Power Thoughts: 12 Strategies to Win the Battle of the Mind (19 page)

I encourage you to develop a new mind-set, one that says, “I love people; I enjoy helping them and being generous.” Then purpose to spend some time each morning thinking about what you can do for someone else that day. Lie in your bed before you get up in the mornings and pray, “God, who can I bless today?” Don’t ask, “How can I be blessed today,” but “Who can I bless today?” In the evening take a “blessing inventory” by asking, “What did I do today to make someone else’s life better?” As I started learning to bless others, I found that I often made plans in the morning to bless people later that day, but then became busy and did not follow through. Taking the evening inventory really helped me because I did not want to have to answer, “Nothing, I did nothing to improve someone else’s life today.”

Decide to use the blessings in your life to be a blessing to others everywhere you go. You can do this in big ways or in small ways, but just do it. You’ll be amazed at the results.

Another way you can be a blessing is just by being friendly. Make a real effort to be friendly with people everywhere you go and show a genuine interest in them. Try to make shy people feel comfortable and confident. Try to make anyone that is handicapped in any way feel just as “normal” as anyone else. There are countless ways we can be a blessing if we think about it creatively.

Think about It

Who do you intend to bless this week and how will you do it?

A Great Big Happy Life

Since being good to people has been one of my personal goals, my “joy tank” never runs dry for very long. I have even discovered that when I do get sad or discouraged, I can begin to think on purpose about what I can do for someone else and before long I am joyful again.

We all experience times in our lives when things are not going great for us. We may even be in the midst of personal loss or pain, but we cannot only be good to people when things are going well for us; we also—and especially—need to bless others when times are difficult for us. The reason I believe we need to be especially diligent about blessing others when we are struggling is that when we concentrate on giving, being kind, expressing love, and blessing other people, it gets our minds off our problems and we experience joy in the midst of our trouble. Why? Because givers are happy people!

You may have heard many times that the Bible says, “It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35
NKJV
). The
Amplified Bible
renders that verse this way: “It is more blessed (makes one happier and more to be envied) to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35). You may know that verse, but do you really believe it? If you do, then you are probably doing your best to be a blessing everywhere you go. I must admit that, for many years, I could quote this verse, but I obviously didn’t really believe it because I spent my time trying to be blessed rather than being a blessing.

I have now learned that we do not even know what “happy” is until we forget about ourselves, start focusing on others, and become generous givers. In order to be generous, we have to do more than simply plunk some change in a bucket during the holidays or give to the church once a week. Actually, I think learning to give in church should simply be practice for the way we should live our everyday lives. I do not just want to merely give offerings; I want to be a giver. I want to offer myself every day to be used for whatever God chooses. For this change to take place in my life I had to change my thinking. I had to think and say thousands of times, “I love people and I enjoy helping them.” This power thought will be life-changing for you if you put it to work in your life.

As you become a generous giver, you will be amazed at how happy you will be and how much you will enjoy life. In contrast, stingy people are unhappy. Those who are not generous live little bitty, pathetic lives. They just do what they have to do; they look out only for themselves; they don’t like to share; and they only give when they feel they must—and then, they often do so reluctantly or grudgingly. These attitudes and actions run contrary to the way God wants us to live because they do not result in blessings for anyone. In fact, Proverbs 1:19 says being greedy will drain the life out of a person:

So are the ways of everyone who is greedy of gain; such [greed for plunder] takes away the lives of its possessors.

God is a giver. Paul writes, “Now to Him Who, by (in consequence of) the [action of His] power that is at work within us, is able to [carry out His purpose and]
do superabundantly, far over and above all that we [dare] ask or think [infinitely beyond our highest prayers, desires, thoughts, hopes, or dreams]—
to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever,” (Ephesians 3:20, 21, emphasis mine). These words describe God, and if we want to be like He is, we need to always go the extra mile, always do more than we have to, always give more than enough, and always be generous.

Think about It

In what ways can you become more generous?

If You’ll Listen, You’ll Know

Because human nature is selfish and self-centered, generous giving does not come naturally to us. We have to build into our thinking the mind-set that we are generous. Begin to think and say, “I am a very generous person. I look for opportunities to give.”

I have found that opportunities to give are all around me—and they are all around you too. Finding out how you can bless another person is as easy as using your ears. If you simply listen to people, you’ll soon know what they need or would like.

In casual conversation, a person who works for me once mentioned she liked things produced by a certain company. I asked someone to go get her a gift certificate and gave it to her with a note telling her how much I appreciate all her hard work. She began to cry and said, “It’s not the gift certificate that means so much to me. It’s the fact that you actually heard me and remembered what I said.”

I encourage you to begin listening to others and paying attention to what they say more than ever before. People want to know you’re listening to them; they feel loved and valued when you listen to them. If you don’t know what to do for someone, you’re not listening to them because people tell you what they want, need, and like—and you’ll know if you listen. You could start a list of things that you hear people say they want or need, and if you cannot provide it for them now, you can pray that God will give you the ability to do so. If you act on what you hear and bless people accordingly, you’ll see that blessing others really is better than receiving anything for yourself. I assure you, the more you give, the happier you will be.

Think about It

What have you heard recently that let you know what someone needs or wants? What will you do about it?

How Generous Are You?

