Tag Archives: success

January 3, 2018 · 5:46 AM

Restoring Courage

One of the words God uses over and over in the Bible is courage. He wants us to be courageous when doing what He asks. One of my favorite passages is in Joshua 1. Verse 7 says, “Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the instructions Moses gave you. Do not deviate from them, turning either to the right or to the left. Then you will be successful in everything you do” (NLT). Success starts with being strong and courageous, but what does it mean to have courage?

The simple definition is strength in the face of pain or grief. It’s the ability to keep going when things aren’t going the way you thought they should. It’s the most difficult thing to have when you need it the most. If you’ve lived life at all, you’ve been discouraged. You’ve lost battles you thought you should have won. You’ve suffered defeat after defeat and wondered where the strength comes from to keep going. How do you find courage in those times?

In those moments, I simply prayed that God would just help me to take the first step, which was survival. We often think of courage as this great thing, but I believe it’s found in facing a new day, taking one more step or breathing one more time. It says, “I’m not going down. I’m not giving up!” Where do we get that courage from in those moments? As I’ve said, I found it in prayer and through God’s help.

Psalm 3:3 says, “But you, O Lord, are always my shield from danger; you give me victory and restore my courage” (GNT). God will restore your lost courage and give you the victory when you ask. Quit worrying about trying to win the war, and focus on getting courage from God to win today’s battle. Keep God’s Word in your heart, and be careful to obey it. Then, as Joshua 1:7 says, you will have success and victory.

Photo by Josh Adamski on Unsplash

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September 13, 2017 · 5:00 AM

Relationship Goals 


When I was a teen, someone told me, “You become like those you run with.” When I was a young adult, someone told me, “You show me who your friends are, and I’ll show you who you are.” Then several years later, someone told me, “If you want to soar with eagles, you can’t be scratching around in the dirt with turkeys.” All these reminders have been about the importance of choosing who you choose to hang out with. Either the group you’re with will hold you back or help you get to that next level.

As I’ve lived my life, I can honestly say that these messages are true. Close relationships are the greatest influencers of your success or failure. If you’re constantly failing and are stuck in a bad place, you need to walk away from the relationships that are holding you back. Your life will not change until you change your relationships. If you want your life to improve, associate with people who are ahead of you and are moving in the right direction. This works for spiritual and economic growth.

As Paul was grooming Timothy to be a leader, he gave him the same advice. 2 Timothy 2:22 says, “Strive for righteousness, faith, love, and peace, together with those who with a pure heart call out to the Lord for help” (GNT) Paul wanted Timothy to understand it’s difficult to grow on your own. You need other like minded people who are headed in the same direction to help you get there. Proverbs 27:17 tells us that as iron sharpens iron, one person sharpens another. You need people around you who will make you sharp. 

When coaching or counseling people, I let them know that they need someone ahead of them that they can follow. They need someone beside them that can challenge them. They also need someone behind them that they can help get to the next level. Finding the right relationships is one of the most difficult tasks in life. That’s why it’s preached to you since you were young. It’s never to late to make the changes you need to make. If you’re ready to soar with eagles, spread your wings and leave the turkeys behind. 

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March 15, 2017 · 5:28 AM

The Power To Be Successful


One of my favorite pictures we took on a trip to Haiti was where one person was pretending to cut a board with a skill saw while another person held up the power cord with a confused look on her face. We took it to make people laugh, but the more I think about it, the more I realize that’s how many people live their lives. They have the right tools to be successful, but they lack the power to utilize those tools properly.

Part of what I do for a living, and also do here on this site, is to give people the tools they need to be successful. Power tools work best when they’re plugged in. Imagine how long it would take to cut a board using a skill saw that wasn’t plugged in. Think about the effort it would require and what that cut would look like if they had to do it manually with that saw. Even though we had the right tool, without the power to use the tool to its potential, we wouldn’t be very successful.

