I was up late the other night because I couldn’t sleep.  Lately I have been thinking about the future a hell of a lot.  All I could see in my waking hours was a dead end.  No way out.  I then picked up Think and Grow Rich and noticed something that I hadn’t seen the first few times I had read it.   Napoleon Hill is telling the story of Henry Ford and his instance on having a V8 motor in a single block.  Something that at the time was considered “impossible”.

When told that the V8 motor in one block was impossible Henry Ford didn’t change his mind.   He persisted and some would say with dogged determination, pushed his engineers to the point where it was possible.  He used nothing other than a concept of the future that he wanted, lots of money and a sense of unfailing conviction (in himself) that it could be done.  After some time it was a reality.  So there’s nothing extraordinary about that story really is there?  But here’s what hit me.

Ford like so many others had a vision for something that drove him to commit a lot of resources to it.  Some might say it was a sort of faith that drove him in this direction… others would say that it was a determination that crept beyond on the normal sense of common decency or the fact that he had loads of money.  However, the key lesson I got from it was this: you can’t expect the future to be different from what you expect.  That is, unless you are already expecting, looking and building a better tomorrow from the foundational idea that tomorrow will be better… than you are already behind.  In other words, what you have now is temporary… but that mind you have is eternal.   It will follow you through all kinds of circumstances right up to your death and beyond!

I need not stretch myself for evidence in this case.  Have a look around at the amount of uses the word ‘crisis’ has in modern media.  It is bantered around so much that every time there is a something terrible happens, the word ‘crisis’ is sure to follow.  However, if you think ‘crisis’ and ‘disaster’ then you are accepting the default.  What if you began to think of a better future, clothe that thought with an imagination that tomorrow is going to be better and actually saw it happening in the landscape of your mind’s eye? Think about this.  What if you began to imagine a better tomorrow?  You would expect it!  I am not promising that it would happen because bad things happen to all of us.  BUT, if you expect something better instead of something worse, you will, by the natural workings of your mind, begin to see new patterns that you couldn’t before.  Instead of being ‘reactive’ to the circumstances, you will begin to picture something altogether different.

This is not a major revelation for a lot of people, but for me it was so.   It was for me!  Unless I expect and actively begin to hope in the future, I will not believe anything that hasn’t already happened!  I will simply go through life reacting to whatever comes my way by saying, ‘well I knew that was going to happen.’  What Ford tapped into was that the future is not written in stone for us.  It can get better.  Sure, you may have bottomed out in a bad business deal or suffered a horrible loss.  Nevertheless, I believe that if we begin to hope for a better day and imagine what it will be like when get there, we will begin to see things that we didn’t previously see.  Hope will come our way and we will be all the better for it.

When we focus on what ‘we see’ as the evidence for what’s possible, we forget that almost every piece of technology we have came from someone who had some hope and said, “I believe it can be done.”  More to the point, they took actions to back up their faith and actually achieved what was ‘impossible’.   It’s very easy to be a downer and say all will go to hell.   How about you think about a good future.  Something that puts a smile of your face.  Of course it’s not that simple but it’s just as easy to have hope as it is to say none exists.  Try it, I did and made me feel a whole lot better.   It put me to sleep!

Have you ever found yourself caught between taking a chance in life and then almost instantly doubting yourself. I know I have. Let me give you an example from my own life. When my little dog died a few years ago… my wife was pestering me about getting a replacement dog. In my heart I really wanted another dog but in my head I was really annoyed because the other dog was barely cold in his grave. In my heart I knew I wanted one but my head was telling me it was a bad idea. One Sunday morning I woke up and had a rush of excitement. “Let’s get a dog!” What happened? I got a dog! My heart overruled my head.

What are head choices?

Your head choices are those that you make when you rationalise. You look at the options, perhaps use the decision maker, you think it through, you come to a conclusion. You use the head option. The head is where we store information about the world like our concept of the world and so on.

What are heart choices?

