A two-way street

God knows your requests, everything that you expect to receive from Him. Have no doubt about it. According to your faith, you will receive them.

The question is:

Do you know what God has asked of you? And most importantly:

Have you honored His request yet?

 

Outsmarting your habit

You already know, the majority of things that you do daily consist of habits. From the side of the bed you sleep on, to the time you wake up, or what you do from the time you wake up, the food you eat, the route to work, your routine at work and dozens of other tasks you complete – are all habitual.

Habit is something we do without much thinking. The activity is already embedded in our memory and triggered by some kind of deficit faced in a situation or activity. The bad taste in your mouth in the morning triggers the habit of brushing your teeth. The smell and taste of the rice on your plate triggers the habit of adding beans as well. The annoyance your husband causes you triggers the habit of brushing him off and diving into Facebook for the next two hours. (You can’t imagine the power of habit.)

That’s where the problem lies. Bad habits create bad results. We know this, but we’re still not able to break them. Why? Because we’re not outsmarting them.

It’s possible for you to break a habit, if you only take your brain off auto-pilot and use it.

Want to break a bad habit? Are you up for an experiment?

Okay, here goes. The first step is to identify the bad habit that you want to break.

Write it down on paper. But before you do pay attention. It has to be something:

1. that really bothers you
2. that you’re sick of falling for, and
3. that will bring you positive results, a good reward, when broken and substituted with something better

These three points are very important. The habit that you want to break has to be included in one of the three. So now, take a couple of minutes and write what it is.

The Coach

The starting point for the coach is to believe in the player, in his potential.

Then he identifies his strengths and weaknesses.

He decides what to do to maximize his strengths and eliminate his weaknesses.
He is demanding, because he knows that every player is a reflection of the coach.
He disciplines with a firm hand but not to the point of hurt, because he knows the limits of the person.
He shows how it’s done and provides the necessary tools for the job to be done.
He teaches.
He is a friend but not a buddy.
He helps the person achieve more than he could ever do alone.

Every father (and mother) is a coach.
Every husband (and wife) is a coach.
Every teacher is a coach.
Every boss is a coach.
Every pastor is a coach.
Every leader is a coach.
YOU are a coach — if not to another person, at least to yourself.

What kind of coach have you been?

Thinking BIG-Small thinkers live small lives

Thinking big, in a nutshell, is to think like God. God’s thoughts are bigger than big. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts,” He said in Isaiah 55.9.

Man is limited only by his thoughts. And unfortunately, most people have been prisoners in the tiny prisons of their small thoughts.

You can only do what you think is possible. That’s why people who think small, live small lives.

What is to think small?

It’s to think of what you don’t have instead of what you do.

It’s to think of what you can’t do instead of what you can.

It’s to think of a problem instead of a solution.

It’s to think of what you have against you instead of what you have for you.

It’s to think that you already have enough because you have more than a pauper.

It’s to think that you have tried everything to get what you want when you’ve really only tried a handful of things.

It’s to think that successful people are just ‘lucky’ and that you are not as lucky as them.

It’s to doubt you will succeed and believe you will fail.

You can only do what you think is possible. Henry Ford said, “If you think you can or you think you can’t, you will ALWAYS be right.”

So when you catch yourself wondering why your life is this or that way, why it doesn’t get better, the answer will inevitably come down to the kinds of thoughts you’ve been thinking.

To think big is to think like God. And to think like God, first you must know what He thinks. And to know what He thinks, meditate on what He said in His Word. Here’s just one example:

“Ask of Me, and I will give you the nations for your inheritance, and the ends of the earth for your possession.” Psalm 2.8

What was it again you asked Him for when you prayed this morning?

Onslaught of Evil

A frightening diagnosis, a curse of witchcraft, a death threat, and all else that terrorises the heart, are darts from hell to confront our faith. If our faith is based on the Word of God, none of these things will matter; however, if our faith is based on our emotions, the heart will tremble and collapse before the problems.

For this reason, the Spirit warns us not to look at things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal (2 Corinthians 4.17,18).