In Deuteronomy 8:18, Moses was speaking to the Children of Israel just before they went into the Promised Land. He was giving them final instructions to remember since he would not be crossing the Jordan river with them. He said, “Remember the LORD your God. He is the one who gives you power to be successful” (NLT). He was reminding them that they have the tools to be successful, but God is the source of power behind those tools. He wanted them to remember that their success wouldn’t be of their own power.

The same is true for us. While we hold the tools and do the work, it is God who gives us the power to be successful at whatever He calls us to put our hand to. Like a professional athlete who takes a knee after a touchdown or points to Heaven after a homerun, we need to take time to honor God for each success we have. It keeps us humble and it reminds us and others that God is our source. Apart from His power, we are trying to cut a board with an unplugged skill saw.

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June 29, 2016 · 6:03 AM

Being A Successful Christian


Joshua 1:8 has always been one of my favorite scriptures. From a child, I’ve heard it said that this verse is God’s secret to success. It says, “Study this Book of Instruction continually. Meditate on it day and night so you will be sure to obey everything written in it. Only then will you prosper and succeed in all you do” (NLT). The secret to success is to know God’s laws, to study them, to meditate on them, and to obey them.

Psalm 119:11 says, “I have hidden your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you.” If we will study God’s Word, and put it in our hearts, we are more likely to do what it says and less likely to abandon it. It gives us advice on how to live, what to say, and how to make Godly decisions. The more we study it, the more knowledge and wisdom we will gain. It sheds light on the traps others have fallen into so that we can avoid them.

One of the things we discussed with our guide in Israel was how God wanted all kings to be given a copy of the scriptures and He wanted them to read them daily. He wanted the leaders of Israel to be successful and for their people to prosper. He knew that they would be given all kinds of advice, and that they would need a way to determine if it was good or not. The scriptures do just that. If the advice lines up with God’s Word, follow it.

If God was so concerned about kings reading His Word, you and I should follow that example. There’s not one of us who doesn’t need help in our Christian walk. We all face temptation, but we don’t have to give in to it. When we put God’s Word in our heart, we give ourselves a fighting chance against temptation. Jesus used God’s Word against the devil when He was tempted, and we can do it too. The secret to living a successful Christian life isn’t secluding yourself from the world. It’s having a power in you that’s greater than the world’s attempts to pull you away from God.

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May 17, 2016 · 1:01 AM

1,000th Devotion


It’s hard to believe, but this is my 1,000th post. I started this journey four years ago not knowing what to expect, but having grand ideas in my head. I wanted to learn how to improve my writing, and to have a better understanding of direction, and how to promote my writing so I went to the Re:Write Conference soon after I started. One of the speakers there was Mary DeMuth, who has written over 30 books and has blogged for many years. She said a couple of things that really stood out to me, and I still reflect on them to this day.

The first thing that stuck out to me was that she said she wrote in obscurity for seven years before anyone noticed her. She talked about the struggles of continuing to write when very few are reading. I remember thinking, “That’s not going to be me!” In my mind, I had a message to share and the world wanted to hear it. All I had to do was write, and people would flock to my site. Four years later, I’m still writing in obscurity. I’ve struggled with that because my results haven’t met my expectations.

That leads me to the other thing she said that stood out to me. She said, “Writing is not so we can fill a hole in our heart; it’s so we can give away what God has given us.” That phrase (along with my wife) has kept me grounded throughout these years of writing in obscurity. They both remind me that anything I do for God is not about me. It’s about God. If what I’m doing is about Him, then I need to learn to be ok with obscurity. As my wife tells me, “If what you wrote was for one person and God sent them to read it, you are successful.”

In our world, I’ve learned that God defines success differently than we do. We think of book deals, thousands of followers, and fame as being successful. But God defines it as our obedience to Him. In this journey of writing, I’ve learned that it’s not the quantity of lives that I touch that makes me successful or gives me worth: it’s the quality with which I touch lives. If I’m doing what God has called me to whether it is for one person or one thousand, then I am successful in His eyes and those are the only ones that matter.

