Everybody loves Jesus, right? I've never ever had a conversation with anyone who thought he was a jerk. He healed people, loved people, and cared for the outcast. He died a horrible death because he believed that he could save our souls. Even if someone doesn't believe the story at all, you can't not like Jesus. So what's the problem? The problem is a lot of people love Jesus, they just don't want to follow Him, and they're not interested in Him. Why is that? It's because they're not getting Jesus represented to them well. Jesus loves us and He died for us, but for a few weeks, I'd like to look at the side of Jesus that should make the church pause and pay attention, ANGRY JESUS Just to be clear, anger is not a sin. Paul said, “In your anger do not sin.” And Jesus, that everybody loves, one time made a whip, went into the temple, and drove out the money changers and overturned tables. This Jesus told people it would be better for them to have a rope tied around their neck with a two-ton rock attached and thrown into the sea. This Jesus called people names like “brood of vipers”, “unmarked graves”, and “sons of hell”.

Jesus definitely said, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” He said, "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. I am gentle and humble in heart." I think the world's idea that Jesus was nice is correct, so what do you do with “you snakes”, “you brood of vipers” and “how will you escape being condemned to hell”? This is Jesus too. Sometimes Jesus' words were sharp and biting.When the son of God gets mad, we should pay attention because we can learn a lot about a person from the things they don't like. So, who was He mad at? Well, that's the kicker. I always knew Jesus was mad at the Pharisees, Sadducees, and teachers of the law. Then one day I realized the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the teachers of the law were the church leaders of their day, and Jesus was a part of that church. As a matter of fact, this was the church that God set up. They were the people appointed by God for the purpose of enacting God's system of religion. When that realization hit me like a ton of bricks, I began to wonder if there was anything that caused Jesus to be mad at His church back in the day, that might be my issue as a current church leader. I discovered four basic attitudes that were the problem: legalism, judgmentalism, hypocrisy, and indifference to suffering. Those were the four things that flipped Jesus’ switch. In fact, we still have problems with those things today. 

Who's Your Friend?

When you want to relax and have fun, what kind of people do you spend your time with? When you go out to dinner with friends, what kind of friends do you choose? Our friends tell us everything about us, because people tend to choose friends who reflect their own values.

No man wants to feel uncomfortable when he is playing golf with another man, and no woman wants to feel uncomfortable when she is shopping with another woman. So when a person wants to relax, that person will instinctively select a companion who wants to talk about the things that interest him and wants to do the things that make her happy. To look at your friends, therefore, is to look in a mirror. We choose friends who reflect our personal interests.

This is why, in the Bible, the apostle Paul could say, “Do not be misled: ‘Bad company corrupts good character.’” Two things happen when we spend lots of time with other people. First, we choose people who already reflect most of our priorities and morals. And second, we adopt the remaining priorities and morals of those with whom we spend our time. We become like them.

So one of the best habits you could develop to make your future brighter is the habit of spending time with people you want to emulate. Obviously, you don’t get to pick your coworkers or your neighbors. All of us have to learn to get along with difficult people. But when it comes to those friends that you choose to draw close to you, start looking for ways to bring admirable people into your inner circle. Seek out friends who are doing the things you want to do and succeeding in those areas of life where you want to succeed. Your friends will dictate your future in a very big way.

Tiny Actions

What are your goals in life? When it comes to the most important aspects of your future, what are the things you hope to achieve? In regards to your health, do you have goals, or do you simply hope that your health will last? When it comes to your finances, do you have goals, or do you simply hope that things will work themselves out? When it comes to your relationships and your dreams, do you have goals to achieve the things that intrigue you, or do you simply hope that things will fall into place for you?

If you have goals in any area of your life, you should know that you will only achieve those goals by developing the kinds of habits that will make your dreams come true. Let me give you an analogy to illustrate my point.