When we take intelligent faith into account, we do not accept doubts or give in to any “light and momentary” affliction, however difficult it might seem. On the contrary, we manifest a natural resistance as a result of our personal conviction! That’s when revolt comes in and we demand the fulfilment of the Word of the Eternal God.

This is to see what cannot be seen, to believe the impossible, to live from faith to faith and by faith.

How can a person understand this if he is not born of God?

How God Speaks to You

On November 4th 1995, Yigal Amir, an Israeli and devout Jewish law student, assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin because, he claimed, God told him to do it. In May 2003, Deanna Laney, a 38-year-old Texan mother of three, ‘devoted wife and choir member in her church’, killed her two sons aged 6 and 8, and bashed the skull of her 14-month-old baby. After doing it, she phoned the police and said calmly ‘I have just killed my children. God told me to do it.’

When I hear stories like that I can only think that either God has gone mad or I am worshipping a very different God from the one these people do.

The two examples above are perhaps a bit extreme but they do illustrate what can happen when people do not recognize the voice of God. Every day, people around the world make wrong decisions based on the belief that God is telling them to do it. How many, for instance, have gotten married thinking the person was “God’s choice” for them, only to realize later they made a big mistake?

Truth: Who doesn’t want to hear God speak to them?

But how does God speak to us? Can we know when He speaks? How can we be more sensitive to hear His voice? Can the devil speak to us and pass off as God? Let’s explore the issues around this subject.

I would say that 99% of what God wants to say to us is written in the Bible. And the remaining 1% includes different ways He may use to draw our attention back again to the 99% that He already explained in His Word.

In other words: It is extremely important that you do not deviate from God’s Word when seeking guidance from God for your life. To look for dreams, visions, signs, prophecies or any other kind of special revelation will probably lead you to the wrong place. Some of the most confused Christians I have ever met were deep into this kind of belief. That’s because the devil uses these things to speak to people and pass off as God.

God has repeatedly said that His Word will never change. He is committed to it. He is not like politicians who promise and don’t do it. Neither does He have a memory problem to forget what He said. So there is no other word, advice or revelation that can be safer, surer, or more reliable than the Word of God itself. You are safe if you stick to it.

“All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.” 2 Timothy 3.16,17

Having said that, it is important that you take the Scriptures as a whole, bringing every verse you read into context. Loose verses of the Bible can be easily misinterpreted and lead you to disastrous consequences. God has given us faith and intelligence to be used together to our benefit. If you use your faith alone, you will become a fanatic. If you use your intelligence alone, you will become a stupid unbeliever.

God speaks to you through His inspired Word. Therefore, read your Bible and meditate on it. Make time to hear God more, and He will speak to you more. It’s amazing how much you can benefit by cutting down a little on watching TV, listening to music and reading the papers, and instead using that time to spend with the Word of God. Try it.

He who has ears to hear, let him hear. Do you have them?

 

God looked to all religions and said:

—  You don’t represent Me.

The valley was full of religious leaders from around the world, from all religions. From the top of the mountain, God’s voice spoke. Perplexed, they asked: “What do mean we don’t represent you?”

– If you had a mirror, I would tell you to look at yourselves. But let me tell you what I see:

• Internal fights – your leaders dispute for power, while I taught that “the greatest would serve the least.”
• External fights – you fight amongst yourselves, counting who has more sheep, all the while the sheep that have gone astray are getting lost
• You made me the image and likeness of yourselves. Instead of being like Me, you imagine me to be like you. You change your God to comply with you but you don’t mold yourselves to my liking
• You think I hate the same people you hate. I have bad news for your: I don’t hate anybody, but I hate what you do
• You manipulate my people for your own gain. You make up schemes, always thinking of how to take more of my sheep’s money, when I ordered that you take care of them
• You make a spectacle of yourselves to please people instead of giving them what they need. Your meetings (or better yet, you should call them “shows?”) are full of tricks to impress, involve, and lull My sheep into a sleep of deception

– Should I go on? You don’t represent Me. You’re frauds!

Although embarrassed, the religious people dared to say: “Lord, then who represents you?”