For those of you who have been on this journey with me, I’d like to say, “Thank you.” For those of you who have let me know that a particular post has touched your life and been exactly what you needed at that moment, you will never know what that has done for me. Your words have encouraged me as I’ve struggled in obscurity and reminded me that I’m being successful in God’s eyes even when I don’t feel like I’m being successful.

I hope that with this post, you can look at your life and see where you’ve defined success differently than God has. I hope that you can see that your success doesn’t depend on how many people you reach. It simply depends on your obedience to what God has called you to do. If you’re struggling with not feeling successful in what God has called you to, take heart. If you’re being obedient, you are successful in God’s eyes, and He’s the one who ultimately matters.

Roll your works upon the Lord [commit and trust them wholly to Him; He will cause your thoughts to become agreeable to His will, and] so shall your plans be established and succeed.

‭‭Proverbs‬ ‭16:3‬ ‭AMP‬‬

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May 2, 2016 · 6:17 AM

The Journey Of Success


As you know, David was told by God that he could not build the temple. God had told him that his son Solomon would build it. In II Chronicles 22:5, David recognized that his son Solomon was young and inexperienced. He then decided to make preparations for building the temple. He ordered everything that Solomon would need in order to build the temple. Even though Solomon had everything he needed to be successful, it was up to him to do something with all the material if he was going to build successfully.

Success doesn’t lie in having the things God gives us, it lies in doing something with them. In Matthew 25:14-30, we read the Parable of Talents. Jesus told the story of three men who had been given bags of silver from their master according to their abilities. Two of the servants took that material and invested it while one hid it. When the master returned, it was the ones who did something with the material who were considered successful, not the one who let it sit.

I Corinthians 12:7 says, “A spiritual gift is given to each of us so we can help each other” (NLT). God has given each of us the materials to be successful just like David did for Solomon and the master did for his servants. The question is, are you going to let the materials sit there or are you going to do something with them? You can’t let the fear of being unsuccessful to prevent you from doing anything. If you do nothing with what God has given you, you’re no better than the man ho buried his bag of silver.

If God has given you a dream, quit often it’s as big as the task given to Solomon to build the temple. You may look at yourself and think you’re too inexperienced to do what God called you to. If you read the Bible, the greatest heroes of faith were the ones who didn’t let their inexperience keep them from their calling. They trusted God to do His part, so they did theirs. It’s up to each of us to take the gifts God has given us and put them to use. The greatest successes in life start with the smallest of steps. What can you do today to get started on your journey of success?

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April 19, 2016 · 5:30 AM

God’s Secret To Happiness

  Since I was a kid, I heard people tell me, “You become like those you run with.” It was great advice then and now for choosing who you hang out with and listen to. We’ve all received bad advice from someone in our life that has put us in a situation we didn’t want to be in. Some of us have a momentary awkwardness and others have a lifetime of regret because of the consequences of that choice. Either way, we got into the mess by taking advice from someone we shouldn’t have been hanging around.

Psalm 1 is one of my life chapters. What I mean by that is that I see it as a promise from God so I’ve tried to build my life on it. The chapter starts out by telling us, “Happy are those who reject the advice of evil people, who do not follow the example of sinners or join those who have no use for God” (GNT). If you want to be happy, stop taking advice from people who don’t know the principles found in God’s Word. Find better people to hang out with if you want your life to change.

If you’ve followed this site for a while, you know the struggles I went through years ago. When I hit rock bottom, I worked my way backwards to find out how I got there. It all started with choices to hang out with and associate myself with people who had no use for God and what I believed. When I looked at my life, I realized I wasn’t happy. God took me back to this chapter and called me back to being who He called me to be in verse 2. It says, “Instead, they find joy in obeying the Law of the Lord, and they study it day and night.”

If we will get away from the wrong crowd and start living the way God’s Word tells us to, we’ll not only find happiness, but joy. But God doesn’t stop there. He gives us another promise in verse three if we live that way. It says, “They are like trees that grow beside a stream, that bear fruit at the right time, and whose leaves do not dry up. They succeed in everything they do.” God promises productivity, success, favor, and happiness in our life if we will just live the way He wants us to and associate ourselves with like minded people.