Your life is a precious thing, and you only get to live it once. But your life is composed of years, and your years are composed of months, and your months are composed of days. In a sense, therefore, your life is just a big collection of a whole lot of days. So the way you live all those individual days will determine the outcome of your entire life, because your days are the building blocks of your life.

In the same way, your goals are composed of a whole lot of tiny actions that you perform on a daily basis. If you have habits that compel you to perform the right kinds of actions each day, your life will be a steady journey toward your goals. But if you have habits that compete with your goals or that hinder you in the pursuit of your goals, your life will be frustrating, because your goals will never be achieved. Your habits, therefore, are the building blocks of your dreams.

Connect to Your Destiny

I have found in my research and study that, no matter what a person’s belief system is, most agree that our thoughts shape our life and destiny. There is a clear connection between thinking and behavior and, a person’s behavior is always connected to the outcome of that person’s life.

Those who believe in God, believe that our origins are in Him, and because our lives have their origins in God, our lives also have real purpose. We were created for a reason, with forethought and intentionality. We came from somewhere and we are definitely going somewhere. However, in spite of our origins and God’s specific plan, the fact remains that we hold the keys to our own destiny.

Colleen Moore has a website where she shares information, advice, and positive perspective. One story that caught my eye was about a man named Michael. Michael was one who could easily get under your skin. He was too nice, too happy, and too good. He always found a way to see the positive in every situation, even if it was a negative situation or conversation. Michael was asked by one of his coworkers, “How can you be so positive all the time?” Michael explained that his attitude was a choice. He had learned that both good and bad are going to happen, but that he had the power to choose whether he would be a positive person or a negative person regardless of circumstances. He decided he did not want to waste his life waiting for things to change so he adopted the mindset to be positive every day.

Sometime after this conversation, the lady who had asked Michael about his consistently upbeat demeanor decided to follow up and see how he was doing. It turned out Michael had been severely injured in an accident. He had fallen sixty feet from a communications tower. He had endured eighteen hours of surgery and a lengthy stay in an ICU. He survived the fall, but was destined to live the rest of his life with discomfort and limited mobility. When she was able to connect face to face with Michael, she asked how he was. His response? “If I were any better, I’d be twins.” Then he offered to show her his scars!

As they talked about the accident, he told her that when he was laying on the ground, his first thought went to his soon-to-be-born daughter. His second thought was that he had two choices: he could choose to live, or he could choose to die. He told her that the paramedics were great, successfully getting him to the hospital and encouraging him on the way, but when they wheeled him into emergency and he saw the expressions on the faces of the doctors and nurses. That’s when he got really scared. He could see in their eyes, “He’s a dead man.” As the nurse was excitedly interviewing him to prep him for surgery, she asked if he was allergic to anything. He responded with “yes” and the room got quiet as everyone listened for what he was allergic to. He took a deep breath in that moment and said, “Gravity”. Then, over their laughter, he told them, “I am choosing to live. Operate on me as if I am alive, not dead.” Michael pulled through - seriously wounded from the accident - but fully alive in every sense of the word and fully convinced that his choices made the difference between life and death.

In Matthew 8:13 (NASB), Jesus stated, “It shall be done for you as you have believed.” This tells me that there is a fixed law in God’s creation. It says beliefs lead to aftereffects, and thoughts lead to outcomes. Therefore, we can build our lives on this law. We can “bank” on this law just like we bank on the outcome of gravity! Make your choice today. People who comprehend the connection between their thinking and their behavior, their beliefs and the outcome of their lives will taste the ultimate life.

Today, I want to talk about pride. A message on pride, for purposes of actual change in people’s lives, is a frustrating topic because the people who need to hear it don’t think it’s for them. I want to challenge you as you read this article to be open to considering that you have a little bit of pride. Keep in mind that if you’re not open to receiving this message you probably need to hear it.

Most of us don’t typically see pride as a real sin. But God detests pride (Proverbs 16:5). No one wants God to look at us like we’re detestable! But, we tend to dismiss pride as a sin. For a different perspective, what if I was talking about lust and I admitted to checking people out. Your response would be “that’s gross” and you wouldn’t want to hear from me anymore. Pride is just as bad. 

