Today, I’d like you to meditate on this: Your life is either ever-expanding or ever-shrinking according to the choices you make. These decisions are made every day of your life, and they are making your life bigger or smaller. The choices you make are either giving you more opportunities or fewer opportunities. It’s always easier to make decisions that shrink our life, and it’s usually harder to make decisions that grow it.

Here’s an example of how this thinking works. There’s a beach I love to go to, probably because it’s the closest one to my house. It’s where I enjoy reading and swimming. One day, I felt my heel pop and it was covered in blood. Limping up to the lifeguard, I was in great pain. “That’s a stingray,” he said. “That’s going to hurt a lot. You should put it in hot water.” My answer was, “I’m fine, I’ll be okay.” The pain only got worse as I washed it off. When I got home I put it in hot water and the pain went away instantly.

Friend, I thought I could never go back to my favorite beach. I needed a beach without stingrays. The second thought I had was although stingrays hurt, they don’t harm you. This might sound crazy, but I went back to the beach the next day and did not “shuffle,” like the lifeguard suggested; I stomped around and I never got stung. I didn’t want my world to shrink because of fear. Some of you have been burned, stung, hurt, betrayed by friends or by life and say, “I’ll never do that again.” However, I urge you to keep going and continue to grow as a person and not be afraid! Use the tools that God gives you to guide you.