The Audacity of God's Grace: 10 Strategies To Living Your Best Life Now (16 page)

Because the audacity of God’s grace is enough, you are now equipped to take back what the devil stole from you and rediscover yourself again and the dominion which God has deposited into your life by the grace of God. The implication is this: For every trouble you have faced, God is about to bless you with double. How about that? What I encourage you to do is to begin by asking God to speak directly to you. Ask God that you are ready to listen and hear his word and the strategies you will utilize to overcome the present circumstances in your life. God can speak directly to your needs and where you are even at this point in your life history. I pray that you will re-discover your happiness, your peace, your joy, and above all, have your strength renewed and experience the real joy of serving the Lord which is now your strength (Nehemiah 8:10). Congratulations! As from today, I mean right now, I want you to decide to be God’s child. Be happy! You can begin to experience the audacious grace of God that liberates and crushes every setback. I have experienced it. You too can.

Think About It

For your mind liberation and automation for success exercise number 3, ask yourself: What do I have control or power over that has been defeating my success that I need to believe God and take action and activate God’s power in me to overcome it and succeed? What are the major initiatives I need to undertake to accomplish this task or goal out of the five goals for my life that I identified in
10 SLYBLNP # 1 above
? An example could be to quit having pre-marital affairs, extra-marital affairs, avoid procrastinations from pursuing your life career goals and dreams, or setting up your own small business with a greater vision of expanding the business over time no matter what. Additional examples could be to watch your weight, to use the gym or do more exercise, watch your diets, to quit drinking alcohol or smoking or any lifestyle choice that has been defeating your joy and becoming that person God has created you to be.

When you identify what is limiting you, you will have the ability to live your best life now. I want you to think properly and make a full scan of your lifestyle before you write these things down. Give yourself a timeline such as: from this moment until a specific date through the grace of God, I want to quit drinking, having extra or pre-marital affair, stealing or smoking, setting up my own small business or even going extra mile to reconciling with friends or family members that you shouldn’t have hurt or that hurt your feelings through poor actions. You can go and ask for forgiveness from those whom you have used and/or abused, blackmailed, betrayed their trust, lied against, or mistreated in ways that you would not want others to treat you. This could be people that played significant roles in your life journey for you to become successful in one way or the other or those that you misjudged because of the spirit of poverty etc. Additional examples could mean to forgive yourself of your past and ask for God’s direction in your new life today and for a greater future.

Write down the initiatives below that you have identified that you need to believe the grace of God to accomplish and begin to automate your mind into success to do them? Again, I will ask that you list or write them down as well as how you plan to go about them and begin to make declarations about them. If you want, put todays date by the side of it, and sign your signature. Remember that these goals and or initiatives must be SMART which is an acronym for:

• Specific

• Measurable

• Attainable

• Realistic and

• Timely.

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STRATEGY NUMBER 4
I CAN DO BETTER THAN
I’M DOING RIGHT NOW

“The recipe for achieving success lies in your ability to make the best out of every opportunity. There are too many opportunities out there with few people grabbing them. Many people will remain poor because they think there is not enough money to go around or opportunity to create wealth around them.”

—John Nwankwo

YES, YOU CAN

Majority of people in life got off from a rough start. But that should not be your excuse to failure. Maybe, you personally experienced terrific poverty, despair and abuse of your economic wellbeing or a handful of negative things during your childhood. This should even spur you to achieve greatness. But you have to be willing to agree that, yes, you can. The problem is that the first eight years of a child’s life is when the child forms what will become most of the child’s characteristics. Once most of the child’s mindset and character development are formed, even as adults, those characters, attitudes, and behaviors has got the ability to push a person up in life or keep them down. Now watch this: Many of our life’s attitudes and approach or outlook to life didn’t just happen. They are the products of what we have internalized, what we have heard, what we embraced, what we believe over time, and what we have been exposed to. These are the things that will impact our perceptions in life, how we make judgments and see “reality”, and how we draw conclusions. As we grow over the years, the patterns we have established in our minds become a force either for defeat or for what builds our success story.

The implication is that when certain opportunities or situations arise, because of our established mindsets, we are pre-programmed to respond, act or think in certain specific ways.

In fact, it will be almost a miracle for us to deviate. If we have been exposed to embrace poverty and a life of struggle as virtues or a means to holiness by our parents, religious leaders, mentors, chances are that we will believe this lie. If we have been raised in ways that we believe in taking short cuts, in laziness; exposed to embrace cheating or falsehood; being a User-friendly individual or dependable on others for our survival, it will take the grace of God—a miracle for us not to act in this prescribed ways. This is why some people get hooked up on crimes and criminality, and unable to defeat failure. It all begins in the way we have been raised to think or programed to respond. Our best weapon of defense—to defeat poor thinking patterns and poor teaching syndrome is to automate our mind towards success; to say to ourselves that no matter how ugly this situation or circumstances may seem to be, that I can still excel. If we don’t re-build a strong system of defense to succeed, to avoid quitting easily, and to pursue excellence, we cannot do better than we have done in our past. This is why we must train our minds to embrace faith in God’s abilities to make us successful. Our minds must be trained to believe that yes, irrespective of the ugly situations, we still have the capacity to rise to the top and live our best life now.