Pride is not necessarily ego. Pride is tricky and can manifest by drawing attention to yourself by appearing pathetic. The end result is you are still after people’s attention for yourself. Our job is to put all attention on God. We want to show off who He is. Are you worried about what people are thinking about you all the time? You may be struggling with pride. 

Pride is a pervasive matter. No one wants to admit to it. Honestly, it’s easier for me to admit to it when I’m writing a message about it. Pride is usually why we get our feelings hurt and why we feel rejection. Pride is the reason we can’t admit to making a mistake. Pride causes us to take ourselves a little too seriously. We will resent criticism if we are prideful. Insecurity is a result of pride because we are seeking for others to notice and praise us. Pride causes us to see ourselves as overly important or more special to God than others. Pride will make us want to blame others for our problems.

So, what made Jesus mad? I've been processing this the last few weeks in my series “Angry Jesus.” I saw a church sign the other day. It said, “We love hurting people.” I realized as I read it that if you accent different words in the sentence, you get a different message. The truth of the matter is, I have heard so many stories over the last few weeks, and of course over 30 years of ministry, of how the church has hurt people. Ironically, that's what was going on back in Jesus' day. Today I want to focus on John 8, my favorite story. It's about a woman caught in the act of adultery. We do not know who she was, but for today, I’m calling her “Janice”.

“The religious scholars and Pharisees led in a woman who had been caught in an act of adultery. They stood her in plain sight of everyone and said, “Teacher, this woman was caught red-handed in the act of adultery. Moses, in the Law, gives orders to stone such persons. What do you say?” (John 8:3-5).This story has inspired a new word, "gracism." It's just as dumb as racism, but it's not about the color of a person’s skin or where they come from. It's based on the color of the sin they are guilty of. If I'm going to look down on you because of something that you've done, disregarding what I’ve done, this is what I call “gracism” Your sin is not any different than my sin. There are no different levels of sin. Lying seems worse than gluttony and murder seems worse than adultery. I get that thinking. But I have no right to stand and gloat because I think my sin is less than someone else’s sin. That makes me a “gracist”.

Here's the truth: "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." A later, scripture says, "And the wages of sin is death." What does that mean?All sin is mortal - murder and adultery, gluttony and lying. Jesus grew up with a mom who felt like Janice, right? People called Jesus an illegitimate child. Mary was pregnant with Jesus out of wedlock. Whether it was her fiancé or someone else, it was against the law. And I believe that childhood experience of growing up with a mom who He knew was holy and loved by God, but who people judged and condemned, gave Him a deeper level of compassion as He dealt with the people He encountered.

Invest in Yourself

Today I want to talk about the principle of sowing and reaping. Have you ever heard the old saying, “Garbage in, garbage out?” Being aware of our choices and making sure we watch, listen, read and talk to people who feed our vision and goals is time well spent.

Think of it this way - the human mind is a lot like farmland. It is fertile and capable of producing an abundant harvest. Both the human mind and farmland will embrace what is planted and both will exponentially reproduce what has been planted. So my question to you is, what are you planting in your mind? Are you planting life or are you planting mediocrity and eventual defeat?

The mind, as is the rest of the body and your soul, are fearfully and wonderfully made. It is capable of amazing things. However, we have control over what we are planting in our amazing mind and we need to be aware that what we plant matters. Galatians 6:7 validates the theory, “Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap.” Another way to say it is, that the life of a person will become precisely the outgrowth of what has been sown - by others as well as each individual sower. Each person must ultimately be responsible for everything his or her mind absorbs, retains, and reproduces.

