This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live – Deuteronomy 30:19 (NIV).

How many decisions do you make in a day? How many do you labor over? How many do you choose without thinking about them?

Look at your life for a moment: do you like where you are? Your residence? Your source of income? Your family? Your friends? The car you drive?

Subconsciously or consciously, you made the decisions that got you to this point in your life.

I know that is a hard pill to swallow because we want to blame our parents, spouses, children, bosses, even God. Yet the responsibility for your life lies squarely in your hands.

Yes, bad things happen to you, but what you do, how you react, is totally up to you. You get to decide how events are going to affect you. Are you going to allow them to make you stronger or bitter?

Instead of blaming God, why not use your power of choice to choose to trust God to help you and to turn your tragedy into triumph, your mess into a message?

There is power in choosing. Nothing in the Christian walk is about our feelings. You walk by faith not by feelings (2 Corinthians 5:7) .

Everything from love to forgiveness is a choice. Trust is no different. Choose to trust. Choose to love. Choose to forgive. Your feelings will eventually catch up with that decision.

What is going on in your life? What parts do you want to change? Make better choices, and watch your circumstances turn around.

#choices #mind #thoughts #reactions #powerinchoice #choosegood

We need to learn, yes, but we also need to apply what we learn to our lives. Otherwise knowledge without application is meaningless.

How do we see ourselves?  Do we see ourselves as strong and confident?  Or do we see ourselves as losers, as not good enough?

How we see ourselves determines how far we will go in life.  If we see ourselves as unworthy, as failures, then we will approach life with this attitude.  Everything we touch will fail–our relationships, our businesses, our work, everything.

Why? Because we are never going to rise above the picture we have of ourselves.

How do we change that picture?

By meditating on the good about us and not the bad.  If we continue to play the same record in our head about how bad we are, about how we never get the breaks in life, about how unfair life has been to us, we are going to get more of the same.

What we focus on is going to happen in our lives.

Let’s instead focus on the good about us in Christ:

We are in right standing with God through Jesus (II Corinthians 5:21).  As long as Christ’s Sacrifice is acceptable, we will remain righteous through Christ.

We are accepted (Ephesians 1:6).

We are justified (Romans 5:1-2).

We are loved by God (John 3:16, Romans 5:8).

We were created for a purpose (Jeremiah 29:11).

We can do all things through Christ who strengthens us (Philippians 4:13).

Everything our hands touch prospers (Deuteronomy 28:8).

When we focus on who we are in Christ, the more we will see ourselves being the people God created us to be.  We will see what God says about us happening in our lives.

This won’t happen overnight.  It won’t happen in a day or week.  We have to continually meditate on what God says about us.  We can store those Scriptures in our phones, so we rehearse them while waiting at the grocery store, while on hold, in the morning, before bed.  We could also put them in places around our home and office where we will see them.  We need to make meditating on them throughout the day a habit.

We can choose to think negatively about ourselves, thus feeding that negative image.  Or we can meditate on who we are in Christ and change that image, causing us to see positive changes happen in our lives.   Which will you choose?

#image #positiveimage #negativeimage #Christsimageofyou #thoughts

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Seek to understand more than you seek to be right. Listen to what others say, and you might find more common ground than you thought.

Thank God every day. Thank Him for life, a roof over your head, money in the bank, food to eat. Some don’t even have these things.

Share what God has done in your life with others. Share your victories and your experiences. Someone might need what you have to say.

Remember the past. Rehearse your victories. Keep your eyes on your goals and move toward them knowing that you’ve got this!

Don’t let people annoy you. Breathe deeply and decide that the other person is just having a bad day. Be a ray of sunshine in their life.

No matter what is going on in your life, praise the Lord. It is magnifying Him rather than your problems that will see you through.

Last year around this time, I had sciatica.  So bad that it hurt to stand, to sit, to get out of bed, to put on my clothes.  I lived in constant pain, trying almost every thing to get relief.

I returned to Arizona after spending a year in Nevada, hoping the warmer climate would help.  All I wanted to do was go to church.  The church I felt at home at.  I needed that comfort.

I stood in the worship service, clutching the seat in front of me for support.  The worship team started singing, “Lord, I Need You.”  I sang it.  Tears streaming down my face.  In that moment, my illness, my darkness, turned.  Was I healed?  No, but, in that moment, I knew light would come at the end of my dark tunnel.

I went to work and played that song over and over again.  Day after day.  Week after week.  I changed my prayer from “Lord, heal me” to “Lord, what is the solution to this?”

Then He lead me to the two things that helped tremendously.  Today I walk, sit, stand without pain.

Too many times, though, we dismiss God’s work in our situations.  We say things like, “Oh the Magnesium and the exercises I did helped me.”

Who lead us to those solutions?  God.

We are too quick to rationalize God right out of our miracle.  We don’t give credit where credit is due.  We don’t realize that God and God alone is responsible for our salvation, our healings, our breakthroughs and our miracles.  Apart from Him, we are nothing (John 15:5).  We are nothing in and of ourselves.  We can’t heal ourselves.  We can’t save ourselves.  We can’t help ourselves apart from God giving us the smarts, the teachers, the life to do so.

When God does something in our lives, we need to declare it (Psalm 118:17, Psalm 107:2).  We need to acknowledge all that He has done in our lives.  When we do, it magnifies God instead of our problems.  It makes God bigger in our lives.  It makes Him bigger in our thinking, and consequently, our believing.

Keep your eyes on God, declare His works in your life.  When you do, your problems will shrink, and you will see God work more on your behalf.

#solutions #God #declareHisworks #miracles #breakthroughs