Concepts of Success

Con­cepts

Faith

God Is! — or — God is Not!

Actions, Choic­es, Faith, Knowl­edge

We all Wager OUR lives — that God IS, or that God is not — by our thoughts, our choic­es, our words, and our actions.  Our cre­ator gave us the will to choose.  God wants us to fol­low him by choice not by force.  Whether or not we admit, all who have ever heard of God have made a choice to believe God is or is God is not.  Our choice is appar­ent in our lives, as the way we live.  Lit­tle known and scarce­ly under­stood is the fact that all who have heard of God have made a choice; and all will gain or lose as a result of their choice.  For any wager­ing that God is not, it is not too late to change your mind.

The French math­e­mati­cian and philoso­pher, Blaise Pas­cal wrote what some called a prac­ti­cal argu­ment for belief in God.  It became known a Pascal’s Wager, with some refer­ring to Pascal’s Gam­ble.  Blaise Pas­cal (born June 19, 1623, Cler­­mont-Fer­­rand, France—died August 19, 1662, Paris) was a French math­e­mati­cian, physi­cist, reli­gious philoso­pher, and mas­ter of prose.

Pascal accurately demonstrated how we gain or lose depending on how we wager.

Experience God through your heart:

He had an impres­sive reli­gious doc­trine of teach­ing the expe­ri­ence of God through the heart rather than through rea­son.  Appar­ent­ly he expe­ri­enced lead­ing from the Holy Spir­it, just as God designed.  From the abun­dance of our heart our beliefs are spo­ken.

Pascal further clarified his teaching:

“He argued that peo­ple can choose to believe in God or can choose to not believe in God, and that God either exists or he does not. Under these con­di­tions, if a per­son believes in the Chris­t­ian God and this God actu­al­ly exists, they gain infi­nite hap­pi­ness; if a per­son does not believe in the Chris­t­ian God and God exists, they receive infi­nite suf­fer­ing. On the oth­er hand, if a per­son believes in the Chris­t­ian God and God does not exist, then they receive some finite dis­ad­van­tages from a life of Chris­t­ian liv­ing; and if a per­son does not believe in this God and God does not exist, then they receive some finite plea­sure from a life lived unhin­dered by Chris­t­ian moral­i­ty.”

In a profound declaration
Pascal said, “Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. Let us estimate these two chances. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing.
Wager, then, without hesitation that He is.”

You must decide, will you gam­ble your place in eter­ni­ty? When you can move past the wager­ing that He is or is not; when you see Him as “for sure and real,” then you have Him in your heart.

You don’t have to wager, you just believe.

Fol­low me next time for more on God’s Design for Man.

Source and Ref­er­ences:  Few from all that is avail­able.

Ency­clo­pe­dia Bri­tan­ni­ca

Romans 3:27 KJV

Matthew 6:21

Romans 10:9–10

Knowledge

Conclusion to “ACCORDING TO…”

Actions, Choic­es, Faith, Knowl­edge

Part Three of 3

Rules — According to…

Rules begin short­ly after birth and quick­ly become per­pet­u­al neces­si­ties to liv­ing, and right­ly so; as soci­ety will crum­ble with­out rules to keep life civ­il.  Today, I write about rules that I per­ceive to be para­mount as SUCCESS PRINCIPLES.

Joshua in the Bible lived around 1355 BCE to 1245 BCE. He was born as Hosea ben Nun in Egypt in 1355 BCE and suc­ceed­ed Moses as the leader of the Israelites.  In Joshua’s day it was the book of the law [rules] THAT GOD INSTRUCTED him to fol­low to “have good suc­cess.”

Joshua 1:8 KJV

This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt med­i­tate there­in day and night, that thou mayest observe to do accord­ing to all that is writ­ten there­in: for then thou shalt make thy way pros­per­ous, and then thou shalt have good suc­cess.

