The Myth of Motivation

By:  Staci Stallings

The Myth of Motivation

Positive thinking people like to talk about “Motivation.”  They give tips and tricks about how to stay motivated.

However, if your motivation is derived from something outside of yourself, it is at best an illusion and at worst something that will lead ultimately to despair and misery.  I told a friend the other day, “It’s like we stand at the mirror, brushing our teeth in the morning, saying to ourselves, ‘I can do this.  I can.  I can do this.’”  The next morning, same thing, ‘I can do this.  I have to do this.’  By the 55^th morning we’re down to, ‘I really don’t want to do this.’”

The definition of the word “motivate” is to move to action.  It is the process of taking your thoughts, your goals, your dreams and moving them into action.  If your motivation is based on your effort, you won’t be moving very long until pointless futility starts creeping over your spirit.  I know.  I was there.

Pushing the Car

Picture this for a moment.

You have a car, but there is no gas in the car.  So you get up in the morning early.  You get ready, run out to the car, open the door, and start pushing and trying to steer at the same time.  Each step is a struggle, but you have a car, and you’re bound and determined to use it. So you continue like this—step-by-struggling-step for the entire ten miles to work.  When you get there, you are exhausted, but you made it to work.  You did it!

However, the next morning, nothing has changed, except you wake up five minutes later with the thought going through your head, “Ugh. That car again. Man, my legs hurt.”  Once again, you talk yourself into getting out there and pushing the car to work.

The third morning, the alarm goes off.  You roll over and look at it, too tired to even turn the thing off.  Why can’t you just sleep a little while longer?  The truth is, you just can’t face pushing that car again, but somehow you drag yourself out of the bed, fighting to convince yourself that it won’t be that bad.  It is.

By the fourth day, you’re beginning to wonder what is wrong with you.  After all, others don’t seem to be having this much trouble with their cars.  Oh, some of them do, but it can’t be as bad as yours.  You must be doing something wrong.  So that evening on the way home from work, you stop by the bookstore and pick up, “How to Get Motivated to Push Your Car.”  Now, you’re excited again.  Finally, someone will give you the secret.

You spend the evening reading, and by the next morning, you’ve decided that you CAN do this!  So you get out to the driveway, open the door, and start pushing.  It doesn’t take terribly long for you to realize that this is still work, a lot of work.  It’s still frustrating, and with every labored step, you feel the motivation draining from you once again.

The same thing happens with Christians in church.  It’s called “rededicating your life to Christ.”  Yes, you’ve been a Christian, but the truth is, you’ve kind of gotten off track, so now after much consideration, you’re back, and you’re ready to recommit.  In fact, you’ve gotten that Read-the-Bible-in-a-Year book and signed up for two Bible studies as well.  You have decided to pray for at least 15 minutes straight every night with your whole family.  And you are going to go to church every Sunday and on Wednesdays no matter what.

You’re ready to get started, and you do so with gusto.  Everything is going great until that night you miss your Bible reading.  Instantly, you feel like a failure.  Now, you may be able to talk yourself out of feeling too badly, determine to redouble your efforts the following day, and try again.  But in three days, your son is begging to be let out of family prayer time to do his homework.  Two days later you get in late from a soccer game, and 15 minutes of uninterrupted prayer turns into waking up the next morning realizing you didn’t get anything done last night.

Once again, you feel like the definition of a Christian failure.

The truth is, the two scenarios—pushing the car and rededicating your life to Christ—are really very closely related.  In both, it is up to YOU to do it.  What is paramount in the situation is YOUR effort, YOUR motivation.  At first your motivation may be high, but if it comes from nowhere, it is doomed to failure, and you are doomed to feel like a failure because of it.

To add insult to injury, the more perfectionistic you are, the MORE you will feel like a failure.  And many, many people in the positive thinking arena have the perfectionistic trait in spades.  I know I did.

Feeling “Enough”

Growing up, I wrote in a journal every night for seven years.  Some were long expositions on the day’s events, some were my dreams and hopes for the future, some were about my failures—where I was with life and with myself.

One theme reoccurred so often in these journals that it became clear just how often I felt like that.  The theme is encapsulated in eight words:  “Why can what I do never be enough?”

I see now that question that could be the theme question of the Try Harder wheel!  But I didn’t know about the wheels back then.  Honestly, I thought there was something wrong with me.

I believe I’m not the only one who has ever felt this way.  In later chapters, we will look a little closer at this question and what it really means.  For now, I want to relate it to how you perceive yourself in relation to God.

Many of us on the Try Harder wheel are convinced that what we are doing is what God wants.  After all, we want above all else to get to Heaven and to hear God say, “Well done my good and faithful servant.”  That is our ultimate GOAL.  And we’re willing to work ourselves into the ground to hear it.  (And truth be told, we’d like to hear it once in awhile here on earth as well.)

The problem is that we don’t understand that God’s plan for us has nothing whatsoever to do with our effort, it’s not about our having and keeping control, it’s not even about our motivation.

Life, success, real Christianity, is about surrender.

