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Choices

Our Choices Determine Our Success — Part Two

Choic­es Leave a com­ment
Little known and scarcely understood truths.
Power of Choice

When I closed my last arti­cle I asked you to fol­low me again as I con­tin­ue Our Choic­es Deter­mine Our Suc­cess.  This arti­cle may appear more like an epi­logue than a con­tin­u­a­tion.

As I opened my eyes this morn­ing, my mind began its usu­al roam­ing as I set up.  I sud­den­ly remem­bered; I have a choice  how I start my day. I do start with a grate­ful heart and short and sim­ple but sin­cere “Good morn­ing God, thank you for anoth­er day.”  It will sur­prise most peo­ple who are new to this, just how effec­tive it is in mak­ing a much bet­ter day.  It has been said “To have a good day, start with pos­i­tive thoughts.”  How true it is.  The choice is ours.

The Problem

Knowl­edge and truth are often lost in today’s world of hyper activ­i­ty and the “apa­thy mind­set” cul­ture.   In today’s cul­ture it is like­ly a lost fact, a sim­ple but pro­found fact, that we have a choice how we start our days.  Every day, whether we are con­scious of it or not, we choose how we will start our day.  The truth is:  The knowl­edge of know­ing that it is real­ly up to you, is a pow­er­ful life chang­er.  Pow­er­ful!  Yes, a pow­er that comes to us at birth when God endowed each of us with “will.”

It is our will pow­er that deter­mines “how we choose?”  We have all been blessed with this gift at cre­ation, a pow­er to choose.  We have been giv­en the “will” to deter­mine, in whole or part, our des­tiny.

The pow­er of choice:  You are bar­gain­ing with your life through your choic­es.  The affects of choic­es on our lives is well illus­trat­ed in this poem by Jessie B. Rit­ten­house.

My Wage

I bar­gained with Life for a pen­ny,
And Life would pay no more,
How­ev­er I begged at evening
When I count­ed my scanty store;

For Life is a just employ­er,
He gives you what you ask,
But once you have set the wages,
Why, you must bear the task.

I worked for a menial’s hire,
Only to learn, dis­mayed,
That any wage I had asked of Life,
Life would have paid.

What are you choos­ing for your life?  The pow­er of choice is real pow­er and it is yours to make.  If it is desire you need, you sim­ply choose to desire. If it is belief in your­self you need, you can, if you just choose to believe. If it is knowl­edge you need, you can choose to get it.  If it is com­mit­ment you need you must choose to be com­mit­ted.  Only then, you must choose real com­mit­ment, that is real­ly being com­mit­ted to make right choic­es.  How?  You may be think­ing.  The Lord tells us in Math­ew 7:7 Ask, and it shall be giv­en you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you:

The choice is yours!

BE HAPPY AND BLESSED IN THE NEW YEAR!

As I post this writ­ing, I pray that each of you have found the truth in the mat­ter of Our Choic­es Deter­mine Our Suc­cess.  Join me next time as I con­tin­ue to explore God’s design for man.

Choices

Our Choices Determine Our Success — Part One

Choic­es Leave a com­ment

Part One

WHEN LIFE IS A CHALLENGE: 

I have often heard it said, and am guilty of such say­ing myself; “life can be a chal­lenge.”  The word chal­lenge is often used in law sig­ni­fy­ing a false stand­ing. While the truth is the word chal­lenge sim­ply implies a non truth; it is some­thing that is false.  It appears peo­ple in gen­er­al are mak­ing up chal­lenges as they go through life; many just mean things are some­times dif­fi­cult to over­come.  I sug­gest the word is sim­ply over and improp­er­­ly-used as excus­es.   The word comes to us from many cen­turies ago mean­ing to accuse false­ly.  [Tak­en from etymonline.com/search?q=Challenge; c. 1200, “to rebuke,” from Old French cha­longi­er “com­plain, protest; hag­gle, quib­ble,” from Vul­gar Latin *calum­niare “to accuse false­ly,” from Latin calum­niari “to accuse false­ly, mis­rep­re­sent, slan­der,” from calum­nia “trick­ery”]

Over­com­ing what peo­ple com­mon­ly call life’s chal­lenges can result from the choic­es made on their jour­ney.  When we learn that a chal­lenge is real­ly some­thing made up and is not true at all, but sim­ply a dif­fi­cul­ty we face.  We can over­come our dif­fi­cul­ties with far more ease in the choic­es we make; doing so can actu­al­ly become com­mon sense for us.  Aside from the spir­i­tu­al help God pro­vides us all, we can as indi­vid­u­als decide; choos­ing to use our will pow­er on our behalf.  It can become com­mon sense and a very mer­i­to­ri­ous action for each of us to choose, since the pow­er of choice is ours and comes to us as our free will.  We can choose to rec­og­nize the fal­si­ty of the chal­lenge at hand and move to over­come our per­ceived dif­fi­cul­ty with faith as we deny the fal­si­ty and call things that are per­ceived as false as though it were not false, that is as though it be.  By our choice, and with the pow­er of God in us, we can choose to call things that are not as though they are.  When done so prop­er­ly, with faith and com­mon sense we can do so with­out lying.

I have lived such expe­ri­ences.  Here is one exam­ple.

Not so long ago I had a chal­lenge, or so I thought at that time.  I have a very nice work shop in a large met­al build­ing of pole barn type con­struc­tion on land by our home.  It has five inch poles of treat­ed lum­ber set 3 to 4 feet deep in the soil mak­ing a very strong wood frame of the met­al build.  The Chal­leng­ing issue for me that came up was a leak­ing roof.  As the build­ing aged [near 30 years] the met­al had moved through expan­sion and con­trac­tion thus loos­en­ing the fas­ten­ers and allow­ing some to leak dur­ing rains.  I become con­cerned the leak­ing water could cause struc­tur­al wood dam­age so it was time to look at stop­ping the leaks.  But I was chal­lenged in that I am a senior.  At 84 years it would not be wise to be climb­ing a lat­ter to do such repairs.  So I chose not to risk doing this work myself, and wise­ly, I then chose to look for help to get this repair work done.  So I pro­ceed­ed in faith, believ­ing I could find help to do the repairs.

It was truth [not a chal­lenge] that the build­ing leaked and would like­ly cause con­se­quen­tial dete­ri­o­ra­tion of the wood struc­ture.   It boiled down to the real chal­lenge I faced being that of mon­ey.  At the point of see­ing mon­ey as an issue I could have said to myself, I can afford to repair that roof, let it go.  But I chose to think pos­i­tive in that per­haps there was a way to afford to do the repairs.  I would not know unless I found out the “truth” of the mat­ter.  As I inves­ti­gat­ed the cost, I found out could be sub­stan­tial.  I sought out con­trac­tors to price the work and had one bid well over $5000 to apply a mod­ern day seal to the met­al roof in much the same way one would paint it but with spe­cial sealant com­pounds.  I was feel­ing this to be out of my bud­get.  As I became dis­cour­aged with such pric­ing then a com­mon fault of us humans set in try­ing to over­whelm me:  It became “my intel­lect began rea­son­ing to chal­lenge my faith.”  Yes, of course rea­son­ing and log­ic can be our friend, but at times rea­son­ing will trig­ger doubts to our faith.

Feel­ing the chal­lenge of the sit­u­a­tion, think­ing I could not bud­get the repairs, I began strug­gling with doubts.  I did final­ly begin to pray about the mat­ter.  Though I am some­times way too slow to ask, I did final­ly did ask God for guid­ance and when I prayed I quot­ed two scrip­tures (Psalm 18:29 and Philip­pi­ans 4:13).  My quote was not to remind or help God, but to build my faith.   And true to God’s word (Isa­iah 55:11) and just as he said, “So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accom­plish that which I please, and it shall pros­per in the thing where­to I sent it.”

In answer­ing my prayers, it soon came to me that I could over­come this chal­lenge [prove it false] by find­ing an indi­vid­ual capa­ble of such work and pay them by job or by the hour instead of a con­trac­tor which would cost much more.  By this time I was becom­ing encour­aged and grow­ing in faith so that I could see my shop build­ing roof repaired and glis­ten­ing in bright white, the col­or of the spe­cial sealant.   So then I prayed, giv­ing thanks for answered prayer and again for help in find­ing such a per­son that I could afford finan­cial­ly.  As I have aged I have learned, more and more, to rely on God’s help.  So as I began my search I would pray again, “I can do all things through Christ which strength­ens me.”  And again, very soon, it came to me to go into the Amish com­mu­ni­ty which is near­by and seek out some help.  I did so.  And every time rea­son brought on doubt I would dis­miss it with anoth­er prayer.

