If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.
Hopefully you have encountered what I call a "mountaintop" experience. It's like the sun is shining on your face as you receive precise revelation about yourself, a relationship or some other event in your life. It feels almost surreal at the time. However, when you come off the mountaintop, you may experience defeat because the revelation you received seems to be an impossibility.
According to Oswald Chambers, our time on the mountaintop is not necessarily to teach us something, but to make us into something when we come off the mountaintop. I'm here to testify that God does His best work when we come off the mountaintop and are back in the valleys of life. This is where miracles occur.
Growing up, I spent a lot of time playing and competing in sports. The analogy that comes to mind is an athlete who report "being in the zone". As the baseball comes at you in the batters box, you can see the seams on the ball. When your opponent returns a well placed tennis ball, the ball appears as large as a grapefruit. The point is, you see the ball very clearly before it ever gets to you. I believe this truth applies to our spiritual life as well. We must plan ahead of time for trials and temptations that will eventually come our way. It's critical to know how we are going to react before it happens.
I find that the spiritual attacks come when we take our eye off the ball, to continue with a sports analogy. This tends to happen when we are transitioning. Graduating from school. Moving to a new house. Changing jobs. Getting out of jail. Coming out of a divorce. It's like a relay race. If the baton is dropped between runners, the race is all but lost. By planning ahead of time to know how we will respond when the attacks come, we will have huge edge over our opponent, the evil one.
There are many ways to come up with a plan. Looking back on your life and journaling life situations can be a good way to start. Many times we are not aware of God's presence when we are in our sin, yet He is always there, trying to get us back on track. The benefits of developing a roadmap to spiritual success will far outweigh the benefits any worldly plan could produce. One simple example of a plan is to be in prayer, read and study the Bible, and hang out with like minded people.
As we navigate the valleys of life we must make many decisions. Most of us to know the difference between what's good and what's bad. What can be very difficult is making a decision between whats good and what's best for us. The reason this can be hard is because in most cases, what's best for us will not line up with our thinking. It will line up with God's way.
Correct beliefs vs. false beliefs.
I'm not a medical professional, nor am I giving medical advise with the following example. However, I have found this content to be helpful in understanding why failure occurred so many times in my life because I was making decisions based on emotion only.
Imagine receiving a phone call and the person at the other end of the phone said that a loved one was just in a car accident and they were not expected to live. You might jump in your car and head over to the hospital. If on the way to the hospital, that same person called you back and said they had made a mistake. They proceeded to tell you that the person in the accident was not a loved one. In fact, it was someone you did not know at all.
I would imagine that the emotions you would feel thinking it was a loved one fighting for their live, versus your emotions upon getting the new information that your loved one was if fact safe, might cause similar emotions, but in fact they would be very different. Knowing your loved one was not the victim of a life threatening accident might instead result in emotions of relief and thankfulness.
Here's my point: In the first example the belief you had resulted in one set of emotions. In the second example, because your beliefs changed, so did your emotions. Unless we are talking about physical or severe mental pain, our beliefs drive and control our emotions.
So, if you make a plan that is grounded in sideways beliefs, your emotions will follow suit. It goes beyond positive thinking. Our thoughts drive our actions, which become our habits, which forms our character. However, it's our belief system that has a critical impact on our thoughts and emotions.
You may think satan is holding a gun to your head. I'm here to tell you he only has blanks in the gun. The only power he has over you and me is that of deception; and we hold all the cards. We must never give him permission to deceive us. When he calls, send it to spam.
The importance of sound thinking.
Setting goals and coming up with a plan for success can be fatiguing and devastating if you don't understand the following truth.
For example, you might have a goal of losing weight and getting into shape. You go to the gym in hopes of turning any fat into muscle. Unfortunately, it doesn't quite work that way. Now this may not be 100% correct from a medical standpoint, but I believe the example helps us understand our spiritual capacity, or lack of it. In the gym, you must build up enough muscle so that the muscle overcomes the fat.
I find that this is true of one's spiritual life as well. We must build up our spiritual capacity so it overcomes the flesh. The apostle Paul reminds us that there is nothing good about the flesh.
Under the Success Principles tab, I will be covering some Biblical texts that can get you out of trouble and keep you centered on truth. I hope you embrace this journey and ask questions as you go. Always commit to searching and finding the truth on your own. Don't reply on what I or what anyone else says.