…It is about LIFE:

Today it is the bible that we should observe, as our rule book, to do accord­ing to all that is writ­ten there­in.  Oh, it is NOT ABOUT “RELIGION”  it is about LIFE.  Sad­ly, for much of mankind, the suc­cess prin­ci­ples there­in are lit­tle known and scarce­ly under­stood.  I sug­gest, most who refuse to read it say­ing, ” I don’t believe that stuff” have not read it and don’t know what they are “not believ­ing.”

In today’s  world, it is TikTok/Facebook social media and the so-called news media net­works that are pro­fuse­ly cloud­ing the world we live in with insan­i­ty, con­fu­sion, and decep­tion.  Some, influ­ence-rs, are ded­i­cat­ed to deny­ing and remov­ing man’s his­to­ry and any­thing relat­ed to Chris­tian­i­ty, and inject­ing all sorts of untruths into our lives.  Sad­ly many will believe any­thing they see on social media or hear on news media net­works.

To the deniers who claim the Word is all myths and fables, I must remind you: In my para­phrased words [as tak­en from 1 Corinthi­ans 1:27–29  KJV].  God chose the fool­ish things of the world to con­found the wise; and He hath chose the weak things of the world to con­found the things which are mighty; and base things of the world, and things which are despised, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are; that no flesh should glo­ry in his pres­ence.

True knowl­edge is being threat­ened with the “dumb­ing down” & “false nar­ra­tive” affect of the social media, the news media net­works, and our edu­ca­tion sys­tem as well.

True Knowledge “The paradigm for Success”, can be found in the Holy Bible.

Men and women often miss the fact, or will not accept the fact that all true knowl­edge of suc­cess prin­ci­ples was includ­ed in CREATION.  Man did NOT invent those suc­cess prin­ci­ples though he has used them for thou­sands of years.  Regard­less of your beliefs, mankind was endowed with free will and the abil­i­ty to choose to use THE PARADIGM OF TRUE KNOWLEDGE to insure suc­cess on life’s jour­ney.  WHAT ARE YOUR CHOICES?

DO YOU CHOOSE To build your life on a sol­id foun­da­tion of TRUTH?  To do so,  you must bal­ance “accord­ing to” with all that is writ­ten to include Body, Soul, and Spir­it?

WILL YOU believe, speak, and act, “according to” and become successful?

Fol­low me next time for more on God’s Design for Man.

Some rel­e­vant ref­er­ences

1 Corinthi­ans 1:27–29
Joshua 1:8
Romans 12:2Luke 17:6
John 17:17
1 John 5:14–15
John 15:7
James 1:4–8
Luke 6:45
Luke 6:45

Some rel­e­vant ref­er­ences

Proverbs 18:14
Proverbs 18:14
Proverbs 4:7
Proverbs 3:13
Proverbs 4:5
Proverbs 4:7
Proverbs 16:16
Proverbs 17:16
Proverbs 19:8

Knowledge

ACCORDING TO…Part two of 3

Choic­es, Faith, Knowl­edge, Spir­it

Accord­ing to the Law of Align­ment

The spir­i­tu­al law of align­ment is rarely rec­og­nized or used pur­pose­ful­ly.   It can work for you. It works for you, or does not work for you, accord­ing to your plan, or lack of a plan.  It will work for, or against you “accord­ing to” your choic­es, your words, and your actions.

As I see it “the Law of Align­ment is mak­ing sure your thoughts, words and actions are in har­mo­ny with your dreams, desires and goals.  Doing so in har­mo­ny with laws of the Uni­verse, you will attract what you need in life to accom­plish your desires and goals.  Notice I did not say you would have what you need, but that you would attract your needs.  How you act on what you attract will deter­mine what you have”.    Fol­low­ing the Laws of the Uni­verse is anoth­er way of align­ing our image with the image God has of you.  He cre­at­ed you and I to have domin­ion which is imper­a­tive to suc­ceed­ing in life.