Considering the story of Romeo and Juliet is worthwhile at this point. Do you know the story? Feuding families, boy from one and girl from another fall in desperate love with each other. But, “knowing” their families would never consent to their union, they decide to secretly marry. However, before they can coordinate their getaway, Juliet’s father arranges for her to marry another. Yikes! What to do! Instead of rethinking what they were doing and why they were doing it, instead of considering the potential cost to this relationship and actually talking to their fathers with the friar’s help to see if an agreement could be reached, they decide to pretend to die?! And then they actually die? Each of their decisions set in motion a series of events that led to the outcome of the story. A person’s thinking leads to certain predictable results. Romeo and Juliet were raised in an environment of hatred and manipulation, enmity and intrigue. Nothing good could have come from all the violence, hatred, lying and deception that dominated the families’ thinking and existence. The ideas and views planted in their minds bore an abhorrent harvest.

Your mind will reproduce the seeds you plant. You will reap what you sow after you sow it, and you will reap more than you sow. There is work in the process of sowing, so don’t think you will reap an immediate harvest. An investment of time and resources is required. And, you are worth it! Make choices today that will pay off in exponential ways in your future. You will end up where you end up in life because that is where you want to be. If you hope to do great things with your life, you need to start appreciating the force of your own mind. You have within you what is needed to go almost anywhere and do almost anything and be just about anything you could possibly want to be. But just as that seed planted in the farmland is small, so are the deposits you make in your mind on a daily basis. As those seeds take root, develop and mature, the results will be manifested in time.

Get to know the power of your own mind. There are mysteries in this process that are worthy of your exploration.

Embrace Vitality

In Make That, Break That, I explain the science behind habit formation and the tactics a person can employ to form good habits in his life. I then propose a 13-week plan for creating a new habit in one’s life. But after I offer this information—information that has worked for me in my own life—I share with the reader a long list of suggested habits that a person may want to adopt as he works to create a new habit every three months (four new habits per year). And believe it or not, the first suggestion that I make is for a person to consider nurturing one or more habits of rest.

I am a big proponent of rest. Don’t misunderstand me. I am a big proponent of hard work, too. But I find that most hard-working people have more trouble resting than working. And rest is vital for one’s health and happiness. It is vital for one’s relationships, too.

For this reason, I encourage everyone who reads my newest book to take a critical look at his (or her) life and evaluate the quality of the rest that he gets. Some people don’t sleep enough. Some people never allow their brains to shut down. Some people claim to love their wives and husbands, their children and friends, but they never spend any time with these people. They never curl up with the person they love to watch an old movie and eat popcorn. They never just sit around, looking at old photos and laughing with other people over old memories they share together. They never take a slow walk on the beach just to think or to remind themselves of the sheer grandeur of nature.

Learn to rest by developing habits of rest. God made you to rest and to replenish your energy for the battle ahead.

Let's Be Honest

One of the first things a person needs to do in the quest to create new habits is to take note of the habits that already control his life. In Make That, Break That, I give a simple step-by-step plan to help people create better habits for themselves. And one of the things I do in this process is to ask the reader to make a list of the new habits he or she would like to develop over the upcoming year.

But before I ask the reader to make this list of new and helpful habits, I recommend that he (or she) compile a list of the bad habits that currently plague his life. Some of us tend to procrastinate. Others among us pay our bills late every month. Still others talk over people, become visibly impatient with people, or habitually run late for meetings or forget a person’s name minutes after meeting that individual.

Before you can make a realistic list of the new behaviors you need to hone in your life, you should take an honest appraisal of where your life stands right now. You need to know about the subconscious things that you do every day through the habitual behaviors that you have exhibited for longer than you can remember.

Unfortunately, because these detrimental behaviors are activated on a subconscious level and performed on a subconscious level, we often don’t even know that they exist. We can’t see our own bad habits. But this is where friends and family members can be very helpful.

I don’t believe in dwelling on the negative things in life, but I do believe in being honest and facing the truth. Living in denial is never a viable solution to any problem. So if you have bad habits, try to understand what they are and what drives them. Genuine change always begins with honesty.