Let me say that again:

Life, success, and real Christianity is about learning to SURRENDER.

I hear you cringing from way over here! Oh, boy.  Surrender? Is that a scary word or what!

Surrender?  Are you kidding me?  No!  I need to be out there, fighting the good fight, being all I was meant to be, making a difference in the world.

Yes, all of those things are important, but they are important “because” not “and.”  Let me explain.

Dr. Lee A. Simpson says that our Christian works should never be defined by “and”; our works should always and only be defined by “because.”

We are not saved by Jesus dying on the cross AND our reading the Bible AND our good works AND our prayer life.  We are saved by Jesus dying on the cross. BECAUSE of that, we read the Bible and do good works and have a strong prayer life.  Our works are a result of what Jesus and His great love for us did to our hearts, not somehow a necessary addition to what He did.

In short, it’s not about our effort, and it never was.

Back to the Car

For one moment, I want you to go back to that car you were pushing to work every day.  Now, imagine for a moment that you wake up one day eager to start your day.  You get ready and walk out to the car, only this time, not only is there gas in the car, there’s a driver too!  The driver opens your door, and you enter not even as the driver but as a passenger.

In fact, you do not have to even inform the driver where you are going, He already knows.  So you sit back and relax as your driver takes you to work.  You do not have to worry about the gas gauge or the tires or the oil, for your driver takes care of all of that!  All you have to do is sit back and enjoy the ride.

What a concept!

But here’s a question:  Do you think the next morning you would dread going to the car?  Or would you look forward to that ride? How about the next morning and the morning afterward?  My bet is that far from dreading the ride, you would look FORWARD to it.  It would not be hard.  It would be a joyful part of your day.

So why are you not looking forward to your life now?

More coming on Monday!

Be-Come

By:  Staci Stallings

Be-Come

In accepting His love, God is asking you gently to be-come what He always meant for you to be.

Look at the word “be-come.”  There are two parts.  First, He is focused on your “being.”  Who you are, not what you do.  For many of us, our success is based on what we do rather than who we are.  Not with God.  He first works on our “be.”  Who are you?  First and foremost, you are His child.  That’s a great place to start.

Then God asks you to “come.”  Come to Him.  This requires moving.  You cannot “be-come” by staying where you are.

It is time to be-come all God has known you can be from the very beginning.

As the World Falls Away

As you begin to understand God’s great love for you, something will happen—you will stop looking to external things to make you happy.  Other things will lose their grip on your life and your worth.  You will no longer seek to justify your existence with awards or achievements or things.  Instead, there will be a deep understanding that your existence is justified because God loved you into existence.  You need nothing else.

The real weakness of positive thinking is this:  Positive thinking in and of itself will never work because it is trying to make something from nothing.  It is not trying to make gold from lead, it is trying to make gold from air.

Thinking positively just does not arise naturally in your spirit.  It must be manufactured over and over again, trying always to say “I am worth it because of what I’m DOING.”  Worse, most of our non-directed thoughts are either random or negative.  So to make positive thinking work, we are left trying to manufacture positive thoughts and actions—consistently and indefinitely.

It’s like we are trying to form a river with no water source.  So we try to make up sources—our grades, our actions, our generosity, our hard work.  But all of these supposed “sources” have one flaw in common:  they are not permanent.  The minute you get a lower grade than you had hoped, your source dries up.  The second you act out of anger or jealousy, your source dries up.  The moment you are less than generous or you just can’t face work, your source dries up.

And you are left with shoulds and musts and a truckload of FAILURE staring back at you.  Some of us then try to use these to motivate us to work harder.  That’s like trying to tell a broken down car to move because it should.  It will never work on a consistent basis, and once again, we are left feeling like a failure.

A New Way of Thinking

What we desperately need is a new way of thinking, a new way of being.

And that is exactly what Jesus offers us when He says:

“I came so that you might have life and have it more abundantly.”  –John 10:10

One of my favorite stories on this topic is the one featuring Jesus sitting by a well, asking a Samaritan woman for a drink.  It sounds simple enough, but oh, the profound wisdom that text contains.

In John 4:4-15, while at the well, Jesus meets the woman of Samaria who was steeped in living in the ways of the world.  She had had five husbands and the man she was living with was not her husband. She went to the well in the middle of the day because she knew the others from her village would not be there at that time.  She knew how they talked about her, and so she would rather go in the heat of the day than face her neighbors’ gossip and condemnation.  It is clear that not only was she an outcast, she also had ample reason to feel like a complete failure.

When she gets to the well, this man, Jesus, Whom she does not know, does the unthinkable. He asks her for a drink.  In that time, men did not talk to women they did not know, and Jews certainly did not engage in conversation with Samaritans.  So when Jesus asks her for a drink, she rebuffs Him.  “How can you, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan woman for a drink?”

To which Jesus replies, “If you knew the gift of God and Who is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked Him and He would have given you living water.’”

The woman protests, “Sir, you do not even have a bucket and this cistern is deep; where then can you get this living water?”