It is imper­a­tive that we align the actions of our bod­ies with our mind, soul, and spir­it (heart); while align­ing mind, soul, and spir­it with the laws of the Uni­verse to insure our suc­cess.

Con­cern­ing your life jour­ney, you might ask your­self, “Do my words align with the Cre­ators laws and my actions aligned with my words?”  This is often called “walks the talk.”  “Walk­ing the talk” can lead to fail­ure when the talk is not accord­ing to the Cre­ators Laws.

We all should be ask­ing “How do I align my dreams, hopes, plans, and goals for my future with the Cre­ators Laws of the Uni­verse.   This can be of sig­nif­i­cant con­fu­sion for many peo­ple.  I have heard church goers declare “I don’t want to be a preach­er or mis­sion­ary.  I like what I am now.”  They sel­dom real­ize God can and does put the desire in their heart.

Accord­ing to Your Cho­sen Career

We all need to remem­ber God cre­at­ed some peo­ple to be Apos­tles, Prophets, and Teach­ers to be lead­ers; and He made oth­ers to serve as apos­tles, prophets, evan­ge­lists, pas­tors, or teach­ers.  How­ev­er, He did not exclude my career.  What I do and how I serve becomes per­son­al an issue between God and me, as I dis­cov­er His will for my life.

Thank God that we can have Chris­tians in many careers who effec­tive­ly serve our Cre­ator.  As we gain knowl­edge of the laws of the Uni­verse we will learn suc­cess­ful plans are aligned with those laws, while fail­ures are out of align­ment.

Regard­less of your beliefs, mankind was endowed with free will and the abil­i­ty to par­tic­i­pate in THE PARADIGM OF TRUE KNOWLEDGE to insure suc­cess on life’s jour­ney.  You want suc­cess?  Get knowl­edge of the “Cre­ators laws of the Uni­verse.”   Then, as you speak and act ACCORDING TO…The pow­er of the spir­i­tu­al law of align­ment will burst forth in truth and pow­er for your suc­cess­ful life jour­ney when you align your plans for suc­cess with God’s plan for you.  Remem­ber, build­ing your plans to suc­ceed accord­ing to God’s will for you will not mean you have to give up your dream.

Fol­low me next time for ACCORDING TO…part Three of 3.

Some rel­e­vant ref­er­ences:

Joshua 1:8
1 John 5:14–15
Luke 6:45
Luke 6:45
Proverbs 18:14
Proverbs 18:14
Proverbs 4:7

Proverbs 3:13
Proverbs 4:5
Proverbs 4:7
Proverbs 16:16
Proverbs 17:16
Proverbs 19:8

 

Knowledge

ACCORDING TO… Part One of 3

Knowl­edge, Spir­it

The Foundation of man

When we write or talk of God’s cre­ation of mankind we dare not sep­a­rate the spir­it from the soul and the flesh.  Also I see the les­son from Luke 6:48 being a spir­i­tu­al les­son per­tain­ing to our spir­i­tu­al foun­da­tion.  It reads “They are like a man build­ing a house, who dug down deep and laid the foun­da­tion on rock. When a flood came, the tor­rent struck that house but could not shake it, because it was well built.”  The foun­da­tion we build is in our heart and it is intend­ed that we get knowl­edge and wis­dom con­cern­ing the creator’s laws of the Uni­verse and speak and act accord­ing to them.  We must guard what goes into our hearts.

I believe the spir­i­tu­al heart of man, his inner­most being, is his real foun­da­tion.  What goes into the heart will deter­mine the strength of his foun­da­tion; from it will come his suc­cess­es or fail­ures.

Man’s life becomes an out­er expres­sion of what is abun­dant in his heart.