The Power of Programming

New habits are not the product of self-discipline or self-control. Determination and willpower do play a role in the initial stages of habit formation, but we humans are not built to operate under self-imposed duress for long periods of time. Eventually our bodies and brains will rebel against our efforts to force ourselves to do things we really don’t want to do.

This is why it is important for a person to use the short-term power of self-discipline to train his body and brain to perform a new behavior. Then, by the time his willpower expires, the new behavior will be permanently programmed into the subconscious parts of his brain. The behavior will become a fixed and automatic activity that is performed without thought or intent every time the circumstances demand it.

So to create a new habit, you must intentionally interrupt your old patterns of behavior and purposely inject a new behavior into your regimen of “automatic” activities. And to do this, you must tie your new behavior to something that is already automatic in your life. If you do, your brain will “absorb” the new behavior and prompt you to perform it regularly and without thought. But if you don’t tie your new behavior to habits you already possess, your brain won’t prompt you to perform the behavior routinely. Instead, you will have to discipline yourself to perform the behavior, and that approach won’t last very long.

In Make That, Break That, therefore, I teach the reader how to do this. And surprisingly, it isn’t that difficult. With a little bit of thought, a little bit of creativity, and a little bit of planning, you can develop a new habit of success every three months that can set you apart from the ordinary performers around you and set you on a path to achievement and personal fulfillment.

Did you know, your tomorrow can be better than your today. I’ve been going through a list of words that will help each of us make the rest of our year, the best of our year. The tenth word on my list is “expectation”. What are you going to do with the days you have left this year? Let’s start with what you are expecting. Did you ever think about how we are all different and even if we have the exact same skills and talents, what we do with them will be different from each other. Think of it like this. If we each bring home a bag of identical groceries, I’ll put them together differently than you. The dish you come up with will look and taste differently than mine. If we take the ingredients of each day, it will be different from what someone else might do with the same ingredients. Regardless, we take what we’re given and we want to make the best of it.  

What are you expecting? What are you expecting for the rest of the year, for the rest of your life? The level of your expectation sets the level God is free to work. We can change the world by changing the level of our expectation. We can change what happens in our families, our circles of influence, and our churches on a Sunday in the same way. Whatever you expect with confidence becomes your self-fulfilling prophecy. Read Mark 11:23-25. Have no doubt, believe you have received and you can have anything you ask. It will be yours. But, when you pray, forgive first. So God will forgive your sins too.  If you believe little, you will receive little. You don’t have to settle. Pray bigger. Expect bigger. Receive bigger. It doesn’t take any more energy to have a big dream than it does a little dream. With God all things are possible.  Michelangelo said, “The greatest danger for most of us is not that our dream is too high and we miss it, but that our dream is too low and we reach it.” Don’t settle for reasonable and disconnect yourselves from the abundance God has available. 

On this Mother’s Day, regardless of what this day means to you, we can agree that children are important to Jesus.

Throughout history, people have attempted to paint the perfect portrait of Jesus. Sometimes, He's smiling. Sometimes, He's crying or praying. We all have our gentle, sweet image of Jesus, but that picture isn't complete. If we're really going to understand the Savior of the Bible, it's time to take a fresh look. For years, Christians have asked, "What would Jesus do?" But what if we asked a more illuminating question, "What made Jesus mad?"

The theme verse through this series is from Matthew 23:13, "You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people's faces." The three times that the Bible says Jesus was mad is in the temple when religious activity blocked access for the Gentiles to get to God (He had a “temple tantrum” there), the Sabbath healing where He was grieved by the hardness of their hearts (they cared more about the rules than people getting to God) and the woman caught in adultery (stay tuned). His people, church people, missed the point - people's needs. 

People need access to God and they need care. God's first commandment is love God. The second commandment is love your neighbor. Who's your neighbor? It's God's kid. We can't make God happy when we’re blocking His children from a healthy relationship with Him or neglecting real needs. The Pharisees were busy counting out their dill seeds for their tithe and straining gnats from their drinks so they didn’t eat anything unkosher. But, all the while, God’s kids were in need all around them. They just didn't care, or didn’t take time to look up from their religion to notice. The point is not to focus on following religious rules in order to please God, but to love God and love your neighbor. By the way, you can't do one without the other. 

