Words matter. And the words YOU speak about YOURSELF and to YOURSELF matter the most.

I was pondering this notion as I thought about David in that epic battle with Goliath. You may remember that Goliath had told David “I’m gonna tear you to little bitty pieces and feed your flesh to the birds of the air.” But the story records that David said “When the lion came after my sheep I went after it and I killed it. When the bear attacked the flock I tracked him and killed him dead. And this Philistine shall be like one of them.”

Here’s the question: Who was David speaking to? The scripture tells us that David’s response was in answer to Saul who’d said “You are just a boy going against this giant man.” But I wonder if David was speaking TO Saul, or was David perhaps muttering to himself in response to what Saul had said. I sort of think David was rehearsing past victories in his mind, in order to prepare himself for the next victory; a bigger, greater, more magnificent victory than any in his past.

I want to be a man of living, active, demonstrable faith. I find it builds my faith when I rehearse what God has done for me in the past. It fortifies me to face the bigger battle of the future. And I’m convinced the battles and the stakes in the future will cause those things in my past to look like simple skirmishes, because God continues to equip his people to do greater things. Daniel 11:32 says “…The people who know their God shall be strong, and do exploits.” (KJV)

Part of me wants to be content and not challenge any mountains. But another part of me knows that “doing exploits” is part of the DNA that God puts inside of us when he comes to take up residence in us when we are born-again. So, that means that the bigger things that lie in front of me are going to require ever more faith to accomplish and I’m going to need to remember what God has done for and through me in the past, in order to build my faith for the future achievements. One of the ways I “work” my faith is to talk to myself about what God has done in the past. “God did this small thing, then he did this bigger thing, and now that I face this gigantic thing, the God who was with me in the small thing and the bigger thing will work through me to accomplish the giant thing. I can do this because nothing is impossible with God; because greater is He who is in me than he who is in the world; because I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me; because He is able to do exceedingly, abundantly beyond all that I ask or think according to the power that works in me. Get out of the way mountain!”

That’s how mountain moving faith takes root and becomes established in your life. And its why we should be careful to journal and record the ways in which God shows himself daily in our life, so we can go back to those journal entries and remember well what’s happened in our past.

Are you facing a difficulty? In what smaller ways has God helped you in the past? What does the scripture say about you, and what is God’s promise to you in this situation? Remember those moments and find those promises. Mutter them to yourself everyday, often. Yesterday’s victories are the foundation for tomorrow’s greater victories.

Remember: God is for you!

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I love to hear stories of how God is working in your life. Leave a reply below and tell me what God is doing in your life.

In my Time Alone With God (TAWG) this morning I came upon that piece of wisdom in Proverbs 23: 26 which says “My son, give me your heart and let your eyes keep to my ways.” Imbedded in that simple sentence are two really important concepts.

Give Me Your Heart

The heart is the center of a thing. The heart of the matter is what’s really at its core. The heart of the city is its urban center. The heart of a tree is the hard wood in the middle of the softer exterior. And the heart of a man is the center of his being.

God says “Give me your heart.”

Many people view giving to God in physical, financial, or chronological terms. They give money. They sacrifice time to show up at a church service. While those things have a certain importance and necessity, they really miss the point. In teaching the first Christians Paul said “A man is not a Jew if he is only one outwardly, nor is circumcision merely outward and physical. No, a man is a Jew if he is one inwardly; and circumcision is circumcision of the heart….” Romans 2:28-29

We give our hearts to God when we bow our head in humility and acknowledge that He is God and we aren’t; when we put ourselves in subservience to him and seek his leadership in our life; when we acknowledge our sinfulness and our need for a perfect Savior.

There’s an occasion when we do this for the first time, and then we need to do it daily—recenter our heart, recalibrate our spirits to the tune and tempo of the Great Musician.

But when we give God our heart we aren’t done. We’ve only just begun.

Let Your Eyes Keep To My Ways

Once your stepped into God’s realm, submitted before him, there’s the need to learn how to walk in this new world. The gravity is a little difference. You can get thrown off balance. He says things like “It’s better to give than to receive” and “The first shall be last.” His ways are different than the human ways to which you’ve been trained.

