Dr Paul Allen

I want to share two things. First, I am hungry for more and don’t live in the past or dwell in the past, despite the great things I have seen the Lord do over the decades. So, rather than looking back, I am always looking ahead. Rather than getting nostalgic and, with longing, thinking about the good old days, I am anticipating the next thing God will do. As I understand His words: because I am hungry for more, I have a reason to live and to thrive. Something holy drives me and carries me. I do not want to stagnate. Instead, I want to thrive and continue to grow. This brings to mind the words of Paul, who wrote (concerning his ultimate spiritual vision), “Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward

The structure of our brains is responsible for our tendency to imagine rosy futures for ourselves in which things work out much better for us than others, reports a recent Time  cover story .  Author, neuroscientist  Tali Sharot , says this means we are “hardwired for hope.” But what resemblance does this optimistic bias have to the hope of the gospel? Studies consistently find that people tend to believe their futures will be better than the present and that they will fare better in the future than others will, a fundamentally egotistical tendency psychology has termed the “ optimistic bias .”  Recent imaging studies in cognitive neuroscience reveal that optimistic bias arises through the interaction of structures in the brain that monitor and regulate emotion with structures responsible for remembering the past and imagining the future. Optimism is effectively hardwired into how our brains work, making our optimistic beliefs remarkably robust when confronted with contrary evide