Today, my focus is the case of Jesus’ own disciples. "People were bringing little children to Jesus for him to place his hands on them, but the disciples rebuked them." They're like, "No kids right now. Jesus is busy." When Jesus saw this, He was indignant. What made Jesus mad? His disciples were blocking the children from coming to Him. I always imagined Jesus saying “Let the kids come to me” in a soft, gentle voice. But, this is in His mad voice, “You knuckleheads, it's not about all the important adult stuff. These are the people that need to get to God.” I know the disciples had good intentions, but this made Jesus mad. As a matter of fact, He followed it up with the craziest statement Jesus ever made, “If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea” (Matthew 18:6 NIV). This sounds like Tony Soprano, not how I imagined Jesus speaking based on my Sunday school pictures.

I’ve been abused but you won’t see any scars, used but you won’t see the wear and tear, lonely when surrounded by my closest friends and blackmailed but I will not negotiate with terrorists. We must wake up to the fact that the enemy is at war with us. Everything that happens in the natural is impacted by things in the spiritual. It is time to wake up in the spirit. In Revelation 3, the Apostle John wrote to the church of Sardis. His words are sobering. He told them they had a reputation of being alive but that they were dead. He told them their deeds were not complete in the sight of God.Sardis was a huge city. It was highly advanced. It was near a river that brought life to the city and it was protected on all sides. It was a destination city. On the outside the city of Sardis looked really good but their insides were dying. The city of Sardis influenced the church of Sardis, they looked good but were almost dead.

This is the church we’re talking about today. Have you ever seen the movie, “Princess Bride”? There is a line in the movie regarding the lead character “He’s only mostly dead.” Are we mostly dead or are we spiritually awake? I hope we are full of the life Jesus paid for us to have. The church of Sardis was mostly dead. The Church is God's plan for redemption. We are the hope of the world to bring the gospel of Jesus to people who need to hear and we have got to wake up! We do not want to miss it. We do not want to miss the voice of God and we do not want to miss the opportunity to partner with Him in the plan for people. We need to go back to what we heard and believed at first; hold to it firmly. Repent and turn to Jesus again. Jesus told the church of Sardis, “If you don’t wake up, I will come to you suddenly, as unexpected as a thief.”There are a couple of instances in Scripture when Jesus “wakes” someone up, meaning actually that He raised them from the dead. Jesus is Resurrection and Life. In the case of Lazarus, Lazarus’ sister, Martha, even though she believed,  almost got in the way of what Jesus was about to do. Don’t allow your misunderstanding to get in the way of another person's miracle. She needed to step aside so Jesus could move. Wake up Martha! Don’t think naturally. Think spiritually! It was as if Jesus said to Martha, “Are you kidding me right now! Your brother is going to be alive and you’re worried about how much his body stinks!” Jesus not only came to wake up Lazarus (raising him from death) but He woke up everyone else that day who was there to witness the event and would believe.

Today, I continue with a message on things that made Jesus mad. Anytime there's blocked access to God, it makes Jesus mad. If you haven’t seen my message on Jesus’ temple-tantrum from last week, please go back and read/listen.

So, legalism… I hate it. If you've got a stupid rule, I'm going to want to challenge it. I want to know why the rule is there and if it makes sense! Rules are never going to be able to cover every scenario we could come up with and an effort to try to make rules that do so results in stupid rules.  Do you realize your behavior, your judgment, your rules, may be keeping people out of Heaven?? Jesus said it this way in Matthew 23:13 (NIV),“Woe to you …You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to.” Earlier in Matthew 23, Jesus spoke to the crowds and said, “Do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach. They tie up heavy, burdensome loads and lay them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them.”  To quote a modern icon, Homer Simpson answered Bart’s question about what religion they were, “You know, the one with all the well-meaning rules that don't work out in real life... Christianity.” What happens if Homer's statement is true? Well-meaning rules that don't work in real life create a huge unnecessary barrier and this makes Jesus mad.

