GETTING IN AGREEMENT WITH GOD ABOUT WHO YOU ARE AND WHAT YOU CAN DO WITH YOUR LIFE

Christian Positive Psychology is simply learning to think the way God intends for you to think.

Not all thoughts and emotions are created equal when they enter the human heart and mind. Many thoughts and emotions are frankly destructive; they make you sick and tear you apart.

On the other hand, the most powerful force and most positive force in the universe is love, and when God's love gets inside your heart and mind, your thoughts and emotions become healthy and you become whole.

When the positive power of God's love controls your heart and mind, you are thinking the way God intends for you to think. Your thoughts are positive, and your emotions are healthy.

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 them 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, and that plan forms the foundation of Christian Positive Psychology.

When your mind is full of thoughts consistent with God's love, your thoughts are healthy and 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.

This forms the corner stone and focus of all Christian Positive Psychology and is the center around which you organize your life.

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 intends for you to think.

CHRISTIAN POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY GIVES YOU THE POWER TO MAKE THE TRIP

Christian Positive Psychology is based on the overwhelming and unrelenting power of God's love and its ability to change lives.

Psychology in general suffers from a power deficiency.

Secular psychology worships at the altar of insight.

People believe if they get insight into their problems, somehow the problems will magically disappear.

Unfortunately, insight may point people in the right direction, but it does not give them the power to make the trip.

Insight may tell you where you want to go, but power doesn't emanate from insight.

Everyone knows that obesity is associated with hypertension, heart disease, and stroke, and yet the rate of obesity relentlessly spirals out of control. Insight doesn't make people exercise or eat healthy foods.

Insight is not power.

Christian Positive Psychology is all about the power of God's love, and it does not suffer from a power deficiency.

God's love is real power. It points you in the right direction and gives you the power to make the trip.

CHRISTIAN POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY TEACHES YOU HOW TO MAXIMIZE THE POWER OF GOD'S LOVE

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.

CHRISTIAN POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY HELPS YOU GET IN AGREEMENT WITH YOURSELF

What is the meaning of positive?

The word positive has been around for about seven hundred years. According to Merriam-Webster, the first known use of the word positive was in the 14th century. That was about a hundred years before Columbus sailed to America. Until then, people did not have a positive attitude, because the word positive did not exist in the English language. Before then they had to use other words to describe a positive attitude. Probably they simply said that someone had a good attitude.

The word positive means congruent and non-ambivalent.

It's an operational definition signifying 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 a single 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 you need to love God with all your heart, all your mind, and all your strength. He was stating a simple truth. In your relationship with God, you 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. Being congruent simply means you are in agreement with yourself.

Positive people are in agreement with themselves.

Positive is also non-ambivalent.

Ambivalence is the enemy of a positive heart and mind.

Ambivalence is like a wave in the sea blown by the wind. Whenever the wind changes, the waves change.

You can't behave like waves of the ocean if you want to have a positive life. External forces don't decide which direction you sail on the ocean of your dreams. You set your course and continue sailing regardless of the direction of the wind.

Ambivalent people never commit to a single purpose. They go with the flow, and they end up in Nowhere Land.

A positive mind is always non-ambivalent.

Positive people are convinced and committed to a course of action regardless of the consequences. Opposition does not deter them, and storms don't stop them.

They conquer the storms of life. Storms simply confirm they are sailing on the ocean of their dreams.

CHRISTIAN POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY CHANGES YOUR EXPECTATIONS

Christian Positive Psychology changes the way you think about who you are and what you can do with your life. It does this by changing your expectations.

God 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.

When Jesus said, "As you believe, so shall it be done unto you," he was stating the Law of Expectations. He made it abundantly clear that your expectations create the road map to your future.

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." But you need to more than ask, seek, and knock. You must do it expectantly.

You are to ask expectantly, seek expectantly, and knock expectantly.

When you get your expectations right, your life immediately starts to improve.

Jesus came to change our expectations, and he taught that positive expectations are the foundation for a positive life.

CHRISTIAN POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY RESULTS IN WHOLENESS

Wholeness happens when you are spiritually alive with a healthy heart and mind.

You connect with God in your spirit, and your heart and mind are full of God's love.

Even with sickness in your body, you can be whole in your spirit, heart, and mind.

God has a plan for your life that is better than anything you can imagine, and part of that plan is called wholeness.