I very soon found a man.  Not only was he capa­ble, but he was expe­ri­enced in such roof work.  I then found a sup­pli­er of a spe­cial roof sealant and esti­mat­ed the quan­ti­ty need­ed along with an esti­mate of time required to do the work.   My wife agreed we could bud­get these repairs at huge­ly sub­stan­tial sav­ings so I chose to act on this chal­lenge as my own con­trac­tor.  I pur­chased the mate­ri­als and hired the man and his son. Then, I did in fact get the repairs done for a frac­tion the exor­bi­tant bids.  Thank God.  Thank God for giv­ing me the will to choose and to ask for the guid­ance. Through answered prayers I received guid­ance and was able to make the right choic­es.  I mar­vel at and love that “I can do all things through Christ which strength­en me.” (Philip­pi­ans 4:13)

Chal­lenges are oppor­tu­ni­ties to over­come using our God giv­en free will.

OUR FREE WILL:

As I wrote pre­vi­ous­ly:  Through­out the ages man has been in search for pur­pose.  Philoso­phers such as Pla­to, Aris­to­tle, Augus­tine, Aquinas, Descartes, and many oth­ers spent their entire lives in pur­suit of, sought after, and wrote about their visions of the mean­ing of life and it’s free will.  Books crowd library shelves with man’s philoso­phies of life.  Some authors acknowl­edge that choos­ing, what IS OUR WILL TO CHOOSE is a pow­er­ful gift from God.  I found the KJV of the Bible God uses choice 23 times, and the word choose 63 times, and the word chose 145 times.  All are ref­er­ences to the gift from God that is our free will.  I am now remind­ed of a pro­found truth of just how lit­tle known and scarce­ly under­stood are the truths in God’s word.

High­ly sig­nif­i­cant to all life’s choic­es for man and woman appears in Deuteron­o­my 30:19 when God says, “This day I call the heav­ens and the earth as wit­ness­es against you that I have set before you life and death, bless­ings and curs­es. Now choose life, so that you and your chil­dren may live.”  This is just one of many exam­ples of God’s illus­tra­tion of the pow­er of choice-our free will.  Now choose life:  We must all seek out and learn the real mean­ing; the broad all encom­pass­ing pow­er God offers each us in our spe­cif­ic cre­ation when He said, “…choose life.” 

If you were to look up choice, choose, and chose in any dic­tio­nary you will only find man’s def­i­n­i­tion which is so lack­ing in what God intend­ed when He cre­at­ed man and instilled into him the pow­er of will, the pow­er of choice:  Anoth­er unique gift from God.   “Now choose life” as God wills for us.  A Notable Choice:  A good name is rather to be cho­sen than great rich­es, and lov­ing favour rather than sil­ver and gold. (Proverbs 22:1 KJV)

As I post this writ­ing, I pray that each of you read­ing this will find the truth in the mat­ter of Our Choic­es Deter­mine Our Suc­cess.  Join me next time as I con­tin­ue to explore how our Our Choic­es Deter­mine Our Suc­cess, in Part Two to keep your life jour­ney suc­cess­ful.

This study includ­ed ref­er­ences of 242 vers­es relat­ed to chal­lenge and choice in KJV of Bible.  You can see detail list of these bib­li­cal ref­er­ences here with option to save and/or print.

 

Emotions Can Enable Us

Emo­tions Leave a com­ment

As I research and study both bib­li­cal and non-bib­li­­cal sources, I pray for wis­dom as I search out and write about the truth about our human “emo­tions.”  While I am not a psy­chol­o­gist or psy­chi­a­trist I do have a dri­ve to under­stand how God has design us, so nat­u­ral­ly I want to know how emo­tions work in my life. I am not in search of rules, but of truth in God’s design for man.  Not as an end all solu­tion, but to open our minds to the pos­si­bil­i­ties inher­ent in learn­ing of God’s plan for mankind’s use of his emo­tions; feel­ings both good and bad and how to cope.

The sub­ject of emo­tions and its many ques­tions have been debat­ed for thou­sands of years; and still is a pri­ma­ry dis­cus­sion among edu­ca­tors and psy­chol­o­gists every­where.  But I ask, who of them are bring­ing God into the dis­cus­sions?  And why do we have and expe­ri­ence emo­tions?  How do we con­trol our emo­tions?  In this age of gross miss infor­ma­tion and per­verse cul­tures, explor­ing these ques­tions is more impor­tant than ever.

As I have writ­ten before, God had a plan for man when he cre­at­ed man and women with mind, will, and emo­tions.  And He clev­er­ly, by my under­stand­ing, includ­ed in man’s design a unique pow­er to con­trol the emo­tions.  The pow­er of choice and will gives man such pow­er.  As my research expand­ed I was remind­ed of the vast impli­ca­tions to mankind of “emo­tions” and how his choic­es to react to them actu­al­ly affects his life.  The effects can be dra­mat­ic and pro­found, but often not desir­able.

An over sim­pli­fi­ca­tion per­haps, but I see emo­tions are to humans what a gyro­scope and com­pass are to a fly­ing air­craft.  While the com­pass has been around for many years before, in the ear­ly days of air­craft devel­op­ment the gyro­scope was invent­ed to show a pilot when his air­craft was upright.  So togeth­er they helped keep the pilot upright and on course.   Sci­ence has evolved the mechan­i­cal gyro­scopes to less mechan­i­cal and more dig­i­tal and involved com­put­er con­trols to help man fly air­craft or oth­er aer­i­al projects.  Emo­tions help us know when our life is upright and head­ing in the right direc­tion.  Emo­tions con­nect with our brain [mankind’s com­put­er] to react to the emo­tion.  Will our emo­tion­al reac­tions be for good or bad?

A Gen­er­ous Gift

A gen­er­ous gift from our Cre­ator; emo­tions are feel­ings that affect our lives.  I believe our emo­tions are intend­ed for our good but sad­ly there are bad times when emo­tions often work against us. As I wrote pre­vi­ous­ly:  There is com­mon belief that man is body, soul, and spir­it; and with­in the soul our mind, will, and emo­tions flour­ish.  Emo­tions are a crit­i­cal part of human behav­ior, just as God Planned.  The mind holds a pow­er and dom­i­nance over our flesh­ly body.  The mind is pro­found­ly pow­er­ful and sure, yet com­plex for man to under­stand. Man’s soul holds a spe­cial con­nec­tion with the spir­it of man.  I have come to believe the soul, “man’s being,” that is con­nect­ed to the “spir­it” of man will reflect out­ward­ly the inner emo­tions of man:  And thus cre­ate our per­son­al­i­ty which is as some­one once said, “…an out­er expres­sion of an inner atti­tude.”  Then when we find Christ we are born of the Spir­it thus empow­er­ing us [our soul through our spir­it] to com­mu­ni­cate with God on a spir­i­tu­al lev­el, and com­mu­ni­cate with man from the heart [the spir­it of man]. The intri­cate­ly crit­i­cal work­ings of a man’s life, his being, his per­son­al­i­ty, is direct­ed by not only his mind and will, but under the influ­ence of his emo­tions.  Emo­tions reflect a peace­ful spir­it or a not so peace­ful spir­it.  James Allen spoke of self con­trol and emo­tions when he said, “Self-con­trol is strength. Right thought is mas­tery. Calm­ness is pow­er. Say unto your heart, “Peace, be still!” and, “Calm­ness of mind is one of the beau­ti­ful jew­els of wis­dom. It is the result of long and patient effort in self-con­trol. Its pres­ence is an indi­ca­tion of ripened expe­ri­ence, and of a more than ordi­nary knowl­edge of the laws and oper­a­tions of thought.”

When we use our intel­lect and our will in favor of self con­trol, and can learn how to NOT allow WRONG emo­tion­al reac­tions into our lives; how not to be con­trolled by pride and van­i­ty we are sure to come out on the right course.  But sad­ly, in today’s social and media worlds, we see all too often impul­sive emo­tion­al reac­tions trig­gered by hate and prej­u­dices.   I is both sad and alarm­ing when you real­ize these out­bursts come from the heart of the per­sons involved.

We must learn to dis­tin­guish intu­itive feel­ings [emo­tions] from our rea­son­ing intel­lec­tu­al knowl­edge.  After con­sid­er­able research includ­ing sev­er­al dic­tio­nary reviews, prayers, and deep thought, here is how I define emo­tions.  Emo­tions:  A feel­ing result­ing from an instinc­tive state of mind for humans derived from the cir­cum­stances of the moment at hand that emanate from that feel­ing and sen­sa­tion that come about for a per­son from his or her cir­cum­stances of the moment.  I did not find any real dif­fer­ences in the few dic­tio­nar­ies I reviewed on emo­tions; I did find they lacked in sub­stance of what real­ly defines “emo­tions.”  Dur­ing my life, hav­ing had emo­tion­al out­bursts with bad tone of voice expe­ri­ences, many of which I would not be proud to repeat, I learned that many times the emo­tion­al event was trig­gered by an impul­sive action. Wrong impul­sive­ness comes from the heart the same as right does.  But, thank God, I would even­tu­al­ly learn we can choose to change our hearts, and so main­tain self con­trol over the emo­tions effects on our lives.