Notice he said “Let your eyes” keep to his ways. That’s intentional. It’s with the eyes that we focus and concentrate. Its through the eyes that we absorb into our brain things for us to ponder. If written today, in our vernacular, he might have said “Look at things this way….”

Success comes when we begin to align our thinking with God’s thinking. From our thinking comes our words and our actions. Those words and actions produce results for us, but before we did them we thought them. So we have to train ourselves to “think like God thinks. But how?

Read the Bible. Whatever else the Bible is, its God’s revelation to man. It’s a big long letter from the Father. It contains family history, guidance, direction for today, and hope for the future. It paints a picture that clearly spells out what it means to be in this family—to bear this name—and what the Father’s hope is for the children’s future. As I read I do so with pen and notecards in hand, capturing the things that the Holy Spirit causes to leap off the page into my spirit, so that I can make any adjustments to my thinking that may be necessary in order to produce the actions most likely to lead to success.

Read those who are ahead of you. I have a world-class group of mentors, some of whom I’ve met and some I haven’t, but they all mentor me through their writings. Just today I was praying for one of them—Mark Batterson. Mark has met me once. He won’t remember that. But today, I was so grateful for how what he had written was ministering to me that I stopped and prayed for him and his family.

Your Path to Success

You are on a path to somewhere. Is success that destination? Why not? It’s just as easy to go there as anywhere, and far more rewarding. Start on your knees, focus your eyes, train your mind, and produce the fruits that lead to Abundant Living!

A few nights ago I ran into my friend David Turner having dinner at a restaurant. He said “How do you find time to read so much?” (At that point the new year was ten days old and I’d already posted the third book I’d read for the year to Facebook; a little self-accountability exercise that helps me to keep reading and I hope encourages you to as well.) As I struggled to answer David’s question about “how” I found time to read, I’ve captured some ideas about how I manage to find time to read, and how you can read more to.

Some of us are faster readers with better retention than others. I’m one of those people. I read well. I can’t do math. I can’t run marathons (I jog like a Clydesdale). But I am a good reader.

You shouldn’t compare yourself to me, or to anyone else. You may not read as much as I do, or as rapidly. The question is: Are you reading? Charlie “Tremendous” Jones says “You are the same person today as you’ll be one year from now except for the books you read and the people you meet.” So what are you reading?

Ten Ways to Find More Time To Read

1. Keep books handy. I typically have a book beside my easy chair, a book on my night stand, and a book beside the toilet.
2. Read in the bathroom. You’re going to be spending some time there anyway, you’d might as well multi-task.
3. Read on your kindle (or other e-reader). I like the kindle reader on my iPad because I can take it with me when I travel and its not as bulky as carrying books.
4. Read while you exercise. I exercise everyday for nearly an hour. During this winter, I’m walking on the treadmill and I get bored so I need to be distracted. Books don’t help because I find them hard to keep open; they keep wanting to shut and are difficult to keep open to the most recent page. But my iPad lays flat on the screen of my treadmill allowing me to read easily without fighting to keep the page open.
5. Read while you are on vacation. We typically vacation for 9 days. That’s a week, with a weekend on either end. During that nine days I’ll usually read five or six books. In fact, I have authors who release about one book per year, and I save those books to read while I’m on vacation.
6. Read while you are waiting on your family. I live with three women, so I wait alot. (You’ve heard that country song “Waitin’ on a woman” haven’t you?) Just this morning I had about 15 minutes to wait before all my girls were ready to leave for church. I sat down in my easy chair and read.
7. Read before you go to bed. I read most nights before I go to bed. Not always. Sometimes I watch TV. Sometimes I pray. Sometimes I read my Bible. Sometimes I get quiet and think. But I’ve always got a book at my bedside and more often than not I read before I go to sleep.
8. Read as part of your TAWG discipline. I have a daily Time Alone With God (TAWG) every morning. I typically read two to eight chapters of the Bible and pray during this time. But sometimes, if I’ve got a book going that supports my efforts to be spiritually centered I read a chapter in that book during my TAWG. Right now I am reading The Circle Maker by Mark Batterson. Its a fantastic book on prayer that is very helpful to my life. So its a good spiritual investment for me to be using a portion of my TAWG reading about how to be more effective in my praying.
9. Read instead of watching TV, web surfing, or playing computer games. Come on, is there really anything on the tube that you really benefit from watching? Oh, I like to watch TV. But often its just a dull, mindless waste of time. Shut the darned thing off an feed your mind.
10. Set aside work time to read. Reading is a legitimate work activity. It’s part of improving—continuing education that makes you better. Periodically we have sessions with our staff where we take time away from our daily work to discuss certain books we’ve been reading. If you’ve not read, had your staff team read, and discussed with them Linchpin by Seth Godin, that would be an excellent investment of your time.