Laws That Apply

You and I, and yes, all of mankind, Chris­t­ian or not, are sub­ject to the laws of the Uni­verse; God’s rules for life.  We were unique­ly designed to be in rela­tion­ship with our Cre­ator uti­liz­ing our whole per­son; body, soul, and spir­it.  The whole per­son should be involved in our life; how we live. Some say it is about bal­ance.  God’s word tells us how to make our way in this life suc­cess­ful.  He instruct­ed Joshua: 8 This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt med­i­tate there­in day and night, that thou mayest observe to do accord­ing to all that is writ­ten there­in: for then thou shalt make thy way pros­per­ous, and then thou shalt have good suc­cess. Joshua 1:8 King James Ver­sion

He cre­at­ed us to suc­ceed then offered His word, writ­ten instruc­tions for suc­cess.

We were designed and cre­at­ed with the abil­i­ty to prophe­cy and fore­cast our own future through words we speak and actions we take.  Few know this.  Our words and our actions come from the heart.  Do your words align with Laws of the Uni­verse?  Are your words accord­ing to your plan? Are your words from your heart or impul­sive.  Every­one must real­ize our words amount to prayers in many ways.  Some­one once said, “Be care­ful what you pray for, you might get it.”

God’s laws, laws of the uni­verse, apply to all of mankind, no excep­tions.  There are laws that direct­ly affect our body, for exam­ple, what we eat or drink will have phys­i­cal affects.  There are laws that affect our soul, such as our edu­ca­tion and our knowl­edge affect our minds.  Then there are spir­i­tu­al laws that affect us spir­i­tu­al­ly in the heart.  We must be care­ful what we allow into our heart.

When an apple falls from a tree it is because of a uni­ver­sal law of grav­i­ty.  It works all the time whether we are aware or not.  All uni­ver­sal laws, whether men­tal, spir­i­tu­al, or phys­i­cal, work this way whether we like it or not, whether we know or not.  They work just as planned.  Spir­i­tu­al laws are includ­ed in God’s laws, laws of the Uni­verse.  Spir­i­tu­al laws work just as faith­ful­ly, accord­ing to design, as do the laws of the mind, or laws of physics.

Suc­cess doesn’t depend on who you are, or your assets, it comes sole­ly as you believe, as you think, as you speak, and as you act from the abun­dance of your heart, accord­ing to God’s laws of the Uni­verse.  

As chil­dren we all knew how to dream.  Then as we grow up and old­er life hap­pens, and cul­tures inter­fere so we for­get how.  While it is impor­tant to have dreams I am not refer­ring to “When you wish upon a star” kind of fan­tasies.  One might say I write about “How to obtain what you REALLY want in life” [the desires of your heart] by learn­ing how to call things that are not as though they are UNTIL THEY REALLY ARE.  How to real­ize your dreams by learn­ing what is “God’s Design for your life.”

Your suc­cess depends on your spir­i­tu­al foun­da­tion.  So your plans for suc­cess should begin by build­ing a good foun­da­tion on sol­id rock ACCORDING TO God laws of the Uni­verse.  

Fol­low me next time for ACCORDING TO…Part Two of 3

Some rel­e­vant ref­er­ences:

Joshua 1:8
1 John 5:14–15
Luke 6:45
Luke 6:45
Proverbs 18:14
Proverbs 18:14
Proverbs 4:7

Proverbs 3:13
Proverbs 4:5
Proverbs 4:7
Proverbs 16:16
Proverbs 17:16
Proverbs 19:8

Patience

Patience In Action

Spir­it 33 Com­ments

A pow­er­ful force for Suc­cess

One with­out the Oth­er?

Lit­tle known and rarely under­stood is the invin­ci­ble pow­er to suc­ceed that will come to those who har­mo­nious­ly inte­grate all of God’s design for suc­cess into their dreams using all of them togeth­er syn­er­gis­ti­cal­ly.  Doing this, you will enter into a par­a­digm shift from just get­ting by to suc­ceed­ing.

When it comes to apply­ing the faith of patience to your actions it could be said “You can’t have one with­out the oth­er.”  I believe God’s prin­ci­ples of suc­cess are all inclu­sive and not to be sep­a­rat­ed, so we must remem­ber action is only part of God’s plan.  Act­ing in faith fol­lowed by the force and pow­er of patience can empow­er your actions to ful­fill­ment when your actions are “accord­ing to His will.

