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POSITIVE GUIDEPOSTS
FOR SAILING ON GOD'S OCEAN OF LOVE
Positive Guidepost 1.
Dare to call God your Father, and build your life on the foundation of
his love.
God is a Spirit, and He is the one who makes your spirit come alive.
That’s why you call him Father. Spiritual birth happens the moment you
open your heart to God’s love and dare to call him Father.
Most people get nervous when you talk about spiritual birth. It’s a
confusing subject, and they have lots of questions. How much theology do
you need to know? How many scriptures do you need to read? Do you need
to pray extra hard for a long time to make it happen? Are there any
formulas you have to follow? Are there any special words you need to
say? Do you need to say them in any particular order? Is there a special
place you need to go to make it happen? Can you do it with your eyes
open, or do they have to be closed?
All of these questions focus on you, seducing you into believing that
spiritual birth is something you do, instead of something that God does to
you.
The truth is that God is the one who does it all. He is the one who makes
it happen. As soon as you open your heart to his love and call him
Father, He does the rest.
Positive Guidepost 2. Learn to think the way that God thinks.
Although it might
seem presumptuous to believe that humans can actually think the thoughts
of God, we must always remember that God created us in his image, and He
gave us the ability to think and feel. It's reasonable to assume that God
must have designed our minds to function best when we fill our minds with
certain types of thoughts. It's also reasonable to assume that God
designed our hearts to function best when certain types of emotions fill
our heart.
The creator of the universe actually did have a plan for our hearts and
minds. When your mind is full of thoughts consistent with God's
love, your mind is exactly the way God means for it to be. When your
heart is full of emotions consistent with His love, your emotions are
healthy, and they are exactly the way God means for them to be. When
you think the way that God thinks, your heart and mind are full of God's
love. Your thoughts are positive and your emotions are healthy.
They are exactly the way God means for them to be.
When dysfunction, despair, depression,
negativity and anxiety take over your heart and mind, you are not thinking
the way that God thinks. You have it all wrong, and until you get it
right, your life will be harder than it needs to be, and if you fill your
heart and mind with the toxic waste of the twenty-first century, there is
a good chance you will become sick.
The cure for what ails the human heart and mind is a liberal dose of God's
love. You must fill your mind with thoughts that are consistent with
God's love until those thoughts reign supreme. You must fill your heart
with emotions consistent with God's love to drive the toxic negative
emotions out of your mind. You must learn to think thoughts of love, and
let that love percolate down into your heart so that you start feeling
good once again.
There is no mystery here. You must simply start thinking
the way that God thinks.
Positive Guidepost 3. Get in agreement with God.
You
need to understand how God thinks so that you can get in agreement with
him.
God thinks abundance. Jesus said that he had come so that you might
have life and have it more abundantly. God created the world and
everything in it. What you need is no big deal to God. Supplying your
needs won’t break his back or bankrupt his kingdom. God enjoys giving
you good things. His plan is to fill your cup with blessings until it
runs over.
God thinks possibility. All things are possible when you think the
way God thinks. God is the God of possibility, and there is no limit to
how good your life can become when you think the way God thinks.
God thinks positive. The most positive force in the universe is
God’s love. It changes the way you think and feel making you into a
positive person.
God thinks positive expectations. When you get into agreement with
God, your expectations change. Impossible becomes possible, and
scarcity becomes abundance. God has a powerful positive plan for your
life. God expects good things to happen in your life when you think the
way that He thinks.
God thinks forgiveness. God forgives you for the wrong things that
you have done. He not only wipes the slate clean, He also throws the
slate away.
God thinks freedom for the captives. Jesus came to set the
prisoners free. The chains of lack and limitation fall off when you
think the way God thinks.
God thinks release from oppression. Jesus came to liberate you from
all forms of oppression. Economic, spiritual, chemical, and
psychological dependencies disappear when you think the way God thinks.
God thinks recovery of what has been lost. The blind receive their
sight. What the world destroys and takes away, God recovers and
restores.