Since it is wide­ly accept­ed by Chris­tians and non-Chris­­tians alike, that we are born with emo­tions; then the real ques­tion must be, how do we learn to con­trol our emo­tions and not allow wrong emo­tion­al reac­tions into our lives?  Emo­tions do exert cer­tain pow­er over the mind; so we want to avoid the bind­ing and blind­ing effects some emo­tions can have on our lives.  Aware­ness of emo­tion­al affects, and how they can work for us or against us in our lives, can have real life chang­ing affects when we make the right choic­es.  It has been said fear trig­gers a fight or flight response.  When this hap­pens to us, self con­trol [the will] can help us hold our ground [not pan­ic] and turn the emo­tion to our ben­e­fit.  We have will pow­er [self con­trol] so we can choose to use it for our ben­e­fit.  God instilled emo­tions into man to help him find his way; they can keep us on course.  He cre­at­ed man with mind, will, emo­tions.  Our will gives us the pow­er to choose.   I ask you, What are choos­ing to do with your emo­tion­al expe­ri­ence?

As I got more into the study of emo­tions to learn more of God’s plan, I found it help­ful to list words of my think­ing that were results of my emo­tions. Words sig­ni­fy­ing emo­tions and words that trig­ger emo­tions can appear in dif­fer­ent forms such as hap­py and hap­pi­ness.  I put togeth­er a list of emo­tion­al sig­ni­fy­ing words [not con­clu­sive] shown below.  I should note:  There are more words one can add to this list of emo­tion­al feel­ings should you desire.  I then searched the KJV and the NIV Bible for the word emo­tion which I did not find.  Then I searched for each word on the list.  As I list­ed each word I did “feel” an emo­tion; then I dis­cov­ered dif­fer­ent emo­tion­al sig­ni­fy­ing words appeared a dif­fer­ent num­ber of times.  For exam­ple notice in the list below the words “love and faith” com­pared to the word ‘admire.”  Oh, then it occurred to me; the more the word appears the more impor­tance God placed on that emo­tion.  Remem­ber what God said of char­i­ty: [love]: “1 Corinthi­ans 13:13

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the great­est of these is love.

*NOTE:  Love was list­ed 686 times.  Wow, what a les­son!

The words list­ed sig­ni­fy an emo­tion; the num­ber in brack­ets [ ], indi­cates how many times the emo­tion appears in NIV of the Bible.  I chose to list from the NIV ver­sion of the Bible.  There is no par­tic­u­lar mean­ing or sig­nif­i­cance to the sequence of the list I have put togeth­er below, though I did alpha­bet­ize it for con­ve­nience.  While this is not a study in ety­mol­o­gy it is indica­tive of “feel­ings” result­ing from a par­tic­u­lar cir­cum­stance or events at a par­tic­u­lar moment of life.  As you read the word you can feel an emo­tion.

  • Admire [1]
  • Adore [1]
  • Amaze [54]
  • Anger [268]
  • Anx­i­ety [7]
  • Appalling [26]
  • Awe [53]
  • Calm­ness [1]
  • Con­fu­sion [19]
  • Con­tempt [43]
  • Crav­ing [7]
  • Dis­gust [5]
  • Enjoy [61]
  • Envy [20]
  • Excite­ment [1]
  • Faith [458]
  • Fear [336]
  • Grat­i­tude [5]
  • Guilt [189]
  • Hap­py [26]
  • Hate[127]
  • Hor­ror 24
  • Joy [242]
  • Love*[686]
  • Pride [63]
  • Rage [35]
  • Relief [19]
  • Sad [39]
  • Sat­is­fac­tion [4]
  • Sur­prise [14]
  • Sym­pa­thy [6]
  • Tri­umph [34]
  • Trust [170]

Exam­ples o­f words that sig­ni­fy emo­tions; awe­some insights into God’s Design for man.

 I see our emo­tions as our life’s gyro­scope and com­pass in God’s design to keep our lives upright and on course.  I see us as being able to con­trol our emo­tions dur­ing our life jour­ney.

As I post this writ­ing, I pray that each of you read­ing this can find the truth of God’s Design in the mat­ter of Emo­tions.  It seems to me that our goal should be to align our minds thoughts and emo­tions with the WILL OF GOD.

Join me next time as I explore how Our Choic­es Deter­mine Our Suc­cess.

Mind

Mind-Body Connection

Mind Leave a com­ment

Acti­vate God’s Design for Your Suc­cess.

Lit­tle known and scarce­ly under­stood truths about our mind.

Our Mind:  The Thought­ful, Choos­ing, Mind-Body Con­nec­tion.

Our mind has been sub­ject of debate, seem­ing­ly, for­ev­er.  There have always been dif­fer­ent views, from philoso­phers and sci­en­tists alike, on human mind func­tions and its rela­tion­ship to our lives.  Libraries are filled with books about the mind of man; so the sub­ject of the “mind” will scarce­ly be exhaust­ed by me as I write here of my learn­ing how God breathed life into man and he became a liv­ing soul.  Man, wow, what a cre­ation from God!  A liv­ing soul! (Gen­e­sis 2:7).  We were cre­at­ed with glo­ry and hon­or a lit­tle low­er than angels, with pow­er over our works. (Hebrews 2:7).  Our mind gives us the means to exer­cise this pow­er of “liv­ing.”

James Allen, in As a Man Thin­keth, wrote, “At birth the soul comes to its own, and through every step of its earth­ly pil­grim­age it attracts those com­bi­na­tions of con­di­tions that reveal itself, that are the reflec­tions of its own puri­ty and impu­ri­ty, its strength and weak­ness.

We do not attract what we want, but what we are.  Our whims, fan­cies, and ambi­tions, are thwart­ed at every step, but our inner­most thoughts and desires are fed with their own food, be it good or bad.  The ‘divin­i­ty that shapes our ends’ is in our­selves; it is our very self.  And so we are held pris­on­ers only by our­selves:  Our own thoughts and actions are the jail­ers of our fate — they imprison, if they are base; they are also the angels of free­dom — they lib­er­ate, if they are noble.”

From the inner core of the brain where our soul is, our mind thrives.  There is com­mon belief that man is body, soul, and spir­it; and with­in the soul our mind, will, and emo­tions flour­ish.  The mind holds a pow­er and dom­i­nance over our flesh­ly body.  It is pro­found­ly pow­er­ful and sure, yet com­plex for man to under­stand. Man’s soul holds a spe­cial con­nec­tion with the spir­it of man.  I have come to believe the soul, “man’s being,” con­nects man to the spir­it of man.  Then when we find Christ we are born of the Spir­it thus empow­er­ing us [our soul through our spir­it] to com­mu­ni­cate with God on a spir­i­tu­al lev­el.

Sub­con­scious Mind

There, in the soul, the mind cre­ates, receives, and trans­mits thoughts into choic­es and actions; and also oper­ates sub­con­scious­ly to con­trol all auto­mat­ic func­tions of mankind.  Maxwell Maltz called it the sub­con­scious mind.  He went on to say “sub­con­scious mind” is not a “mind” at all, but a mechanism—a “ser­­vo-mech­a­nism” con­sist­ing of the brain and ner­vous sys­tem, which is used by, and direct­ed by the mind.”

Some human func­tions are built in, while some are learned such as when a child learns to talk and walk.  Some learned abil­i­ties such as walk­ing are embed­ded into our sub­con­scious so we can walk with­out tak­ing con­scious thought.  There are sci­en­tif­ic views emerg­ing that shows there to be com­plex links [inter­play] between the mind and body.  The mind oper­ates both con­scious­ly and sub­con­scious­ly to con­trol mankind.  Our cog­ni­tive fac­ul­ties include per­cep­tions, our thoughts, con­scious­ness, and mem­o­ry so as to process rea­son­ing, our choic­es as deci­sions, and prob­lem solv­ing; all part of the liv­ing soul of mankind.

Choice

I would be amiss if I failed to include “choice” in this mind-body dis­cus­sion.  With­in our mind we have been giv­en the pow­er of choice.  Yes, pow­er in the form of our free will to choose.  In the mind along with our per­cep­tions, our thoughts, con­scious­ness, mem­o­ry, and our abil­i­ty to choose, there is a bidi­rec­tion­al rela­tion­ship of the mind to the body.  Vik­tor E. Fran­kl,  in Man’s Search for Mean­ing wrote,  “Every­thing can be tak­en from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s atti­tude in any giv­en set of cir­cum­stances, to choose one’s own way.”  It is as Vik­tor Fran­kl said “…choos­ing one’s atti­tude…” that I write about here today.

Thoughts

What this means is this:  While we can­not always choose what we face in life, such as our cir­cum­stances, even our thoughts, but we can always choose our atti­tude toward those cir­cum­stances and thoughts.   That is we will always have with­in our mind the pow­er of choice!  So, from our minds we main­tain con­trol of our words and actions, good or bad.  We even have con­trol over thoughts in that we can “choose” to accept [to act on] them or “choose” to reject them.  This answers a ques­tion I have heard some ask, “Who real­ly has author­i­ty over your life?  Who is in con­trol? Our mind, our will, and our emo­tions spring forth from our soul into choic­es and actions, thus we live.  Moses made it obvi­ous in Deuteron­o­my 30:19–22 where in part he said”…Choose life..”