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January 13, 2016 · 5:56 AM

Reopen And Restore

  
How do you respond to road blocks and set backs? Do you believe the non-scriptural platitudes that say, “God doesn’t close a door without opening a window”? Do you give up and just sit there? Maybe you look for another route and roll with the punches. Each of us respond in different ways when we’ve done the ground work for things in our lives only to have it stopped suddenly. I believe how we respond matters.

In Genesis 26, Abraham had already died and his son Isaac was a full grown man. Isaac planted crops and God blessed them. Whatever he did, God put His hand on it and made him successful. With that success came jealousy from others who were not as blessed. The Philistines went around and filled his wells with dirt, and their king made him uproot his family and move because of their jealousy. 

When Isaac moved away to other places he had taken his flocks before, he realized what they had done. Isaac and his father had dug many wells throughout the land to give water to their family and flocks. Now, all those years of work had been undone. He could looked for other wells that didn’t belong to him, but that wasn’t right. Genesis 26:18 says, “He reopened the wells his father had dug, which the Philistines had filled in after Abraham’s death. Isaac also restored the names Abraham had given them” (NLT).

When what you’ve worked for gets destroyed by someone else, don’t just walk away or give up, put the work back into it and re-dig your wells. It’s going to take work. It’s going to take determination. It’s going to take your desire to be successful and blessed to be stronger than your desire to give up. Isaac didn’t quit or look for God to open a new well. He grabbed a shovel, started digging, and restored what the enemy had closed. That’s the response we should give to set backs and roadblocks in our lives.

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November 6, 2015 · 6:08 AM

Pig-like Commitment (Video)

Commit your actions to the Lord, and your plans will succeed.
Proverbs 16:3 (NLT)

If you are having trouble viewing this video, click here.

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August 17, 2015 · 6:24 AM

The Secret To Success

I once heard someone say, “Those who fail to plan, can plan to fail.” It’s stuck with me through the years as I’ve made decisions in my life. I’m a spontaneous person at heart, but I understand the need to plan. I have friends who plan everything, but find it hard to be spontaneous. I think there can be a balance. I’ve learned to curb my spontaneity to quick events that aren’t life changing and to plan out things that have long term consequences. If you’re going to be successful in life, more often than not, it will come through planning and not through spontaneity.

Proverbs 4:26 tells us, “Plan carefully what you do, and whatever you do will turn out right.” (GNB) Solomon didn’t just tell us to plan here, he said to plan carefully. According to the Blue Letter Bible, the word he used for carefully means to weigh out. We need to look at the pros and cons of our decisions, determine what success looks like and which failures or losses will be acceptable to us. With any decisions in life, there will be gains and there will be losses. We just need to decide ahead of time if the trade-off will be worth it.

To improve your plan’s chances of success, share them with others who are wise. They will see things you don’t and provide you with different perspectives. They may also foresee road-blocks and outcomes you didn’t. Plus, they may catch the vision of your plans and work with you long term to help you accomplish them. Proverbs 15:22 tells us, “Get all the advice you can, and you will succeed; without it you will fail.” That seems pretty straightforward, but what happens when you fail?

I believe that a good portion of our growth comes from failure. At work, I tried to prove I had a better way to do a certain process. I was wrong. My boss then said, “It’s ok to fail as long as you fail forward.” He was trying to say, “You’re going to have failures in your life. You can either let them drag you back to where you started or you can let them lead you down a new path.” Your life will have failures in it, but it’s what you do after that matters. I like to tell people, “You only fail when you quit trying.”

Success in life is not hard to find – it’s hard to do. It requires planning and counseling from people who are wiser than you are or have different perspectives than you do. Remember earlier, I said you have to determine what success looks like. For each of us, that’s different. Success isn’t always name recognition or being famous. Success can be small so long as you accomplished what you set out to do with the help of God and those He placed around you. Plan carefully with them and watch God bring success to your life.

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