Reading is like anything else. You’ll do it if its important to you. If you are going to be better this year, you don’t have a choice: you’ve got to start reading.

Everybody has the same 168 hours in their week. Its just a matter of what you do with yours.

Find the time. Read!

“But the fearful, and unbelieving, and abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone which is the second death.” -Revelation 21:8

Its certainly instructive that fear, murder, lying and idolatry all appear in the same category. That’s not because God is “picking on ‘fearful, murdering liars.’” It’s because all of those behaviors deny God. They enliven (or are enlivened by) a Spirit that denies God’s love for you, his love for others, and his principles for how life was designed to work. Remember, fear is faith. It’s just faith placed in the Satan’s ability as superior to God’s will, desire, and ability.

You don’t have to be afraid. You can grow out of your fear and begin to walk in overcoming faith that will result in an increase in confidence, recognition of blessing, and a positive shift in perspective that will make you a much more positive person.

The first step is to shift your mind and say aloud “I’m not going to give into fear any more. I’m learning to live out my faith in God who loves me.” I’d encourage you to practice saying that phrase aloud several times a day.

The second step, is you have got to learn who you are in Christ. You must understand your identity as a child of God. You can’t do that apart from digging into the Bible. I’d recommend you start by reading a chapter in Proverbs everyday. Today is the 14th of the month. So today you read chapter 14.

There’s alot more. It’s not complicated or hard, but neither does it come overnight.

I’ll leave it there for now. If you’re starting on this journey, I’d like to know. Send me an email.

Darkness and fear go hand-in-hand. That’s why when you are in darkness its so important to know why its dark, and where the light is.

I John 1:5 says “God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.” All light. No darkness.

If you find yourself in the darkness you can know that it didn’t come from God. God doesn’t do darkness. He can’t! He’s all light. Light can’t create darkness. Dark is anti-thetical to the properties of light. Can water leap into flames? No! And in the same way, he who is light does not produce darkness.  The darkness isn’t from him.

So, why are we in the dark?

There are two reasons I can think of for why we experience darkness. First, we may be in the dark because we are too far away from the light source. Thus, its light is not shining where we are. The second reason is that something is standing between us and the light so that we are in the shadows.

If you find yourself in the dark, and you recognize that you have never been near the light source, or you have been near the light but you’ve drifted away; run to the light. James 4:8 says “Come near to God and he will come near to you.” God will meet you way more than half way. He’s just looking for any indication you are moving his direction.

If you find yourself in the dark suddenly, and after examination you realize that you haven’t drifted from closeness to God, it means that you are in a shadow. Something, maybe something big, has stepped between you and the light. It may be uncertainty about your job. It may be a person who has drifted from God causing you to fear for them and for your relationship which casts a shadow over you. It may be illness. It may be loss. It could be anything. Whatever it is, you must realize that the shadow is created because the problem has wedged itself between you and the light. That’s why its so important that we “Fix our eyes on Jesus…” (Hebrews 12:2) Don’t look away. Something might obscure your vision and you can’t refocus when you turn back in his direction.

When you realize you are in the darkness of the shadow, fix it. Analyze what’s between you and God. It is real or perceived? If it is real, what can you do to fix or eliminate it? Do it. And finally, speak to it. Speak to it? Yes, speak to it. Jesus said in Mark 11:23 “If any of you shall say to this mountain ‘Go throw yourself into the sea’ and does not doubt in his heart but believes, it shall be done for him.”