Choices of the heart are those that you make that come from the inside. The heart makes choices about what we think for us because it’s an intuitive inner feeling. A gut instinct that you can overrule if you really try. One time I went to apply for a job and my heart broke out inside me. It was as if God was saying, ‘Don’t do it!’ That was the heart. My head was like, ‘this is a great job what’s the problem?’ I didn’t take the job because if life I have learned to listen to my heart. Many times when I haven’t it’s been a bloody disaster.

The choice often is rationalised in the human life yet so many of our choices are hardly that. There is no point planning out a life if you aren’t prepared to take chances based on what you feel is the right path. This is inner guidance. If you believe only what you see… life for you will be a stale adventure. Not only will you only accept what you know, you will never believe in what you don’t see and know the importance of vision in the human life. Your head has it’s place as the guiding master builder of your life but it should not replace the desires of one’s heart.

There is a saying: once bitten, twice shy. So what happens when you get bitten repeatedly by the same dog over and over again? There can be no doubt that you should avoid that dog because it turns on you too often. I had a dog like that once so I got rid of it. There is another dog that bit me more times than I can count. It’s the dog of the modern mainstream church.

Now before you start, I would like to say I am still a Christian and yes I do things that are considered so. Have a look at my about page (up and to the right!). I am happily involved in Christian based aid. So what’s the beef I have with church?

Why I won’t go to church anymore

My experiences with church go back a long way. However, the most recent event broke my heart. My oldest daughter had been going to a church group for a little over two years. Last Sunday I was hanging around just watching what she was doing.  I noticed that none of the other children were talking to her.  In fact they were ignoring her. She walked up to a few people and they just looked away. Now, I know that perhaps I shouldn’t be so sensitive. But, you would think after two years that kids would get to know other kids?  The problem for her was that she was not attending the school attached to the church so she was outcast.

The funny thing is two minutes before that a person said to me, ‘are you new here?’ I had been going for two years. I would also like to add that went to groups and participated in events for some time. So why the stigma? I don’t know.

So what’s the big deal? A bunch of other kids won’t talk to my children. So what? Well this is the big deal. If you don’t fit into a church they exclude you. Don’t believe me? Go into your local “mainstream church” and carry a baby with no visible husband in sight. Tell me what happens. I will tell you a story of how they wouldn’t take a photo of my sister in law for their church ‘family wall’ due to the fact the she told them she was a single mother.  They totally ignored her and nobody spoke to her for the duration so-called “welcome to our church” function. They realised she was a single mother and thought we don’t want that in here.  They mustn’t think Jesus, would want his photo taken with a single mother.  That’s disgusting!

When I left a church I was attending as an active member for over three years I was humilitated by the fact that they ignored me on the street.  I had shared personal secrets with these people but because I wasn’t in the “clique” anymore I was excommunicated.  I was invisible to them.  Even though I made firm eye contact.  These were people that I felt were my friends. Friendship for most church people does not extend past the building or the immediate circle of church goers.

Church is no longer about Christ it’s about empire building

Empires are what early Christians fled from because they were being killed by the dozens. Somewhere along the line the church decided to become the empire of ‘Christ’ and didn’t consult God about it. It’s one thing to assume you are the leader of a group but quite another to use your authority to make your own empire. Why do we have such big congregations that grow by the thousands when people like me and my sister in law are excluded? Ego? It’s so that an empire can be built in the name of God. I have no problem with people being successful and believe it or not no problem with large churches. Who am I to criticise what people want to do? Go for it. But, what about the fractured? What about the outcasts and excluded? Society already frowns on them… so why exclude them? For God’s sake read your bible. Jesus spent his whole time with hookers, tax agents and the working class of his day. I don’t think he was that offended by these people.

Church suits certain personality types

I am not an outgoing person by nature. I am introverted. I cringe at the sight of people attending parties and the like and I can imagine some of you do too. I am not the sort of person to engage in self-promotion or anything like that. It’s not in my nature to even want to be found. It’s the way I like it. I am not openly attracted to large groups neither am I the kind of person to be found at the centre of attention. Perhaps this is where I differ from the expectations of church goers.  They want hugging, kisses, meet and greet and want to live in your pocket. I don’t want to see empires. I want to see a difference. The world has major problems and I am yet to attend a church that even makes a difference in it’s own community. That is not to say there isn’t one. I am sure there is. You just won’t see me there.