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

 Where to start? 

Start with prayer, it is is easy, but suc­ceed­ing is an on-going endeav­or of actions and patience dri­ven by desire, faith, hope, and love; all POWERED BY PRAYER.

Dreams often seem out of reach, like huge moun­tains of insur­mount­able heights that can cre­ate hes­i­ta­tion or dis­cour­age­ment.  These dif­fi­cul­ties in them­selves should not be rea­son enough to give up and quit.  Arthur R. Ashe Jr., the first Black play­er select­ed to the Unit­ed States Davis Cup team, and the only Black man ever to win the sin­gles titles at Wim­ble­don, the US Open, and the Aus­tralian Open said “Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.” He gave us a pro­found reminder of the real poten­tial we each have with­in us no mat­ter our cir­cum­stances.

While we must not deny our cur­rent sit­u­a­tion in life, we can start where we are by tak­ing baby steps towards our goals. One of those baby steps should include seek­ing out and ver­i­fy­ing what is true of our sit­u­a­tion.   We must start with, main­tain, and act in truth; the real truth.  Final­ly, brethren, what­so­ev­er things are true, what­so­ev­er things are hon­est, what­so­ev­er things are just, what­so­ev­er things are pure, what­so­ev­er things are love­ly, what­so­ev­er things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things. Philip­pi­ans 4:8.  I believe God put these things togeth­er for the pur­pose of per­son­al empow­er­ment.  I believe these things work syn­er­gis­ti­cal­ly in empow­er­ing our actions.

Doing With­in While Doing With­out!

There is a lit­tle known con­cept of truth about start­ing from lit­tle or noth­ing that is pow­er­ful in mov­ing us for­ward in our jour­ney, to make it a suc­cess­ful jour­ney.

We can learn to do with what we have, to use our exist­ing knowl­edge, resources, and abil­i­ties toward our dreams.  Think cir­cum­stances are hold­ing you back, think again:  There is always some­thing one can do to get start­ed.  Mr. Ashe’s con­cept of Start where you are, Use what you have, Do what you can, can be said anoth­er way.  “You can do with­in while doing with­out.  What does that mean?   Here is an exam­ple to illus­trate the mean­ing.

I have mul­ti­ple hob­bies, one is in wood crafts and I am blessed with a nice shop with many tools.  One day I found a plan to a nice set of book cas­es and I quick­ly thought I will build those for our home.  Then as I stud­ied the plans I found there to be a cou­ple of issues for me.  The plans called for plac­ing a nice mold­ing edg­ing onto the out­er frame.  With­out that appear­ance they just would not look the same.  So I was dis­cour­aged and thought maybe I could not do this project.

Then I decid­ed I would look at the tool required to do this mold­ing.  I found it.  But it cost more than I could bud­get, issue num­ber one.   So I thought, “How long will it take for me to save enough mon­ey to buy that tool?” Then I remem­bered some­thing I learned many years ago.  I could prac­tice a lit­tle known con­cept of doing with­in while doing with­out.  That would be to study the draw­ings and make plans, and do what I could with what I had, to move on the project when I received the tool.

So, then, as I devised a plan to save the mon­ey I real­ized, issue num­ber two, I did not have the qual­i­ty lum­ber need­ed for those book cas­es. “Alright” I said to myself, “I will just come up with a plan to get the lum­ber as well as the tool.  So, I con­tin­ued to do with­in while doing with­out as I stud­ied the plans for build­ing the book cas­es.  As I stud­ied the plans and dreamed of where we would place them in our home, I prayed silent­ly “God, show me how to accom­plish this.”

Anoth­er Lit­tle Know Truth:

As I began this project doing with­in while doing with­out I was actu­al­ly uti­liz­ing anoth­er lit­tle know truth of God’s Design for man.  That is:  As I pro­ceed­ed to act in with faith in patience I was “call­ing things that were not as though they were.”   Anoth­er prin­ci­ple of suc­cess works “accord­ing to His will.”

