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The football FANatics in my house spend a lot of time discussing, arguing and strategizing over each and every play their team makes. They agonize over defeats and celebrate victories all while yelling continuously at the TV!

I think about each of these NFL teams and all of the hard work they put into a season. Each team member must fully rely on the others for safety, dedication and advancement. The Coaches must accurately and efficiently write hundreds of plays that make up the team's official playbook. Each athlete must memorize and skillfully be able to execute the plays in this manual. If one player forgets the format, the play will not work out as planned and they will fail to score. The play book is a pathway to victory, a brilliant plan, one that when followed correctly, can lead the team to a monumental victory.

We also have a play book, The Holy Bible! It is a brilliant manual designed to give us all the insight we need to be victorious. Like the team playbook, there is knowledge, and wisdom for us to soak up and abide by on every glorious page. It is a perfect outline for our individual and uniquely designed plans.

For I know the plans I have for you says the Lord; a plan for good and not for evil. A plan to prosper you and to give you a hope and a future. Jeremiah 29:11

God very similarly to an NFL coach, has written some very wise plays for each of us. The Bible is full of perfect pearls of wisdom for our lives and details for each of our own unique and inspiring stories. When we are faithful to follow God's word, we can flow through our pages with ease, absorbing a bounty of knowledge while breezing through the chapters with gusto and an unparalleled zest for life.

We may only get small glimpses and mere fragments of these wonderful pages in our play books because we are so often bogged down with focusing on outside influences, worldly stresses, and life's random issues. We let our problems and our fears take us on a time stealing detour. We are led down the bumpy, misguided road and off of our beautiful, divinely drawn paths. It's like we took all the pages from our playbook and tossed them all in the air and then as each page gently reaches its final resting place on the ground, we try failingly to piece them all back together. Each page left on it's own or in the wrong order can make no sense, there is no plot to follow. It's us a jumbled mess and our minds cannot grasp it. To the contrary, our playbook , when left in tact and diligently followed in its wholeness is an absolute masterpiece. It is like a road map for the soul.

"I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you and watch over you." Psalm 32:8

Only God, the author himself, knows what our play book says, He gave the pages order and lovingly numbered every one. We may be stuck on page 54 and we do not like what it says. We may be facing joy stealing trials and are ready to give up. If we do fail to press on through, we may never see how close we were to victory! We may never have read that page 55 was the page we were waiting for. The page filled with words of freedom, joy, and victory! The very next page may have contained the game winning play!

Our lives will follow the paths we choose, we can follow this book of life page by page in sequential bliss or we can live in the wilderness of uncertainty and unturned pages for a lifetime.

Choose the bliss!!