You can have wholeness when an arm or leg is missing. Your eyes may be blind, but your spirit can have twenty-twenty vision. You can have wholeness even while you have cancer.

Nothing can chase wholeness out of your life when you are spiritually alive, and your heart and mind are full of God’s love.

God created you, and He knows you better than you know yourself. He knows what ails you, and He knows the cure.

No matter what therapies you have tried in the past, if you have not experienced God's love, you are missing out on the most powerful medicine in the universe. God's love always makes your life better.

If you want your body to heal in the quickest possible time, a liberal application of God's love will make it happen faster.

If you want to restore wholeness to your heart and mind, you need to max out on God's love.

CHRISTIAN POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY IS THE DEFINITIVE CURE FOR DAMAGED EMOTIONS

God's love will not change the bad things that happened to you in the past, but it will erase their power.

God's love is more powerful than any problem, and it will move mountains of difficulty out of your life when His love takes over your heart and mind.

When you shift your focus to God's love, you win the battle for a positive heart and mind. God's love becomes the center around which you organize your life.

The war for a positive mind is fought on the battlefield of focus, and focusing on God's love connects you with the most powerful and most positive force in the universe.

How does God’s love do its miraculous work?

1. First, it changes the way you think.

2. Second, it changes the way you feel.

3. Third, it changes the way you live.

First, you experience God’s love intellectually, and that changes the way you think.

You need to change the way you think about many things.

When you look at your limitations, you need to change the way you think.

When you look at your failures, you need to change the way you think.

When you look at your past, you need to change the way you think.

When you look at the present, you need to change the way you think.

When you look at the future, you need to change the way you think.

When you look at who you are and what you can do with your life, you need to change the way you think.

Once you start thinking differently, the emotional healing begins, and God’s love changes the way you feel.

Your emotions are the direct result of the thoughts that you put into your mind.

When you think new thoughts, you experience new emotions that are consistent with those thoughts. Your new thoughts become the musical score for a new emotional symphony that plays in your heart and mind. When God is the author of your new thoughts, the melody of God’s love starts playing, and good things happen in your life.

God designed your mind to function best when it’s under the influence of his love. When your mind is full of thoughts consistent with his love, your mind is exactly the way God means for it to be.

God designed your heart so it would experience healthy emotions when it’s dominated by his love. When your heart is full of emotions consistent with his love, your emotions are healthy and your heart is exactly the way God means for it to be.

Once you start thinking new thoughts and enjoying new positive emotions, another miracle happens. You start taking new actions. You even start doing things you could never do before.

New actions mean a new life, and that is exactly what happens. God’s love rolls through your heart and mind, and you become a new person with a new life.

But that isn’t all the good news. You also establish a relationship with the Great Physician who will use the power of love to transform your life. He will not give you a placebo or Love Potion Number Nine. He will give you the real thing, unconditional love that lasts forever.

No matter what your problems are or how long they have been present, God’s love will work on them until the job is done. God is in it with you for the long haul.

How long will it take for your life to get better? That depends.

How much time are you willing to invest in your new life? There is no specific timetable for improvement. You write your own schedule of healing based upon the amount of time you spend focusing on God’s love.

Ten minutes of focusing on God’s love is better than no minutes at all, but that doesn’t give God much time to fix what ails you.

Dabbling in God’s love is doing things the long hard way.

If you want God’s love to do its miraculous work, you must become totally immersed in it. You must practice God’s presence every day, all day long. Only then will your heart and mind be continuously exposed to the healing power of his love.

CHRISTIAN POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY KICKS IN WHEN YOU BECOME SPIRITUALLY ALIVE

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 you audaciously 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.

He isn’t going to ask you to write an essay to find out if you really understand what you are doing. He isn’t going to give you a multiple choice test asking you one-hundred questions on theology, and if you don’t score at least seventy percent, you don’t get to call him Father. He won’t ask for a personal interview or references from religious people. He won’t demand that you are perfect before you can have a relationship. He won’t require that you don’t sin for three days in a row before it can happen.

God loves you unconditionally, and that means there are no preconditions to having a relationship with him.

CHRISTIAN POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY LEADS TO EXCELLENCE

You are a child of God destined to achieve excellence and live with a heart of love.

God gave you the ability to achieve excellence in at least one area of your life.

Your area of excellence is unique. No one has your identical talents and abilities, and no one can exactly duplicate your area of excellence. You have a unique contribution to make to the world. If you were not here, the world would be diminished by your absence.

