Jesus said that faith is essential to making your
life into what you want it to be. He said, "As you
believe, so it shall be done unto you." What is it about faith
that makes it so important?
1. Faith changes your vision. When you have faith, you
see possibilities that other people cannot appreciate. While
others stumble around in spiritual darkness, you see where you are
going, and you have clarity of purpose.
2. Faith changes
your focus. You radically shift your focus in a new direction, and
that focus expands. Instead of your limited and short-sighted
dreams, you have the privilege of experiencing God's dream for your life
3. Faith takes the
handcuffs off God. God doesn't push and shove his way into your
life. He enters your heart and mind by invitation only. You
must ask him to come in and change the way you think and feel.
Once you ask him into your heart and mind, the handcuffs come off God,
and He starts working miracles.
4. Faith gives you positive expectations. Your old way of
thinking and feeling is gone. You believe that there is no limit
to how good your life can become when you get in agreement with God's
plan. When you say yes to God, his purpose and plan take you
places that you never dreamed were possible.
5. Faith is a switch that turns you on and
starts you moving. The inertia of your old life dissipates as the
power of God's love rolls through your heart and mind.
6. Faith makes you congruent. Your head, heart, and will now
want the same thing and move in the same direction. You get in
agreement with God, and become a part of his unstoppable plan.
7. Faith gives you courage when you place
your trust in God. God is your Defender, the Captain of your fate,
and the Master of your soul. He is your Guide and will show you
where to take the next step. He knows your life from start to
finish, and it won't be over until He says it's over. You have
nothing to fear.
ASK
AND YOU SHALL RECEIVE
Why does God want me
to ask him for good things? Why does the Bible say in James 4:2, “You have not,
because you ask not?”
1.
Asking reminds me that God is the source of all good things. All
of my talents and abilities come directly from him. The God who
made the world and everything in it has plenty of resources to supply
all my needs.
2.
Asking reminds me that God is my Father, and that He wants to give me
good things. God is not stingy with his children or miserly in
dispensing his blessings. He delights in giving his children what
they need, even more than they need. He wants to fill their cups
until they overflow.
3. Asking
reminds me that my relationship with God is based on love rather than on
groveling and fear. When God looks at me, He looks through eyes of love.
From start to finish, He wants the best for me.
4. Asking
reminds me that my relationship with God is up close and personal.
The Father is never far. He is always present, and I am to take my
relationship with him in a personal way. I am on speaking terms
with God.
5. Asking
reminds me that I get what I expect. Asking is a form of faith
called positive expectations. When I talk to God, I am to ask
expectantly. I don’t get what I want. Instead, I get what I
expect.
6. Asking
takes the handcuffs off God and allows him to start working miracles in
my life. God isn’t pushy; He gave me a free will, but He can’t
work miracles without me giving him permission. I must say yes to
God and open my heart and mind to the power of his love so that He can
make me into a new person.
7. Asking
opens my heart and mind to the new things that God wants to do in my
life. It’s the first step in getting into agreement with his
purpose and plan.
8. Asking
connects me directly with God. It’s the way God designed things to
work in his Kingdom of love. Without asking, the connection cannot
happen. That’s why Jesus said, “You have not, because you ask
not.”
9. Asking makes spiritual growth possible. God wants me to
grow up spiritually. Although I am one of his children, He doesn’t
want me to remain as a child. He isn’t looking for an extended
spiritual adolescence; He wants me to grow up and become mature with a
heart full of excellence and love.
10. When I ask expectantly, I start moving in a positive
direction. I act as if God has already given me what I need.
Asking starts me moving and doing my part so that God can do his part.
After I do my part, God does his.
Faith isn’t something that we do. Rather, it’s something that God
does to us when we suspend our disbelief and place our trust in him.
People are always asking how they can have more faith. They
believe that they somehow need to pump themselves up so that they have
more faith. They believe that faith comes from themselves.
They are wrong. Faith comes from trusting God. When you have
a close personal relationship with the Father, you have all the faith
you need. It's comes with the relationship.