In dis­cussing the mind we must real­ize we can­not sep­a­rate the mind from many of the oth­er process­es of our being.  From the eter­nal core of our soul, our mind, will, and emo­tions, we cre­ate our­selves; our per­son­al­i­ty, and our char­ac­ter, our lives.  And in so doing we must remem­ber the soul is con­nect­ed to the spir­it of man and is often vis­i­ble to oth­ers as we out­ward­ly reflect our inner being.   The soul deals with moral, intan­gi­ble, and eter­nal aspects of our lives.

Mind and Health and Wel­fare.

Here in Amer­i­ca our health care sys­tem is still study­ing and treat­ing the mind and body as two sep­a­rate enti­ties.  I con­tend our Cre­ator linked our mind and body so we might ben­e­fit from adopt­ing more holis­tic approach to our health.  And I believe James Allen would sure­ly agree, our wish­es and prayers will be answered only when they are aligned with our minds and accept­ed thoughts and actions, all of which must align with the will of God.

In his book, Faith and Con­fes­sions, Charles Capps wrote, “ The word of God is the will of God.  It is God’s will, but it won’t hap­pen in your life just because it’s God’s will.  You will not be healed just because the Bible says, …by whose (Jesus) stripes ye were healed(1 Peter 2:24).  You will not become pros­per­ous just because the Bible says, …what­so­ev­er he doeth shall prosper(PS.1:3).”  He con­tin­ued, “The word must be inside you.  You can’t take a Bible down to the hos­pi­tal and lay it on some­one to get them healed, although the Bible is full of the Word of God.  But if you can get that word inside them, it will man­i­fest itself.  The Word pro­duces when it is plant­ed in the heart.”

Our pros­per­i­ty and our heal­ing, [our good health] begins in our minds.  So our prayers are cre­at­ed in our minds; as we think, we pray.

As I post this writ­ing, I pray that each of you read­ing this can find the truth of God’s Design in the mat­ter of your mind-body con­nec­tion.  It seems to me that our goal should be to align our minds thoughts with the WILL OF GOD.

Join me next time as I explore how our emo­tions can work for us on our suc­cess­ful life jour­ney.

Our Will

Will Leave a com­ment

Activate God’s Design for Your Success.

Lit­tle known and scarce­ly under­stood truths about our “free will.”

OUR FREE WILL.

Through­out the ages man has been in search for pur­pose.  Philoso­phers such as Pla­to, Aris­to­tle, Augus­tine, Aquinas, Descartes, and many oth­ers spent their entire lives in pur­suit of, sought after, and wrote about their visions of the mean­ing of life and it’s free will.  Books crowd library shelves with man’s philoso­phies of life.  Some authors acknowl­edge that choos­ing, what IS OUR WILL TO CHOOSE is a pow­er­ful gift from God.  I found the KJV of the Bible God uses Choose 63 times, choice is used 23 times.  All are ref­er­ences to the gift from God that is our free will.  A most sig­nif­i­cant choice man has appears in In Deuteron­o­my 30:19 when God says, “This day I call the heav­ens and the earth as wit­ness­es against you that I have set before you life and death, bless­ings and curs­es. Now choose life, so that you and your chil­dren may live.”  This is just one of many exam­ples of God’s illus­tra­tion of the pow­er of choice-our free will.

Vik­tor E. Fran­kl,  in Man’s Search for Mean­ing wrote,  “Every­thing can be tak­en from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s atti­tude in any giv­en set of cir­cum­stances, to choose one’s own way.”  It is as Vik­tor Frankl’s said “…choos­ing one’s atti­tude…” that I write about here today.

The God giv­en pow­er of self con­trol & self dis­ci­pline, our willpow­er, our choic­es directs our lives.  Men and women often tra­di­tion­al­ly referred to mankind as being of body [flesh and bone] and con­tain­ing spir­it and soul to have three parts body, soul, and spir­it. I have noticed the Divine three as part of God’s plan.  I have learned, too, there are three parts of the soul; the will, mind, and emo­tions.  It has been said we have a mind, will, and emo­tions and in this order.  I con­tend that tra­di­tion may have inad­ver­tent­ly placed this order.  The will, mind and emo­tions, seems to me, to be the more appro­pri­ate order because of the pow­er our will holds for our lives.  Ulti­mate­ly the will holds the pow­er over the mind and emo­tions.

I am for­ev­er awed as I con­tin­ue to learn the pur­pos­es of the many parts [mem­bers of the body] of man in which God cre­ative­ly implant­ed our abil­i­ties and pow­ers.  God has cre­at­ed and placed with­in the body of mankind a spir­it, soul, mind, will, and emo­tions:   Our body hous­es our human exis­tence and our life is expressed through these dri­ving forces.   I have come to believe that when God breathed into man’s nos­trils the “breath of life” and man became a “liv­ing soul”, man also was endowed with many pow­ers [dri­ving forces].  Of the body’s many mem­bers, “the will” is the gyro­scope and com­pass direct­ing our life jour­ney.  Through our unwa­ver­ing strength to car­ry out our wish­es, our will pow­er, deter­mines how well we mas­ter our life jour­ney.

We reside in life under the con­trol of our will.   While we must become aware of all the mem­bers of our bod­ies, we must keep our willpow­er at cen­ter.  I once met a per­son who, was expe­ri­enc­ing fail­ure after fail­ure in life.  He actu­al­ly made the state­ment, “What ever will be will be, so why should I even try?”  He did not accept that will pow­er is a gift of God to each and every per­son.  The last I knew, this man died with­out tak­ing con­trol of his life.

The pow­er to choose will super­sede all our body mem­bers, even the mind and emo­tions.  It is the pow­er that tells the mind, “Now, choose what I have willed”.  Oh, be sure, the emo­tions will try at times to take over, but we must “will” our emo­tions to not be in charge.

Influ­ences

One can­not live with­out influ­ences; par­tic­u­lar­ly out­side pres­sures to our will to self con­trol­ling the pow­ers we all have been giv­en.  Through our will we have the abil­i­ty to choose to be influ­enced or not.  Our emo­tions can be influ­enced so pow­er­ful­ly that emo­tions can take con­trol if allowed.  Con­trol­ling our will, our pow­er to choose, is for our mind to rea­son on choic­es, and then, it is our will to act on those choic­es.  My will is me, as I think, as I know, as I feel it is the I in all I do, it is my ego; what my will does, I do.

When I will emo­tions are in charge, then I am emo­tion­al.  Maybe even emo­tion­al­ly out of con­trol.  The will can bring emo­tion­al thoughts into cap­tiv­i­ty and in so doing give your emo­tions some­thing to rejoice about through hap­py emo­tions.

From birth through­out our infor­ma­tive years and beyond, we are being influ­enced.  Hope­ful­ly we learned right from wrong so as adults we can be on guard against bad influ­ences and our emo­tions that can lead us into wrong deci­sions.   Life is full of out­side pres­sures from social, gov­ern­ment, friends, neigh­bors, TV, and even our­selves because of choic­es we make.  Wrong choic­es that lead us into bad habits such as tobac­co, drugs or alco­hol can be cor­rect­ed when we will­ful­ly choose to cor­rect our mis­takes and over­come such habits.

Such habits are dan­ger­ous­ly life threat­en­ing and may require pro­fes­sion­al help.  When we choose to include God in our lives we can go to Him and ask for help.  Ask, Seek, and Knock it says in Matthew 7:7, “Ask and it will be giv­en to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.”  We must choose and believe.  God will help.  We can pray for guid­ance on whom and where to seek help from man.  It may involve med­ical and coun­sel­ing.  God can give us the pow­er to accept the help and work through with­draw­ing from such habits.  We must exer­cise our will to choose and believe; then will to act on our choice.

How are you choos­ing to use the dri­ving forces direct­ing your life jour­ney?

Some peo­ple believe they don’t have “enough” willpow­er.  And often say “If only I had more willpow­er…. .”  I don’t believe it is “lack of willpow­er” that is need­ed.  But rather an under­stand­ing of the pow­er we have for self con­trol.  Seems to me it is not lack of will pow­er, but a weak willpow­er that is at fault.  Strength­en your willpow­er in these ways.  First, gain knowl­edge and under­stand­ing, Sec­ond search out prop­er moti­va­tion and estab­lish it, third, set goals, and fourth, learn to mon­i­tor your behav­ior toward your stronger willpow­er, and last, exer­cise your will to improve.  Strength will come through use, whether it be a pos­i­tive, or neg­a­tive.  Strength­en willpow­er to estab­lish your abil­i­ty to resist inap­pro­pri­ate temp­ta­tions in order to reach worth­while goals.  Increased knowl­edge and under­stand­ing, of the forces influ­enc­ing our moti­va­tion can have a pos­i­tive effect on our life.