As I con­tin­ued, thoughts began to come to me with ideas for com­ing up with the qual­i­ty lum­ber for this project. Weeks before I had noticed a large Elm tree that wind had tak­en down months ago dur­ing a bad storm. I went into the woods and sur­veyed the tree.  “Yes,” I thought, “I have tak­en lum­ber from our woods before, Yes, I can cut out some select small logs that I can then cut into some very nice lum­ber.”  So with chain saw, table saw, cut off saws, and pow­er plan­er, and me-pow­er, I made some real­ly nice qual­i­ty elm lum­ber from that downed Elm tree.

Wow!  I had decid­ed I real­ly want­ed to build those book cas­es, so I start­ed with what most would call “noth­ing.’  But it was, NOT NOTHING AT ALL, it was real­ly some­thing.  My some­thing was a dream and faith.  I had a dream so decid­ed to make my prayer for help my First Prayer and not a last resort prayer.

As I stud­ied the plans and dreamed, see­ing the fin­ished book cas­es in our home, I would say silent prayers ask­ing for help.  And I added one of my favorite prayers, “I can do all thinks through Christ who strength­ens me.”  He gave me strengths of hope and how to ideas and faith to act, and the patience to move ahead baby step by baby step until I was suc­cess­ful.  Prayers and actions in faith cre­at­ed in me, in my heart “a can do atti­tude.”

Over the years I have learned to make, my prayers of last resort, my FIRST PRAYERS.  And I learned how to apply the POWER AND FORCE OF FAITH WITH PATIENCE to my dreams as I start­ed this project where I was, with what I had, and I began to do what I could.  I dreamed, Prayed, and act­ed in faith and patience.  Through my faith empow­ered actions I had called things that “were not” as though they were.  Weeks lat­er I received my new tool pur­chased from mon­ey saved.  Then using the lum­ber from the fall­en Elm tree I did build a new set of book cas­es shown here on right and left of TV set.

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

We must remem­ber that Action and patience are only part of God’s plan for our suc­cess.  While He designed us all to suc­ceed, it is not auto­mat­ic, but seek­ing it is by choice.  Start­ing is easy, but Suc­ceed­ing takes Desire, Faith, Hope, Love, Action, and Patience to Per­se­vere, all Pow­ered by Prayer.    Fol­low me next time for more of God’s Design for Man.

Some sources:

Matthew 7:7  Ask, Search, Knock

Ask, and it will be giv­en to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.

1 John 5:14  Con­fi­dence in Him

And this is the bold­ness we have in him, that if we ask any­thing accord­ing to his will, he hears us.

Luke 6:47  Words and Acts

I will show you what some­one is like who comes to me, hears my words, and acts on them.

John 16:13  Truth

When the Spir­it of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own but will speak what­ev­er he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.

John 8:31,32  Truth

Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye con­tin­ue in my word, then are ye my dis­ci­ples indeed; 32 And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.

Philip­pi­ans 4:8  True

Final­ly, brethren, what­so­ev­er things are true, what­so­ev­er things are hon­est, what­so­ev­er things are just, what­so­ev­er things are pure, what­so­ev­er things are love­ly, what­so­ev­er things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.

Actions

Actions

Wis­dom One Com­ment

Lit­tle known and rarely under­stood is the invin­ci­ble pow­er to suc­ceed that will come to you when you har­mo­nious­ly inte­grate all of God’s design for suc­cess into your dreams using all of them togeth­er syn­er­gis­ti­cal­ly.  When it comes to apply­ing faith to your actions it could be said “You can’t have one with­out the oth­er.”  I believe God’s prin­ci­ples of suc­cess are all inclu­sive and not to be sep­a­rat­ed so we must remem­ber action is only part of God’s plan.