For most of my life, I haven’t spoken to my mountains. I’ve agonized over them, fretted and feared them, and cried out to God to move them. But I’ve come to realize that one of the gifts that God places in us when we believe is a mountain moving type of power. So today, I ask God to move the mountain, AND, I ask God to empower me to move the mountain, AND, I speak to the mountain and tell it to move. That’s a way in which personally, my faith becomes substance.

If you’ve never been in the habit of speaking to mountains, this may seem a little weird to you. That’s OK. We’ve all gotta start somewhere. Don’t make this faith thing harder than it is. Simple start walking in it. The next time you are in the darkness of a shadow, speak to the mountain. Then, begin looking intently through the mountain and you’ll begin to see the light shining ever brighter on the other side.

Afraid? I would be, except I know how to turn on the light and I’ve quit making excuses for why I’m in the darkness.

Are you afraid? I dare you to employ the principles I’ve talked about here. But wait! You might want to grab your sunglasses first. I see a bright light in your future.

I’m writing this on Black Friday. Yesterday was Thanksgiving, and it was a GREAT day at our house. In most ways it was no different than other years. Same food. Same schedule. Same cast of characters. Though yesterday’s 65 degree weather beat 2010′s ice by a country mile.

For our family this was a special Thanksgiving. We didn’t plan it that way, it just happened. But since I don’t really believe in “just happened” perhaps I should say that God planned it exactly as it went down. First, there is the food preparation. That can be taxing but it was smooth at our house. In fact, I even made dressing from scratch for the first time, and that was easy! (Why haven’t I done this before?) The turkey was juicy. The pie was succulent. The sweet potatoes flavorful. Everything came off perfectly on time. The food was wonderful.

Then, there is always family to contend with. This year our gathering was small; the four of us, my parents and my 88 year old grandmother.  The conversation was pleasant and relaxed. After the meal the girls gave the grandparents the tour of their bedroom Christmas trees while Kel and I did dishes. Afterward everyone gathered in the living room to be serenaded by all manner of tunes accompanied by acoustic, electric, and base guitar along with piano. It was noisy, but it was pleasant. No social issues at all this year. That’s nice.

All this in the atmosphere of a roaring fire in the fireplace (which wasn’t needed because of the 65 degree weather, but I’ll turn on the air conditioner if I need to so that I can have a fire in the fireplace on Thanksgiving.)

To cap off a day that is going well, I had two baby calves born yesterday.

Fantastic!

As the day yielded to evening Kel and I smooched around in that way that always makes our daughters say “Ew, gross” we talked about how much we enjoyed the day. I’m telling you: yesterday was about as warm and cozy and Rockwellian as it could get.

I hadn’t seen any uncovered breasts in church since then, until a few nights ago in a Nicaraguan village. I was midstream in a passionate sermon about sin, righteousness, and the love of God when a young lady I’m guessing to be less than 20 years old lifted her shirt, fully exposing both breasts to whomever, and beckoned her toddler to come and nurse.

It caught me a little by surprise. No big deal. Exposing breasts to feed a baby is a culture-by-culture thing; we American’s need to “get over it.” Yet it did catch me off-guard. It just wasn’t very American-evangelical-normal. I mean, we have nursing mother’s rooms with the service video fed into the room so Momma can feed the baby discretely and still be at church with the rest of the family.  But in Nicaragua, sitting on row two, you just whip ‘em out all the while nodding, smiling, and amening the preacher even as you switch breasts half-way through just so things stay in balance.

So there I am, fervently working my audience, all the while there’s this whole other narrative running in my chuckling brain. “Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore.”

So when you are in church next Sunday—particularly if you are a pastor facing the congregation—beware, you just never know what the lady on the second row is going to do.

As I was leaving the village after speaking for the final time a 40 year old pastor who’d been in our conference in Managua stopped the car and then knocked on the window. He was gracious, told me how much he’d been helped by the teaching, then he said something that set me back on my heels: “Today has been the best day of my life!”