I’m sure Jesus had one of those knowing smiles on His face when He answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again; but whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst; the water I shall give will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

The woman likes this idea but doesn’t really understand what Jesus is saying.  “Sir, give me this water, so that I might not be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”

I want you to understand what the woman did not.  The “water” Jesus talks about is a metaphor for the source of your life, for what you are using to renew your life.  See, the woman kept coming back to the well every day—just like we do certain things every day.  We eat, we clean, we work, we study.  We do, do, do.  And tomorrow, just like the woman, we have to go back to that “well” to get more.

Father Robert Barron, tells the story of when he was in grade school.  He was a good student and was proud of the fact he always had A’s on his report card.  His father, too, was proud of him.  Then one six weeks, he brought his all-A report card into his father.  His father examined it, nodded, said, “Good job,” signed it, and handed it back.  Father Barron says, “When I walked out, I felt this… ugh.  Now I have to go back and do it all over again.”

That’s what it’s like when we are on the Try Harder and Give Up wheels.  When something OUT THERE is our source, we have to keep making the trek to that well, and we will have to make it again tomorrow and the next day and the next.  Unless, of course, we choose to Give Up.

The truth is there is pain in abundance on both of these wheels.  If you are on these wheels, I guarantee you know what it is like to feel like a complete failure most of the time and exhausted the rest.  You are that woman going back to the same well again and again… and again.

More coming on Wednesday!  Be sure to invite your friends to come check out “Being God Positive”!

Stones & Smoke

By:  Staci Stallings

Stones and Smoke

The Greeks told the story of Sisyphus.  Sisyphus was doomed forever to push a boulder up a mountain.  The story goes that the curse was that just as he got the stone nearly to the top, it would roll back down, and he would have to start over again.  Sound familiar?  It sure does to me.  I got really tired of pushing that stinking stone.

I now have a name for this way of living.  I call it pointless futility.  Pointless futility leads to heavy hearts and used up spirits.  It leaves good people asking, “What’s the point of this?”  In fact, King Solomon in Ecclesiastes 2:1 from The Message Bible answers this question thusly, “I said to myself, ‘Let’s go for it—experiment with pleasure, have a good time!’ But there was nothing to it, nothing but smoke.”

If you’re going for the wrong things, your life will feel like smoke.  You will feel like Sisyphus pushing that boulder and never really getting anywhere.  You will understand to the depths of your being the meaning of “pointless futility.”

A New Way

Anthony Robbins says that one of the main reasons changes don’t last in people who are seriously committed to changing is because they fail to find a new positive to fill the old negative.  They determine they’re tired of pushing that stone, so they determine to stop doing that.  The problem comes when they do not fill that old pattern with a new pattern.

Too often what happens is they just move to a different mountain with a different boulder.  You see this a lot.  Someone who was addicted to alcohol finally quits drinking and starts gambling.  Someone who smokes all the time and finally quits begins eating to excess.

They’ve traded one boulder for a different boulder, but their life hasn’t changed.

Dr. Lee A. Simpson says it this way:  “An acorn in your hand will never be what God meant it to be if it stays in your hand.”  In other words, you can have all the potential in the world, but if you don’t plant it, it will never bring about fruit.  Getting away from a destructive habit is the first step. The second step is planting a new pattern in your life so it can grow and flourish.

The God Circle

Remember VanVonderan’s circles?  There were two:  Try Harder and Give Up.

If you are eating off the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, you are on these two wheels.  That Wheel of Fortune keeps rolling and no matter how hard you work, no matter how hard you try or how much you give, you simply cannot stay on top for very long. Further, you are probably exhausted, feel like a failure, wonder why you are so miserable, and maybe even blame God because you’re doing all of this, and there’s supposed to be a reward… somewhere, but you ain’t finding it.  Right?

Actually, no.  That’s exactly WRONG.

We were never meant to do it on our own.  God does not bless our effort.  If you are saying, “God, I did this, please bless it,” you are wasting your breath.  We were never meant to spin on the Wheel of Fortune. We were never meant to do it on our own. That’s why the Tree of Life was an option, and it still is. It’s just too many of us have forgotten that it’s even there!

There is a third circle in VanVonderan’s work.  It’s called The God Circle.  This circle looks like this:

I would term this circle the “Be” circle.  The Try Harder/Give Up circles are the “Do” circles.

On the God Circle, your worth and acceptance do not come from what you “Do,” they come only from one truth:  God loves you.

Not a little bit, not sometimes, not when you’re good or when you’ve accomplished something.  No.  God loves you right now, just the way you are, and He loves you abundantly, endlessly, more than you can ever know or imagine!

Amazingly, I can hear your head shaking from all the way over here.  “But how can that be?” you ask.  “God wants me to do so much for Him, and let’s face it I’m not as good as the saints.  I’ve sinned, and He knows it.  There’s no way God can love me.”

You’re right.  God knows every single thing about you.  He does. He knows how tall you are, where you were born, that you hate asparagus and Brussels sprouts.  He knows about that thing you did back in high school and the things that are weighing you down today.  He knows.  Yes, He definitely knows.