I am aware that deal­ing with the mind, will, and emo­tions can be dif­fi­cult and even con­fus­ing at times.  Emo­tions can affect our think­ing [mind] in many ways.  Using the pow­er of the will we can direct the mind to choose the way that is best, or worst, for our being.

With each new learn­ing expe­ri­ence, my curios­i­ty has dri­ven me to find more of God’s design for man, that is, His pur­pose.  It could well be said we are designed to be for the Lord and the Lord for us.  This being a vast sub­ject there is much more to be said about our earth­ly exis­tence.

God cre­at­ed man and woman with will pow­er, a unique pow­er, to have domin­ion of all the earth.  This is an inner pow­er to suc­ceed which resides in each of us.  It is a gift of God.  Your will is you, you are your will, so as you will, you do.  Some are say­ing, “If this is so, then why am I fail­ing?  I want to suc­ceed.  So this must not be so!”  As I have stud­ied God’s word over the years and have asked Him con­tin­u­al­ly for knowl­edge, wis­dom, and under­stand­ing I have come to believe in the pow­er placed in all of us as our will and its place in our life’s Jour­ney. 

Where to start?

Your will is your inner Pow­er to choose:  Mak­ing a delib­er­ate choice is your decid­ing pow­er and your being will yield to that pow­er.  The STARTING PLACE for suc­cess­ful life jour­ney starts NOW; and may well be in learn­ing of the pow­er of the will.  Learn to use your mind to con­trol your will and set your sails for a suc­cess­ful life jour­ney.

Use your mind to change aver­age into amaz­ing by learn­ing to make the right choic­es!

As I post this writ­ing, I pray that each of you read­ing this can find the truth of the mat­ter of your will.  It seems to me that our goal should be to align our will with the WILL OF GOD.

Join me next time as I explore how our Mind works with our Will to keep us on a suc­cess­ful life jour­ney.

 

The “As If” Success Principle — Part Three

Faith One Com­ment

Suc­cess doesn’t depend on who you are, or your assets, it comes sole­ly as you think, as you speak, and as you act from the ABUNDANCE OF YOUR HEART.

Start­ing is easy, BUT Suc­ceed­ing takes Desire, Faith, Hope, Love, Action, and Patience to Per­se­vere, all Pow­ered by Prayer

This “As IF Suc­cess Prin­ci­ple” is not dif­fi­cult to prac­tice.   Any­one can learn to do it.  It is a pow­er­ful, even mys­te­ri­ous, abil­i­ty built deep with­in us by our cre­ator. Start by map­ping out your jour­ney.  Where to start?  Start now, Right where you are.  It will get eas­i­er as you move for­ward.  These bits of truth point in the right direc­tion:  Willie Nel­son once said “There is only one map to the jour­ney of life and it lives with­in your heart.” and Arthur Ashe said “Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.”

The “as if suc­cess prin­ci­ple” func­tions on, a built into man, [lit­tle under­stood], inter­nal force that lives with­in us, that dri­ves man to become, or achieve, exact­ly what is imaged.  Image and speak it enough times, and it will come to live in your heart.  Remem­ber, thoughts can become things.  These con­cepts work by putting faith into action.  Is this Mag­ic?  No.  Pos­si­ble yes! It is REAL and it WORKS.  This same truth is right­ly referred to in the bible as “call­ing things that are not to bring to naught things that are.”  Can be said anoth­er way, “Call­ing things that are not as though they be.”  It includes an eter­nal prin­ci­ple of look­ing at “the unseen” rather than the seen.  We can use imag­ing to help us accom­plish this.  There is Devine pow­er in focus­ing eter­nal truths toward our liv­ing suc­cess­ful­ly.  It takes desire, knowl­edge, faith, hope, love and action, among oth­er truths to live suc­cess­ful­ly.  Why does this work?  It works because it is a faith builder.  Faith is built in the heart by rep­e­ti­tion.  God cre­at­ed prin­ci­ples always work when worked.

Our imag­in­ings pass from the present con­scious mind mys­te­ri­ous­ly into our sub­con­scious mind as seeds ready to grow.   They are then plant­ed as seeds into our fer­tile hearts where they will grow as long as they are prop­er­ly nour­ished:  Images and words that line up with God’s Design.  As our heart accepts images, growth begins from an incred­i­ble God cre­at­ed force work­ing to bring the image into real­i­ty.  Then From the abun­dance of our heart our des­tiny grows in our life jour­ney.  Imag­ing some­thing as if it be real will grow your faith to keep you on a suc­cess­ful life jour­ney.

Claude M. Bris­tol in his famous book The Mag­ic of Believ­ing did not say it as I do, but he believed it the same as I do.   There are lit­tle known and scarce­ly under­stood uni­ver­sal truths per­tain­ing to “see­ing the unseen.”  Paul the Apos­tle tells us how to change the unde­sir­ables you may be see­ing; that is the “seen things in your life that you don’t desire.  Here is what I believe Paul meant.  He says in part, “…look not at the things [unde­sir­ables] which are seen but to look at the unseen [the desir­able things].  Seen things are sub­ject to change.  The unseen are eter­nal, that is spir­i­tu­al and sub­ject to our Cre­ators Spir­i­tu­al Laws.  We were cre­at­ed with the abil­i­ty to use these Spir­i­tu­al Laws to our ben­e­fit.”  Brack­ets by me.

This “As If Prin­ci­ple”, like many oth­er uni­ver­sal prin­ci­ples of truth, is like­ly to be gross­ly mis­un­der­stood.  To many it is lit­tle known and scarce­ly under­stood, and to oth­ers may even be a secret [as in being hid from their view].  I pray you will have the desire to learn the truth about these con­cepts and of God’s design.  You can look back at Part one  and Part two of this pow­er­ful suc­cess prin­ci­ple to review the spir­i­tu­al laws that gov­ern it.  We must remem­ber that all God’s Pow­er has been made avail­able for those who believe.

Suc­cess doesn’t depend on who you are, or your assets, it comes sole­ly as you think, as you speak, and as you act from the ABUNDANCE OF YOUR HEART.

Fol­low my com­ing arti­cles of God’s Design for Man.

The truths described here are many and are truths that can be ver­i­fied in the KJV of the bible.  Quo­ta­tion marks, ital­ics, bold­ing, and under­scor­ing I use for empha­sis.

REFERENCES and SOURCES of True Knowl­edge are many.  These are only a few.

  BIBLICAL:

 2 Cor 4:17, 1817 For our light afflic­tion, which is but for a moment, wor­keth for us a far more exceed­ing and eter­nal weight of glo­ry; 18 While we look not at           the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are tem­po­ral; but the things which are not seen are eter­nal.

 1 Corinthi­ans 1:2828 And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God cho­sen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are:

  1 Corinthi­ans 2:1212 Now we have received, not the spir­it of the world, but the spir­it which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely giv­en to us of God.

   Matthew 21:21 21 Jesus answered and said unto them, Ver­i­ly I say unto you, If ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do this which is done to the fig tree, but also if ye shall say unto this moun­tain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; it shall be done.

    Mark 11:23 23 For ver­i­ly I say unto you, That whoso­ev­er shall say unto this moun­tain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have what­so­ev­er he saith.

     Proverbs 1:7 7 The fear of the Lord is the begin­ning of knowl­edge: but fools despise wis­dom and instruc­tion.

     Romans 10:17 17 So then faith cometh by hear­ing, and hear­ing by the word of God.

     Matthew 7:8  For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh find­eth; and to him that knock­eth it shall be opened.

            Matthew 21:22 And all things, what­so­ev­er ye shall ask in prayer, believ­ing, ye shall receive.

Just a few FAMOUS PHILOSOPHERS and oth­er influ­en­tial teach­ers.

Dr. Paul Collins,Dale Carnegie,Zig Ziglar,Norman V. Peale,Robert Schuller,Willie Nelson,Denis Waitley,Claude M. Bristol,Napoleon Hill,Plato

 

The “As If” Success Principle—Part Two

Faith Leave a com­ment

The “As If” Success Principle—Part Two

Part Two

We are all designed to suc­ceed

Man was cre­at­ed to suc­ceed. It is not auto­mat­ic, but is ours by choice.  To accom­plish this, Knowl­edge and wis­dom can be gained through prayer.  The great­est speak­er of pure truth that ever lived, Jesus said, “For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh find­eth; and to him that knock­eth it shall be opened.”   Pray believ­ing for knowl­edge and wis­dom and then stay tuned to receive guid­ance for your life jour­ney.  We can choose or NOT choose to gain the knowl­edge and apply it.  Devi­ate from our human design and fail­ure is the con­se­quence.  We were all cre­at­ed to suc­ceed.