God
is the source of all good things, and that includes faith. Faith
belongs to God and comes from him. When we suspend our disbelief,
faith takes control. We get out of the way and stop limiting God.
We take the handcuffs off God so that He can start working miracles in
our life.
We
don’t have to have faith. It’s faith that has to have us.
When faith takes over, our expectations change. God shows us who
we are and what we can do with our lives.
Faith is like a mighty river dammed up by unbelief. When we
suspend our disbelief and get out of the way, the river of faith sweeps
away our limitations and fills our lives with positive expectations.
When we get in agreement with God, faith takes over, and there is no
limit to how good our life can become.
FAITH - NOT FEAR
Several of Jesus' disciples were fishermen, and
occasionally Jesus used their boats to travel to his next destination.
One evening they were crossing the Sea of Galilee with Jesus asleep in
the stern of the boat. While they were underway, a fierce squall arose,
and the wind and waves threatened to overwhelm their boat. They were
taking on water as each new wave washed over them, and it was only a
matter of time before they would sink if the situation didn't rapidly
improve. This was a true emergency; these fishermen were not
over-reacting when they thought they might die during this storm.
Everyone who has been in a storm at sea knows exactly how they felt.
Jesus slept through the storm until the fishermen woke him up and said,
"Teacher, don't you care if we drown?" Jesus rebuked the wind and
waves, and the storm immediately subsided. Then Jesus said to his
comrades, "Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?"
Why wasn't Jesus afraid? Jesus knew that he didn't come into this
world to drown in the Sea of Galilee. Jesus was following God's plan,
and death by drowning definitely wasn't in the plan. Jesus had such
close fellowship with God that he knew God's plan by heart from start to
finish. Jesus knew he had nothing to fear from a storm at sea.
The disciples didn't know that God wouldn't allow them to perish in the
storm. They didn't understand God's plan, and their hearts were full of
fear. The same thing often happens with us.
Without a close personal relationship with God, we don't understand his
plan, and our hearts are full of fear. When our fellowship with God
becomes up close and personal, for the first time we understand his
plan, and we put our faith in it. We know that if we follow his plan,
nothing can happen to us until the plan has run its full course. Once
we have faith in his plan, we no longer have any reason to fear.
Faith naturally flows into your heart when you trust God.. Faith
is a product of trust, and fear is a product of distrust. When you
trust God to take you through the storms of life, faith naturally wells
up in your heart. You don't need to muster your faith. It's
not something you do. Faith happens to you, because God puts it in
your heart and mind when you trust him.
Jesus made it clear that fear has no place in the heart of a child of
God. When you have a personal relationship with God and follow God's
plan, you have nothing to fear.
People of faith know that it's never over until God says it's
over. God is trustworthy, and if you put your trust in him, a
tidal wave of faith will sweep through your life.
ENOUGH FAITH
Men used to believe the world was
flat. Early sailors thought if you sailed in a straight line, you would
eventually sail off the edge of the world into oblivion. Only a few
people thought the world was round. They took a step of faith and
sailed their ships around the world. Their step of faith allowed them
to sail on the ocean of their dreams.
That’s the way faith works. It makes
extraordinary things happen. It’s the first step you take on the
journey to your dreams. Without faith, it’s impossible to live your
dreams.
EVERYTHING WORTH DOING REQUIRES A STEP
OF FAITH
Everything worth doing requires a step
of faith. When you move in the direction of your dreams regardless of
the consequences, you have all the faith you need to make them come
true.
When I left my job to sail around the
world on a thirty-nine foot catamaran, I moved in the direction of my
dreams regardless of the consequences. Sailing around the world on my
own boat took me far outside my comfort zone. It was easy to think of
dozens of reasons why it was a bad idea.
If I focused on everything that could
go wrong, I would have stayed in homeport forever. The only way to make
the voyage happen was to take a leap of faith. I had to start sailing
regardless of the consequences.