But He also knows the love that He made you with.  He remembers the moment you were formed and how He rejoiced at your life.  He knows what is in your heart—the hurts, the joys, the hopes, the dreams.  He knows it all, and without a single doubt, He loves you beyond measure!

If you do not believe me that God loves you like this right now, that’s okay.  It’s not an either-or, all-or-nothing type deal.  God is VERY patient. After all, He’s got eternities to show you just how much He loves you, and He knows sooner or later you will understand and accept that love.  For now, breathe in the possibility that God loves you with reckless abandon and utter extravagance.  The very thought may cause your heart to rise that such a thing is even possible, or your spirit may resist every word of it.

In thinking about this, ask God to help you to be willing to begin to believe it.  Ask Him to show you and to reveal to you how much He loves you.

Be back Monday with more from God Positive!

The God Void

The God Void

The truth is we all have a deep abiding need for God, a God Void if you will, but too often, we try to fill that void with something else (money, fame, adulation, food, drink, pleasing others, perfectionism, control).  At first, it may look like our substitute is working, but then we feel that void again, and we have to keep doing more and more and more to get the same “fix.”  We have to work harder, longer hours.  Make more money.  Eat more food.  Find new sexual partners.  Drink more.  Be involved in more things.  Gain more control.

If the word “addiction” comes to mind, there’s a good reason for that.

I say this gently because you have probably never thought of it this way, but if you are filling this God space with anything other than God, you have set up an idol in your life.  Whatever you are trying to fill the God space with has become more important to you than God because you have tried to replace God with this something else.  And whatever it is, it will never work for long.  The very idea that it can is an illusion.

A good question to ask is:  What dominates my life?  If God doesn’t, something else does.  What is that something else?

If you feel like you are spinning and spinning and spinning further and further out of control, don’t worry.  You’re not alone.  There is a way to get off the wheels, but first we need to look at this God Issue from a slightly different angle.

The Two Trees

“In the Garden there were two trees—the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil…”

You know the story.  Adam and Eve were hanging out in the garden when the snake showed up.  He asked a sneaky question, “Did God really say you couldn’t eat of any of the trees?”  Eve explained they could eat of any tree except the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  The snake convinced her that God only said that because He knew she would be like God if she ate of it, so she did.

And now, we blame Eve for something we do every single day.

You see, Eve’s story is our story.  It’s your story and mine.

When you look at your clock and know you should be at home rather than where you are, you’re eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  When you had a great class but then you remember you should have pointed out this other thing, you are eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  When you go on a date and then come home and go through all the things you should have said or should have done, you’re eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

Don’t beat yourself up too badly at this point.  You’re not alone.  We all do it.

We hunger for control.  We get day-planners and Blackberries and i-Phones, trying to schedule ourselves into control.  We yell.  We threaten.  We pout. We punish, trying to hold onto some control or gain more.  We tell ourselves we should be the ideal weight, have enough in the bank, be a better parent or spouse, and if we did, we would feel better about the future and ourselves.  If we were just like such-and-such or so-and-so, we are convinced if we just had that, then we could be happy.

The thing is none of these will bring happiness or peace if you do not have it now.

Write this down, and post it somewhere you will see it each day:

Nothing Outside of Me Can Ever Make Me Happy

Controlling your time, making more money, getting to the goal, having that “thing” will not make you happy.  It will not bring you peace because happiness and peace do not come from OUT THERE.  They only come from IN HERE.

That’s the secret Eve did not understand.  God wanted to give her all of life.  All she had to do was accept His gift.  That’s it.  Nothing more.  But she didn’t trust Him and so chose to try to do it on her own, on her own power. She wanted CONTROL.

And so do you.  I know because I did too.

Understand this principle:  To the degree that you rely on your own power, your own understanding, and your own strength, you will be miserable.  To the degree that you choose to eat only from the Tree of Life, relying on God in everything, you will be happy.

More on Wednesday from God Positive!

The God Issue

By:  Staci Stallings

The God Issue

I was baptized at ten days old, and honestly, there was never a time that God was not central to my life.  From grade school through my early years of marriage, God was ever-present and very important to me.  I worked hard for God.  I went to church, obeyed the rules, and made a conscious, deliberate effort to be good.  Okay, I admit it.  I didn’t just want to be “good,” I wanted to be “perfect.”

As I said earlier, mixed with this God-consciousness, I had heavy doses of positive thinking.  I was taught to set goals, work, and achieve.  And I was good at it.  Coupled with that “perfect” thing, I was probably too good at it.  I held myself to standards that no human can never achieve, so I believed often myself a failure and vowed to try harder.

In his book, Tired of Trying to Measure Up, Jeff VanVonderan describes three circles.  The bottom two are:  Try Harder and Give Up.

