The 3 Essentials: All You Need for Success in Life (18 page)

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Authors: Casey Treat

The Right Will
When our three children were small, Wendy and I quickly realized we had a trio of very strong-willed kids. As opinionated and driven as both of us are, I really cannot imagine how our kids could have been any other way. As toddlers, it was relatively easy to help them to operate in our wills; if a stern look or voice couldn’t do the trick, there was always the spanking spoon to use as a threat. One look at the spoon, and they would quickly submit. But once they became teenagers, it was a whole different scenario. As much as Wendy or I wanted to assert our authority over them when we could see they weren’t making the best choices, we had to exercise extreme self-control and let them find out for themselves the consequences of their actions. Now as young adults, it is entirely up to them to choose the ways of God on their own.
Likewise, God cannot force us to engage in His purposes for our lives. We must make a decision on our own to submit our wills to His will. God, knowing the strong sway of the world, gives us some advice. In Deuteronomy 30:19 He says, “I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live.” After giving two options, one resulting in death and one in life, you wouldn’t think He would need to instruct us which path to choose! It’s almost insulting until we take an honest look at our lives and see how many areas in which we have chosen death. With regard to our spending habits, our eating habits, our recreational habits, and the things we say, so many of us have chosen not to submit our wills to God’s will or to submit to what the Bible offers as truth.
God cannot force us to engage in His purposes for our lives. We must make a decision on our own to submit our wills to His will.
It is up to each Christian to choose to submit his will to the plans and purposes of God. This isn’t always easy, and many have a difficult time doing this because their wills have become so weak from atrophy. They have lived so long just following the course of their flesh, or the world, or whatever was expected of them, and now when God proposes a choice, a way to live at a higher level, they cannot seem to make the shift. Your will is like a muscle; it must be exercised in order to become strong to stand against the flow of the flesh and its carnal ways. In some cases, you may simply need to start out by taking small steps toward whatever area in your life you realize you have been operating in the death and cursing option from Deuteronomy 30:19.
One push-up a day isn’t very much, but at least it’s
something
, and if you add one on each week, in just one year, you’ll be doing over fifty push-ups! If you normally eat the entire bag of Cheetos, just eat half the bag, and pretty soon you won’t even crave them anymore. Instead of trying to read the entire Bible in a year, just read one scripture a day. Meditate upon that scripture all day, and in one year you will see how much your soul has begun to prosper because of your diligence to apply one of God’s principles to your life each day. Every act of positive, biblically based choice strengthens our will and gives us more of an ability to submit our will to God’s will.
In Luke 10:38-42, Jesus is visiting two of His good friends, Martha and Mary, and using their house as a place to spend time teaching His disciples. Martha is running around, making sure everyone’s needs are met, and trying to fix a meal for all the guests. Then she realizes she doesn’t have enough hands to get the job done. When she goes to find her sister, Mary, so she can help, Martha finds her doing no work at all. She’s sitting down at the feet of Jesus listening to Him teach. Martha is indignant with the unfairness of this situation. She says to Jesus, “Lord, do You not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Therefore tell her to help me.” Jesus’ answer must have surprised her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and troubled about many things. But one thing is needed, and Mary has chosen that good part, which will not be taken away from her.”
While he was not trying to belittle her heart to serve, He wanted her to understand there is a time and a place for everything. It was admirable she was being so diligent, but the higher choice would have been for her to relax and bask in the presence of the Son of God. When it came time for dinner, she could have brought Him whatever she had and said, “Lord, this is all there is; can you bless it and make it enough for everyone?” She could’ve had both—the satisfaction of offering a wonderful meal to everyone
and
the opportunity to grow in the life-changing power of Jesus’ words.
We must get our priorities right. When we put God first, and use our wills to choose to find the time to spend in His Word, we will be able to overcome the debt, the depression, the addictions, and anything that attempts to weigh us down. We will find ourselves living in the blessings and prosperity of God because we decided to submit our wills to God’s will for our lives.