When I decided create a Positive
Thinking Network with more than 100 positive websites, I knew that the
odds of rocking the world with my websites was low. There are billions
of pages on the internet, and my positive sites are less than a drop in
an ocean of URLs. The only one way to find out if anyone would
visit the Positive Thinking Network was to create the websites and
accept the consequences.
If you want to make your dreams come
true, faith is the only way to make them happen. You must move in the
direction of your dreams regardless of the consequences.
FAITH IS EMPOWERMENT
Faith is about empowerment. To get
where you want to go, you need power, and faith gives you that power.
Practical faith comes in two types.
Type I Faith empowers you to do the
things you can do and should do for yourself.
Type II Faith empowers God to do things
for you that you can’t do for yourself.
TYPE I FAITH
The first type of faith empowers you to
be all you can be, and do all you can do. It’s what makes your dreams
possible. This type of faith affects all areas of your life. You don’t
need to be spiritually alive for this type of faith to work. People who
have no religious convictions can still use type I faith to make their
dreams come true.
When God created you, he placed type I
faith inside your heart and mind. Everyone is given this type of faith
at birth. Some people develop their ability to use this gift, and
others hardly know it’s there.
Although type I faith empowers you to
do what you want to do and be what you want to be, this doesn’t mean God
is left out of the picture. God is the one who gave you this gift, and
He expects you to use it in a worthwhile manner.
Type I faith is a powerful force for
both good and evil. Bad people use this gift for evil purposes; they
use its power to intimidate, coerce, and bend others to their will.
They have evil dreams that they want to impose upon the world, and they
use the dark side of type I faith to make it happen.
Be careful how you use this gift. With
power comes responsibility and accountability. The moral universe
grinds slowly, but it grinds sure. God designed the moral universe to
keep close accounts of how you use type I faith. Eventually, accounts
will be settled and you will reap what you sow.
TYPE II FAITH
Type II faith empowers God to do the
things for you that you can’t do for yourself. You can’t pull yourself
up by your own spiritual bootstraps. No matter how hard you try, you
can’t be born spiritually without God’s help. Only God can make your
spirit come alive.
This second type of faith makes it
possible for God to work in your life. It happens when you open your
heart to God’s love and become one of his children. The power of God’s
love flows through your life transforming your mind and healing damaged
emotions. For the first time in your life, you dare to call God your
Father, and you have a relationship with him based on love.
God has been waiting to perform a
miracle in your life since the day you were born. Type II faith takes
the handcuffs off God so the miracles can begin.
DON’T CONFUSE THE TWO TYPES OF FAITH
Many people act as if there is only one
type of faith. They think if they have enough faith, God will make
their dreams come true. They want God to do things for them that they
can do for themselves. That’s a big mistake, and it won’t work.
No amount of faith will make God do for
you what you can do and should do for yourself. God placed type I faith
in your heart so you would be empowered to be all you can be and do all
you can do. God intends for you to exercise your faith so you can live
a life of excellence.
Faith works when you use it correctly.
If faith isn’t working for you, it’s because you are using it in an
incorrect manner. You are probably trying to get God to do things for
you that you can do for yourself.
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RUNNING IN THE WRONG DIRECTION
Before you take a step of faith, you
need to have a talk with God. You need a reality check to make sure you
are heading in the right direction. Every step you take in the wrong
direction takes you further from your dreams and further from the plan
that God has for your life. No matter how fast you run, if it’s in the
wrong direction, you will never reach your dreams. When God is your
navigator, all of your steps are in the right direction. The fastest
way to your dreams is to have God show you the way.
FAITH EMPOWERS YOU TO LIVE YOUR DREAMS
Faith is acting as if your dreams are
possible before they actually happen. Faith is for everyone who wants
to live their dreams.
Dreams aren’t an accident. God gave
them to you for a purpose. They are God’s way of pointing out that you
have the possibility of achieving excellence. You can dream great
dreams and make them come true using the power of faith.
FAITH DOESN’T HAVE A SIZE
Jesus’ disciples once asked him to
increase their faith. They felt that their faith was not up to the
task. You may feel the same way. Your faith seems too small to have an
impact on the monumental challenges that litter the landscape of your
life. You wish you had a large amount of faith so you could make big
things happen. You act as if faith is a commodity, and if you somehow
had more, you could turn your life around. Although it may seem that
bigger is better, you don’t need to worry about the size of your faith.