Challenging church mentalities on ‘tithing’

There is a lot of debate about giving in the church. Personally it’s your money, do what you want with it. If you wish to give it to a person to support them to teach you their version of the bible and build a great big building then that’s your choice. When my wife wrote a letter to the church asking them how we could afford to tithe when we couldn’t afford to pay our bills I was mystified by their response. In a fairly “nice” letter we were told we just have to be obedient. Ah, the works gospel in evidence again. How can one be obedient when the resources required to do so are absent? So I tell the bank, who is going to bankrupt me, that my tithe is due and I have to be obedient to God. No matter which way you look at this it’s manipulation of the worst kind. When you tell someone who is struggling, that they just have to obedient; or else they fall under a ‘curse’, you are missing the point. Oh and by the way I still don’t tithe even though I paid off most of my debts in one year through a miraculous chain of events.  All things are possible to them who believe! I am giver but out of a cheerful heart not because the pastor told me so. And I am not bound to do so according to way I see ‘grace’.

I am speaking about the churches I have attended and I have to say that my case is my case. It’s not your case. You may get something tremendous out of church. They may not isolate you or make judgments from afar. They do to me.  One morning I “woke up” when reading my bible. It said that you can’t put new wine into old wineskins. Why not? Because they will break. If you mix rules and regulations with Grace you don’t have a real Gospel you have a works minded flesh fest.  You can’t make God do what you want then expect him to like it either.  So why do we persist in religious routines?  That is outside my understanding at this stage.

Over the past two years I have worked very hard to fit in. I tried to belong and even made an effort for my children’s sake to get them go along to church. I went to meetings, I attended home groups and yes I even went out the front several times. Evidently, it was all in vain. In my experience the modern mainstream churches are missing heart. And yes this is another post of mine on the heart. I will never stop being a Christian because of my life experiences but that doesn’t mean you will see me in a church anytime soon. I have had too many bad experiences to go near that dog again. Can I suggest if it bites you … run. It’s a real mongrel when it gets a hold of you.

This is another post of my on-going conversation about the heart.

“…If you believe you have received it then it shall be yours.” Mark 11:24.

In a previous article I spoke about hope and why I thought it was so important. In this article I want to talk about how to turn hope into faith. Faith is one of those simple to do but hard to understand things that most people need to use and develop in their own life. I believe there are four key steps you need to master to do this.

1. Know what you want

I can’t say this with any more words: KNOW WHAT YOU WANT. If you know what you want… then you will know that you know that you want it. Putting aside all the stuff you may have heard prior to this. The bottom line is that you can create desires and believe for things you want. If you don’t know what you don’t want then you have nothing tangible to believe for. Rev. Paul Yonggi Cho says it this way, ‘have a clear cut objective’. I believe without knowing what you want you can never get what you want. When you have a hope for something better, that’s the starting point for faith. When your dream begins to grow inside you and you see yourself with it then you are beginning to turn hope into faith. Knowing what you want, is the starting point. It is supplemented by hope because hope is faith in embryo form.

2. Ask for what you want

The second most important thing about faith is that you ask. It says in the bible that you don’t ask so you don’t get. I think in reality we think we haven’t earned what we want or some other poisonous belief slips through the crack to show itself in our thinking. You have nothing because you haven’t asked for it. Are you asking for it? Have you asked for it? If you want something from somebody (i.e. God) what do you do? You say, ‘can you please pass me the salt?’ So why should life goals be any different. Ask for what you know that you want.

3. Believe that what you want is yours… already and be thankful for it

This is a tough one. When you hope you defer things into the future. That means that ‘someday’ you will get it. Not so with faith. When you have faith you know it because you can call those things which don’t exist yet as though they did. Why can you do this? I don’t know. I know that it works, that’s about all I can tell you at this stage. Once you have asked for what you know that you want you have to believe that you have it. I think of it this way for me. When I put in my request, I think of it as an order. When was the last time you walked into a fancy restaurant and was served the moment you sat down? Or putting it another way when was the last time you were given a cheque and you went and bought a loaf of bread with it. No, you have to cash that sucker first. Faith says, ‘I have placed my order, now I know it’s mine… God granted it to me.’ Beyond that point the how and the why are out of the realm of your concern.

