INsights and OUTbursts 14, Ten Actions That Will Ruin Your Life

When God made us in His own image, He gave us the ability to choose among options. Satan immediately perverted this ability resulting in Adam and Eve choosing to disobey God. And Satan continues his evil work, tempting us to make bad choices, and thereby limiting our options to live the full and productive lives God wants us to live.

To keep our options open and make wise choices, here are ten things to avoid doing.

1. Kill yourself. This really limits your options for the future! Satan succeeds in leading people to kill themselves at a rate of one every 40 seconds worldwide. In North America suicide is the second leading cause of death for 25-34 year-olds, and the third leading cause of death for 15-24 year-olds. Someone in Canada and the USA commits suicide every 16 minutes, or 91 per day.
2. Damage yourself physically. Disfiguring burns, a broken spinal cord, a damaged brain or amputated limbs, slam shut the doors of a thousand opportunities currently open to you. Avoid thrill seeking activities that could result in serious physical damage.
3. Fry your brain or ruin your body through drug or alcohol abuse. 
4. Commit a criminal act. You not only lose money through fines and years of your life through jail, but having a criminal record will keep you from getting a passport to travel to other countries and keep you out of many job positions.
5. Get yourself or someone else pregnant outside of marriage. A baby severely limits your options. Even if you or the other person decide to legally murder your baby before it is born, neither one of you will be unscathed emotionally and spiritually. 
6. Borrow to live a lifestyle you cannot afford. Consumer debt will drastically constrict your future. It is like an amputated foot. It will cost you many of the best years of your life to get out of debt and do what you really want to do.
7. Be careless of what kind of people you hang out with or what books you read. People and books are the two most influential forces in your life. Instead, make winners, not losers, your peers. Read books that build you, educate you, develop your interests and make you think.
8. Live only for the here and now, doing it because it feels good with no thought for the future. Instead, use your God-given ability to imagine a better future, then work towards it using the abilities, talents and interests God has given you to make you unique. A life dream or goal will be a steady guide as you choose among options.
9. Waste the opportunity to get a good education. Instead, choose an institution for higher education for what it can give you to help fulfill your goal, not just because a friend goes there. Save your money to get an education. You can even borrow money for education as it is more an investment than a debt, but only if you suck every bit of benefit out of your opportunity.
10. Fall in love and marry someone who is not excited about your dream or life goal. One of you will lose out and your marriage will not be a happy one. Don’t even go out with someone who doesn’t share your dream. Have you noticed? People tend to marry those they hang out with. 

The daily newspapers are filled with stories of people who are ruining their lives by doing one or more of these things. Don’t do them. Please God by living a productive life. Frustrate Satan. And stay out of the newspaper.

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