Faith isn’t about size. Jesus said if
you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could move mountains.
Jesus was saying that faith doesn’t come in small, medium, or large
sizes. Faith is either present or absent. If it’s absent, your life is
full of limitations, and you are stuck in Nowhere Land. If it’s
present, you can move mountains.
You never need to worry if you have
enough faith to reach your dreams. Any faith is enough to start moving
in a positive direction. You will always have sufficient faith to be
the best you can be and do the best you can do.
MOVING MOUNTAINS
Jesus said faith makes it possible to
move mountains. Moving mountains is exciting stuff. The problem is
there are so many mountains that seem to be staying right where they
are.
If it was up to us, moving mountains
would be ninety-nine percent faith and one percent hard work. When we
encountered a mountain, we would have a chat with God about how the
mountain needed to be moved, and if He gave us the go ahead, we would
exercise our faith, and the mountain would disappear into the sea. In a
few effortless minutes, another mountain would bite the dust. We could
move our mountains without lifting a finger. Unfortunately, that’s not
how faith works.
In the real world, moving mountains is
ten percent faith and ninety percent hard work. Faith tells you it’s
possible, and hard work makes it happen. When Jesus said your faith
could move mountains, he didn’t say how long it would take or how many
people would help you. It may take years to move your mountains.
Nevertheless, the mountains will move if you get out your shovel and
start working.
Mountains don’t move in an instant;
they move one shovel full at a time. When you ask God to move your
mountain, God hands you a shovel and tells you to start digging. When
you lift your first shovel of dirt, you instantly become a mover of
mountains.
FAITH ENABLES YOU TO TAKE THE NEXT STEP
There are no glasses that allow you to
look into the future. In fact, you don’t even know what will happen
today.
When your heart is full of faith, you
realize it isn’t necessary to know what will happen in the future. You
only need to see where to take the next step. If you are faithful in
taking the next step, one day your dreams will come true. You can go
anywhere you want when you are willing to take the next step.
Dreams don’t happen in big steps. They
are the result of lots of little steps that all add up. When you learn
to walk, you have to take a large number of baby steps. Twenty years
later, you are ready for the Olympics. That is the way things happen
with faith. You start out with baby steps, and eventually take Olympic
size steps. The important thing is to take the first step of faith, and
then the next, and the next, and the next.
YOU MUST BE WILLING TO DO
WHATEVER IT TAKES
Most people want life to be easy. When
they want something, they don’t want to have to wait for it or work for
it. They would like to exercise their faith and have it magically
appear. They want to name it and claim it. They want to pray, and have
God do all the work. If they had their way, God would open the windows
of heaven and pour out blessings while they sit in their easy chair, sip
lemonade, and enjoy the sunshine of God’s love. It would not be long
before they became spiritual couch potatoes.
People think if they had more faith,
their life would be easier. The truth is that faith makes your life
harder. As long as you have no faith, you can sit on your hands or
stand around doing nothing. The minute you take a step of faith, the
work begins. The more faith you have, the bigger the job becomes.
If you have faith to move molehills,
you won’t even break a sweat before the job is done. If you have faith
to move mountains, you have a lot of hard work ahead. Nevertheless, if
you remain faithful, the mountain moves and you move on to bigger
challenges. You begin to look at Mount Everest, not because you want to
climb it. Instead, you want to be the first person to move it.
Never look at faith as the path to a
life of leisure. God gave you faith so you could see things other
people can’t see and do things other people can’t do.
It’s impossible to live a life of faith
if you are unwilling to do whatever it takes. The heart of faith must
be a willing heart.
Most people aren’t willing to do
whatever it takes. They want God to do it for them. They believe that
if they have enough faith, God will be willing to do whatever they
want. When God doesn’t do it, they take it to be a sign they didn’t
have enough faith. They try to muster a little more faith, hoping it
will kick start God, so He will solve their problems. They don’t
understand that no amount of faith is going to make God do for them what
they can do for themselves.
