Living His Word
Living HIS Word provides you with an inspirational message on applying HIS Word in your every day life.
Message of Encouragement (Part #4)
Pray and Go...
Now that you have a vision, and if you have read and followed the previous three essays you have a vision, you need to submit it to God. The Bible teaches us that although man makes many plans, it is only the things that line up with God’s will that come to a successful conclusion. So you need to make sure that your vision and God’s will are on the same track. How do you do this?
Well, first you pray. Talk to God as you would to a trusted friend who supports you and your ideas. Show Him your written vision and talk to Him about it in detail. Ask God to show you how He feels about your vision. In many cases, the Holy Spirit will speak to you and tell you whether your plan is good or if it needs adjustment. At other times, circumstances will begin to unfold to support your plan. This is a positive sign. God may speak through other people to tell you in what direction to go. If you think you hear God telling you to move in a certain direction but you are not sure, WAIT UNTIL YOU ARE SURE. Don’t jump ahead. God has a perfect timing for everything and that includes your plan. Keep praying and keep your eyes open and you will be able to see when it is the right time to move forward.
If you are definitely sure that God is giving you the green light, then begin to take small steps to carry out your vision. For example, suppose you are thinking about starting a lawn care business. You have written out the vision, including start up costs, what services you will provide and so on. You have prayed and you feel a definite positive response from God. At this point, you should begin to look at the price of equipment, talk to neighbors about becoming possible customers, creating a work schedule. Buy a lawn mower if you don’t have one. (Get the best one you can afford, but don’t go beyond your budget). Get some hedge clippers and whatever other tools you need. Then get to work. If God is truly behind the venture, one by one these steps will fall into place.
As you are doing this, you need to maintain a positive mindset and speak positively about the plan. Many visions have died due to people’s negative thoughts and words. You have a great idea and people start telling you all the reasons why it won’t work. If you listen to them, you will never get your idea off the ground. If God is for you, who can be against you? If you believe God is for the idea, then there is no reason why it won’t work. You must believe in your success and speak words that show you believe. In the example above, begin to think of yourself as a businessman or businesswoman. Tell people you are starting a lawn care business. If God has blessed your plan it is already done in His mind. You just have to believe it is a done deal in YOUR mind.
Your success may not come overnight. Many ideas need time to grow. Many businesses start small and grow. But if you have followed all these steps, stay with it and you will see your dream become reality. CONGRATULATIONS!
Message of Encouragement (Part #3)
Write the Vision
Once you have come to believe that change is possible, you need to direct your mind. If your present situation is not good, how do you want things to be? So many times, we are stuck on complaining about our situation but we don’t even know what we want. When we come to God with vague statements like, “Just bless me” very little happens. The Bible teaches us to have a vision – a clear idea of what we desire in life and how to bring it about.
Let’s pretend for a moment that you have always wanted to work with children. You may be working at a job that involves no contact with children at all. If you are unhappy at that job, and you desire a change, you should consider what kind of work with children you want to do. Do you want to be a daycare worker? A teacher? Do you want to enhance children’s lives by exposing them to art or music? It is not enough to say “work with them”. There are many ways to work with them. You need to know what kind of work you want to do. The same is true for any other vision. Try to be as specific as possible in your vision.
Then you need to give substance to this vision that you have. See yourself actually doing what you say you want to do. In the example above, you could see yourself in a classroom, perhaps, with musical instruments around you, teaching children about the different instruments and the sounds they make. Feel yourself standing in front of the room, or sitting in a chair. Hear yourself speaking to the children. Hear the sounds of the instruments. Feel the cold metal of a flute, the warm smoothness of a drumstick. The more you do this, the more real the vision becomes. You are actually creating this experience in your mind. You are giving it form and shape and in the process you are moving closer to it becoming real.
Write down your idea. Give it as much detail as possible. Every day, feed your idea by looking over what you have written, adding to it as you see fit. Say positive things about your idea. If you have a vision to get out of debt, see yourself creating a plan and working it and successfully coming out of the hole. Write out your plan in detail. Every day, tell yourself you are more than a conqueror and that with God’s help you are overcoming debt and becoming financially secure. In the next segment we will look at what to do with our vision, once we have a vision to do something with.
Message of Encouragement (Part #2)
You can if you think you can
Sometimes we look at our situation or our circumstances and we get discouraged because things are not as we would like them to be. We may have a lot of problems, we may be in some kind of trouble, or our finances may be in terrible shape. We may be worried about our health, our loved ones, or friends.
When you find yourself in a bad situation, there are four steps you need to take to get yourself moving in a positive direction. We will take these steps one at a time, beginning with…
1. Believe that a change for the better is possible—God is able to do anything, but He is not going to push you much past your ability to believe. Jesus said to one of the people He healed, “according to your faith, be it unto you.” The Proverbs say, “…as one thinks in his heart, so is he.” What kind of conversations are going on in your head about your circumstances? Are you telling yourself, “that’s just the way it is” or “I’m never going to get out of this one”? It is just that kind of thinking that keeps you stuck.
What makes faith a radical thing is that it asks you to look your bad situation in the eye and insist that it will change. You don’t have to pretend that you don’t have a bad situation. You don’t have to say, “I have a million dollars”, when you really have $3.27 to your name. No, you recognize that you are broke, but you also understand that being broke is a temporary situation, and that it is a situation that will change. The first person that you have to convince of this is you. If you are sick, troubled, or whatever, think to yourself that this problem CAN get better. Believing you can get there is the first step to coming out of that hole you have fallen into.