Let's talk about values. What are values? Values are what is important to you. Values are what you hold in your heart and then reflect into the world.

Maybe you value having a thousand-thread count in your sheets. Maybe you value having a body that is really athletically built and you spent time and maybe money building your body to be really great at performing in sports. Maybe you value going out and picking your own pumpkin out of your own garden that you planted with your own hands and grew from seed, and now you are going to make pumpkin pie out of it and you do that every fall with your grandchildren. Maybe that is something you value. Now Values can change over time. I know at one point in my life I really valued sitting down at the piano and practicing for an hour. That was really important to me. However, that isn't important to me anymore. I don't value that like I used to. So values can fluctuate, and values can change. Values can also be in distortion. So I could value something really distorted like: "I can hold a grudge longer than anybody else," or "I drive the fastest car in the neighborhood so that means I'm better than everybody else." I could also value something very denigrating like: "I have the ugliest feet and I spend so much time looking at my feet thinking that they are so ugly, they are so big, they don't fit with the rest of my body and so I value beating myself up." A lot of people today value beating themselves up, It's really sad.

If you value principles of Truth, now you are getting into character. This is where character is built. When you take your own personal values and project them onto principles of Truth. So it would sound like this: "I value being honest," "I value being responsible," "I value being kind to people around me," "I value forgiving," "I value being humble and looking at myself and asking 'Are there things in my life I need to change?'" Character is built when principles of Truth become a person's values. That is so important! If you want to be a person of high moral character, then you MUST, you must value principles of Truth.

So today we are going to talk all about a woman who does not have values in her life. Now, this is a scary place to be and here's why it's scary to not have values. Values offer direction. Values give a left or a right, they give a calibration as to "You are really really hot here" or "You are really really cold here." So it gives you a place to measure yourself. Now without a standard of measurement, it is really hard to know if you are off if you don't even know what side you are facing or if you don't even know what direction you are standing. Having a value says "Ooh ooh, you need to make some adjustments here" which is good! It's wonderful to get feedback from yourself so you can go "Okay, I do feel off. I'm going to go back and I'm going to change that" or "I'm going to go back and I'm going to repent" or "I'm going to go back and make some adjustments." When you don't have values, you don't know when you are off and what you end up doing is reverting to other people around you to tell you what to do. That is what is going on with this woman who writes us today. She has no values and so she is susceptible to being manipulated by her children and by others around her.

If you want to be solid and don't want to be manipulated. You have to have values. I would also encourage you to make sure those values are based in principles of honesty, responsibility and humility.

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