FAITH EMPOWERS YOU TO TAKE THE RISKS
AND ACCEPT THE CONSEQUENCES
No matter how hard we work, eventually
we relinquish all the things we worked so hard to acquire. Even though
we know that we will have to surrender all our stuff as we grow older,
that doesn’t keep us from believing if we get enough stuff, we will
finally feel secure.
The soap opera of security focuses on
getting as much stuff as we can during that phase of life in which
acquisitions are our Holy Grail. Not only do we have to work like a
Trojan to acquire all that stuff, we also have to fight tooth and nail
to keep it for as long as is humanly possible.
People equate security with stuff, when
the opposite is true. People who have stuff are the ones who are
insecure. They worry all the time about loosing their stuff, and they
buy insurance so they can keep their huge pile intact.
People who don’t have a mountain of
acquisitions are far more secure, because they don’t have anything to
lose. They know that the soap opera of security is only a sideshow;
it’s make-believe. The only true security is God’s eternal and
unconditional love. Beyond that, security doesn’t exist on planet
earth.
You face a choice. You can worship at
the altar of security, knowing that security is a false God, or you can
worship at the altar of God’s love and allow him to give you true
security that lasts forever.
When you stop worshiping at the altar
of security, and stop worrying about all of your stuff, and start
focusing on God’s love, a miracle happens. Now you have nothing to
lose, and you are willing to take the risk and accept the consequences.
The worst case scenarios of the security mongers no longer send shudders
of fear through your heart and mind. You focus on God’s love, knowing
that in the long run, when you leave your stuff behind, the real you is
secure forever. The security of God’s love gives you the power to take
any risk and accept any consequence.
BRINGING IT ALL TOGETHER
Faith isn’t magic. It’s the practical
method by which you reach your dreams. When you are willing to do
whatever it takes, when you are willing to take the next step, when you
are willing to take the risk and accept the consequences, you have all
the faith you need to reach your dreams.
FAITH ONLY HAPPENS AFTER YOU MOVE IN A
POSITIVE DIRECTION
Faith doesn’t exist until you start
moving. Until you move, you only have hope. The proof that you have
faith is the actions you take.
Faith isn’t something that must be
present before you move in the direction of your dreams. Rather it’s
something that develops after you start moving. When you start out, you
don’t see how your dreams are possible. Nevertheless, the moment you
take the first step, faith instantly comes into your life.
You can’t sit in your easy chair and
expect faith to suddenly pop into your mind. You have to start moving
in a positive direction before it happens. Most people get this
backwards. They don’t move until they feel like they have enough
faith. Consequently, they never go anywhere and never live their
dreams.
Do you want to make faith active in
your life? It’s not hard to do. You simply act as if your dreams are
possible and work each day to make them happen. You act as if you
cannot fail as you move in the direction of your dreams. You can even
be born spiritually if you open your heart to God’s love. When you
don’t worry if you have enough faith, your faith does just fine.
FAITH IS THE ON SWITCH, AND GOD'S LOVE IS THE POWER
The Law of Faith and the Law of Love
govern the spiritual universe.
The Law of Faith states: "As You believe, so shall it be done unto you."
You get what you expect.
The Law of Love states: "God is love and works by love, and by nothing
else than love. The power and presence of God in your
life is love. Every time you experience God's love, you experience
His presence and power.
Even though a power plant produces a million megawatts of
electricity, until you turn on the switch, as far as you are concerned,
there is no power. You must flip the switch to experience that
power.
Love is the power of God at work in the world. On a personal
level, love is the power and presence of God in your life. But the
only way to experience that power is to flip on the switch of faith.
Faith is the on switch in your life, and God's love is the power that
makes His dream for your life come true. Faith
starts you moving in the right direction, and God's love gives you the
power to make the trip.
It's time to flip on the switch of faith and allow God's love to
make you into a new person.
YOU ARE POWERED BY GOD'S LOVE
God is the Source of all good things in your
life, and you are powered by His love.