Wow! The BEST? Not a great day. Not one of the best? But THE best?

I often open my presentations by talking about experiencing “An internal, pervasive sense of YES!” Apparently that’s what happened to him; he moved from OK to YES!!

How ‘bout you? Are you experiencing an internal pervasive sense of YES!!? If so, I’d like to hear about it. And, I’d like to hear about your life’s best day. Send me an email and tell me about it

In my former life I used to speak to groups of several hundred people weekly. But I was careless and imprecise with what I said, perhaps because I didn’t believe anyone was really listening or paying attention. This week I was reminded of how much some people do pay attention and of the profound impact of your words.

I’d met some of this week’s conferees during my previous two visits to Nicaragua, so we share some familiarity. On multiple occasions during the week, my words from previous visits came back to me.

Emotional distress from life’s battles is apparently a big issue to Nicas; at least it was to some of the people who came to speak with me this week. My guess is that all humans—in the modern world, at least—carry emotional baggage that they may or may not be aware of.

One man came to me with a notebook in hand, and he turned to the page of notes he had taken when I was here on my last speaking engagement eight months ago. He told me of how as a young teen he’d gone to a Christian youth camp, and at nighttime after the organized activities some of his fellow campers had sneaked away to go drinking while he remained back at the camp praying.

In the midst of the night there came a knock at the door. It was the police. They wanted him to identify the corpse of one of his fellow teenaged campers. Somehow in the dark, on a night already clouded by alcohol, there had been a melee and in the confusion the police had shot and killed one of his fellow campers.

He told me of how the image had burned into his mind and how it had haunted him in adulthood. He’d had years of nightmare and terror which he attributed to the image of his dead peer seared into his conscious so many years ago. Then he began to read from his notes from the last time I’d spoken in Nicaragua. He told me all about how a particular concept I’d taught and a couple of phrases I’d said—which he had captured—released him from his terror, and of how he’d been freed from the haunting that had plagued his life.

Wow! Words are powerful.

A lady came with a similar story. She told me of how she had participated in our last conference and of how God’s promise in Jeremiah 29:11 had stuck with her. It says “‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ says the Lord. ‘Plans to prosper you and not to harm you. Plans for hope and a future.’” She told me of how hearing those words had helped her to understand for the first time that God had a plan for her life, and that the plan was good and provided a future she could look forward to. She’d been given hope and wanted to say “thank you” for unlocking the door to her despair and helping her to see her value to God and the seeds of blessing that he had planted into her life which she could cultivate into a great harvest of abundant living.

Over and over people kept quoting phrases and concepts about abundant living.

Wow! Words are powerful.

I hate to think about the opportunities I likely missed as a younger man when I could have been giving life giving words to people desperate for hope, and how an undisciplined mind and a careless tongue might have squandered the chance to change the future for someone.

I’m always trying to learn, and I was already aware of the principle of the power of your words. But it was pressed into me in a more profound way this week as I heard the “you said” stories from my Nica friends. I’ve always heard those kinds of things from people who’ve heard me speak, but for whatever reason I have really never believed it or put much stock in it. I always assumed they were saying those things because they felt they were supposed to. But no more.

There’s something amazingly powerful about having people in tears standing before you, speaking in a tongue you can’t understand,  telling you of the emotional chains in which they’d lived, and how the word that God spoke to them through you released them from their mental prison.

Wow!

Now, I get it. Words are the key that unlocks the door that leads to abundant life!

I pledge to reign my tongue even more; to sharpen my words for surgical precision and to use them judiciously to break chains and free prisoners. There’s something magical about participating in setting captives free. It’s life in the Kingdom of God, and THAT is where the living is abundant!

One lady is telling me of how she has become proud and arrogant. Its almost inconceivable to me. Her shelter is a tin shack inferior to anything my farm animals live in. She makes $100 a month. She has maybe two changes of clothes, and yet she struggles with pride.

“The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it.” Jeremiah 17:9

Its interesting, incomprehensible, and instructive to me, that someone who lives so humbly could struggle with the sin of pride.

Hmmm.