Growing up, I was on the perpetual Try Harder circle.  You know those little hamsters on the wheels?  Yeah, that was me.  I ran and I ran and I ran, and when I stopped or I got thrown off, I shook my head in disgust at myself, called myself a failure, and vowed to do better next time.  Then, exhausted and bruised, I climbed back on the wheel and started running again. At that time, I believed that my happiness was predicated on my success, and since I never felt like a success (even though the outside world often said I was), I was never happy.

For example, in my early book-writing days, I would go to booksignings with a goal of sales in mind.  Say I thought I should sell 25 books.  I would work like crazy setting the signing up and making sure everything was “perfect.”

Now, let’s say I sold 22 books.  When I finished the signing, I would check my sales and feel miserable and disappointed and like a complete failure.  I hadn’t sold my goal, so I would beat myself up, even if I was outwardly smiling.  It was easy (I thought) to see why I was miserable because 22 simply was not 25.  I had not reached my goal; therefore, I was a failure.  That made sense.

But here’s the thing.  If I sold 28 books, I would look around after the signing, and I was still miserable.  I couldn’t understand this so I would try to figure out why.  Then it would occur to me—I should have called such-and-such and invited them too.  They would have come, and I would have sold 30 books!  That’s it.  That’s why I was miserable, and so I would beat myself up again.

You see, it really didn’t matter what I did or how perfectly I did it.  Very quickly the high of the achievement would wear off, and I would look around and try to figure out why I was still miserable.  Then I would seize on another target, make that my new goal, and convince myself that once I got over THERE, then I would be happy.

But it never happened.

I was only truly happy for moments if that.

In fact, there were times I got so tired on that wheel that I just gave up altogether, and it spun me right off, complete with the crash in the corner.  This made me feel like a worse failure, and I would vow to do better next time. I would pick myself up, dust myself off, stagger back to the Try Harder wheel, and start all back over.  It was a horrible, vicious cycle.  Please understand that attaining the goals I set never brought lasting happiness, and trying harder just made me exhausted.

Maybe you know how that feels.

Rolling, Rolling, Rolling

Father Robert Barron in the DVD “Blessings” talks about the Wheel of Fortune.  This is an ancient concept (not the game show on TV).  The Wheel of Fortune describes what life is like if you are spinning on the Try Harder wheel or the Give Up wheel.

The Wheel of Fortune looks like this:

On the Wheel of Fortune, you are always in one of four places.

You can be on the top: I am King! (You won the game, made the sale, passed the test.)

You can be falling off of the top: I am losing… I have fallen off or are falling.  (You lost the game, missed the sale, failed the test.)

You can be at the bottom:  I have lost.  I’m on the bottom.  I’m a failure. (You lose the season, get fired, flunk.)

You can be climbing back up to the top:  I am climbing.  I will be on top again.  (You practice, you work hard, you study.)

On the Wheel of Fortune you have one goal:  To justify your own existence by winning enough to stay on top permanently, a goal which you can never attain because it is impossible outside of God’s love to justify your own existence.

Living on the Wheels

When you live on the Try Harder/Give Up Wheels, you are also living on the Wheel of Fortune.  Sometimes you’re up, sometimes you’re down, but the one thing you’re sure of is that the wheel will keep rolling.  Achievements at the top don’t last very long.  Falling off hurts.  Being at the bottom is an invitation to stay there.  Working your way back up is slow, painful, and exhausting.  Nothing on the wheel is ever certain, and you can never work hard enough to win perpetually.

But most of us keep on keeping on because we do not know there is another way.

More coming soon from Being God Positive in a Spirit Draining World!  Subscribe so you know when posts are updated!

Back from Hiatus

By:  Staci Stallings

Just after starting this blog, I got chosen to be on Team for a retreat, and that pretty much evaporated all of my “spare time.”  The retreat is now over, and I have decided to begin blogging again by posting pieces from “Being God Positive in a Spirit Drainging World.”  I would love any comments on the posts as that will help me hone the ideas that end up in the final book.

Discovering The Truth

“And the truth shall set you free.”

The sad fact is that too many of us simply don’t know what the truth is, so we stumble through life tripped up by obstacles that we either didn’t see or refuse to acknowledge.  Many of us are still carrying around things we should have let go of a long time ago, but either we don’t know how or we just haven’t come to the place where the pain is greater than the supposed benefit of hanging onto this thing.

The truth is that no matter what area or areas you struggle with, what is ultimately holding you back is a faulty set of beliefs in that area.  Those beliefs may be something you came up with to cope with life, something someone told you, on outcropping of something that happened to you, all of these or none of these.  But the truth of the matter is that at the bottom of everything, it is your beliefs that create your world.

Dr. Lee A. Simpson, a local preacher, said that “words frame our worlds.”  Specifically, the words you are telling yourself or the words you are allowing your mind to tell you are framing and shaping the world in which you live.

During the Depression, my great-grandfather was a well-known businessman in the little community where he lived.  The story is told that he would buy and sell anything.  If one farmer brought in a pig, my great-grandfather would buy the pig and sell the farmer grain for his cows.  If another farmer came in and needed a pig, my great-grandfather would sell him the pig for tomatoes and corn.