So, do we not need rules? Of course, we need rules. I know we need rules. I know society needs governance. God gave us rules because He loves us. That's the difference. He loves us so He gave us rules. Think about the Ten Commandments for a second. They're all for our benefit. They provide a foundation for a relationship with our loving Father and for our general well-being, individually and socially. Here's the thing, the problem is whenour interpretation of the laws of God hinder people getting to God. At that point they are our laws and our rules. If we don't understand God’s laws but we’re expecting others to follow those interpretations, it creates a barrier for people to get to God. This makes Jesus mad. In Mark 3:1-6, Jesus decided that it was time for the Pharisees to learn a lesson about forcing people to go through well-meaning rules that don't work in real life. And so, He broke one of them. “Once again Jesus entered the synagogue, and a man with a withered hand was there. In order to accuse Jesus, they were watching to see if He would heal on the Sabbath. Then Jesus said to the man with the withered hand, ‘Stand up among us.’ And He asked them, ‘Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to destroy it?’ But they were silent. Jesus looked around at them with anger and sorrow at their hardness of heart. Then He said to the man, ‘Stretch out your hand.’ So he stretched it out, and it was restored. At this, the Pharisees went out and began plotting with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus.”

We are halfway through the year and I want to pause and help you understand that no matter how your year has gone, whether great or terrible, you can make the rest of your year the best of your year. God works all things together for your good and no weapon formed against you will prosper. All things are made new in Him. Don’t fall into a thinking pattern that whatever has happened to you or whatever will happen to is God's will. Your decisions shape your circumstances. For example: If you run out of gas on the freeway, this is not God’s will. It was your decision to not buy gas 10 miles back. If everything that happened was God’s will, there would be no reward for obedience and no penalty for disobedience. “Whatever will be, will be” is not truth and it is not the way God works. You can’t go back and start your year over again, but you can start from now and make a brand new end.

The difference between seasons is wisdom and the difference between miracles is information.
Hosea 4:6 says people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. You can be connected and not informed and you can have access but not possess. You may have access to the King, but not know what He knows. We need to be looking and seeking wisdom. It’s available. Ask for wisdom. I believe I have some wisdom for you today. How do you impact the rest of your year to finish it well and make it the best?

How's Your Attitude?

Generally speaking, are you an optimist or a pessimist? Do you see the glass half empty or half full? All our lives, we have been taught that attitude is a choice. Attitude is not a matter of genetics or a matter of upbringing or a matter of the circumstances impacting our lives; a person’s attitude is a choice that he makes regarding the way he will respond to the world around him.

But I would actually go a step farther. I would propose that a person’s attitude is a habit. It is something that is learned through a repetitive response to inner feelings and the external world, and it eventually becomes an automatic reaction to everything in life.

Did you know, however, that your attitude is more than just an attitude? It is more than just a way of thinking or behaving. Your attitude actually affects your health. People with positive attitudes have a higher tolerance for pain than people with negative attitudes, and positive people have less stress in their lives than people with sour dispositions.

Just like any good habit, therefore, the habit of a good attitude can be learned over time. In real life, good experiences and bad experiences tend to balance out. But because our attitudes are based on perceptions, not reality, those perceptions can be reshaped if we will follow the simple steps that are necessary for creating a new habit.

In Make That, Break That, I explain the simple steps for forming a new habit, including the habit of a better attitude. And while the bad news is that these steps will take time to implement in your life, the good news is that they can make a lasting difference. A new habit, once acquired, can truly change the trajectory of your life and the perceptions that shape it.

A Strange Convergence

Dreams are a lot like seeds. A seed has to be planted and watered, and it has to have sunlight in order to thrive. But with time and care, a seed will eventually break through the soil into the light of day. And a seed will become a stalk or a shrub or a tree or a vine. Dreams have many of these same qualities.