You don’t need to be like anyone else. You don’t need to be like everyone else. Instead, you need to be yourself and be the best you can be.

Excellence is not just for a few special people. It’s a gift that God gives to everyone.

You are created in the image of God, and excellence is a reflection of that image. It’s an expression of who you are after the power of God’s love rolls through your heart and mind and makes you into a new person.

Jesus said, “To whom much is given, much shall be required.” God has given you more than you know, and you must spend the rest of your life developing the excellence He placed inside.

God doesn’t make mistakes. He has big expectations and positive plans for your life, and He is backing you up with the most powerful force in the universe, his love.

CHRISTIAN POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY HAS A POSITIVE FOCUS

Your mental focus makes or breaks you.

When you choose your mental focus, you set the direction for your life.

You build your future thought by thought, and you become what you think about all day long. That's why it's so important to focus on positive things.

The war for a positive mind is fought on the battlefield of focus, and until you learn how to control your mental focus, you cannot win the battle for a positive mind.

You can have a positive mind and a positive life once again, but for that to happen, you have to change your mental focus. Only a persistently positive focus can create a consistently positive mind.

This isn't as much about positive thinking as it is about different thinking. It's about thinking new thoughts when you switch the focus of your mind.

Christian Positive Psychology has a single postive focus, and that focus is on God's love.

When you continually focus on God's love, you regain the high ground in the battle for a positive mind.

When God's love gets into your heart and mind, you become a new person with a new way of thinking and feeling. You actually get a new life.

Old things pass away, and all things become new.

The power of positive focus is immense when your focus is on God's love.

CHRISTIAN POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY HAS A POSITIVE ATTITUDE

Your attitude is your way of looking at yourself and at your world, and it's a choice you make every day.

I lived outside the United States for twenty-eight years in more than twenty countries.

As a result of living in so many dissimilar cultures, I can state beyond the shadow of a doubt that not everyone looks at things in the same way. In fact, cultures often look at the same thing in radically different ways.

Attitude is everything when you live in different cultures.

If you have the wrong attitude, you won't survive long in some countries. The wrong attitude makes your work difficult or impossible, and the right attitude makes it easy. The wrong attitude may result in deportation or even worse.

Attitude is a mind set. It's the way you choose to look at yourself and at the world.

The single most important decision you make every day is the set of your mind.

If you get it right, you have an awesome life.

If your mind set is wrong, your destiny is failure, frustration, and self-destruction.

You must have the right attitude, and it must be positive. There is no other way to reach your potential and to live your dreams.

CHRISTIAN POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY INSTALLS A POSITIVE OPERATING SYSTEM IN YOUR MIND

When God created your mind, He designed it to run most efficiently using a Positive Operating System. He made a software package called POS Version 1.0.

POS stands for Positive Operating System. Version 1.0 means there is only one version. No updates are necessary, and no revisions are required. POS Version 1.0 is the optimum operating system for your mind.

Positive thinking truly is the right type of thinking. Positive thinking is more than a good idea. It's the way your mind was designed to work. God designed your mind to function best when it’s under the influence of positive beliefs.

If you think enough positive thoughts, your mind gradually shifts over to a Positive Operating System.

Two thousand years ago, the Apostle Paul 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.” This was Paul’s method of installing POS Version 1.0. What worked for Paul will also work for you. You can install a Positive Operating System by putting positive things into your mind.

God has given you all the tools you need to have a positive mind.

People complain that it's difficult to live as a positive person in a negative world. They talk as if the odds are stacked against them. They feel like they should accept their miserable existence and learn to live with a negative mind.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

God gave you the power of repetition to install a positive operating system.

If you consistently and persistently repeat positive thoughts, it is absolutely inevitable that your mind will fill up with positive things, and before long, your mind will start repeating those same positive thoughts back to you.

You must repeat positive thoughts until your mind repeats them back to you if you want to have a Positive Operating System up and running in your mind.

CHRISTIAN POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY TRANSFORMS YOU THROUGH THE RENEWING OF YOUR MIND

The mind is the door through which the power of God’s love enters your life. 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.

No matter what path you walk to personal transformation, all paths eventually converge on the mind.

That doesn’t mean all paths lead to God. It does mean that God designed your mind to be the door through which you enter the world of change.

You can actually change your life by changing what you put into your mind.

The power of the mind is so great that there is considerable confusion regarding its role in spirituality.