Right Emotions
Emotions aren’t a curse. Emotions aren’t a sign of weakness (are you getting this, guys?), and they aren’t uncontrollable (ladies, that’s for some of you). We were made in the likeness and image of God, and there are many places in the Bible that depict God showing emotion because of one situation or another. We can find scriptures when He was angry, when He was pleased, when He was disappointed, and when He was jealous. Jesus, as the Son of God, was the perfect example of being a man fully in touch with His emotions, but never letting them get out of control. We read about His anger with the moneychangers in the temple, His surprise at the lack (and the abundance) of certain people’s faith, His grief at the tomb of Lazarus, and His compassion as He healed the masses. By His sinless model, it’s clear that it’s never wrong to feel emotions about any situation; it’s simply a matter of how we respond to them.
Sometimes our Christian teaching can lead us to believe that it is acceptable to feel positive emotions like happiness and pleasure, but unacceptable to express negative ones like anger and frustration. Ephesians 4:26 sheds some light on the issue for us. It says, “Be angry, and do not sin, do not let the sun go down on your wrath, nor give place to the devil.” Paul doesn’t tell us not to be angry; in fact, he says that it is fine to be angry—just don’t sin because of it, or let it linger longer than a few hours, or else you will give the enemy a foothold in your life.
Feeling emotions will not keep us out of God’s perfect will for our lives. Attempting to hide or suppress every negative emotion will only lead to a physical or mental breakdown of some degree. Eventually, these stresses will spring up as cancer, depression, sickness, or panic attacks. We must allow ourselves to feel the emotions that rise up inside of us, but then choose to line them up with godly thoughts and godly actions. Be angry, but don’t punch a hole in the wall. Get yourself together before you react, and then respond in a right way. Feel the fear, but don’t let it take hold in your heart or become any part of your speech. Find scriptures that offer God’s promises for that situation and speak His life-giving Word over it until faith begins to arise. Recognize the laziness, and then do something about it. Get up off the couch and do a jumping jack or something! Paul gives a powerful guide to handling our emotions.
1. Feel the emotion.
2. Resist the temptation to sin because of that emotion.
3. Resolve that negative emotion in some way before you go to bed.
The soul is where the abundance and blessing of God resides, and every Christian has one. When we get our minds, wills, and emotions right, we will begin to experience the exciting life of renewal God has planned for us. Each day, we will become stronger as we align our lives with His Word, and the weaknesses that used to bring us frustration and failure will start to fade away. When we have God’s prosperity flowing from our souls, we will have everything we need within us to empower us for higher heights in every realm of our destinies.
14
The Focus of Renewal
A
man came up to me after a church service and said, “I tried your renewing the mind deal, and it really worked. Thanks!” As he walked away, I thought,
That guy just doesn’t get it.
Renewing the mind isn’t something you “did.” It’s something you are doing every day, something you are committed to never stop going for—it’s a lifestyle.
In the Greek language, there is a unique verb tense. Like English, Greek has past, present, and future verb tenses, but it also has one that means the action is continual; it never ends or is something we are always engaged in. In Romans 12:2, when Paul wrote, “Be transformed by the renewing of your mind,” he used that ongoing verb tense with the word
transformed.
He was trying to get us to understand that this renewal was a process, a constant challenge for every Christian to grab hold of throughout their entire lives. When we understand this and choose to be a part of this daily discipline, we will be able to experience God’s perfect will for our lives.
We know this idea of ongoing growth is true for our kids. If they do not like a particular season of their lives, we say, “Don’t worry, son. Not long from now you’ll have grown out of this awkward stage.” Or “You’re so young right now; I promise you’ll understand this when you’re older.” We encourage them to move forward in their lives by explaining that positive rewards will come if they will only continue to learn new things and keep their visions fresh. We tell them they can do anything, change anything, if they will make sure to not let their frustrations keep them down. When did we stop believing this to be true for
ourselves
and give up on the attitude to be ever ready to grow, to change, and to renew? When did we start putting our minds on hold and settle for living every day by a predictable set of habits and routines? Some of us have put our brains on birth control; we haven’t given birth to a new thought in years!
