Fear is a bully (day86/365)

Can you imagine a life without fear? A life with no lay-offs, no flare-ups, no slow-downs, no turnovers, no downturns, no upsurges, no breakouts?
A life not affected by a final heartbeat, a final paycheck, a final solution?

Fear corrodes confidence. Fear sucks life out of the soul.

Can fear save a marriage?
Can fear pull you out of poverty?
Can fear negotiate a peace treaty?

We can’t be happy and fearful at the same time.
We can’t be clear thinking and afraid at the same time.
We can’t be confident and fearful at the same time.

Fear is a bully! It likes to kick other emotions out and takeover. Fear can easily lead to sin in angry outbursts, drinking binges, sullen withdrawals.

Hysteria is not from God. He calls us to have courage and faith.

As Max Lucado shares with us how to overcome 13 fears in his book “Fearless”, my prayer is that we can all find courage and faith to face our challenges. Keep reading over the next week for some encouragement.

Healing and Health (day83/365)

Over and over again we hear that physical sickness is in large part caused by sickness of thought and emotion. Resentment, guilt, fear, anxiety cause illness. Would you deny or defy that statement? Can you or others you know harbour ill will, grudges, resentment, guilt, fear, anxiety and live in good health?

Norman Vincent Peale in “The Power Of Positive Thinking” suggests we cast out the ill will. Get rid of the grudges without delay. They do no harm to the person you are holding the resentment against, but they eat at you day and night. Your poor health is being caused by whats eating you. Emotional ills sap your energy, reduce your efficiency, and cause a deterioration in your health.

Are you sick of pain in joints and muscles, getting colds, eczema, arthritis, back ache, chest pain, headaches, the list goes on. Are you sick and tired of being sick and tired?

Then, here are five steps to healing.

1/ Have complete willingness to surrender to the hand of God.
2/ Completely let go of all error (sin in any form) and desire to be cleansed in the soul.
3/ Have faith and believe in the combined therapy of medical science in harmony with the healing power of God.
4/ Be willing to accept God’s answer, whatever it may be; have no irritation or bitterness against His will.
5/ Have substantial, unquestioning faith that God can heal.

Fill your mind with attitudes of good will, forgiveness, faith and love. Read your bible. Find some helpful verses. Memorise them. Live in freedom.

Overcome Worry and Other Problems (day82/365)

Worry has been described as an unhealthy and destructive habit, the most disintegrating enemy of human personality, the most subtle and destructive of all human diseases.

Norman Vincent Peale, author of “The Power of Positive Thinking”, reports one study made of 450 people who lived to be be older than 100 years found the following reasons for their longevity.

1/ They kept busy.
2/ The used moderation in all things.
3/ They ate lightly and simply.
4/ They got a great deal of fun out of life.
5/ They were early to bed and early up.
6/ They were free from worry and fear especially the fear of death.
7/ They had serene minds and faith in God.

A simple exercise to eliminate worry from our day is to say the following:- “With God’s help I am now emptying my mind of all anxiety, all fear, all sense of insecurity”. Repeat five times slowly then add “I believe that my mind is now emptied of all anxiety, all fear, all sense of insecurity.” Repeat five times.

Next step is to fill the mind with positive affirmations. Try something like “God is now filling my mind with courage, with peace and with calm assurance. God is now protecting me from all harm. God is now guiding me to right decisions. God will see me through every situation.”

Faith is the one power against which fear cannot stand. Master faith and you will master fear. Worry need exist no longer.

A few more tips to help solve problems:-

1/ Sit with two or more others in an attitude of fellowship and prayer. Share your problems with others and with God.

2/ Conceive of God as your partner. Be matter of fact with Him, listen to his advice before jumping into decisions.

3/ Enlist the “emergency powers of the brain”. Draw upon the inner powers that normally lay dormant except in dramatic situations.

4/ Practise faith attitudes. “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed….nothing will be impossible for you.” Matthew 17:20

The Seed of Faith (day71/365)

Faith – the promise of the realization of things hoped for and unseen.

Despair – the premonition of our deepest fears and unseen darkness.

Life is a self-fulfilling prophecy! You don’t necessarily get what you want in life, but guaranteed, you will get what you expect!

So what’s your choice? Faith and hope OR despair and fear?

Besides our feelings, our faith affects our health. eg. stomach ulcers caused NOT by what we eat, RATHER by what’s eating us. So to summarise, our thoughts can give us a natural high or make us ill.

Denis Waitley in “Seeds Of Greatness” further gives ten steps to optimism or FAITH.

