Starting Your Best Life Now: A Guide for New Adventures and Stages on Your Journey (2 page)

This could be the day you see your miracle.

RISE TO NEW LEVELS

Todd Jacobs dreamed of starting his own computer software business, but when he got married and the first baby came along, he shelved his dreams and took a mundane job just to pay the bills. Ironically, when a terrific opportunity arose for Todd to work with one of his best friends and develop software for a well-known, established company, he turned it down. He doubted his skills and was afraid to take a chance.

Like Todd, many people miss pivotal opportunities in their lives every day because they expect nothing better. God opens new doors for them, yet regrettably they back away. Rather than launch out in faith and believe for the best, they say, “Well, that could never happen to me. That’s just too good to be true.”

DOORS OF OPPORTUNITY WILL SWING OPEN FOR YOU

God has more in store for you! His dream for your life is so much greater than you can imagine. If God showed you everything He has in store for you, it would boggle your mind.

If you have a vision for victory in your life, you can rise to a new level. But as long as your gaze is on your problems instead of on your possibilities, you risk moving in the wrong direction and missing out on the great things God wants to do in and through you.

It’s a spiritual as well as a psychological fact: Your life will follow your
expectations.
If you dwell on positive thoughts, your life will move that direction; if you continually think negative thoughts, you will live a negative life, which will affect your relationship with your family and friends. If you expect defeat, failure, or mediocrity, your subconscious mind will make sure that you lose, fail, or sabotage every attempt to push above average.

W
HAT YOU WILL RECEIVE IS DIRECTLY CONNECTED TOHOW YOU BELIEVE.

It’s time to quit limiting God. God is your source, and His creativity and resources are unlimited! One idea from God can forever change the course of your life. God is not limited by what you have or don’t have. God can do anything, if you will simply stop limiting Him in your thinking.

Quiet your heart and receive God’s Word:
“I can do all things through Him who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13
NKJV
).

When God brings opportunities across your path, step out boldly in faith, expect the best, move forward with confidence, knowing that you are well able to do what God wants you to do. Step outside that little box you’ve grown accustomed to. Start thinking big!

If you will change your thinking, God can change your life.

BREAK THROUGH BARRIERS

Up until the early 1950s, track-and-field experts pompously declared that no runner could break the four-minute-mile barrier. “Experts” conducted all sorts of profound studies to show that it was impossible for a human being to run that far, that fast, for that length of time. And no one ever had.

But one day a twenty-five-year-old man named Roger Bannister refused to let all those impossibilities form a stronghold in his mind. He began to train, believing he could break the record. And, sure enough, he went out and ran the “Miracle Mile,” breaking the four-minute-mile barrier.

Now, here is what is so interesting about this story. Within ten years after Bannister broke the record, 336 more runners also broke it! Think of that. As far back as statisticians kept track-and-field records—hundreds of years—nobody had done it. What changed?

Simple. For all those years, the barrier was in the runners’ minds. One man proved the experts wrong and hundreds ran free.

A
SK
G
OD TO PUT SOME FIRE IN YOUR SPIRIT.

WHAT’S HOLDING YOU BACK?

When God led the Hebrew people out of slavery in Egypt, the eleven-day journey to the Promised Land took forty years. God wanted them to move forward, but they wandered in the desert, going around the same mountain, time after time. They were trapped in a poor, defeated mentality, focusing on their problems, always complaining and fretting about the obstacles between them and their destiny.

No matter what you have gone through in the past, no matter how many setbacks you’ve suffered or who or what has tried to thwart your progress, today is a new day, and God wants to do a new thing in your life. Never let your past determine your future.

If you will change your thinking, God can change your life. You were born to win; you were born to break through barriers; you were created to be a champion. Our God is called
El Shaddai
, “the God of more than enough.” He’s not “El Cheapo,” the God of barely enough!

Quiet your heart and receive God’s Word:
“The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds” (2 Corinthians 10:4).

Don’t accept whatever comes your way in life. Take a stand and make a difference. Your words have amazing power, so quit talking about what you can’t do, and start talking about what God
can
do. Stay in an attitude of faith, and you will break through the barriers of the past.

