HOW TO GAIN LIFE?

By:  Blackaby

For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. (Matthew 16:25)

Christians are commanded to lose their lives. This means they ought to deliberately release their lives to God and His kingdom. One of the greatest hindrances to you being on mission with God will be your view of what constitutes your “legitimate rights”; that is, those things that you feel you have a right to experience and enjoy. It’s not difficult to turn over to Christ those things that are not a sacrifice or that you would prefer to do without anyway. Rather, it is the things that are good and that are dear to you that may stand between you and God’s will.

It’s good to be near your grown children and grandchildren, for example, but God may want you to go to another city or continent on mission with Him. It’s good to get adequate rest, but you may receive a call of distress in the middle of the night. You may assume that you have a right to certain material things, yet God may ask you to release all of your possessions to Him and His purposes (Matt. 19:21).

Jesus modeled perfectly this attitude toward life. He had a legitimate right to enjoy the comforts of heaven. Yet, He did not look at it as a right He should hold on to, nor did He see leaving all that was His as a sacrifice too costly to make (Phil. 2:5–11). As a result, God highly exalted Him and brought salvation to a broken world. Has the world convinced you that there are certain rights that you must protect? Are you trying to save your life? Have you noticed that in so doing, you are actually losing the life God wants you to have?

HOW TO REALIZE THAT CONVICTION IS THE KEY

By:  Z. Ziglar

The late Mary Crowley frequently commented that one person with a conviction would do more than a hundred who only had an interest.  Commitment is the key to staying the course and completing the project.  Conviction always precedes commitment.  

When we’re convinced as a salesperson that we are selling a marvelous product, our demeanor, body language, voice inflection, facial expressions – everything – communicate to the prospect that we fervently believe we’re offering something of value.  Many times the prospect will buy not because of their belief in the product, goods or service, but because of the belief of the salesperson. 

Our feelings are transferable.  Courage can be and frequently is transferred to the other person.  Convictions are the same.  The teacher who fervently believes in the message he or she delivers will persuade the student by the very depth of that conviction.  One of my favorite Mary Kay Ash quotes is, “Many people have gone a lot farther than they thought they could because someone else thought they could.”  In short, their confidence, born of someone else’s conviction, had enabled them to “make it.”  Conviction comes from knowledge and a “feeling” that what we’re teaching, doing, selling, etc., is absolutely right.  When we transfer that conviction to those in our sphere of influence, they and society benefit.

Show me a person with deep convictions and I’ll show you a person who’s made a commitment to deliver those convictions to others.  Show me a great leader and I’ll show you a person of deep convictions who is able to attract followers because of those convictions.  I’ll also show you a person who is happy in what they’re doing and far more successful than those who do not have those convictions.  Buy that idea; develop those convictions; make that commitment!

THE THREE (3) EVILS

By:  S. Voysey

On January 12, 2010, Haiti was hit by a magnitude 7.0 earthquake that leveled an estimated 250,000 homes and 30,000 buildings, killing nearly 300,000 people. A cholera outbreak a few months later claimed thousands more lives.

Philosophers have a name for this kind of devastation. They call it natural evil. With its earthquakes, famines, diseases, and afflictions, the world can be a hostile place.

I visited Haiti once, before the quake. There I met many teenage Restaveks—domestic servants—who were treated as slaves. They were overworked by their owners and often beaten when they couldn’t complete their chores because of extreme fatigue. That’s moral evil— evil arising from the human heart. We know all too well how much moral evil infects the world. A Haitian pastor told me about the effects of Vodou (Voo-doo) on its worshipers. Once “possessed by ancestral spirits,” Vodou participants often change personalities, cut themselves, and do other self-destructive acts. We might call this demonic evil—evil from the dark spiritual realm.

Here’s the good news: Jesus came to defeat all three forms of evil! Mark’s gospel opens with Jesus exorcising an evil spirit from a possessed man (Mark 1: 21-28). He did the same for others (Mark 5: 1-20, 9: 14-27). Jesus combated moral evil by teaching love as the highest virtue (Mark 12: 28-34), promoting the values of faithfulness and servanthood (Mark 10: 42-45), and transforming thieves like Zacchaeus into generous benefactors (Luke 19: 1-10).

And when natural evil broke out, Jesus had the power to quell it. He calmed a raging storm (Mark 4: 37-39), miraculously provided food for the hungry (Mark 6: 30-44), and healed the diseased and broken (Mark 1: 40-45, 2: 1-12).

Evil met its match in Jesus—and was defeated. One day Jesus will return and eradicate evil entirely. Come, Lord Jesus!