For many people, the mind becomes a stumbling block. They elevate it to such a high position that they appear to worship at the altar of the mind. Others turn their back on it, believing that religious faith and the mind are in conflict, and they choose faith.

Those who worship at the altar of the mind often believe their mind is everything. They elevate it almost to the status of God. They preach a gospel of mental omnipotence that is supposed to cure all ailments. If they can just get things straight in their mind, everything will be fine.

Those who have an adversarial relationship between their mind and faith, struggle to bring their unruly mind into submission. Often they hold their mind in contempt, because many of their thoughts make them uncomfortable. They hope their spirituality will give them control over their unwanted, disturbing, and frightening thoughts. They try to ignore their mind, hoping it will go away, or at least stop irritating them with thoughts they don’t want to think. They try to divorce themselves from their mind claiming all they need to do is live by faith. If they have enough faith, everything will turn out fine.

The truth lies between these two extremes.

God designed your mind to be the door through which the power of his love flows into your life.

Your mind is where God’s love is brought to bear on the problems of life. When you fill your mind with the power of God’s love, miraculous things happen, but it wasn’t the mind that made them take place. It was God’s love that made the miracle come to pass.

CHRISTIAN POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY FILLS YOUR MIND WITH GOOD THINGS

God gave you a good mind and He expects you to fill it with good things.

Don't allow negative thoughts and limiting beliefs to take up residence inside your mind.

Your brain is not a dumpster for the toxic waste of the twenty-first century.

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.”

Paul was not just passing out good advice when he said, "Think on these things." He was giving a roadmap to a positive mind.

If you continuously fill your mind with good things, you have a one-hundred percent chance of becoming a more positive person.

Don't take my word for it. Take Paul's.

There is no other way to create a positive mind.

CHRISTIAN POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY IS BASED ON GOD'S LOVE

The most positive force in the universe is God's love. The most powerful force in the universe is God's love. The most important fact in the universe is that God loves and accepts you the way you are, but He loves you too much to let you stay that way.

The power and presence of God in the world is love, and every time you see uncondtional love, you are seeing the hand of God at work.

The power and presence of God in your life is love, and every time you experience love, you experience God's presence and power.

The power of God in your mind is love, and every time you experience loving thoughts, you experience the mind of God.

The power of God in your heart is love, and every time you experience loving emotions, you experience the heart of God.

God created you and knows you better than you know your self. He knows what ails you, and He know the cure.

God's love is not just for you. It's for everyone. When you send God's love to other people, you become God's arms of love in the world.

You are never more like God than when you are loving other people.

CHRISTIAN POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY NEUTRALIZES THE POWER OF GUILT

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 his love.

CHRISTIAN POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY USES 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.

If you want to push your heart in a positive direction, The Mega Affirmation is a good place to get started

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.

CHRISTIAN POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY KEEPS YOU CENTERED

God's love forms the center of your life and keeps you centered.

It is the central point around which all other things revolve.

It is your point of perspective that brings all things into focus.

It is your point of reference by which you measure everything that happens.

It is your source of power.

It points you in the right direction and gives you the power to make the trip.

It is the first thought that enters your heart and mind in the morning and the last thought you think before you go to sleep at night.

It is the bedrock on which you build the foundation for your life.

It is your lighthouse in a storm.

It is always there to support and sustain you no matter what happens.

It keeps you centered because it is your center.

CHRISTIAN POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY SHOWS YOU HOW TO MAX OUT ON GOD'S LOVE

What does it mean to max out on God's love?

1. You dare to call God your Father.

2. You have a personal relationship with God based on love. You fall in love with God.

3. You send your love back to God through loving other people. You fall in love with other people.

4. You practice God's presence every day all day long.

5. You give up your need to be right and switch the focus of your life to love.

6. You move in the direction of the dream that God placed in your heart regardless of the consequences. You act as if that dream is possible and work each day to make it happen.

7. You use prayer to do a reality check and align yourself with God's plan for your life. You get in agreement with God. You trust God's plan because it's good for you and perfect for the type of person you are.

8. You open your heart and mind to the power of God's love. His love washes the toxic waste out of your mind and heals your damaged emotions.

9. You live congruently as a whole person with your intellect, emotions, and will all heading in the same direction. You become an Unstoppable, Consistently Positive, Endlessly Persistent, Doer of Dreams.

10. You spend the rest of your life focusing on God's love and putting good things into your mind.