The Unseen

The con­cept of as if imag­ing is based on the eter­nal prin­ci­ple of look­ing at the unseen rather than the seen.  We can learn the pow­er­ful con­cept of look­ing at the un-seen as well as the seen.  How can you look at some­thing when it is not real?  You have to use one of the many fea­tures our cre­ator includ­ed in our design.  You start this process by using your imag­i­na­tion to bring images into your mind’s eye.  Words also cre­ate and rein­force images.  Focus on the same image over and over, speak­ing aloud to your­self what it means to you, what you expect until it is plant­ed into your heart.  Dai­ly, at appro­pri­ate times, then day in and day out repeat this, adding prayer, until the unseen becomes real.  This is a uni­ver­sal truth that suc­cess­ful peo­ple have used since time began.  Napoleon Hill called the eter­nal prin­ci­ple “auto-sug­­ges­­tion” when he said, “FAITH is a state of mind which may be induced, or cre­at­ed, by affir­ma­tion or repeat­ed instruc­tions to the sub­con­scious mind, through the prin­ci­ple of auto-sug­­ges­­tion.”  What he said is true, but he left out WHY it is true.  God’s word says faith comes by hear­ing and hear­ing by the word of God.

While the “auto-sug­­ges­­tion” con­cept is real, we must remem­ber faith is a spir­i­tu­al pow­er and comes from the heart NOT THE MIND.  Of course our faith begins in the mind, but intel­lec­tu­al faith is not all pow­er­ful.  Words of desire com­bined with images por­tray­ing what is desired will enter one’s sub­con­scious as “seeds of real­i­ty.”  And when prop­er­ly nour­ished with faith, will begin to grow in our heart.   We must focus on the desired unseen.  We must NOT look at an unde­sir­able as it is “poi­son” to your grow­ing seed.  When we want to be healthy we should NOT speak or image ill health.  Admit­ting you are ill is not the same as using words that con­done or enforce the ill­ness.  You can image good health while admit­ting to an ill­ness.  I believe we can choose to NOT OWN an ill­ness.  Grow and accom­plish by devel­op­ing pos­i­tive words, images, and actions.

A True Sto­ry of “AS If Imag­ing”

Here is a short true sto­ry of how I learned to use the “As IF Suc­cess Prin­ci­ple.”  In the lat­ter half of the 1960’s I was employed by a Build­ing Con­trac­tor “Com­ley Fin­er Homes, Inc. in Arkansas.  I was hired as a “trou­ble shoot­er” by my old­er broth­er Tom who owned the com­pa­ny.  His sin­gle fam­i­ly hous­es were tak­ing far too long to con­struct from start to fin­ish; some­times 6 or sev­en months.  It was announced to his exist­ing employ­ees, sup­pli­ers and con­trac­tors that I was an “expe­d­i­tor.”  Tom hired me because I was trained by the USAF SAC in mate­r­i­al expe­dit­ing in the years lead­ing up to Viet­nam.  I locat­ed, and expe­dit­ed orders for air­craft parts to help keep the US air­craft fly­ing to and from Viet­nam.  I tracked the orders dai­ly until arrival.  So, for our asso­ciates I was an expe­d­i­tor, for Tom I was his trou­ble shoot­er.

In the weeks and months fol­low­ing my employ­ment as expe­d­i­tor I dis­cov­ered many prob­lems while I spent time mak­ing sure mate­ri­als were on the job when need­ed. I also spent time inves­ti­gat­ing and research­ing to find prob­lems so I could present, not just the prob­lem, but a solu­tion as well.  I was taught to nev­er present a prob­lem with­out a solu­tion,   Tom, liked my efforts and began to ini­ti­ate solu­tions.  It was not long, then, that I was pro­mot­ed in two ways.  One, I was tak­en in as a part­ner in the firm, and two, being a part­ner I should be super­in­ten­dant.

I was per­son­al­ly moti­vat­ed to suc­ceed so I was eager­ly seek­ing out knowl­edge per­tain­ing to home build­ing and to super­vis­ing peo­ple.  When a devel­op­er of cours­es in self-improve­­ment, sales­man­ship, cor­po­rate train­ing, pub­lic speak­ing, and inter­per­son­al skills, Dale Carnegie agent, came to town with cours­es relat­ed to man­ag­ing peo­ple.   I was quick to attend.  Dale Carnegie offered a large selec­tion of self improve­ment sem­i­nars.   I was blessed in that I was able to spend some per­son­al time with the instruc­tor of the four major areas of train­ing.  I attend­ed all. I also read Carnegie’s books.   When they came to town they would always come to our office to vis­it with me and my broth­er Tom; usu­al­ly over break­fast or lunch.  Also, in casu­al cof­fee social­iz­ing I ben­e­fit­ed from per­son­al one on one advice from the instruc­tor.

Though time has blurred my mem­o­ry of the instructor’s name, I will nev­er for­get that time in my life.  I often had cof­fee with the instruc­tor; one day I was dis­cussing the chal­lenges I faced in con­struct­ing of homes in a prof­itable time line.  I was speak­ing neg­a­tive­ly say­ing how I did not know how I would reach that goal.  He said to me, “Oh, Jim, don’t you remem­ber the ses­sion where we learned the truth of “act enthu­si­as­tic and you will become enthu­si­as­tic?” While I nod­ded yes, he added, “As I told you in class, add imag­ing, so you see your­self as being enthused and you will become enthused even faster.  You can start out in small ways.  Then you can use this imag­ing act­ing as if method to accom­plish oth­er goals.”  Then, he held his hand up between us, as if to keep my atten­tion and fin­ished with, “There are two forces that will work togeth­er for your ben­e­fit. When you do this repeat­ed­ly and add a sim­ple prayer to your imag­ing you acti­vate spir­i­tu­al forces on your behalf.”

He was a Chris­t­ian and shared Spir­i­tu­al knowl­edge with me often.  What he told me that day was that I could know the things that are freely giv­en to us of God.   He intro­duced me to Carnegie’s books as well oth­er books such as, “Dis­cov­er­ing the Pow­er of Pos­i­tive Think­ing” by famous author, Nor­man Vin­cent Peale, and “The Mag­ic of Believ­ing” by Claude M Bris­tol.

I began learn­ing to apply these prin­ci­ples.   I was a will­ing stu­dent so I soaked up the knowl­edge offered me in those years.  I learned to improve my words and actions to line up with my goals, and to ask for Devine help and guid­ance.  Those as if lessons from the instruc­tor stuck with me.   I began imme­di­ate­ly to apply that prin­ci­ple, and oth­er truths, to all areas of my life, as well as to my respon­si­ble job of home build­ing.  The sin­gle great­est chal­lenge to reduc­ing the time of con­struc­tion was in per­son­nel and con­trac­tors show­ing up and show­ing up “on time.

As I learned to visu­al­ized suc­cess [visu­al­ly act­ing as if], my enthu­si­asm to be a suc­cess­ful builder became con­ta­gious.  As I improved my peo­ple skills our con­trac­tors, sup­pli­ers, and employ­ees caught the enthu­si­asm from me.  I was became blessed with new insights [thoughts and an eter­nal nudg­ing] of how to improve these areas, so that over a two year time peri­od I changed our home build­ing out­put from 6 or sev­en months to 3 months [90 days] for small­er homes, and 4 months for larg­er homes.  Improved time spent on con­struc­tion also improved prof­its mak­ing that a very suc­cess­ful time in my life.

Suc­cess doesn’t depend on who you are, or your assets, it comes sole­ly as you think, as you speak, and as you act from the ABUNDANCE OF YOUR HEART.

Fol­low me next time for part three of The “As If” Suc­cess Prin­ci­ple.

The truths described here are many and are truths that can be ver­i­fied in the KJV of the bible.  Quo­ta­tion marks, ital­ics, bold­ing, and under­scor­ing I use for empha­sis.

REFERENCES and SOURCES of True Knowl­edge are many.  These are only a few.  The Sources and ref­er­ences here are by no means all that are avail­able.

BIBLICAL:

2 Cor 4:17, 1817 For our light afflic­tion, which is but for a moment, wor­keth for us a far more exceed­ing and eter­nal weight of glo­ry; 18 While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are tem­po­ral; but the things which are not seen are eter­nal.

1 Corinthi­ans 1:2828 And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God cho­sen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are:

1 Corinthi­ans 2:1212 Now we have received, not the spir­it of the world, but the spir­it which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely giv­en to us of God.

 Matthew 21:21 21 Jesus answered and said unto them, Ver­i­ly I say unto you, If ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do this which is done to the fig tree, but also if ye shall say unto this moun­tain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; it shall be done.

Mark 11:23 23 For ver­i­ly I say unto you, That whoso­ev­er shall say unto this moun­tain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have what­so­ev­er he saith.

Proverbs 1:7 7 The fear of the Lord is the begin­ning of knowl­edge: but fools despise wis­dom and instruc­tion.

Romans 10:17 17 So then faith cometh by hear­ing, and hear­ing by the word of God.