God thinks favor. He bestows his blessings on all who get in
agreement with him. He opens the windows of heaven, and blessings fall
all around.
God thinks good news. God has no dark side. He is on our side, and
is in it with us for the long haul. All of God’s thoughts are good
news. When you become silent and listen for God’s voice, you hear his
positive message of love.
You
can trust God. If you do your part, God will do his. When you get in
agreement with him, then God starts working miracles in your life.
Positive Guidepost 4.
Have a zero ambivalence relationship with yourself and with God.
Zero ambivalence means that your mind, heart, and will
are all congruent and committed to moving together in a non-ambivalent
fashion to achieve a worthwhile objective.
All three components of your
personality ( your heart, mind, will) are heading in the same direction and
working together to achieve the same purpose.
Congruent is a big word with a simple meaning. The three parts that create
your personality are your mind, heart and will. If those three components
of who you are get in agreement, they are congruent. They all want the
same thing, they are all headed in the same direction, and they are all
working together toward the same objective.
All parts of you must work together and head in the same direction if you
want to live your dreams. If your will, mind, and heart are heading in
different directions, then you will be pulled apart and become
dysfunctional because you are not in agreement with yourself. You must be
congruent if you want good things to happen. That's why Jesus said that
we need to love God with all our heart, all our mind, and all our
strength. He was stating a simple truth. In our relationship with God,
we must be congruent, or it will not work. If your heart wants one thing
and your mind wants another, you are doomed to a life of failure and
frustration.
When you have zero ambivalence, you are
in agreement with yourself, and you are in agreement with God.
Positive Guidepost 5. Develop positive expectations. You don't get what you
want, you get what you expect. As you believe, so shall it be done
unto you.
Jesus created a world ruled by your
expectations. You don't get what you want. You get what you expect. It
doesn't matter if your expectations are positive or negative, you will
get what you expect.
Jesus understood the laws of the moral universe because he created those
laws. He knew how things work. When Jesus tells us how to live, he
isn't just giving good advice. He is stating in absolute and
unequivocal terms the way he made things work. That's why he said, "As
you believe, so shall it be done unto you." Jesus created a universe in
which expectations rule. It doesn't matter that much what you want.
It's what you expect that counts.
Jesus said, "Ask and you will receive,
seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened." I am to ask
expectantly, seek expectantly, and knock expectantly. Jesus came to
change our expectations. He taught that positive expectations are the
foundation for a positive life.
Positive Guidepost 6. Never quit. It's never over until God says it's over.
For as long as
you are alive, you must work on your dreams.
The day you quit working is the
day you start to die. You will be dead for a long time, and there is
no need to hasten the process by dying before your time. Life is
short, and death is long, and you should never quit until you die.
There is only time time when you should quit.
When what you are doing obviously isn't working, it's time to try a new
strategy.
Managing failure is tricky. You may be
doing the right thing, but your timing is off. You may be doing the
wrong thing, but your timing is right. If you are doing the wrong
thing, or if your timing is off, you should stop what you are doing and
try something new. Failure is not a signal to quit.
Failure is a signal to modify your timing or strategy. Eventually,
you will make the proper adjustments, and your dreams will come true.
You must never quit working on your dreams until God says it's over..
Positive Guidepost 7.
Achieve excellence in at least one area of your life.
Select an area of excellence
which you develop and give to the world.
Whether you realize it or not, God embedded excellence into the core of
your being. From the top of your head to the tip of your miraculous
big toe, you are excellent through and through. God has a plan for
your life custom designed for just you, and that plan has excellence
stamped all over it.
If you have been beaten down into mediocrity,
and if you feel there's no reason for hope, it's time for you to listen
up. You have the ability to achieve excellence in at least one area
of your life, and that's just the beginning. There is no limit to
how good your life can become when you align yourself with God's master
plan.
Positive Guidepost 8.
Do Not Accept Limitations.
Don't place limits on worthwhile objectives until you
do your utmost to make them happen.