Our failure to do so means that our minds will continually wander in the wrong directions they have been for years. Why do you think the millionaire’s children think differently from children’s from poor homes? The secret lies with what each of these children have been influenced to think, how they perceive success and what they are exposed to. If you think that there is not much you can do to better your health, your marriage, your children’s educational needs; your economic condition or that there not enough opportunities or money to go around or that you cannot create wealth, you will never achieve them. You become easily discouraged, and the sad reality is that you will lack the capacity to do better in life. You know why? Discouraged people don’t see opportunities. Even when they meet with opportunity that a millionaire will instantly size and capitalize on, because of a preprogrammed mindset of fear and doubt, a discouraged person, mostly poor people, will see excuses not to make the most out of these opportunities.

There is Power in Your Exposure

Another secret why most poor people I have seen or known over time do not do better than they are doing right now is that majority of them do not read. They don’t educate their mind for success. Most poor people and the middle class are stuck where they are today, because they think that education ended with their current level of formal education. Interestingly enough, every millionaire that I know reads something or finishes one book each week or in a month. While many poor people have big television sets and video games for their children, the millionaires have big libraries filled with motivational and inspirational books on how to stay up in life, and not to drag through life. My networks of friends always have something to share, something to challenge you to educate your mind on success. It could be audio, a video, or a success-process program or toolkit. The worst thing a millionaire wants is to go back to poverty. While I do not personally know you by name, my questions to you are this: Apart from the religious literatures which I still read ferociously, What have you read lately about your material wellbeing to challenge your mindset or automate that mind to work success for you? Do you know that there is power with what you read or believe? Greater power lays in what you are exposed to.

See, if you don’t feed your mind with what is good, you are tempted every now and then to let negative things occupy an exalted position in your mind—your life. You will let in negative experiences, the thought of “I cannot do this, I cannot do that, this is not for me or people like me” etc. to set the course of your life.

This is one of the most dangerous places to be in life. I want you to kill the thought of “I cannot, and replace that thought to, I can” for that’s a proven way for you to do exceedingly better than you are doing right now. When you expose your mind to this believe system, you will receive more power to achieve greater things in life.

“That your parents, you, or your mentors started life with small things or poverty doesn’t mean you should finish that way.”

I believe sincerely that you can do better, because you are very powerful. You need to get refreshed each day, with vitality and a vision of hope for your life. After you have done so, you can automate that vision into success by trusting that by the special grace of God, I can develop myself and become prosperous and a powerful force for social change and the good of humanity. You have the ability to champion a cause for this generation.

Look Out for Opportunities Even in Adversity

Amidst the busy schedules of people and unending struggles to survive in a highly competitive world with financial and familial troubles; despair, helplessness and hopelessness can lurk in. Thankfully enough, beside every insurmountable obstacle, the audacity of God’s grace is able to push people and communities forward and make people able to live their best life now by providing a way of escape and guarantee success for everyone who are willing to work hard. This will help you to enjoy life. The secret lies in believing God and activating our faith in him to enable him release the fount of every blessing that guarantees us the ability to live our best everyday life. Your beginning point is to make the most out of every opportunity even in adversity which is always part of humanness. You don’t really need to know how the airplane works or how the pilots fly them before you will board your next flight or do you need to? If you want to know the mechanics of the automobile that will take you to work before you drive your car, I bet you would be unemployed. The Ipads or laptop that I use works well. That’s all I care to know. I am not interested in learning the way it works or learning all the nitty gritty before I use them.

Making the most out of every opportunity is not about utilitarianism. It does not mean that our ends should justify our means. It does not encourage us to take short cuts by cheating or falsifying information to perpetuate fraud or orchestrate corrupt practices. Making the most out of every opportunity means that, at every opportunity God brings our way, we should obey the power of God’s promised word, trusting his unfailing love, and act in faith in the midst of these opportunities. When we act in faith, believing the grace of God to carry us through, God release on us, a supernatural energy to carry on even when we are in the dark about the details of how God will perform the impossible. This is one of God’s areas of specializations! The wisest man who lived on earth once said in (Ecclesiastes 11:5 NIV): As you do not know the path of the wind, or how the body is formed in a mother’s womb, so you cannot understand the work of God, the Maker of all things.