I want to close this chapter with several questions for you to ask yourself to help you see how generous you are or, perhaps, are not.

• How well do I tip? If I were a waiter or waitress, would I want to wait on myself, based on the way I tip?

• What kinds of gifts do I give? Do I give the cheapest things I can find? Do I get anything just to meet an obligation or do I sincerely look for what I believe the person receiving the gift would enjoy?

• Do I freely and frequently encourage and compliment other people?

• Am I willing to share what I have?

• Do I hoard possessions or do I give away what I’m not using?

• How many things do I have hidden in drawers in my home—things I have not used in years that I am keeping just because I like having possessions?

• When I have opportunities to give to those less fortunate than I am, do I give generously? Do I do as much as I can or as little as I can?

• If I’m with someone who has a cold and runny nose, and I have been carrying around a package of tissues for weeks, do I give that person only one tissue, or do I offer the entire package so they will have plenty?

• Do I give someone else the best-looking steak at dinner or do I keep that one for myself?

We could ask ourselves all kinds of questions like these that would help us locate our level of generosity. I believe you want to be as generous as you can possibly be so meditating on this power will certainly help you reach your goal. Think and say, “I love people and I enjoy helping them.”

Power Pack

“Be mindful to be a blessing….”

Galatians 6:10

“If anyone intends to come after Me, let him deny himself [forget, ignore, disown, and lose sight of himself and his own interests] and take up his cross, and [joining Me as a disciple and siding with My party] follow with Me [continually, cleaving steadfastly to Me].”

Mark 8:34

“Let us not love [merely] in theory or in speech but in deed and in truth (in practice and in sincerity).”

1 John 3:18

“We know that we have passed over out of death into Life by the fact that we love the brethren (our fellow Christians). He who does not love abides (remains, is held and kept continually) in [spiritual] death.”

1 John 3:14

POWER THOUGHT

6

I trust God completely; there is no need to worry!

“Lean on, trust in, and be confident in the Lord with all your heart and mind and do not rely on your own insight or understanding.”

Proverbs 3:5

W
orry does no good and can impact our lives in negative ways. I’m sure you have noticed how absolutely powerless you feel when you worry or feel anxious and troubled, because worry is indeed completely useless. It is a waste of time and energy because it never changes our circumstances. Worry and anxiety do, however, change us. It can make us sick and grouchy. A medical researcher recently told me that 87 percent of all illness is connected to wrong thought patterns. Worry would come under the heading of “negative thinking” and all negative thoughts actually release chemicals from the brain that affect us adversely. In her popular book
Who Switched Off My Brain?
Dr. Caroline Leaf states that we think thirty thousand thoughts per day and through an uncontrolled thought life, we create conditions that are favorable for illness; we make ourselves sick!

Despite the fact that worrying does us no good and is actually detrimental to our health and well-being, it seems to plague multitudes of people, maybe even you. It’s human nature to be concerned about the bad situations in our world and in our personal lives, but if we’re not careful, we can easily become worried or fearful, and we can end up in sin because worrying will keep us from trusting God. Worse than that, by worrying we end up helping the devil in his goal of tormenting us. I find it is easier for me to avoid worry if I keep reminding myself that it is a total waste of time and does absolutely no good at all.

I like to say worry is like sitting in a rocking chair, rocking back and forth; it’s always in motion and it keeps us busy, but it never gets us anywhere. In fact, if we do it too long, it wears us out! Worry keeps us from living in faith and steals our peace. When we worry, we are actually saying, “If I try hard enough I can find a solution to my problem,” and that is the opposite of trusting God.

The cause of worry is simple: it’s the failure to trust God to take care of the various situations in our lives. Most of us have spent our lives trying to take care of ourselves, and it takes time to learn how to trust God in every situation. We learn by doing it. We have to step out in faith and as we do we will experience the faithfulness of God, and that makes it easier to trust Him the next time. Too often we trust our own abilities, believing we can figure out how to take care of our own problems. Yet most of the time, after all our worry and effort to go it alone, we come up short, unable to bring about suitable solutions. God, on the other hand, always has solutions for the things that make us anxious and worried.

Trusting Him allows us to enter His rest, and rest is a place of peace where we are able to enjoy life while we are waiting for Him to solve our problems. He cares for us; He will solve our problems and meet our needs, but we have to stop thinking and worrying about them. I realize this is easier said than done, but there is no time like the present to begin learning a new way to live—a way of living that is without worry, anxiety, and fear. This is the time to begin thinking and saying, “I trust God completely; there is no need to worry!” The more you think about this truth, the more you will find yourself choosing trust over worry.

Think about It

What do you worry about most?_____________________________

How can you release your worry and concern to God?

It’s a Matter of Focus

When our daughter Sandra was a teenager, she occasionally got blemish breakouts on her face. She hated them and was extremely insecure about them. She focused on the blemish so much that she actually called attention to it. She talked about it excessively and by doing so, drew attention to it and others began to notice it. She squeezed it and picked at it and then tried so hard to cover it up with makeup that she actually made it worse. She was a pretty girl, had nice hair, and was lean and thin. She was smart, athletic, and had a great personality, but every month for a week all she focused on was the couple of pimples she got. This is a good example of how we magnify things simply by focusing on them excessively.