– Again with the hypocrisy. You don’t understand anything!  Why do you call me Lord if you’re not my servants? As for who represents me, it’s not Algebra or Trigonometry. It’s easy to know. The problem is your ego is so big you can’t see. If I would send Him to this world again, you would crucify Him once more.

There was then a long silence. And the voice became silent

 Problems require a reaction of equal magnitude

Ahab was the worst king that Israel had had up to that point. He did more evil than all that had preceded him. “Ahab did more to provoke the Lord God of Israel to anger than all the kings of Israel who were before him.”

On the other hand, who did God raise up to confront the worst of all kings? Elijah, the prophet of fire. Elijah was the sharpest, boldest, most courageous prophet in the history of Israel. To fight the worst king, God raised up the greatest prophet.

This teaches us a very important lesson: My reaction to a problem has to match its intensity. Proverbs 24.10 says:

“If you faint in the day of adversity, your strength is small.”

Today we would say: “If you fall to pieces in a crisis, there wasn’t much to you in the first place.”

If I want to change my life, overcome something evil that has controlled me, or a warrior that’s imprisoned me, I have to be a greater man of war than he!

A pastor has to be more of a warrior than the evil forces that have held people back and blocked them from coming to the church. The wounded must be stronger than their wound, the poor bolder than their poverty, and so on.

If you stop and think about it, this is nothing new. It’s simply a question of common sense. And courage.

Breaking a Bad Habit

Studies have shown that over 90% of what we do everyday is out of habit. Human beings are creatures of habit, which is a very helpful ability in many ways.

Imagine for example having to think every day about how to brush your teeth, or how to climb the stairs. These are things we do without even thinking because they’ve become part of our habits. In that sense, habits are good because they free our minds from having to think about every little thing we do.

The problem is when we develop a bad habit. Bad habits can, without you noticing it, destroy your life little by little.

Habits are hard to break. But if you want to break a habit, one rule is to design your environment in such a way that makes it impossible to practice it.

For example, I wanted to get into the habit of using an electric toothbrush instead of a regular one. As long as I kept both on my bathroom sink top, guess which one I’d reach for every time? Yep, the regular one. It was instinctive. Although I knew I wanted to use the electric one, my mind would immediately tell me, “Why trouble yourself? Why make me think? Just go for what you’re used to.” (Now you understand why people stay in their comfort zone!)

Then I made a simple decision to put away the regular brush and leave only the electric one on my sink top. Suddenly, at the time of brushing, it became more troublesome for me to go get the regular brush than just reach for the electric one under my nose and use it. I did that for a month, and guess what, it became a habit.

Although the above is a simple example, the principle is the same to break any kind of habit. It’s what expensive rehab centers do. People pay thousands of dollars for what? To go to a rehab where the environment makes it impossible for them to keep practicing their habit. And why do most rehab treatments fail in the long run? Because most people leave the rehab and go back to the old environment and circumstances that lead them right back to the old habit!

So, if your habits define your life, identifying your bad habits and replacing them with good ones is one of the best investments you can make in yourself.

Outsmart your lazy mind by redesigning your environment and circumstances to make it impossible to keep the old habit, forcing yourself to do the new thing instead.

Stick to it for at least 40 days (a magic period for forming a new habit) and you will be free from that old habit.

The two sources

There are two sources of power in the world: good and evil. The source of good sends forth life through the Spirit of God, and the source of evil sends forth death through its darkness.

These two sources are spiritual forces, and in order for either to have an affect on the world, they need to use human beings. Spirits need a body to manifest themselves in the world. Both the Spirit of good as well as the spirit of evil need a person to express themselves.

The Spirit of God seeks people with character to sow what is good throughout the nations; while, the spirit of evil looks for people without character to use as pedophiles, murderers, rapists, extortionists, to sow evil among the nations. Its goal is to make everyone an unbeliever in the existence of a Just, Holy and Merciful God.

The question is: why are the forces of evil more active in the world than the forces of good? The answer is that those who do evil don’t care about the future of their souls. Besides they make up the majority in this world.

On the other hand those who do what is right, the instruments of the Spirit of Good, are the minority. Few are chosen and saved. That’s because few have made a commitment with the Way, the Truth and the Life Everlasting.