HOW TO RESPOND WHEN PUT ON HOLD?

By:  D. Egner

Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him; do not fret when men succeed in their ways, when they carry out their wicked schemes. – Psalm 37: 7 (NIV)

I’m sure you’ve had it happen to you. You call the appliance store and ask for the service department. “Can you hold?” a cheerful voice asks, and before you know it you’re hearing music. Every so often a taped message assures you that your call will be answered. You wait and wait. You think, I could have driven over there and back by now! You feel forgotten and that nobody cares.

Sometimes it seems that God has put us on hold. We pray and pray about a matter of extreme importance, but nothing happens. Nothing!

I’m sure that’s how Hannah felt. She was asking God for a baby. Childlessness was a curse in her day. To make it worse, her husband’s other wife ridiculed her mercilessly. Hannah wanted desperately to give her husband a child. She prayed out of deep pain and bitterness. Yet year after year she did not conceive.

How can we reconcile the apparent silence of God to our repeated prayers? Remember that God’s wisdom surpasses our own. What we’re asking for might harm us. We can’t see the whole picture. Our timing is not God’s timing.

When God puts you “on hold,” don’t grumble. You can entrust your most cherished longings and desires to Him, and then patiently wait for Him to answer.

When we call out to You, O Lord,
And wait for answers to our prayer,
Give us the patience that we need
And help us sense Your love and care. —Sper

When God puts you on hold, don’t hang up!

HOW TO PRUNE UNHEALTHY RELATIONSHIP?

By:  J. Canfield

Everything we want to achieve in life involves relationships. While it’s important to learn how to build successful relationships, it’s equally valuable to choose wisely when determining which connections to nurture.

Drop the Anchors

Achieving goals and greater levels of success require energy – sometimes an enormous amount. Negative people are like psychic vampires. They drain us of the precious energy we need to grow and achieve, making relationships with these individuals toxic to success.

Until we reach the point in our self-development where we no longer allow people to affect us with their negativity, it’s best to avoid toxic people at all costs. They will hold us back with their victim mentality and mediocre standards.

To identify which relationships are draining you, make a list of all people you spend time with on a regular basis. Go through the list and put a minus sign (-) next to the people who are negative and toxic. Put a plus sign (+) next to the people who are positive and nurturing.

Then stop spending time with the people on the negative list! If you don’t believe that is possible – for example, if you are surrounded by negative people at work – do your best to dramatically decrease the amount of time you spend with them.

Identify Your Best Investments

Another way that relationships can drain our energy is when we feel overwhelmed by the number of relationships we have to maintain.

The first thing to explore is the feeling of “have to.” Remember, there are no “have to’s” or “shoulds” in life. There are only “choose to’s.” We get to choose where we invest our time and energy – and that includes determining which relationships we want to maintain.

“Have to” indicates that our motivation to maintain the relationships is based on fear. But to create greater success, we want to make decisions that are motivated by joy and excitement, as well as our purpose and goals.

We are equipped with a handy inner guidance system that tells us when we are making decisions that are in alignment with our higher good: Joy. When we are not spending a lot of time feeling joyful, it is a clear sign that we are off course.

Review your list of relationships again, this time with a different set of criteria. Identify the people who bring you the greatest joy, as well as financial and professional success. Which relationships are critical to your bottom line? Which people are you most excited to spend time with? Which people are most important for you to keep in touch with? These are the relationships to cultivate.

Dan Sullivan, president of the Strategic Coach, teaches his clients to identify their top 20 relationships, as well as a “farm team,” which are 20 additional relationships that should be nurtured as future additions to the Top 20. Create this list for yourself, using joy as the measuring stick for personal relationships and bottom-line success for professional relationships.

Once your key relationships are identified, put the names into a chart, with the names prioritized in the first column. In the second column, add contact information so that it is readily available when you want to reach out to one of these key contacts. In the third column, answer the question, “What result(s) do I want to achieve with this person in the next 90 days?” Do you want them to hire you? Attend your seminar? Buy your book? Send referrals to you? Use this chart to guide your actions over the next three months as you nurture the key relationships.

You Get to Choose

In business particularly, you may feel that you are required to stay connected with more people than you would normally choose.

Remember that you get to choose not only which relationships you want to nurture, but also how close each relationships will be and how you will stay connected.

As world-renowned marine artist Wyland once said, “There are two types of people – anchors and motors. You want to lose the anchors and get with the motors because the motors are going somewhere and they’re having more fun. The anchors will just drag you down.” Carefully choose the relationships in which you invest your precious time and energy to ensure that your success isn’t slowed … and so that you experience a positive return on your investment.