Nothing is going to be able to keep you down.

DECLARE GOD’S FAVOR

Joseph was a young man with a heart full of dreams when his brothers sold him into slavery. Think of being hauled away to Egypt, mistreated, taken advantage of, unjustly accused of rape, and thrown into prison. But the Bible says, “The favor of God was upon Joseph” (Genesis 39:5–23). Despite overwhelming adversity, and no matter what people did to him, he continued to prosper and eventually was put in charge of all Egypt’s agricultural affairs.

Ruth was a young widow providing care for her mother-inlaw, Naomi, and they were practically starving during a severe famine. Yet Ruth found “favor” with the owner of the grain field (Ruth 2:10), and eventually she and Naomi’s dire circumstances turned around, and their needs were supplied in abundance.

When you are living under God’s “favor,” or favor-minded, the Bible says, God’s blessings and “love chase after me every day of my life” (Psalm 23:6
THE MESSAGE
). In other words, you won’t be able to outrun the good things of God. Everywhere you go, things are going to change in your favor. Every time you turn around, somebody’s going to want to do something good for you.

ARE YOU MISSING OUT?

The favor of God comes to us in the midst of life’s challenges. In less than a year, the Old Testament character Job lost everything—his family, his business, and his health. He lived in perpetual pain. But in the midst of that dark hour, Job said to God, “You have granted me life and favor” (Job 12:10
NKJV
). Amazingly, Job was not delivered, healed, and set free until chapter 42! But at the very beginning, when his circumstances appeared most helpless, Job was saying, “God, I don’t care how bad the situation gets. Your favor is going to turn it around.” No wonder God restored to Job twice what he had before!

Quiet your heart and receive God’s Word:
“Set your hope wholly and unchangeably on the grace
(divine favor)
that is coming to you” (1 Peter 1:13
AMP
).

When you are going through tough times, even if your situation looks impossible, stay in an attitude of faith. Before long God’s favor is going to show up, turning that difficult situation around to your benefit. Stay in an attitude of faith and declare the favor of God instead of being discouraged and developing a sour attitude. One touch of God’s favor can turn everything around in your life.

N
EVER GIVE UP ON
G
OD.

DEVELOP
a Healthy Self-Image

True self-esteem can be based

only on what God says about me—

not on what I think or feel about myself.

I am who God says I am.

You were made in the image of God.

SEE YOURSELF AS GOD SEES YOU

Carly was the lone woman employed in a largely male-dominated field. She had to earn her right to be heard nearly every day. Overweight, with a halting walk from one leg being slightly shorter than the other, she heard the laughs and snide remarks made behind her back. But Carly paid little attention. She knew who she was, and she knew she was good at what she did. She walked past her detractors, receiving one promotion after another, eventually becoming the CEO of her company and a highly-sought-after expert in her field.

Carly’s secret is her incredibly positive self-image. She believes that she has been made in the image of God, and that He gives her intrinsic value. She doesn’t strive for the approval of others or depend on compliments to feel good about herself. Bright, friendly, articulate, and extremely competent at her work, Carly is living her best life now!

Learn to love yourself as your

heavenly Father loves you.

HOW DO YOU SEE YOURSELF?

Your self-image is much like a self-portrait; it is who and what you picture yourself to be, which may or may not be an accurate reflection of who you really are. How you
feel
about yourself will have a tremendous impact on the person you become, because you will probably speak, act, and react as the person you
think
you are. The truth is, you will never rise above the image you have of yourself in your mind.

God wants us to have healthy, positive self images, to see ourselves as champions. You may feel you’re a failure, but that doesn’t change God’s image of you. You may feel unqualified, weak, and fearful, but God sees you as a victor! He created us in His image, and He is continually shaping us, conforming us to His character, helping us to become even more like the person He is.

Quiet your heart and receive God’s Word:
“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9).

We must learn to love ourselves, faults and all, not because we are egotists, but because that’s how our heavenly Father loves us. You can walk with confidence, knowing that God loves you unconditionally. His love for you is based on what you are, not what you do. He created you as a unique individual—there has never been, nor will there ever be, another person exactly like you, and He sees you as His special masterpiece!