A dream is a long-term goal for one’s life. And while some dreams pertain to relationships, other dreams pertain to one’s career. And while some dreams pertain to financial promotion, other dreams pertain to athletic or musical achievement. In fact, if you think about it, real life—the kind of life that is fulfilling in every way—is nothing more than the steady pursuit of those dreams that truly matter.

But dreams aren’t achieved just because we want them, and they aren’t achieved with the passage of time alone. We have no “right” to our dreams. Dreams are achieved through a strange convergence of the things we can control and the things we can’t. But all of us know that dreams are more likely to come true if we “work” those dreams the way a farmer works the soil. And if we do the work that our dreams require, they are more likely to actually happen.

This is why good habits are so important on the journey to success. It’s the little things we do every day that eventually determine whether our dreams break through the soil or whether they die in the cold, damp ground. An athlete who wants to compete in the Olympics, for instance, will watch what he eats, and a woman who wants to build her own business will rise early and stay late at the office.

So look to build those habits that will build your life. Success won’t happen by accident.

Go For It!

I had a friend who started a gluten-free diet with his wife to try and isolate some health issues. In the end, the diet did not do anything special for him but it did help his wife. Going on the diet did not yield great benefits for him, but my friend had nothing to lose and much to gain.

In the same way, I want to encourage you to try the things I have been sharing with you the past few weeks. You have nothing to lose, but everything to gain. Put into action the things you have learned from these principles and I know you will see results and benefits. Try them! You have nothing to lose. Commit to work in your everyday life so you can experience firsthand just how powerful your own thought processes can be and how strongly your thinking can affect every aspect of your life.

To further assist you on your journey, I encourage you to search your heart, be completely honest with yourself, and identify the one thing that you want more than anything else in life. Identify this primary driving motivation – that one thing that floats your boat and quivers your liver more than anything else – and write it down in one phrase or one sentence so you can use it as a launching pad for a short-term trial of these principles. If you could achieve one thing before you die, what is it that you would achieve? Focus on this phrase or sentence for four weeks. Read it a few times in the morning and the evening and all the in-between moments when you have time to focus for a minute or two. Say it out loud during the course of your day. Do this every day for at least four weeks. (If you haven’t read my book Make That, Break That on habits, you can buy it today at davemartin.org!)

I am not the author of this concept. In Deuteronomy 6:7-9, after God had given the Israelites His law, He gave them this piece of wisdom, “Impress (these laws and truths) on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.” God designed and created the human mind and knows how He designed it to work. He set us up for success! We just have to do what He told us to do.

Without even realizing it, a person becomes what they think. They drift toward those things. My four-week challenge will help you take the initial steps toward a mindset shift. It will get your focus off the negative and onto those real desires of your heart, what I believe is most probably your actual purpose in life or a contributing goal to that purpose. You will begin to see ways that you can make it a reality as you dwell on this phrase or sentence. You will begin to understand your own capacity to create success for yourself and see your own potential for sharing in the world’s abundance that God has provided and set before us. I believe if you commit to this challenge daily for the next 28 days, that you will have a new habit that will completely revolutionize you as a person and set you on a course that can alter the outcome of your life.

The goal of this exercise is to help you stop thinking like everyone around you – narrowly and for the short-term. Catch yourself every time you start drowning in the mundane and repetitive problems of day-to-day life that deplete all of your thinking time, leaving no time to consider nobler things. What I want for you is that you learn to formulate a mental picture of your strongest personal goal so it can begin to dominate your thinking, impact your planning, alter your actions, and change your life. It will take time to unlearn old patterns but do not give up! Take control of your mind. Let it only think about the things that you teach it to think about and only consider the data that you program into it.

I go into more detail regarding this process in Chapter 7 of my book Mindset Matters. It’s one of the best ways to invest in yourself, and in your future. Do this for yourself today. It is truly Success Made Simple.