Limiting thoughts are a disguised form of negation.
They are a way that you say no to life while pretending that life is
saying no to you. Limitations are plausible self-deceptions. They are
prefabricated excuses for every failure to be what you want to be and do
what you want to do.
No one blames you for being held back by all the
limitations that you have adopted. Limitations are a subtle form of
negativity that is socially acceptable. They don't have a bad sound or
smell. It even has the appearance of maturity to not struggle with
reality and to accept the limitations that appear to be present in the
world.
When you face a challenge, you write a script of
limitations and possibilities based upon your beliefs about yourself.
Inside your mind is a personalized collection of limiting beliefs that
tell you everything you cannot do. Your limiting beliefs create
confusion, and it's easy to attribute your limitations to your world
rather than to yourself.
There is no reason to place limits on any worthwhile
object before you try to make it happen. Limiting beliefs are a choice,
and you should choose to not have any.
Positive Guidepost 9.
Respect the laws of the moral universe.
The moral universe grinds slow, but it grinds
sure.
When you are in agreement with the laws of the moral universe, you
prosper. When you violate the laws of
the moral universe, your life becomes harder than it needs to be.
The moral universe is relentless, and it takes sides on the choices you
make. It gives you either rewards or consequences.
Rewards are positive and empowering. Consequences are negative and
destructive.
You have a free will, and have the right to break every
law in the moral universe. Nevertheless, breaking those laws is an
exercise in self-destruction. Every law that you break will
eventually break you. That's 100% guaranteed. It will happen.
Learn the laws of the moral universe, and use them in a positive manner.
You will prosper, and there will be no limit to how good your life will
become.
Positive Guidepost 10. Be transformed by the renewing of your
mind. Change your life
by changing the way you think.
The mind is the door through which you enter the
world of positive change. That's why the Bible says, "Be transformed by
the renewing of your mind." In order to have a new life, you need a new
way of thinking.
You can change who you are by changing what you put
into your mind. When you change your mind, you change your life. This
law of change never fails. Although the wheel of change turns slowly,
it always turns in the direction of what you put into your mind. You
must fill your mind with positive thoughts so that your life moves in a
positive direction.
Everything you put into your mind is important
because it changes who you are. When you put in good things, your life
improves. When you put in bad things, your life becomes worse. There
are no exceptions to this law.
Positive transformation is not an accident; it's
something you do on purpose. You become a positive person by putting
positive things into your mind.
Trying to change your life by
changing your image is a waste of time and is doing things backwards.
It will not work. You change your life by changing the way you
think.
At the moment of change there is a shift in
your beliefs about who you are and what you can do.
Whatever changes you make always happen in an
instant, and they happen first in your mind. If you are having a hard
time bringing about positive change, you need to examine your beliefs.
A key belief is preventing you from change. If you alter that
belief, you arrive at the instant where change is possible.
Do not talk yourself into believing that
change is impossible. Positive change is something that you already
know how to do. The size of the change is irrelevant. Whether
changes are large or small, they still happen in an instant, and they
happen first in your mind.
Positive Guidepost 11. Fill Your Mind With Good Things.
God gave you a good mind and He
expects you to fill it with good things. Your mind is not a dumpster
for the toxic waste of the twenty-first century. You don't want to
allow negative thoughts and limitations to fill your mind.
The Apostle Paul made it very clear what we should put into our minds.
He said,
“Whatever is true, whatever is noble,
whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is
admirable, whatever is excellent, or worthy of praise, think on these
things.”
The way you get a positive mind is to fill it with positive things.
Positive Guidepost 12. Use positive affirmations to change the
way you feel.
Your emotional mind is an eternal
skeptic and must be shown the truth many times before it will believe.
That is why affirmations are so valuable. You can repeat them until you
overwhelm the inner skeptic and change the way you feel.
The inner emotional skeptic isn’t
interested in logic; it’s more susceptible to the power of repetition
than it is to the power of reason. If you repeat anything enough times,
the inner skeptic slowly has a change of heart, and it changes the way
you feel.