Don’t focus on your weaknesses; focus on your God.

BE STRONG AND COURAGEOUS

Perhaps you know the story. Ten of the twelve Hebrew spies sent by Moses into Canaan to check out the opposition came back and said, “It is a land flowing with milk and honey, but there are giants in the land. Moses,
we were in our own sight
as grasshoppers. They’re too strong. We’ll never defeat them” (Numbers 13). Compared to the giants, the mental image they had of themselves was as small helpless grasshoppers. The battle was lost before it started.

Joshua and Caleb had a totally different report. “Moses, we are well able to possess the land. Yes, there are giants there, but our God is much bigger. Because of Him,
we are well able
. Let’s go in at once and possess the land.” Faced with the same giants, Joshua and Caleb believed God and refused to see themselves as grasshoppers. Instead, they saw themselves as God’s men, led and empowered by God.

DON’T BE A GRASSHOPPER

Friend, are you allowing your weaknesses and insecurities to keep you from being your best? God already has enough “grasshoppers.” He is not pleased when we mope around with a “poor me” mentality. When you do that, you’re allowing your self-image to be shaped by nonbiblical concepts that are contrary to God’s opinions of you. This sort of poor self-image will keep you from exercising your God-given gifts and authority, and it will rob you from experiencing the abundant life your heavenly Father wants you to have.

You and I are “well able” people. Not because we are so powerful, but because our God is so powerful. He wants you to be a “can do” person, someone who is willing, ready, and “well able” to do what He commands. When we face adversity and hardships in life, we can rise up with boldness and confidence, knowing we can overcome them. God loves to use ordinary people just like you and me, faults and all, to do extraordinary things. If God chose to use perfect people only, He’d have no one to use.

Quiet your heart and receive God’s Word:
“Now thanks be to God who always leads us in triumph in Christ” (2 Corinthians 2:14
NKJV
).

You can change the image you have of yourself. Start by agreeing with God. God sees you as strong and courageous, as a person of great honor and valor. Quit making excuses and start stepping out in faith, doing what God has called you to do.

K
EEP GOING; KEEP GROWING.
G
OD HAS MUCH MORE IN STORE FOR YOU!

Learn to be happy with who God made you to be.

BE AN ORIGINAL

I recall talking with Steve, a young man who suffered severe rejection as a child. His parents continually beat him down verbally, telling him he’d never amount to anything. Those destructive words crushed his self-image. Steve later discovered that his parents had hoped for a baby girl and were sorely disappointed when he was born. Sadly, Steve was convinced that he was to blame for all the heartache in his family and his parents’ unhappiness.

I told him, “Steve, you cannot allow your self-esteem and your sense of value to be determined by how other people treat you. God accepts us even if everybody else rejects us.” It took a while for Steve to accept the truth, but today he is well on his way to living a happy, productive life.

DARE TO BE HAPPY WITH WHO YOU ARE

God doesn’t want a bunch of clones. You should not let people make you feel badly about yourself because you don’t fit their image of who you should be. You were created to be you. You were not created to mimic somebody else. If God had wanted you to look like a perfect model or have a different personality, He would have made you that way. When you go around trying to be like somebody else, not only does it demean you; it steals your uniqueness.

An important factor in seeing yourself God’s way is to understand your intrinsic sense of value. Your sense of value cannot be based on your successes or failures, how your friends treat you, or how popular you are. It is not something we earn; indeed, we cannot earn it. God built value into us when He created us. As His unique creation, you have something to offer this world that nobody else has, that nobody else can be. Your sense of value should be based solely on the fact that you are a child of the Most High God.

Quiet your heart and receive God’s Word:
“We are God’s workmanship” (Ephesians 2:10). The word
workmanship
implies that you are a “work in progress.” God is continually shaping us into the people He wants us to be.

Be an original, not a copycat. Be secure in who God made you to be and then go out and be the best person that you can be. Even if everybody else rejects you, remember, God stands before you with His arms open wide.

I
F YOU RUN THE RACE AND BE THE BEST THAT YOU CAN BE, THEN YOU CAN FEEL GOOD ABOUT YOURSELF.