Are You Ready for the Social Media Revolution?

We should appraise ourselves if we are abreast of time in whatever we do. Peruse carefully please and appreciate the media trend to consider what you should do.

You can send the link to someone else if you find it interesting.

Is your interest ready for the Social Media Revolution?

Dear Reader,

Facebook. Twitter. LinkedIn. YouTube. Blogging. These are the tools of the social media revolution. Is your business ready? It had better be because frankly, the Social Media Revolution is already over, and consumers won.

What??? The revolution's already over?

Yup. If you blinked, you missed it. Don't worry, though, most of the rest of
the business world is still playing catch-up too!

Did you know that...

* If Facebook were a country, it would be third-largest in the world, and growing faster than #1 and #2 combined?
* YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine in the world. Every minute, 24
hours of video is uploaded to it.
* LinkedIn is the largest network of business professionals in the world, with over 70 million users in 200 countries. 12 million of them visit daily, and a new one joins every second.
* Millennials now outnumber Baby Boomers. 96% of them have joined a social network.
* 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations about products. Only 14% trust ads.
* 93% of all business buyers believe all companies should be on social media
platforms.

Social media isn't a fad - it's a fundamental shift in the way we communicate.
Is your business ready?

Culled from John Assaraf.

IAT Boluwatise
www.SaintsAwakening.ning.com

FOUR SEASONS

The following pictures are of the same place but taken under different seasons!! (be sure to scroll on past the last) OPEN SCREEN WIDE Lessons on Life There was a man who had four sons. He wanted his sons to learn not to judge things too quickly. So he sent them each on a quest, in turn, to go and look at a pear tree that was a great distance away. The first son went in the winter, the second in the spring, the third in Summer and the youngest son in the fall. When they had all gone and come back, he called them together to describe what they had seen. The first son said that the tree was ugly, bent, and twisted. The second son said no it was covered with green buds and full of promise. The third son disagreed; he said it was laden with blossoms that smelled so sweet and looked so beautiful, it was the most graceful thing he had ever seen. The last son disagreed with all of them; he said it was ripe and drooping with fruit, full of life and fulfillment. The man then explained to his sons that they were all right, because they had each seen but only one season in the tree's life. He told them that you cannot judge a tree, or a person, by only one season, and that the essence of who they are and the pleasure, joy, and love that come from that life can only be measured at the end, when all the seasons are up. If you give up when it's winter, you will miss the promise of your spring, the beauty of your summer, fulfillment of your fall. Moral: Don't let the pain of one season destroy the joy of all the rest. Don't judge life by one difficult season.   Persevere through the difficult patches and better times are sure to come some time or  later..

Principles to Live By - Steve Goodier

Groucho Marx once quipped, 'Those are my principles, and if you don't like them ... well, I have others.' Though he is joking, I wonder if he is actually hitting close to home. I need to regularly check in with myself and ask questions like, "Is the thing I'm doing now guided by sound principles?

Principled people are the heart and soul of a society. But who teaches our young people about character? Who teaches them how important it is to be honest and to do what is right?

Even ETHICS classes might not touch on matters of character. They discuss the medical ethics of cloning, stem cell research and genetic engineering. They consider euthanasia, abortion and capital punishment. And they even look at the ethics of governments and multi-national corporations.

But one college professor recently made a disturbing discovery: she assumed her students shared her principles of honesty, honor, integrity, and the like. She taught ethics, but assumed that her students shared her personal ethical standards.

Then one day she dropped an armful of final exams on her desk in disgust and complained that over 50% of her students CHEATED on their social justice exam. (Do you think they caught the irony here?) They'd spent months learning about ethical issues most societies face, but they never discussed personal morality. They could talk convincingly about good and bad behaviors of corporations, governments and societies, but they cheated on their exams. They just didn't get it: cheating is wrong. And can we expect societies, governments and businesses to do better than the people who run them and live in them?

Principled people are the heart and soul of our lives together. Church leader John Wesley simplifies it for us. In regards to what is right and wrong, he says simply this:

"Do all the good you can,
By all the means you can,
In all the ways you can,
In all the places you can,
At all the times you can,
To all the people you can,
As long as ever you can."

I think those are principles I want to live by.