ACTIONS, TRUE AND HARMONIOUS:  Lack of har­mo­ny is also a faith killer lead­ing to mis­takes and even fail­ure.  A har­mo­nious­ly action­able Faith is one that works with hope and patience to bring suc­cess.  This is not a pro­posed for­mu­la or an exclu­sive method.  Instead it is truth of how I see a part of God’s plan for man to suc­ceed.  We can choose man’s law of attrac­tion or we can choose the true law of attrac­tion as God designed exclu­sive­ly for peo­ple who believe in Him.

God Plan is Pow­er­ful and unique­ly described in Philip­pi­ans 4:8.  Actions that are true, hon­or­able, just, pure, pleas­ing, com­mend­able, excel­lent, and tak­en with praise will be har­mo­nious and result in suc­cess. The enor­mous mag­ni­tude of this truth is a pow­er­ful spir­i­tu­al law of the uni­verse, cre­at­ed when God cre­at­ed mankind.  Philip­pi­ans 4:8

True:  Every­one knows, or should know what is true, but along the way life, cir­cum­stances, social and oth­er pres­sures can mis­lead us into mis­takes.  All those pres­sures and stress from peo­ple can wrong­ful­ly influ­ence our deci­sions and there­fore our actions.  This is why we should always ask for guid­ance dur­ing stress­ful times.

Hon­or­able:  Per­sons can pos­sess hon­or.  It is close­ly relat­ed to truth is act­ing in ways to deserve respect, bring dis­tinc­tion and recog­ni­tion for actions and ser­vices ren­dered.

Just:  Actions that are just will be true, hon­or­able, fair, con­sis­tent, moral, prop­er­ly due, and mer­it­ed mak­ing them account­able.

Pure:  Actions can have adul­ter­at­ed inten­tions so thus are not pure.

Pleas­ing:  Self pleas­ing is not always hon­or­able, just, and pure.  But it is OK for our actions to be self pleas­ing.  After all this is what our dreams should include.  And it is pos­si­ble to be self pleas­ing while not being self­ish and self cen­tered.

Com­mend­able:  Accept­able in all areas and activ­i­ties of our lives includ­ing laws of the land being hon­or­able, just, pure, excel­lent, and pleas­ing to those involved.

Excel­lent:  Har­mo­nious actions of the extreme high­est or finest qual­i­ty, Excelling and sur­pass­ing oth­ers in some good qual­i­ty.  A qual­i­ty of great worth is supe­ri­or in nature.

Praise: There is unspeak­able pow­er in praise.  Humbly speak­ing and act­ing in grat­i­tude, thank­ful­ness, and praise are absolute require­ments to liv­ing suc­cess­ful­ly.  Prais­ing our friends, asso­ciates.  Prais­ing God in thanks­giv­ing for our suc­cess­es today and in the future in what we see our goals are work­ing towards.  Includ­ed with our As If imag­ing can be faith boost­ing.

Being mind­ful of liv­ing in the present but act­ing in faith on your dreams can low­er stress and lead to emo­tion­al and spir­i­tu­al and phys­i­cal health when we are liv­ing it with Divine Faith, always with grat­i­tude, thank­ful­ness, and praise.

The mag­ni­tude of the for­go­ing truth is an enor­mous­ly pow­er­ful spir­i­tu­al law of the uni­verse, cre­at­ed by God.

Actions that are true, hon­or­able, just, pure, pleas­ing, com­mend­able, excel­lent, and tak­en with praise will be har­mo­nious and result in suc­cess. The mag­ni­tude of this truth is an enor­mous­ly pow­er­ful spir­i­tu­al law of the uni­verse, cre­at­ed by God.

We must remem­ber that this is only part of God’s plan for our suc­cess.  Fol­low me next time for more of God’s Design for Man.

Choices

Our Choices Determine Our Success — Part Two

Choic­es 2 Com­ments
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 2 Com­ments

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 2 Com­ments

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 7 Com­ments

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.