When God made the universe, He created the sun to be the source of
energy that sustains all life. Even primitive civilizations know
that life flows from the sun. It's not surprising many cultures
worshipped the sun, because they realized it was the source of life.
If you want a second opinion about the sun's importance in sustaining
life, ask the dinosaurs made extinct when a giant asteroid created a
global dust cloud blotting the sun from their sky. Without the
sun, they could not survive. Every plant that turns to face the
sun testifies to the sun's life giving power.
But the sun is not the ultimate Source of life. God created the
sun, and He is the Source. The sun is simply his tool that
provides the energy for life on our planet.
In the spiritual realm, another type of energy provides the power
for the spiritual universe. That spiritual energy is God's love.
God's love gives life. When you open your heart and mind to the power
of His love, you are born spiritually and become one of God's children.
You audaciously dare to call God your Father.
God's love gets into your mind and gives you a new way of thinking.
His love gets into your heart, heals your damaged emotions, and gives
you a
new way of feeling. It makes you into a new person. Your old
way of thinking and feeling is gone. Old things pass
away, and all things are new.
When you face the challenges of life, God's love points you in the right
direction and gives you the power to make the trip. God's love is
the fuel for your life. You are literally powered by His love.
PERSISTENTLY POSITIVE FAITH PRODUCES
CONSISTENTLY POSITIVE RESULTS
All of us have thorns
in our lives. Our job is to ignore the thorns and get on with the
business of blooming.
Just because a cactus has a thousand spines does not mean it cannot
produce beautiful flowers. Cactuses are a lot like life.
Prickly people surround us on all sides, and it's easy to forget about
the flowers. It's easy to focus on the prickles when we should be
focusing on the flowers.
Cactus flowers remind me to maintain a persistently positive focus. I
need to focus on positive things, and I need to do it persistently.
Persistence is the missing ingredient in millions of lives.
Without persistence, faith goes nowhere.
Jesus told a story about a widow who had persistently positive expectations that
produced positive results. It's found in Luke 18.
His parable instructed people to keep on praying and never lose
heart.
"There was once a judge who cared nothing for God or man, and in the
same town there was a widow who constantly came before him demanding
justice against her opponent. For a long time he refused; but in
the end he said to himself, "True, I care nothing for God or man: but
this widow is so great a nuisance that I will see her righted before she
wears me out with her persistence."
The point of this story is about persistence and positive expectations.
The window not only knew what she wanted, she also had positive
expectations. She expected a positive outcome, and she persisted
until she achieved it.
If the woman had gone to the judge only one time and walked away empty
handed, should would have lost the battle. Instead, she went to
the judge and kept going to the judge until she prevailed. She was
not in a one round fight. She would keep fighting her way through
round 10, 20 50, 100 or even round 1000 if that was what was required to
win.
Jesus believed in faith and taught it to his disciples. He also
believed in persistence. Faith doesn't take you far until you
clothe it in the royal robes of persistence. It's persistent faith
that gets the job done.
When you are sick, getting better takes time, and faith must be
persistent if you want to get well.
When you are poor, accumulating wealth takes time, and faith must be
persistent to experience God's bounty.
When you are depressed, becoming positive once again takes time, and you
must be persistent to make it happen.
Faith without persistence is wishful thinking.
God wants you to bloom among the cactus spines, but you will only bloom
if you have a persistently positive faith that does not quit in the face
of rejection and setbacks.
The coin of faith has two sides. The first side is persistence and
the second side is positive expectations. You have to expect to
bloom for it to happen. You get what you expect. You become
what you expect.
The coin of faith is the currency for your spiritual life. The
coin of faith pays the price of your dreams. You spend the coin of
faith to make your dreams come true. The
good news is that God isn't going to run out of the coin of the realm
anytime soon. When you spend the coin of faith, God will give you
more to take it's place.
It's time to start your trip to God's dream for your life. A purse
full of persistently positive faith and consistently positive
expectations will take you to places far beyond your early limited
dreams,
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