The Missing Secret of Victorious Living

I am constantly amazed at the folly of Christians. Even those who know, and those who preach, the message of victorious living through Christ alone, seem to me to miss the simple secret of making it functional. And I'm still trying to fathom why.

Perhaps it is that there's a secret within a secret, or if you will, a secret passage to the secret room. And yet both in truth have been open secrets ever since Christ lived and died and rose again for us nearly two thousand years ago.

It must surely be that even Christians don't find these secrets to be acceptable answers to their quest for victory and holiness and godliness. They simply aren't to their liking. So thy reject them. Or they ignore them.

CHRIST PREEMINENT

The secret room is the goal of the Christian life: "that in all things He might have the preeminence" (Col. 1:18).

This is victory. This is holiness. This is godliness!
-"That in all things He might have the preeminence."

The old Westminster catechism asked: "What is the chief end of man?" And it answered: "To glorify God and enjoy Him forever."

The enjoyment part has been perfectly acceptable through all t he ages, if it could be on our terms; but as to glorifying God, that is another matter. You see, I can't seek that Christ be preeminent or God be glorified while wanting my own way.

WHO WILL IT BE?

I have a choice. It is my way or His. My will or His. My pleasure or His.

My enjoyment or His. My goals or His. My hopes or His. My thoughts or His.

My life or His. My honor or His. My praise or His. My glory of His.

It is dependence on Him or on myself. It is trust in Him or in myself. It is love for Him or for myself. It is I having the preeminence or God having the preeminence. It is God being glorified or I being glorified.

It is either "Not I but Christ" (Gal. 2:20) or Not Christ, but I.

And if I refuse to die that Christ might live in me in newness of life, there's no holiness, there's no godliness, there's no victory.

Oh, true, I might change some of my outward habits, but inside I'm the same self-centered person whose pride and selfishness hung Christ on the cross.

CROWNED OR CRUCIFIED?

You see when I crown myself lord of my life, I crucify Him. Only when I'm ready to let Him put me t o the cross, can I crown Him Lord of my life.

Who then will be crowned, Christ or I?

Who then will be crucified, I or Christ?

No wonder with such a question at its heart we prefer not to acknowledge the open secret of Christian victory. No wonder we prefer to pretend we don't know.

But what about the passage to the secret room, the secret surrounding the secret, the secret access to the secret room?

It is even more of an open secret.

It is secret prayer.

THE SECRET IS SECRET PRAYER

Now, just stop and think a moment. "What would you expect all godly men to have in common as the secret of their spiritual lives?" How long do you suppose, even without any
prompting, it would take you to say, "Prayer".

Can you imagine the shock and disbelief on the part of a Christian congregation if their pastor were to mention in a Sunday service that the most godly man with whom he had ever
been acquainted didn't pray?

For all equally the secret passage to the secret room of spiritual victory is secret prayer.

Start today!

So, my dear friend, start seeking God today alone in the secret place.

Spend much time there not seeking help for temporal concerns but seeking His face, His glory, His honor, His praise. Worship Him, Adore Him. Love Him. Thank Him. Wait on Him. Let Him speak. Let Him convict. Let Him correct. Give Him the praise and the preeminence.

And though it takes ever so long, I certify that He will begin to have His way. Little by little you will begin to yield to Him and His will and His way and His power and His glory. Little by little it will become your desire "that in all things He might have the preeminence." Things both
superficial and hurtful will equally begin to drop off, and you will begin to know His victory "that in all things He might have the preeminence."

by Pastor Ron Marr

Emmanuel - God with Us

Max Lucado tells about his neighbor who was trying to teach his 6-year-old son how to shoot a basketball. They were out in the backyard. The father shot a couple of times, saying, "Do it just like that, son; it's real easy." The little boy tried very hard but he couldn't get the ball 10 feet into the air. The little fellow got more and more frustrated. Finally, after hearing his father talk about how easy it was for the 10th time, the boy said, "It's easy for you up there. You don't know how hard it is from down here."

You and I never can say that about God. When Jesus became man and lived among us, He walked where we walk; He suffered what we suffer; He was tempted as we are tempted. He was Emmanuel, which means, "God is with us."
(Bill Bouknight, Collected Sermons)

IAT Boluwatise