on, having fun with friends, those meaningful conversations face to face, on the phone, or on MSN. It was those long drives and the get away locations I went to, or those holiday trips to the Philippines, that made me smile and those memories, those happy memories that was worth something. But overall I'd say, I wouldn't have spent that much time with God, the one who made time and gave time. We're so busy with our schedules and sometimes we're not even doing anything and we still forget about spending time with God. We leave him to the last second sometimes. But God deserves the best, he deserves to be apart of our lives during the busiest times and during the times where we're just relaxing. Have we spent time with God and thanked him for the time we have been given? I must admit I've taken advantage of it.

FAMILY and FRIENDS
We've never chosen our family, and some may say we choose our friends, but I believe that God has a say in who we're friends with. God brings you to a place to live and you meet people who live around you. I live in Victoria. Like say I lived in Queensland, I would have never met the people I know now in Victoria. God plans who you know and meet every single day of your life. They play their role as a father, mother, brother, sister, uncle, aunty, cousin and friend, they love us, take care of us and they would do absolutely anything for us. But to think, how much time, did I actually spent with my family when I became a teenager. When we become teenagers we drift away from them and begin to rebel against our parents, it's human nature. But in the past, I believed that it wasn't cool to hang with your family. I believed it so much, that I didn't care what they thought, and I spent minimal time with them and I spent most of my teenage life disappointing them. My actions and words when I was drunk, made my friends dislike me, I was turned into a monster. I have no one else to blame but me. God gave us family and friends to help shape us and mold us, he even uses our family and friends to speak to us. But yet again I admit overall, I took advantage of my family and my friends. It was my present, why wasn't I thankful?

LOVE and EMOTIONS
Everyone wants to be in love these days, well actually, everyone used to, and everyone still wants to fall in love I should say. We waste our time trying to find that person that we want to be with. We waste our time trying to seek that love, that feeling, that emotion. Sometimes, when we have that person we love, we love them so much that our world evolves around them. That we put them higher and above everyone. In a past experience of mine, I even put that person above God. I'm afraid when that happens, when you put anyone above God, God is a jealous God and he has the power to take that person away from you. No one should be put above God, for he is the highest of highest! Why do we spend our time worrying about love? It's because we don't want to be lonely. It's our fear sometimes. Even the words I love you have been taken for granted, we've said it too much that those words sometimes don't mean anything just like the word sorry. It's such a battle we talk about the opposite sex so much that we forget about what's really important. Taking Love for granted? That's like taking God for granted, for God is Love.

MONEY
How much time do we spend worrying about Money? We need to pay the bills! We need to buy supplies, food, clothes, shelter. How many times have we gone on shopping sprees and bought things that we barely even need. Money is such a core driven object in this world that it's consumed us so severely. It becomes an Idol, a God to some people, it becomes such a focus that we begin to gamble for it. To get what we want, sometimes we need money, but all the topics above, Life, Time, Family, Friends, Love these are the things that come for free, why worry about Money. Have faith that God will meet your needs! He will grant you with what you need, if you really need it. We take advantage of money so much. I mean, world poverty is still going on right now. There's so many rich people out there in the world that are so greedy that they can't even give a cent or a dollar to the people who need it. Just so even that one little kid, could enjoy a proper meal that some of us would call an entree.

GOD
Last but not least, GOD. The God that gave us all these things. Our lives we live, our time, our family and friends and the gift of Love. These are all gifts from God and it has been taken advantage of ever since we had it. We should be thanking God every single day that we're still breathing and that we have our lives and that we have time. We should be thanking God every single day that we've been given a family and friends to talk to, share things with and love and accept and appreciate. We should be thankful for the gifts God gives us, because if it takes hold of us, God has the power to take that away from us. God gave it and he can take it back, because he is GOD. My older brother made me realise, just imagine you didn't have all these things, Family and Friends, it is then you'd know how it would truly feel to be lonely. My car accident made me realise, if I didn't take my life for granted by drowning my sorrow with alcohol, that accident would never have happened. That night, God granted me a second chance. I don't even think that I deserve that chance, after all the time I wasted. But our God is understanding, our God is full of second chances until to the thousandth time you ask for forgiveness, our God watches over us and cares for us and most of all God loves us. If he didn't, he'd abandon you and you'd have nothing in this world, nothing at all.

Sometimes, we feel like we've hit rock bottom, we feel like nothing is going right, how many times have we sulked about that. I just broke up with my ex-partner, I just lost a lot of money, my parents just grounded me, me and my friend just had a huge argument, and the list goes on. We always have excuses, we always have problems, but what I learnt is, within our trials and tests, we should be looking towards God to pull us out of it. The reason why bad things happen to us, is because God is trying to tell us that we need to call out to him to help us. Sometimes God breaks us to make us whole again.

We've passed time, like it was nothing, we've forgotten to say how much we love our parents and our families, we've forgotten to say that what you are doing is wrong to our friends from the fear of hurting them, we have spent and spent when there's people in the world who don't even know how money looks like or how it feels to be full and satisfied! When problems come our way we forget there's a God that can overcome everything! He conquered death, made the blind see, stopped and calmed storms, he casted away demons, do you really think what you're going through is something he cannot stop?

This life is meant to be our test for the real world which is Eternal life. Whatever we do in this life, reflects on how and where we're going to be when this life ends. We take this life for granted so much. It was a present, it IS a present, be thankful to God, he deserves it after EVERYTHING he has done for us.

This is our God and he deserves our best and not our second efforts.

PEACE!