Here’s something that works for me: Close your eyes for a moment and think of something that you really desire. Can you picture yourself with it? I mean really can you see yourself having it, holding it and using it? If you could then what’s stopping you from taking that imagination and using it to be thankful to God that you have it now? What’s the hold up? If you can’t see it then you are still hoping.  Don’t worry.  The time will come when the desire will overwhelm you and you WILL see yourself with it.  I will post on this soon.
4. Begin speaking, acting, thinking and feeling as though it was yours already

A long time ago I thought that when you believed for something that was enough.  I have since learned that when you want something you have to focus yourself to the extent where you begin to talk, think and feel.  Say you want to be healed of something.  So you know what you want and ask for it believing it has been granted to you so now what you have to do is create the atmosphere in the natural order for things to change.  You see, it’s a complete cycle.  This world is one thing split into two parts.  The underlying essential elements (what I call the spirit) and the natural structure.  If you hold to the biblical account (as I do) then you recognise the spiritual underpins and gives birth to the natural.

However, whilst the two orders operate on different principles they are inexplicably connected.  Back to my healing example: you see the solution (the healing), you believe you have it (you can see yourself healed), you now need to take that inner spiritual concept and release it to create in your life.  You see, we create things that come from the inside out.  The light bulb, the wheel and so on began as an ‘inner’ conceptual frame which worked it’s way to the outside.   Here is an example from my own life.

Faith in Action in my own life

Once upon a time I suffered from very severe dermatitis, at the start of the disease my hands were cracked and small blisters appeared on my hands.  As I live in a very humid climate the cracks were exposed to the elements and somehow severe infection set in.  A pastor friend of mine told me that he was healed from sinus when he believed.  So I thought it was time to give it a good aussie go.

The next thing to happen was things got worse.  The infection became so bad that I was in constant pain.  So back to the doctor I went.  I got a new supply of skin cream which at first worked then after a while a new infection set in and I was in even more pain than before.  At some stage I just snapped!  I couldn’t write or type and had a new born baby to contend with.  I actually took the medication and threw it away.  It wasn’t helping, it only made things worse.  After I threw out my medication I began to say ‘I will get my healing from God!’.   Things just kept getting worse and worse.

Then one day about one month later the pain began to subside and within two weeks my hands were restored to normal. During this time I thanked God that he had given me the healing and from there things began to incrementally improve. I still bare the scars on my hands of that time and from time to time it comes back but I always remember what I said and it never lasts long.  Certainly, it’s nowhere near as bad as it was before and it will never get on top of me again.  It was like the moment I began to let the words tell me that I had it, the world around me sat up and took notice.

You can put this to work

I have heard it said that we don’t get because we don’t ask.  That was me for many years.  Now, I am paying debts I could pay ($20, 000 this year alone) and getting opportunities that I never had before.  Does it always work?  No.  But it works more often than not.  Should you throw away medication?  No, I still use it in other areas and have many hurdles that I can’t see my way out of.  Nevertheless, trusting God works more often than it doesn’t.  What’s the alternative… leave your life in the hands of the world?  No thanks.  Tried that and I wound up almost bankrupt.  I would rather use my faith and walk with God thanks.

My advice is to start with something you hope for that is just out of your reach not four hundred years out of your reach.  Stretch yourself so that you ask for something you can’t do that is not completely ridiculous.  So it may be a pay rise at work, help for your relatives, moving a small obstacle or even believing for a pair of socks. Remember there are really four stages at work:

1. Know what you want

2. Ask for it

3. Believe that it’s yours and be thankful for it

4. Speak, act, think and feel as though you have it now.

I want to stress that this is a summary of turning hope into faith.  There are many ways you can do this and a lot of things you can achieve if you begin to stretch your faith.  I am reminded on something that Jesus said to his disciples when they had problems curing the epileptic child:

“All things are possible to him who believes” Mark 9:23.