Matthew 7:8  For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh find­eth; and to him that knock­eth it shall be opened.

Matthew 21:22 And all things, what­so­ev­er ye shall ask in prayer, believ­ing, ye shall receive.

FAMOUS PHILOSOPHERS and oth­ers

Dale Carnegie

Nor­man V. Peale

Willie Nel­son

Denis Wait­ley

Claude M. Bris­tol

Napoleon Hill

Pla­to

 

The “As If” Success Principle — Part One

Faith One Com­ment

WHERE TO BEGIN

Man was cre­at­ed with an awe­some, pow­er­ful, and some­time mys­te­ri­ous abil­i­ty to suc­ceed in life.  Lit­er­al­ly, man was cre­at­ed to suc­ceed!  We have the abil­i­ty to choose the direc­tion of our life’s jour­ney.  You may have already begun your suc­cess jour­ney; if not, then start today, now.  You can choose now to have a suc­cess­ful jour­ney.  Begin today by seek­ing only knowl­edge and wis­dom rel­e­vant to our suc­cess­ful jour­ney.  Knowl­edge, when it is truth, will set you “free” to pur­sue suc­cess.  Through liv­ing and learn­ing expe­ri­ences wis­dom will grow.

MEN AND WOMEN WERE CREATED TO SUCCEED

Under­stand that God wants suc­cess for you.  You have already begun your jour­ney.  I encour­age you to con­tin­ue today, now by check­ing your map.  Make sure you are on the right road.  Seek knowl­edge and wis­dom.  Knowl­edge, when it is truth, will set you “free” to pur­sue suc­cess.

BUILD A SUCCESS FOUNDATION 

Dur­ing my more than 50 years as entre­pre­neur I spent many years in mul­ti-fam­i­­ly apart­ment devel­op­ment.  And we all know apart­ments must be built on firm foun­da­tions to pre­vent move­ment and set­tle­ment to avoid unin­tend­ed con­se­quences to the build­ings.  Life is full of events that can give us unin­tend­ed con­se­quences.  Life requires a sol­id foun­da­tion.  Knowl­edge and truth are co-cat­a­lysts to our foun­da­tion.  There are many such co-cat­a­lysts nec­es­sary to build­ing a sol­id foun­da­tion.  Build­ing your life foun­da­tion will include the heart [your spir­it], truth, knowl­edge, wis­dom, choic­es, faith, hope, love, will, words, patience, and actions.  All are nec­es­sary when putting faith into action.

I would sug­gest you should begin, or con­tin­ue, your jour­ney by build­ing a sol­id foun­da­tion of knowl­edge and truth to avoid unin­tend­ed con­se­quences.  Truth must be present in all the areas men­tioned.  A foun­da­tion of false beliefs will crum­ble.  Seek the truth and learn as much as you can con­tain about each area.  As you learn, the lights will begin to come on men­tal­ly.   Then, you can make the choice [free will] and accept the truths into your heart.   They must become part of you and be in our spir­it heart.

To deny the truth will not change the TRUTH and is self-destruc­­­tive.

HAVE A BURNING DESIRE

William James, one of the great philoso­phers said “If you only care enough for a result, you will almost cer­tain­ly attain it.  Only you must, then, real­ly wish these things, and wish them exclu­sive­ly, and not wish at the same time a hun­dred oth­er incom­pat­i­ble things just as strong­ly.”  And Napoleon Hill in his books on suc­cess also wrote of desire, “There is a dif­fer­ence between wish­ing for a thing and being READY to receive it.”

When you learn to believe that with the Cre­ator all things are pos­si­ble, then your desire can be made to burn hot enough; and you will be ready to focus on hav­ing a suc­cess­ful life’s jour­ney.   It takes FAITH; so only when one believes will you gen­er­ate that BURNING desire.

FAITH TO BELIEVE IN GOD AND YOURSELF

Faith is nec­es­sary for any accom­plish­ment.  Edu­ca­tion that includes hear­ing and doing will grow your faith.  A jour­ney through life will be very dan­ger­ous for any­one who does not believe in them­selves.  It is a fact that self con­fi­dence grows from suc­cess­ful expe­ri­ences.  Start now to expe­ri­ence and learn and become self con­fi­dent.

POWER OF THE MIND

Even the philoso­pher Pla­to, in an era some 400 BCE, had learned and wrote that we can take charge of our thoughts.  For many, many, years, some believed our thoughts con­trolled us; not at all the truth.  I have learned the mind, will, and emo­tions co-exist in man. The mind is a tru­ly fas­ci­nat­ing and pow­er­ful fea­ture of man.   It has been accept­ed by schol­ars such as Maxwell Maltz in his book Psy­­cho-Cyber­net­ics, that Man has two minds, the con­scious and the sub-con­s­cious [uncon­scious] mind.  I have come to believe that there is a direct con­nec­tion of the sub­con­scious mind to the heart of man [spir­it man].  Doubt and fear both orig­i­nate in the con­scious mind, then if accept­ed goes to the sub­con­scious mind and then to the heart, thus become what we believe in our heart.  The pro­found con­cept of “renew­ing the mind” spoke of in the bible is an imper­a­tive to our hav­ing a suc­cess­ful jour­ney.  We can have a renew­ing of the spir­it of the mind which I believe to be when the sub­con­scious con­nects to the heart.

About the mind it should be not­ed:  Psy­­cho-Cyber­net­ics is a self-help book writ­ten by Amer­i­can writer Maxwell Maltz in 1960. Moti­va­tion­al and self-help experts in per­son­al devel­op­ment, includ­ing Zig Ziglar, Tony Rob­bins, Bri­an Tra­cy have based their tech­niques on Maxwell Maltz. Many of the psy­cho­log­i­cal meth­ods of train­ing elite ath­letes are based on the con­cepts in Psy­­cho-Cyber­net­ics as well. Wikipedia

IMAGING AS IF IT BE

This suc­cess build­ing prin­ci­ple is not dif­fi­cult to prac­tice.   Any­one can do it.  It is a pow­er­ful, even mys­te­ri­ous, force of our Creator’s Nature built deep into our minds.  It is work­ing on, a built into man, prin­ci­ple that dri­ves man to become, or achieve, exact­ly what is imaged.  Our imag­in­ings pass from the present mys­te­ri­ous­ly into our sub­con­scious mind as seeds ready to grow.   They are then passed into our fer­tile hearts where they will grow as long as they are prop­er­ly nour­ished.  Our heart accepts images and growth begins.  There begins an inde­scrib­able force to bring the image into real­i­ty.  Then From the abun­dance of our heart our des­tiny grows.  Imag­ing some­thing as if it be real can grow your faith.

If I were to make a moti­va­tion­al speech to young group of inex­pe­ri­enced stu­dents about pos­i­tive think­ing in which I said to my audi­ence, “You must have a pos­i­tive atti­tude about self improve­ment.  When you lack inter­est you can just say and act as if you are enthused and you will become enthused.   When fac­ing a task you must think you can.  Then you can.”  Most of these young peo­ple would accept it to be a fact; some would think of it as pos­i­tive think­ing, oth­ers might dis­miss it alto­geth­er.

Of course these pre­cepts are “poten­tial­ly true” and are encour­aged by many moti­va­tion­al speak­ers.  There are many leg­endary moti­va­tion­al speak­ers, pop­u­lar min­is­ters, and oth­ers who have pro­claimed philoso­phies that infer we can man­i­fest into our lives things that are non-exis­­tent and bring them into real­i­ty now.   Some offer advice on how to make this hap­pen.  One famous moti­va­tor, Dale Carnegie, spoke and taught “Act enthu­si­as­tic and you will become enthu­si­as­tic.”   This is a true con­cept.  The “As If” prin­ci­ple is an expan­sion on what Dale Carnegie and oth­ers were teach­ing  I will expand on it and add oth­er truths and show how and why they work for some, and not for oth­ers.  You can learn to use them to your ben­e­fit.

This “As If Prin­ci­ple”, like many oth­er uni­ver­sal prin­ci­ples of truth, is like­ly to be gross­ly mis­un­der­stood.  To many it is lit­tle known and scarce­ly under­stood, and to oth­ers may even be a secret [as in being hid from their view].  I pray you will have the desire to learn the truth about this con­cept and God’s intent.

HOW “AS IF IMAGING” WORKS

These con­cepts work by putting faith into action.  Is this Mag­ic?  No.  Pos­si­ble yes! It is REAL and it WORKS.  While this is not “… the rest of the sto­ry,” as Paul Har­vey used to say, it is indeed a valu­able intro­duc­tion to anoth­er uni­ver­sal suc­cess prin­ci­ple that is lit­tle known and scarce­ly under­stood.  I will con­tin­ue details in Part One and Part Two com­ing.

FOLLOW MY COMING ARTICLES

In com­ing arti­cles I will show how this suc­cess prin­ci­ple WILL WORK for you, and I will include some true sto­ries of how I learned to use this prin­ci­pal suc­cess­ful­ly.  The truths described here are many and are truths that can be ver­i­fied in the KJV of the bible.  Quo­ta­tion marks, ital­ics, bold­ing, and under­scor­ing I use for empha­sis.