Affirmations aren’t aimed at your
rational mind. Instead, they take aim on your emotional mind to push it
in a positive direction. They transform your life by putting good
things into your heart. Repeating affirmations increases their power,
and the more times you repeat them, the sooner you feel better.
Affirmations are especially effective
in the hearts of people who have a personal relationship with God based
on love. God’s love is the most powerful force in the universe, and
when his love floods your heart and mind, it heals your damaged
emotions. Affirmations help you focus on God’s love and practice his
healing presence.
The Mega Affirmation
When I jump into God's ocean of love, my
life is never the same. I am born spiritually and become a new person.
Old things pass away and all things become new. I look at the world
through new eyes and listen with new ears. I think new thoughts, take new
actions, and have a new life.
God's love changes the way I think and feel. His love washes the toxic
waste out of my mind and gives me a clean mind and a pure heart. My old
way of thinking and feeling is gone. My mistakes and failures are cast
into God's ocean of love. For the first time in my life, I dare to call
God my Father and live as one of his children. God's love heals my
damaged emotions, and my negative feelings and guilt are washed away in a
tidal wave of love.
Each day I jump into God's ocean of love and have a life transforming
experience. Dabbling in it will never do. This isn't something that I do
just once and the positive effects last for a lifetime. I do it every day
for the rest of my life. For as long as I live, I will max out on God's
love.
Positive Guidepost 13. Maximize the power of God's love by sending it out to other
people.
You maximize
the power of God's love by sending it out to other people. Healthy
hearts and minds have an outward focus.
People suffering from depression and emotional problems have an
unhealthy inward focus. Their inward focus is the recipe for
self-destruction, especially when that focus is negative and critical.
The cure for depression and many emotional problems is an outward
focus. They need to stop relentlessly ruminating over their problems
and to start sending love to other people.
God’s love flows through an
unseen pipeline. The flow goes from God to you, and then from you to
other people. You control the flow by how much love you send out to
others.
God’s love works best when you pass it
around. It’s after you pass it on that its power really kicks in. The
more love you pass on, the more that comes your way. The less you send
to others, the less that flows to you. People don’t realize that when
they send only a trickle of love to others, only a trickle comes back to
them from God. What goes around comes around.
The love that you send to others didn’t originate in your heart. God
put it there, and when you send it to others, God gives you more than
enough to take its place. When God sends his love your way, it doesn’t
come as a trickle. It comes as a tidal wave. He fills your cup until
it overflows. He keeps filling it until you have a clean mind and a
pure heart, and then He fills it some more. The more you give, the more
you get. The more you give, the faster it comes, and the quicker your
emotional problems are healed. The more you give, the sooner you become
a whole person.
God has an inexhaustible ocean of love that contains enough for
everyone. God will give you all the love you need if you are willing to
spread it around. If you don’t send his love to others, you die of
spiritual thirst. When you send his love to others, your cup overflows.
God’s plans are elegant in their simplicity. Even a child can
understand them. No one should ever die of spiritual thirst in God’s
world; there’s plenty of love for everyone. You can have all the love
you want if you send it out to other people.
Positive Guidepost
14. Say good-bye to guilt and hello to God's love.
God loves and accepts you the way your
are, but He loves you too much to let you stay that way. That is your
ultimate reason for hope. God is on your side. He wants to fill your
heart with his love, banish your limitations, and wash away the plague
of negative thoughts from your mind. God’s love carries away your
burden of guilt. His love not only wipes the slate clean, it also
throws the slate away. God has a plan for your life that is better than
anything you can imagine. There is no limit to how good your life can
become when you max out on the power of His love.
Positive Guidepost 15.
Use the power of praise to remind yourself of God's
presence and power.
Praise recognizes and reminds you of the power and presence of God
working in your life at specific times and places. Praise is an
affirmation of your trust in God and gives Him the opportunity to
demonstrate his presence and power in a major way.