The story goes that my great-grandfather had a granary in which to store the grain that would come in.  One day his sons were working in the granary.  They scooped grain from a farmer’s truck into the granary in exchange for something else.  The next day, another farmer came and wanted to by the grain in exchange for a pig.  So the two boys were sent back out to scoop the grain from the granary into the farmer’s truck.  As they were scooping, one boy looked at the other and said in annoyance, “Isn’t this the grain we just shoveled in here yesterday?”

And so it is with our minds.  What we allow to be put into our minds, or what we allow to stay in our minds, is what will come out.  What we plant is the only thing we can ever harvest. Our beliefs shape our thoughts.  Our thoughts become our words, and our words define and create our world.

So to change our world, we must start by changing our beliefs.  The problem is that most of us have never really looked at what we believe or at the thoughts streaming through our minds.  We are like robots with random code streaming through us.  So we try one thing and then another and then another without success, never realizing it’s the coding rather than us that’s faulty.

The Importance of Thoughts

It is important to understand that thought is the defining point around which everything else evolves.

Let’s say that an Event happens.  We will call the Event, A.   When Event (A) happens, we have a Thought about it.  We’ll call the Thought, B.  Upon having the thought, we have a Feeling (C), which leads to an Action (D).  The Action leads to the next Event (A2).

So a typical Event to Response would be:

A  (Event) >  B (Thought) > C (Feeling) > D (Action) > A2 (Event 2)

Most people think that they live without B like this:

A (Event) > C (Feeling)  > D (Action) > A2 (Event 2)

But when you understand that this is not in fact the case at all, you can begin to take control of your life.  Notice:

A (Event)  You are to meet someone at a restaurant.  They are late.

B (Thought)  “They are so inconsiderate.  I knew they wouldn’t come. They don’t even care enough about me to call.”

C (Feeling)  I’m very angry.  I’m going to let them have it when they get here.

D (Action)  Pouting and feeling sorry for self and anger at the other person.

A2 (Event)  Determine to get even when they show up.

Now contrast with this scenario:

A (Event)  You are to meet someone at a restaurant.  They are late.

B (Thought)  “I wonder if they got stuck in traffic.”

C (Feeling)  I hope they are okay.

D (Action)  Wait without anger or annoyance but with concern for their safety.

A2 (Event)  Call to see if they are coming, or find something to do to wait.

Notice that the Event (A) was the exact same thing in both instances.  It was the THOUGHT (B) that made the difference.

The Next Step

I hear you already (I know this because it’s what I would have said at one time).  “Yeah, but that’s just making excuses.  Why should I let them off the hook?  They never let me off the hook…”  Understand that ALL of these are thoughts, and they are ALL under your control.  The other person is not under your control as you will see later on.  For now, it is important to recognize that the tie between the Event (A) and the Feeling (C) and the Action (D), is the Thought (B).

The Bible says we are to “hold every thought captive.”  That means you choose to recognize that the link between the events and your feelings and actions is your thoughts.  This recognition takes the power away from the events and your feelings and places them under your direct and conscious control.

Peace or No Peace

By:  Staci Stallings

I’ve covered this before, but I’m not sure it can be covered enough, so here we go…

When you have a decision to make and there is no clear choice, it is important to find out what God wants in the situation.  But most of us don’t know how to do that.  We get into this frantic, “What do You want, God?” posture that is not condusive to hearing the whispers of the Holy Spirit’s voice.  Just recently I had a friend who needed to make a job decision. In all honesty, I know that she knew the answer, but that answer led through some tough decisions.  The path of least resistance looked so much easier.  Just keep on keeping on and maybe things will smooth out.  Well, they didn’t, and she needed to make the decision.

She called and laid out the whole situation in one long gush of words. “I’m really thinking I should quit, but then it’s good money, and I don’t know if I’ll find another job with that good of money, but then I’m moving and this job won’t be as easy to get to, and it’s really stressing me out, and I’m not sure…”

HOLD UP!

Have you ever felt your mind and your heart racing like that?  I know I have.  My poor friend Susan can attest to my extreme moments of panic.  I’ve laid whoppers on her.  “I don’t know how to do this, and what if I mess up?  I mean this is important, but I don’t want to step on anyone’s toes, but I can’t keep going like this either…”

HOLD UP!  Whoa.  Whoa. Whoa.

When you feel yourself doing this, “Hold up” is a good place to start.  Freaking out will not help.  It’s time for clarity, and the One to give you clarity already knows the answer.

I’m also convinced that you know the answer too, but for some reason you are fighting against it.

So first of all, get quiet.  Stop the streaming thoughts that are getting you nowhere.

Now, in your heart ask, “Peace or no peace?”  If it is about a job, “Staying in the job, peace or no peace?”  If it is about talking with someone about something that won’t be fun. “Peace or no peace?”