REFERENCES

 The ref­er­ences here are by no means all that are avail­able.

Romans 12:2 And be not con­formed to this world: but be ye trans­formed by the renew­ing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and accept­able, and per­fect, will of God.

Eph­esians 4:23 And be renewed in the spir­it of your mind;

1 Corinthi­ans 1:26–28 26 For ye see your call­ing, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called: 27 But God hath cho­sen the fool­ish things of the world to con­found the wise; and God hath cho­sen the weak things of the world to con­found the things which are mighty; 28 And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God cho­sen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are:

Mark 11:21–23  21 And Peter call­ing to remem­brance saith unto him, Mas­ter, behold, the fig tree which thou cursedst is with­ered away.  22 And Jesus answer­ing saith unto them, Have faith in God.  23 For ver­i­ly I say unto you, That whoso­ev­er shall say unto this moun­tain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have what­so­ev­er he saith.

Proverbs 1:7 7 The fear of the Lord is the begin­ning of knowl­edge: but fools despise wis­dom and instruc­tion.

Romans 10:17 17 So then faith cometh by hear­ing, and hear­ing by the word of God.

Matthew 7:8  For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh find­eth; and to him that knock­eth it shall be opened.

Matthew 21:22 And all things, what­so­ev­er ye shall ask in prayer, believ­ing, ye shall receive.

2024, A New Year, can have New Beginnings, Even a Renewing of the Mind

Mind Leave a com­ment

Little known and scarcely understood Spiritual Principles from God’s Word.

I have long mar­veled at the spir­i­tu­al teach­ings of Jesus dur­ing his brief time here on earth.  Many times he taught using para­bles, but at times he was much more direct.  One such teach­ing, I imag­ine, went some­thing like this.  He was with his dis­ci­ples, it was morn­ing and they were return­ing to the city, and feel­ing hun­gry, Jesus spot­ted a fig tree and no doubt thought to him­self he would have some figs to eat.  Going to the side of the tree he found no figs, only leaves.  He spoke to the tree say­ing, “Let no fruit grow on thee hence­for­ward for ever.”

Some­time lat­er, he and his dis­ci­ples were in the same area.  They spot­ted the fig tree which had with­ered and died; a result of Jesus words.  See­ing the fig tree again the dis­ci­ples spoke in a sur­prised tone, “how soon is the fig tree with­ered away!”

Jesus, then answered them and said, “Ver­i­ly I say unto you, If ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do this which is done to the fig tree, but also if ye shall say unto this moun­tain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; it shall be done.”

Little known truth of the power of Spoken Words:

Notice, too, in Mark how Jesus respond­ed to his dis­ci­ples:  And Jesus answer­ing saith unto them, Have faith in God.  23 For ver­i­ly I say unto you, That whoso­ev­er shall say unto this moun­tain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have what­so­ev­er he saith.  24 There­fore I say unto you, What things soev­er ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.

Ahh so, the “name it and claim it” Chris­tians may not be entire­ly wrong.

These are tru­ly pro­found teach­ings reveal­ing how mankind can be in charge of his des­tiny.  We can learn to take full advan­tage of God’s plan of Sal­va­tion.  Think of that!  You can take con­trol of your des­tiny when you learn how to use this knowl­edge to pros­per your body, your soul, and your spir­it?  To get the full ben­e­fit from these truths includ­ed in God’s design for man you must con­sid­er the “rest of the truth” includ­ed in this scrip­ture where Jesus said, “…and doubt not, ye shall….”  Remem­ber doubt comes from the heart; then also con­sid­er the state­ment “…ye shall…”  The dic­tio­nary defines shall as an order, a promise, a require­ment, or oblig­a­tion, and as some­thing that will take place or exist in the future.

Don’t Own it:

One of the least rec­og­nized faith killers is the act of own­ing some­thing you DO NOT WANT.  Some will think this triv­ial.  It is NOT triv­ial it is major.  God’s Word says we can have what we say when we believe what we say.  As long as you claim it by say­ing “I have .….” you will have.  I know it is not easy but one could say “I have symp­toms of…” instead of say­ing “I have.”   Then RESIST say­ing things like “It is not work­ing” or I still have…”  Pray about it.  God will help those who ask, believ­ing.

Dead Without Works:

While there are some true instances of mir­a­cles in which the answer to prayer will come like a bolt of light­ning out the heav­ens, chances are most prayers will require “the believ­ing prayer” to be active in bring­ing that prayer forth to real­i­ty.  Remem­ber, the words “faith with­out action is dead.”  And by his actions thru faith that main­tains the prayer prayed, the answer “shall” come.  Only believe!

I now remem­ber a very pop­u­lar radio host, jour­nal­ist, and broad­cast speak­er, Paul Har­vey, and his short sto­ries of his­to­ry and sci­ence that he pro­claimed to be “the rest of the sto­ry”.   I now want to give you the rest of the les­son Jesus offered his dis­ci­ples on that morn­ing I write about here.

Little known and scarcely understood “…we shall..:”

In the Jesus teach­ing that morn­ing on faith and doubt­ing not, [In my opin­ion, He includ­ed the rest of the sto­ry] he very clev­er­ly used the fig tree event to shine God’s light onto a true and pow­er­ful truth includ­ed in mans cre­ation.   Jesus’ faith in GOD was such that his prayers came forth instant­ly as he spoke. He learned from God to speak things into exis­tence.  He tells us we can do this as well, pro­vid­ing we believe it in our heart, and doubt not.  He also tells us we “shall” [in the future] have our prayers answered when believ­ing and doubt­ing not.

In his teach­ing that morn­ing Jesus includ­ed in his les­son on faith and doubt­ing not, lit­tle known and scarce­ly under­stood truths about prayer when he said, “And all things, what­so­ev­er ye shall ask in prayer, believ­ing, ye shall receive.”  Notice Jesus said, “….all things, what­so­ev­er…”

I know a well qual­i­fied and wise Chris­t­ian min­is­ter who teach­es of Math­ew 21: 18–22 that Jesus was teach­ing his dis­ci­ples about faith and prayer; and that verse 21 is the faith teach­ing, and verse 22 is the pray teach­ing.  I agree.   I also believe that besides our prayers being in line with God’s word, our faith filled actions and reac­tions to our prayers are sig­nif­i­cant to our “answered prayer.”  They actu­al­ly demon­strate the faith from our heart.   In the time after your prayer requests; in the min­utes, hours, and days fol­low­ing prayer requests we are respon­si­ble for our actions, our words spo­ken.  Do they line up with our prayer request?  If not, what will result?   Will our actions demon­strate “faith” or “doubt?  Temp­ta­tions to doubt will be every­where.  Take no doubt­ful thoughts, but replace them with “vocal thanks” to God for answered prayer.  I know from expe­ri­ence it is very dif­fi­cult to main­tain faith filled actions and words.  Chris­tians must learn that declar­ing vic­to­ry while still expe­ri­enc­ing symp­toms is not lying.

As anoth­er year comes to a close, I like to look for­ward to the New Year as it can brings us new begin­nings, new oppor­tu­ni­ties, and even a renew­ing of our mind depend­ing on what comes from our hearts.  Jesus taught that out of the abun­dance of the heart the mouth speaks.  I believe we must be very care­ful what goes into our hearts; for out of the abun­dance of our heart “faith” for answered prayers shows forth, as well as the shap­ing of our des­tiny.

I pray your 2024 will be filled with bless­ings of hap­pi­ness and pros­per­i­ty body, soul, and spir­it.

These truths described here, I took from KJV of bible in Math­ew 18–22, and from Mark 11:22:24.  High­light­ing and under­scor­ing I used for empha­sis.

Math­ew 21:18–22.  18 Now in the morn­ing as he returned into the city, he hun­gered.  19 And when he saw a fig tree in the way, he came to it, and found noth­ing there­on, but leaves only, and said unto it, Let no fruit grow on thee hence­for­ward for ever. And present­ly the fig tree with­ered away.  20 And when the dis­ci­ples saw it, they mar­veled, say­ing, How soon is the fig tree with­ered away!  21 Jesus answered and said unto them, Ver­i­ly I say unto you, If ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do this which is done to the fig tree, but also if ye shall say unto this moun­tain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; it shall be done.  22 And all things, what­so­ev­er ye shall ask in prayer, believ­ing, ye shall receive.

In Mark 11:22–24.    22  And Jesus answer­ing saith unto them, Have faith in God.  23 For ver­i­ly I say unto you, That whoso­ev­er shall say unto this moun­tain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have what­so­ev­er he saith.  24 There­fore I say unto you, What things soev­er ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.

Join me next time when I bring more lit­tle known and scarce­ly under­stood truths from God’s design for man dis­closed in “No Deposit-No Return.”