None of us are living our lives exactly how we want them. While there are many aspects we love, we all have areas and habits we are dissatisfied with. But the Bible tells us that we can change whatever realms of life we aren’t happy with, if we will only choose to embrace this idea of change and renewal. Instead of thinking this year will be the “same old, same old,” we can look forward to the next year being the best one yet, no matter how old we are. Rather than making excuses about why we can never change, we can opt to make choices to think differently, to act differently, and to experience life differently.
New Skin, New Thoughts
The book of James was written by one of the natural brothers of Jesus. If anyone needed to renew his mind, it was James. How would you like to wake up one day and realize your older brother is God? Not only have you spent your life getting his hand-me-down tunics, trying to live up to the brother that never did anything wrong, but now you are faced with the fact He is God! How do you compete with
that
? It must have been tough for James to rethink the image he had of his brother, but he did eventually become a Christian and a pastor of a thriving church. James gives us great insight into the process of renewing the mind: “Therefore lay aside all filthiness and overflow of wickedness, and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls” (James 1:21).
I love the King James Version of this scripture: “Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls.” Superfluity of naughtiness—that just rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it?
James says it is the
engrafted
word that possesses the power to save our souls. Not the word that we heard, the word that we read, or the word that we memorized. Saying “Amen!” in church but then forgetting the sermon before we leave the parking lot won’t do much to save our souls. This is why many folks can go to church for years and never change their lives for the better. Remember, all prosperity flows out of our souls, and the mind (which is the prominent part of the soul) is where true renewal starts. James teaches us we must be diligent to make sure God’s Word is engrafted into our souls, not just lying on top of it.
All prosperity flows out of our souls, and the mind (which is the prominent part of the soul) is where true renewal starts.
We have a young man in our church who served in Iraq during the first year of the second Iraq war. He was involved in a massive explosion and miraculously lived to tell the story. However, he suffered extensive wounds on his back, which required skin grafts because the injuries to his skin were too wide and too deep to heal on their own. The doctors harvested a piece of skin from one part of his body so they could perform a skin graft procedure. They used the new skin to cover the wound on his back, and eventually that graft attached itself and began to operate as if it had always been there. The recovery process took a few months, but today the skin is completely healed, so well in fact, you can hardly see any scars and would never know he had received a skin graft.
When we engraft the Word of God into our lives, it has a similar effect. We hear the Word, and then we accept it, believe it, confess it, and begin to live it. James teaches us in verses 22-25 this engrafting of the Word is a progression:
But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror; for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was. But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does.
When we implant the Word in our hearts and actually apply it in our lives by thinking and acting differently, then our soul is affected and our lives begin to change. The blessings of God, which were once hindered by a wounded soul, can now begin to flow out through the health spreading inside our souls. Again, the results don’t happen overnight, but if we will be consistent, the renewal is inevitable. Renewal will become such a normal part of our lives, we cannot imagine settling for anything less than God’s best. Our old beliefs and old habits will dissolve away and God’s new and higher ways will reign in our everyday lives.
Once, you used to stomp around and yell at your family, but because you have been engrafting in your heart God’s Word about gentleness and self-control, you are able to respond in a peaceful way. Before, your life was always one financial crisis followed by another, but now because you have begun to think God’s thoughts about finances, you see something different. You begin to make Bible-based choices in the area of money, you gain an understanding about the godly principles regarding money, and your finances start to climb upward. Or you used to be afraid all the time, scared for your kids, scared about current events, scared about your health, but then the engrafted Word begins to produce God’s peace that passes understanding, and now you are able to ditch the tranquilizers and sleep at night.

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