1/ Fly with the eagles. Live with optimism and realism. Don’t run around with the henny pennys who are concerned about the sky falling.

2/ If ever depressed visit a children’s hospital, a retirement home, a burns unit or an orphanage. If that doesn’t help, try the opposite – visit a playground or park where children are playing. Visit a church.

3/ Listen to upbeat, inspiring music.

4/ Change vocabulary from negative to positive.

5/ Realize change is OK. Sometimes unfamiliar, unexpected and vulnerable. A good growth time.

6/ Get high on endorphins. Think positive thoughts with the only side effect being happiness.

7/ Enjoy positive recreation and education.

8/ Visualize, think and speak well of your health. Use positive self talk on a daily basis.

9/ Call, visit or write to someone in need every day.

10/ Attend church on a Sunday. Parents note that studies on drug abuse among teenagers reveal that those NOT using drugs have a religious belief, have (extended) family relationships, and high self esteem.

Three more seeds of greatness over the next three days. Stay tuned.

Sharing Our Faith (day61/365)

Nicky Gumbel in “Questions of Life” states there are three reasons we would want to share our faith in God.

It is a command of Jesus. “Go” appears 1514 times in the bible.

There is a desperate need for people to hear the good news of Jesus Christ.

Having discovered the good news ourselves, we feel an urgent desire to pass it on.

There is a problem however if we are insensitive in our enthusiasm. We need to remember that our actions are often stronger and more readily accepted than our words. We are more likely to affect others with our consistency, honesty, truthfulness, hard work, reliability, avoiding gossip, encouraging others, patience, kindness, service to others, purity, reverence, love and concern.

When someone is asking questions about the reason we are so peaceful, joyful, and enthusiastic about life be prepared to give an answer to the one seeking hope for their world. Be gentle and respectful.

For all of us, there is the power of prayer. Don’t underestimate this communication with God. He listens to our requests for Him to give life to our loved ones.

Reflection on Daniel (day 28/365)

Isn’t it interesting how we remember some things and forget others.

Just now, I am reflecting on how I vividly remember the story of Daniel in the lion’s den from the book of Daniel in “The Bible“.

Reading through Daniel recently, as part of my read the whole bible through each year project, I realised how much else was in the book that I had forgotten about.

Daniel was a dedicated servant of God, who without a doubt, carried a blessing with him through his life. The lions didn’t eat him remember.

Besides that though, Daniel was somewhat like Joseph from back in Genesis, and was able to interpret the dreams of the kings of the time. God gave him accurate vision to inform the kings of their future. One time he interpreted very eery writing that a disembodied human hand wrote on a wall in the middle of a party.

Daniel also had visions of the future fate of nations who couldn’t care less about God. These are recounted in the book also.

So my point is this. We remember some things in life because we hear them over and over again (like stories in Sunday School).

If the thing heard over and over again is a positive, encouraging, uplifting thing then that’s great. Ask yourself though, is there something else out there I haven’t heard much of, that would be a valuable thing for me to input to my mind regularly?

The last few books I’ve shared with you certainly have some good things in that would be worth adding to the hear “over and over again” category to build faith, belief, confidence.

What books are you currently reading to input good stuff into your mind?

Phases Of Faith (day26/365)

Like a plant faith grows. Robert H. Schuller in “Tough Times Never Last, But Tough People Do”, gives us 5 phases of how our faith grows.

Nesting Phase
Firstly, we need to believe that all people have creative potential.
When our pride and self-respect are intact we can free our mind to explore ideas. So the first thing we need to do is believe in the ideas that God sends us. Respect for these positive ideas that flow into our imagination is the beginning of greatness.

Testing Phase
Next, we need to ask ourselves, “Will this idea cause my life and my activity to be an inspiration to somebody else to become a better person or to achieve more in their life?” When we can think about and attract unselfish ideas, we are on the right track.

Investing Phase
This is a point of no return. Here we make the commitment to invest our time, energy, money, pride, prestige, emotions. Making the commitment public gives us overwhelming odds to succeed.

Arresting Phase
Another testing time. Problems loom. What do we do? We have the choice to hang on or give up; keep believing or quit. Besides our own fulfillment being on the line, we need to ask ourselves, “Which response will inspire the most people?”

Cresting Phase
When we’ve kept on keeping on, we make it! We are successful, we have achieved, we have overcome! How good does it feel? We are then also an inspiration to others to keep bravely fighting their battles too.