When you do this, breathe and let the question sink into your heart and spirit.  You will feel a sense of total peace if what you have asked is the path you should take.  You will feel a sense of no peace, a jangling in your spirit if that is wrong.  Keep going through your choices doing “peace or no peace” until you find the answer that God has in mind.  And know that His Answer will never be frantic or harsh.  God only speaks with conviction, firmness, and gentleness.  If you hear something else, breathe and go deeper.

Also, His Answer will always line up with Scripture.  If peace is telling you to go steal the tires off of someone’s car, that’s not God.

I believe peace or no peace is one of the best ways we have of reaching out and taking God’s hand.  I highly recommend it!

I Can’t Do This

By:  Staci Stallings

Yesterday I met for the first time with a group of women who have come together to form a team of prayerful Christian women preparing to serve God in a way most of them have never done before.  These women are not slouchers.  They are sincere in their walk with the Lord.  Some I have known for many, many years, and their belief in God is not an issue.  However, over and over and over again I heard one refrain, “I’m not sure why I’m here. I’m not sure I can do this.”

Boy, do I know how that feels!

I can’t tell you the number of times God has stuck me in a situation I did not feel equal to.  Not only did I NOT feel equal to it, I KNEW I couldn’t do it.  So the women expressing this concern are in good company.

Over the weekend, my sister and her family came over and we watched “Fireproof”… again.  However, we skipped over to the Making of Fireproof and at the end of that segment as the credits for the segment roll, there is a song by John Waller called, “Something Big.”  Ironically (Holy Spiritically… if that’s a word!), I had already purchased that song off of iTunes, not knowing it was on the movie.  My sister, God love her, said, “Oh, I love this one line.  It’s so me.  It’s says something like, ‘If God doesn’t show up, there’s no way I can do this.’”  That’s a good paraphrase of line so for our purposes, we’ll use it.

Have you ever been there?  Have you ever been called to a place that you REALLY did not feel equal to tackling?  Have you ever been called so far out of your comfort zone that if God doesn’t show up, you’re sunk?

I have.

I am.

Constantly.

In writing, I hit that point almost every time I sit down to put words to paper.  The God Positive book is a PRIME example.  The scope of that book is so enormous, where do you even start?  I also run smack into this wall with my novels with nearly every sentence that comes through me… “Where are we going with this, God?”  God has this thing about not letting me know WHERE we’re going 90% of the time.  I think part of that is His plan, and part of it is He wants to see if I will keep following even if I don’t know where we’re going.  In fact, one time I literally got to the last sentence of a 400-page novel and had to pull up because He wasn’t ready to drop that piece in.

That’s humbling and exhilarating.  Humbling because I’m constantly having to throw myself at His mercy and beg Him to come through for me.  Exhilarating because it is SO COOL to watch stuff come through me that there is NO POSSIBLE WAY I could have done!

I also face many of these walls in relationships.  God has called me relentlessly to counsel and support others.  This is not a task I am often equal to.  There is a lot of heartache in the world.  A LOT.  There are people who deal on a heart level every day with issues I cannot imagine having to deal with.  I read on the prayer boards about people in financial trouble or heading for divorce or who just lost a close loved one or who are going through the last stages of a loved one’s life.  But the prayer boards are somewhat impersonal.  It’s when the person struggling is right in front of me that I find myself going, “What was I thinking getting out of that boat?!  I can’t do this, Lord.  God, what were You thinking sending them to ME?!  I don’t know what to say to them.  I don’t know how to heal their heart or help them know what the next step is.  Lord, send somebody else!  Please!”

Then I remember that God doesn’t call the qualified.  He qualifies the called.  More to the point, He qualifies the willing because He calls everyone.

If I say I’m willing, God takes that to mean I am willing to let Him do it through me… not that He thinks I can do it.

Trust me on this, Peter was not the only one that Jesus said, “Come.”  Peter was not the only one who was in that boat, thinking the boat was what was keeping him out of the water.  That’s not just Peter’s story.  That’s OUR story!

Right now, God is calling you out of the boat.  Right now, He is calling you to step into doing something that YOU don’t feel equal to.  He’s asking you not for your strength and ability, but for your FAITH.

Faith doesn’t mean, “Okay, I have all the pieces, I know exactly where this is going and how it’s all going to work out. I feel prepared to do this.”  Faith is, “I have no CLUE how this is ever going to work out.  I don’t feel prepared or equal to this AT ALL.  But God, you have asked me to step out, and so I’m going to, not because I know how it will end, but because I know YOU.”

When you say in reply to something God is asking you to do:  “I can’t do this.”  You’re exactly RIGHT, and God wouldn’t have it any other way!

Good Stuff and MORE Good Stuff

By:  Staci Stallings

There have been times in my life when God seemed very far away.  These would not be those times.

