Just received my visa today.  I am leaving for Burma (Myanmar) on Monday.  I will keep you guys posted.  You can follow me on Facebook.

“Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” (John 12:24)

Change is painful. Therefore, people don’t change unless the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of change. Growth is also painful. Therefore, people don’t grow until the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of growth.

A fruitful life is costly. It begins with the deadly, ugly, and painful germination process of the seed. In this sense, it’s a blessing to experience pain.

I love the Disney’s animated movie Ice Age, in which Scrat, the sabre tooted Squirrel spends all his effort chasing after a yummy looking acorn since before the ice age. The ice storm came and froze them both for eons. Somehow they survived the ice age, but at the end of the movie, Scrat is still chasing after the acorn.

“The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.” (Matthew 13:31)

There once was a homeless man who slept on a bench in a park. Every night when he went to sleep, he stared at the windows of a rich man’s home that he could see from his bench, wishing one day he would be sleeping in a home like that.

One day the rich man ran into him on the street and said to him, “I felt led to fulfill someone’s wish this morning. Can you tell me what your wish is?” The homeless said, “Sir, every night I slept on the bench in the park and stared at your windows. My wish has always been that I will be able to sleep in a house like yours.” The rich man said, “What a surprise! I actually have thought about the freedom of sleeping in the park. Let’s exchange beds from tonight on. You go to sleep in my bed and I will sleep here.”

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:3)

I can never forget the visit I had to my college classmate’s hometown when I was back in Burma. His father was then the gov-ernor of Shan State and they lived in the locally renown Hmaingshu Mansion in the city of Taungyi. I had a lot of fun visiting with him and got to know his very hospitable and prestigious family. However, one day I discovered something truly great that brought me in touch with reality.

John 20:1-18

Christ is risen! I wonder if I were among the disciples on the first Easter and Mary Magdalene came and announced to us that she had seen the Lord, how I would have reacted. Would I have been among those disciples who believed right away, or like Thomas who reacted with a great deal of doubt saying, “I won’t believe until I see him personally and feel his scars with my own fingers”? I think I would have been both, I would believe, but in the same time I would want to see the proof. How about you?

Easter is probably the most important event in the recorded human history—so important that it divided our calendar into half—BC and AD. Each time you put down your signature and put a date next to it, you are making reference to Jesus’ resurrection. It doesn’t matter whether you are a believer or not. And it’s not just in America, but it’s all over the world. Even though there is such thing as a lunar calendar used by the Chinese, but the official calendar in China is still Anno Domini—the Year of the Lord. But why is Easter so important that it became the reference point for the entire world?

Lady Gaga was at Harvard University recently launching her Born This Way Foundation to empower young people. Oprah Winfrey was invited to be part of the event and later given a special opportunity to interview Gaga at her New York City apartment where she still lives with her parents.

Oprah was extremely impressed by Gaga’s intelligence and she felt that she was passing on the baton of her life-transforming mission to Gaga, saying that, out of thousands of super stars she has interviewed, Gaga was one of those who “has got it” even as young as she is. At the age of 25, Gaga wears the crown of Forbes’ 2011 Most Powerful Celebrity.

People often asked me, “How can I discover my life purpose?” My answer is, discovering your life purpose is very easy. What’s difficult is how to fulfill it because it’s an art, and it takes a life time of creativity, discernment, and focus.

Hi, my name is Sam Stone, the pastor at Trinity Church in Paramus, New Jersey. I am your friend and, if you want, you can use me as a gardener of your soul to help you cultivate a fruitful life.

I love this warm winter. Never before in my seventeen years in the East Coast have I experienced February with an average temperature above 50°F. What a contrast to last year, with those endless snow days in freezing cold! Any winter’s day with 40°F and above is good enough for me because even if it snows, it melts quickly. I love to see the snow when I know I don’t have to shovel it the next day.

With the exception of Christmas and New Year, winter is usually not fun. As I look outside my office window, I see everything grey—with bare dry branches of trees crisscrossing one another creating a gloomy grey scene, with the exception of a few pine trees. But that gloomy scene can become positively poetic if we imagine that within a few months it will be filled with green leaves and colorful flowers again.

What is your purpose in life? I’ve discovered that for many people finding their purpose in life can be a daunting task. The Chinese believe that you won’t get clarity of your life purpose until you are fifty years old (五十而知天命). But, does it really have to be so difficult to know your purpose in life that you have to wait until you are fifty? That’s sounds disappointing!

Maybe that’s just for the general population, but there are some special people like Joseph of the Old Testament that apparently knew his life purpose since he was as young as seventeen. He envisioned that one day his family—his parents and all his eleven brothers would bow down in front of him. Of course he didn’t know why and how it could happen.

Living a life without consciousness of God's presence is like a ship drifting in the ocean without a sail. In this message, I will teach you how to make 2012 the year of blessing by being conscious of God's presence, and how to reenter and stay in God's presence using a simple breathing method that I learned from the late Bill Bright.

For more videos like this visit SamuelStone.com.