Schuller devotes a whole chapter to the power of prayer. Don’t underestimate the power that prayer to our divine master has to bring our dreams to fruition. God made us, he cares for us and wants the absolute best for us. Why not give it a go?

Take Charge and Take Control (day 23/365)

From this chapter of “Tough Times Never Last, But Tough People Do”, Robert H. Schuller gives another 18 fabulous tips to succeed at solving problems. Here they are:-

1/ Don’t surrender leadership to outside forces. Make the shoe big enough to fit your foot(idea). Don’t restrict your foot to the size of one shoe.
2/ Don’t surrender leadership to faces. Don’t be intimidated by others’ criticism.
3/ Don’t surrender leadership to farces (lies, masks). eg. racism.
4/ Don’t surrender leadership to fences. Self image perceptions. eg. I don’t have enough money, don’t know enough people, don’t have an education.
5/ Don’t surrender leadership to frustrations. Never, never, never quit!
6/ Don’t surrender leadership to your (negative)fantasies. eg. People might laugh at me, my idea might be rejected.
7/ Don’t surrender leadership to fears. “God has not given us a spirit of fear. but of power and of love and of a sound mind”. 2Tim1:7
8/ Don’t surrender leadership to fatigue. Schedule some renewal time into your diary.
9/ Don’t surrender leadership to faults. Don’t let problems become an excuse. Rise above them.
10/ Don’t surrender leadership to facts. Attitude is more important than facts.
11/ Don’t surrender leadership to frenzies. When threatened, give yourself some space. Don’t do anything, just think.
12/ Don’t surrender leadership to the fates. Negative self-fulfilling prophesies (ie. fortunetellers).
13/ Don’t surrender leadership to forecasts. Don’t listen to negative, cynical people/reports.
14/ Don’t surrender leadership to your foes.They aren’t interested in solving your problems.
15/ Don’t surrender leadership to your friends. Friends can give advise, share their opinions, but should never have the final word on your project.
16/ Don’t surrender to the fracturing experiences of life. Never believe in or surrender to hurts. Choose to believe in dreams.
17/ Don’t surrender to the flattening out experiences of life. Get inspired by the gonna do’s. Move forward and find some things you are gonna do.
18/ Do surrender leadership to one thing – FAITH. “Who am I?”, “Why am I here?” “Where am I headed?”

Faith Leads to Possibilities (day 21/365)

We are in for a treat as we now progress through “Tough times Never Last, But Tough People Do!” by Robert H. Schuller. One of the foremost speakers and authors in America, Schuller writes easy to understand and easy to implement messages.

Today I am picking some statements from the first two chapters to share. These are a warm up for some real nitty gritty stuff tomorrow.

The biggest problem we have is our attitude.
People who never take a chance, never get ahead.
Nobody is a total failure if he dares to try to do something worthwhile.
Great people are ordinary people with extraordinary amounts of determination.
When you’ve exhausted all possibilities, remember this: you haven’t.
There’s one ingredient that mountain-moving faith, miracle-generating faith, earth-shaking faith, problem-solving faith and situation-changing faith must have, and that ingredient is holding power. Do not quit.
The possibility thinking path leads on to happiness, health and prosperity.
Tough people rise to the top in rough times.
The secret of success is to find a need and fill it.
Open your mind to God. Ideas will flow in. One of these will be the idea that God means for you to grab hold of.
The biggest problem any of us ever face is our own negative thinking.
All we have to fear is fear itself.
Believe it and you can achieve it.
It’s not how you walk that counts, it’s who walks with you and who you walk with.
With God all things are possible.

Living Passionately (day 17/365)

Blog one for a brand new book “One Month To Live, Thirty Days to a No Regrets Life” by Kerry and Chris Shook.

Here’s a good question to ask yourself. What would the priorities in my life be if I only had one month to live? Kerry and Chris believe we would be living more deliberately, passionately and purposefully.

Today’s entry is about living passionately. Here are a few things to think about.

Considering life is a dash (and over in a flash), do I live with clarity of purpose and passion for the things that really matter?

Do I operate on the basis of faith? (Relying on God to slay the giants, rather than being overwhelmed at the sight of the giants.)

Do I understand that when I waste time, I waste life?

Can I understand the importance of spending time with God, my maker, the one who knows me intimately, to draw strength from him?

Do I attempt to get my life in order so I can help others to succeed also? Do I realise that my past failures can be turned into good? What have I learned from my crashes?

Do I really know my dreams, my goals, what I really want in life?

Do I understand that when I look to God, he supplies all the power and strength I need to achieve my purpose?

I hope you agree that these are good questions to think about and find answers for.