In the past five years God and I have become very close.  Much like James 4:8, “Draw close to God and He will draw close to you,” I have found an oasis in the vast desert simply by stopping long enough to let God love me.  One of the surprises in this has been the sheer volume in the ways God wants to love me.  There are friends, first and foremost.  I used to feel very cut off and lost–like I was just here at home by myself in my own little cacoon.  Well, those days are over.  I’ve got several best friends.  I call them that, and they all know it and don’t even blink twice.  My best friend, Betty… My best friend, Susan… My best friend, Dennis… My best friend, Deb…

Then there is the next band of friends who are closer to me than most best friends.  The next band is filled with people who have come at a moment’s notice to support and love me in times of need.  And I’m not talking about four or five.  More like four or five hundred.  I have prayer groups–several–that know me and will pray for whatever I need at a moment’s notice.  I have a church family, kids in my Sunday School, kids I’ve taught even a few years ago.  Then there’s the school community, a tight-knit group.

When I really choose to think about it, I realize how very blessed I am that God has seen fit to influence my life through these awesome people.

After these immediate bands of people, I have others that God has led me right to, often in odd ways that I really can’t explain.  Many of these are authors or singers who have put into words the relationship I am now experiencing with my Best Friend.  It helps me to know that although my relationship with God is unique in all the world, mine is not the only relationship God has.  The cool thing is that God has worked through them to speak to me about Truths He wants me to know that are life-changing.  These are people I have never met.  I have never sat in a room with them.  I have never sent a communication to them, but they are a band of friends I am most grateful that God has put into my life.

In fact, it is becoming a little obvious to me that God is not a stingy God in how much He wants to love me.  He has set His love and His words into these people, and they have chosen to share that message with the world… one in the world is me.  Someone they have never met but love enough to put God’s message of love for me on paper, in song, in words, in notes, and on film.  The deluge of Godly Wisdom that is washing through my life on a daily almost hourly basis is frankly a bit overwhelming.

I’m reading about three books right now, writing at least three.  I just watched “Fireproof” which opened all kinds of new doors about God’s love.  I just finished reading “Wild at Heart” by John Eldredge, and I’ve got several more of his books on the way to me as we speak.  Over the weekend I watched “Flywheel” again, and if I had time, I would sit down and watch “Facing the Giants.”  In fact, at this point, really, I would love to be Mary.  You know, Martha’s little sister, who got to simply sit at the Master’s feet and soak it all in.

Unfortunately, my life resembles Martha too with things to do, places to be, people to see.  As much as I can, I try to be Mary and let God’s love permeate my life.  Ironically though what I have found is the more I do that, the more I want to do that, and the MORE GOOD STUFF God sends my way!

I’m coming to the conclusion that I need to reserve a couple of eternities to get all of this watched and read because at this rate, I’m never even going to get close on this side of those Pearly Gates!

Flying

By:  Staci Stallings

This last week I had two chances to talk with friends about flying.  I don’t mean in an airplane.  I mean spiritually or emotionally.  One of these friends was considering going back to school.  The other is already in school and choosing to take some academic risks she would normally second-guess herself out of trying.  The conversations were remarkably similar though one is a 60-something-year-old guy, and one is a 20-something-year-old girl.

The advice went like this:

The desire to do this is in your heart, otherwise, you wouldn’t even have thought of trying it.  Right now you are like an eagle, poised at the top of a steep cliff.  In your heart you know you were made to fly, but there’s a very real problem.  You don’t know if you can.  I mean, once you jump, there is nothing to hold you up from splattering into the ground except God’s gracious wind and your trust that it will hold you up.  So you stand there, on that precipice.  You look down at the ground, and fear clutches your heart.  Satan is standing next to you, whispering that it is crazy to jump.  You can’t do this anyway.  What are you thinking?  You’ve got to be nuts to even consider jumping.

If you’ve ever considered doing something really daring–especially spiritually or emotionally–you know this fear.

But the eagle was not made to stand on that cliff, looking out and thinking about flying.

Neither are you made to stand in one spot, hearing your heart’s leading but shrinking back from following it.

The obvious prerequisite to flying is finding enough trust in God’s grace and plan to jump.  God put that desire in your heart.  He has a plan for using what you most love in this world… for this world.  He has a plan and a reason for whispering that this thing would be something great to do.  But He can’t use it if you refuse to jump.

I’ve gotten relatively good at jumping.  What I’ve found is that the result is rarely what I think it is going to be when I jump, but it’s always better (in a different way) than I ever could have guessed. I have also learned that God will always be there to catch me before I go splat.

God is like a papa eagle who will push His young out of the nest, let them fall, then swoop down to catch them on His wing.  Soaring, He will bring the young one back to the nest for a rest, and then push them off the cliff once more.  This pattern continues until the baby eagle learns to fly.

Our problem is we are so convinced that if we try to fly, no one will catch us, so we sit on that cliff with a stack of books labeled, “How to Fly,” “Making the Most of Wind Currents,” and “The Sky:  Ten Steps to Flying like an Expert.”  But we NEVER JUMP. We never take the scary leap from head knowledge to actual experience.  Don’t get me wrong.  Books are great, and there is a place for learning how to do something before you do it. But there comes a time when you have to put the books down and go for it.  If you don’t, you’ll be sitting on that cliff wondering what might have been forever.

God wants you to fly.  You were made to fly.  So what are you sitting on the cliff, looking out and wondering for?