Do you have a dream?  I do.  I dream to be successful in all that I do.  One thing that kept me going through the hard times was a desire to see something happen in my life that was great.  I would say that at least on one occasion holding onto hope was very important.  Having working with a aid organisation for awhile now I can say of the hallmarks of extreme poverty is how people in the slums of the world lose hope.   The dreams they have escape them and the reality of the sounds, smell and feelings of their situation stop them from hoping for something better.   It’s sad to see older people who have given up hope that their dreams will ever come to pass.  Here are some reasons why you should never give up hope.

1. Hope is a goal setter

Hope sets the goal for some future event to come to pass.  Whether you realise it or not, you have the power to hope for something better.  When you focus on what’s happening in your life and hope sets in you will begin to dream.  We are all equipped with the mechanisms of hope, so there is no excuse.  Transcending reality is the hard part and I will talk about that in a later post.   You need some kind of goal to set for yourself so hope for something.  Ask yourself this question:  What do you like doing?  Are you doing it?  No?  Why not begin to hope you will?  Set a goal on the inside and begin hoping.  Without the goal how can you ever get anywhere?

2. Hope makes you feel good

Hope can be medicine for your soul.  Are you stuck in a terrible situation.  Begin to hope for things to change.  Recognise what it is that you want to change and begin dreaming about it.  Think about the underlying emotions that rise into your consciousness when you do.   What feelings do you feel?  Doesn’t it make you feel better.  The only problem is staying in that state.  You need to foster hope and make it grow.  You do this by remembering the hope day after day and entertaining it in your imagination.  I do this often and it has helped me tremendously in goals I have achieved and goals I haven’t.  I almost have a PhD which is the result of hoping for something first.  When I began this journey I wasn’t qualified and I should not have been let in.  But I hoped and believed and here I am today.  It all began when I had a dream in my heart of wanting to study more at university.   I will share this story in more detail later on.  There were times when I was studying over the past seven years that I felt I would never emerge out of it in one piece.  But, thank God, I never lost hope that I would emerge out of it with my dream in hand.  What do you dream about?  Begin hoping for it by seeing it in your minds eyes.  Hope for something better.

3. Hope is a template for faith

In the post that follows this one I will explain it in more detail.  Hope sets the goal and provides the template for you to believe.  The power of belief is something everybody has.  You use it to shape and guide your life on a daily basis.  Think of it this way: hope is the blueprint of your dreams whereas belief is the concrete.  What do you dream about?  I dream about a world where communities are transformed from poverty into prosperity.  I dream about things that spontaneously come to me during prayer, my children’s life and those that I teach.  This is not real it’s a dream.  Yet it provides the template for me to want something better in my life.  There is a saying I have heard in Christian circles, ‘hope deferred makes the heart grow sick’ (it comes from the proverbs).  When you lose hope you lose everything.  I have seen the reality of this in people’s life.  What you think about your life and the direction it’s taking is very much the substance of hope.  Everything you are doing is based on it.  If you are a practicing lawyer, doctor, accountant or IT person you once hoped you could do that.  That hope lived in you as a dream.  Now that you are doing it, you no longer hope for what you have.  Yet, if you didn’t hope in the first place you would have had to template to form a belief in you and you would have thrown it all away.

4. Hope builds optimism for the future

A very close friend of mind said it this way, ‘hope is faith in the future’.  I like that.  Hope is faith that at same point you will be experiencing a future dream.  Whatever it is that you want to do if you hope for it, see it and begin to expect it you will eventually have it.   You cannot reach your dreams if you don’t have one.  You cannot build a better life if you don’t think about what it is you want and hope like crazy.  Will you get it if you hope for it?  No, but you will begin to move towards it and without that you will never get your dreams.  Hope is the substance we use to lay down a blueprint for the future.  It’s the part of us that was born into us or discovered as we grew older and it’s the real us surfacing up from underneath letting us know that we are really there.    Today, why don’t you begin to hope and see what you find in your heart.

Remember what you see is not always what is real.  Hope forms a firm foundation for the future actions you wish to take.  If you don’t do it… then your life will resemble pretty much what it does at present.

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