Similarly, during times of hardship or adversity, there are always words of hope and encouragement that are whispered from God’s promised word to those who are open to hear God speak into their situations. Success has always been dependent on choice. We can choose to believe the grace of God and automate our mind into success by disabling every programmatic negative influence over our lives. Surely, the God who gives us opportunities and the ability to grab them does not appear anymore only on burning bushes or speak with just thunder and lightning every time he wants to liberate us or provide us with success. Rather, God rises up a powerful group of people of positive influence and daily opportunities to speak into our lives—words of encouragement on the radio, on TV sets, on the church pulpits, in business webinars or seminars, on inspirational books and talk show programs etc. God provides us with avenues for success which could speak directly into our situations as eloquently as God Himself would do. If you don’t believe that you can live a fruitful life, a life of increase, abundance and prosperity, a spirit-filled holy life or purity and compassion, you can’t live it. The fact is this: what you don’t believe, you won’t become. This is why you must learn to make your expectations to become the mother of your manifestations. Raise your expectations.

“If you expect defeat, you will continually be defeated in life’s battles.”

If you expect success, you will become a unstoppably a successful person. I believe strongly and sincerely that you can do better than you are doing right now. What your belief systems are is very powerful. Throughout history, what I have observed is that there is not a time when God leaves the people he has created in his image without inspiration. God has never abandoned his children in the dark. Centuries in the Old Testament testify of the goodness of God through the inspirational lives of Noah, Abraham, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, Deborah, Gideon, Samuel, David, Solomon, Job and many more. The New Testament speaks about how God raised Paul, who when he was known as Saul, dispersed the apostles, but would later become a passionate follower of Jesus, uniting the Jews with the gentiles. This is why God is greater than your mistakes, and bigger than your current problems. God is more interested in your now, than your past. Social history tells us about great leaders who championed great social changes that impacted life positively in the 20
th
century. The inspirational lives of leaders such as: Albert Einstein, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Franklin D. Roosevelt, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the Wright Brothers, Henry Ford, Mao Tse-tung, Winston Churchill, Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa, Chinua Achebe, Oprah Winfrey, Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, etc. whose impact are still among us.

In the religious histories in recent past and in more recent times, Christian models who are being used to speak forth the grace and the blessings of God into people’s lives abide. Such inspirational leaders and teachers; mentors and motivational leaders includes: the late Prophetess Ellen G. White, the late Martin Luther King Jr., the late Paul Crouch of Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN), Billy Graham who passionately led many people to Jesus in the 20
th
century, Bishop TD Jakes, Pastor Joel Osteen, Pastor Jonathan Oloyede, Pastor Rick Warren, Bishop David Oyedepo, Pastor E.A. Adeboye, Pastor Joyce Meyer, Pastor Creflo Dollar, Pastor Kingsley Anonaba (the man of God who led me to Jesus), Pastor John Nwankwo and Pastor Jane John-Nwankwo, Pastor Olugbenga Efuntade; Pastor David Bukola Ajibode—fondly called pastor Bukky, Pastor Chris Oyakhilome, Pastor Olugbenga Benjamin Adeoye—fondly called pastor G, Pastor Ugochukwu Ahiamadu and Pastor Oyeleke Owolabi (my former publishing mentors); Pastor (Professor) Sampson Nwaomah (The man of God who joined my wife and I in holy matrimony and my former senior pastor at Heirs of the Kingdom Chapel, on the campus of Babcock University), Pastor Bassey Udoh—a distinguished Christian leader and Church administrator, Pastor Benny Hinn, and Pastor Daniel Kolawole Olukoya. Others include Dr. Samuel koranteng-Pipim –a dynamic US-based Ghanaian author, speaker, and theologian, trained in engineering and systematic theology, Pastor Innocent Nwankwo, Pastor Hillary Anaba, Pastor Emeka Onwutuebe, Pastor Oswald Nwaoguikpe, Pastor Uzoma Nwosi and Pastor Rueben Onwubiko among numerous other powerful anointed men and women of God etc.

Don’t Settle for Defeat, You Can Do Well

The ability of many people to do well and walk away from what has been downloaded into their early life either because they had parents who were poor or teachers and mentors whose mind were unemployed with tools for success will be depended on who feeds them now—mentally. The word of God in the Christian Scriptures on (Romans 10:17 NKJV) states that: So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. Now, the same way that faith comes by hearing the word of God is the same way that the fate of failure can occupy our mind over time as we are immersed into falsity or poor teachings syndrome which makes room for the enemy to sow and even sale us the lie that we are doing God a favor by staying poor, and focusing just on the kingdom of God. While we must not take working towards the kingdom of God as a fun-fare, we need to develop lives and communities in ways that those who are waiting for Jesus’ return will be able to live well here on earth and reach our fullest redemptive capacities.