To whom are you committed?

The 9700 were the most miserable

When someone tells the story of Gideon*, the emphasis is usually on his 300 warriors. And rightly so. They were the ones who made a difference. If not for them, the whole nation would have gone on being pushovers of the Midianites.

But we already knew this. The spotlight is always on the heroes.But in the shadows, right there between the light of the 300 warriors and the darkness of the 22000 who were ​​timid and afraid, were the 9700. Who were they, anyway? Cowards? Warriors? That’s the thing. Even they didn’t know who they were.

When Gideon told those who showed up for the battle that whoever was timid and afraid should return home, 22000 card-carrying cowards admitted their fear and left for their “comfortable” caves. As much as I try, I cannot find an adjective that could describe this group. Such people don’t expect anything from life. So when they get nothing, they’re not surprised. But I won’t focus on them today.

The 9,700 were the real disappointment in the story.

They thought they were brave. They thought they were ready for battle. But when they were tested, they discovered something about themselves: They were as cowardly as the others who left before them.

The worst position you can find yourself in is sitting on the fence. Which side are you on? Are you hot, cold, or lukewarm? Is your decision yes, no, or maybe? Do you believe in God, not believe in Him, or just don’t know?

Decide who you are. Know where you stand.

Among the three groups in Gideon’s story, the 9700 were the most miserable. Doubt, hesitation, and half-hearted commitment, are the great reasons behind people’s miseries and failures.

* Find Gideon’s story in the Bible, book of Judges chapters 6, 7, & 8.

God's Weapon

God’s weapon is His Word.

Satan also uses words as weapons.

The Word of God produces faith. It is spirit and gives life.

The devil’s words cast doubts. They’re deadly because they produce fear, worries, anxieties, painful memories, grief and everything else that is hurtful to mankind.

While the Word of God lifts up the fallen, the devil’s words bring down those who think they’re standing firm.

The Christian Word heals, encourages, lifts up, brings peace and hope; it propels you towards a better future.

On the other hand, evil words debilitate, discourage, cause separation, burdens, envy, jealousy, betrayal, stress, injustice, prostitution, theft, destruction, death; overall, it promotes evil.

Human nature is always in conflict between reason and emotion: spirit vs. flesh or faith vs. feelings. The Word of God encourages reason, just like evil encourages emotions.

The question is:

Whose advice have you been listening to?

God’s Spirit or emotions?

Faith or doubts?

5 lessons to grow intelligently

Do not remove the ancient landmarks which your fathers have set. Proverbs 22:28

There are so many lessons in this short, hardly known verse. Lessons you can apply in your life, family, work and business affairs.

Let’s learn some.

1. Things are where they are because someone placed them there. Someone was here before us. They dedicated their lives for a cause. They made treaties. They conquered in blood what today we give little value to. We found ready what others built. Don’t forget that.
2. Not removing landmarks doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t improve or innovate. We are intelligent beings; we want to and should always grow. But we have to be sufficiently intelligent to recognize the good things that don’t need to be changed, but simply maintained and protected.
3. Your ancestors placed landmarks in certain places for a reason. When you assume a new position, before you start changing everything, try to understand why things are the way they are. Be humble and try to understand what was behind the decisions made by those who came before you. Having this knowledge, perhaps you can find ways to improve things even more. Or perhaps you can see that if you change that landmark you’ll be travelling back in time.
4. Children owe respect and attention to their parents. If you build upon the good that your parents left, you’ll be even better. If you ignore their conquests and teachings, you’ll be a real idiot. Actually, you shouldn’t even have been born.
5. Removing old landmarks means invading someone’s rights. Old landmarks used to be sacred. In the Law of Moses, changing landmarks which identified the property line between two people was passable as a curse.* The romans even had a god called Terminus which supposedly guarded these landmarks. All of this to enforce an idea: don’t be unjust with your neighbor. Do not take what is not yours.

Don’t remove old landmarks that your parents placed: growth with respect, justice and intelligence.

*Deuteronomy 19.14; 27.17