Praise is not about feelings. It's about facts that reflect the power
and presence of God.
Do not confuse praise with emotion. Praise is not emotion, but words
of praise often are full of emotion.
Praise is an affirmation of the power and presence of God in your
life. Emotion is how you feel because of what God is doing on your
behalf. Praise focuses on facts. Emotion focuses on feelings. Don't
place your faith in your feelings, because feelings change. Place your
faith in God who is working in specific and concrete ways to make your
life into something good.
Praise is a recognition of God's specific actions on your behalf. It
reminds you that you have a personal relationship with God, and that
when you get in agreement with Him, amazing things start to happen.
Praise recognizes what God has done in the past. When your eyes of
praise look into the past, you see the hand of God working things out.
God made a way when it appeared that there was no way. God exchanged
your impossibilities for His possibilities.
Praise recognizes what God is doing in the present. When your eyes
of praise look at the present, you see what God is doing in your life
right now. You see a here and now God who has a positive plan. When
you get in agreement with Him, He takes you to places far beyond your
early limited dreams.
Praise recognizes what God will do for you in the future. When your
eyes of praise look into the future, you see God leading the way and
showing you where to take the next step.
Praise connects you with God and is part of your conversation with
God. You talk to God and thank Him for all that He is doing. Praise a
major part of your relationship with God. It's your personal
conversation with the Father - spirit to Spirit - heart to Heart. It
reminds you of God's presence and power. It's spiritual glue that
strengthens your connection with God.
I suspect that God enjoys our praise because it can only come from
hearts that love and trust Him. Words of praise confirm that we love
God with all our heart, all our mind, and all our strength.
I also suspect that praise is more for us than it is for God. God
doesn't have an ego problem that needs to be propped up with words of
praise. On the other hand, we need to speak words of praise. The more
we praise, the more we affirm God's presence and power. The more we
praise, the more we see God at work in the past. The more we praise,
the more we see God at work in a personal way in the present. The more
we praise, the more we trust God to lead us into the future. The more
we praise, the more faith wells up in our heart and mind.
Praise is more than just words. It creates an atmosphere in which
God manifests his presence and power in miraculous ways.
When Paul and Silas were locked up in prison, they sang songs of
praise so loud that all the other prisoners could hear how God was
working in their lives. They had just been beaten, they were in chains,
and their legs were in stocks. They should have been in the dungeon of
despair. Instead, they sang words of praise to the God who was rocking
their world. It wasn't long until God sent an earthquake and released
them from their stocks and chains. The message is clear. Songs and
words of praise break the chains of lack, limitation, captivity and
addiction. When you are down, you are never out if you sing words of
praise. God honors praise by demonstrating his power as you face your
biggest challenges.
In days of King Jehoshaphat, a coalition of armies assembled to
attack Jerusalem. The situation appeared grave and the people were
afraid. In the midst of the terror, the word of the Lord came to
Jehoshaphat with the following message, "Do not be afraid or be
discouraged because of this vast army. For the battle is not yours, but
God's. You will not have to fight this battle. Take up your positions;
stand firm and see the deliverance the Lord will give you."
The next day Jehoshaphat appointed men to go in front of the army of
Israel and sing praises to God as they went. In the eyes of the world,
this was a suicide mission. People singing songs of praise on the front
lines between two armies prepared for combat. But eyes of praise saw a
completely different picture. They could see that the battle was the
Lord's, and they sang songs that recognized God's presence and power.
When the foreign armies heard the songs of praise, they began fighting
among themselves, and they fled the battlefield running for their lives.
That's the way praise works. Praise is a shield that goes before
you. When you praise God, the shield goes up. When you complain and
doubt, the shield comes down. Every time you face a challenge, you need
to say words of praise. Every time trouble surrounds you on all sides,
you need to sing songs of praise.
God is your shield and defender when praise fills your heart and
mind. When you praise God, your shield goes up and the battle is the
Lord's. So take up your positions, stand firm, sing praises, and see
the deliverance of the Lord.
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