Last week was outstanding This week will be too I hope what is true for me Goes doubly true for you
Last week our challenge was to use “Outstanding!” instead of our regular response to the question “How are you?”
The power of the spoken word creates. It creates worlds. It creates your world.
The spoken word begins with a thought. By changing our thoughts we can change our world. By using the spoken word we can speed up the change.
Set your mind on something you desire for yourself, pray for it, then speak as if you believe you have received it.
Recently I heard an evidence based story about a man (Jesse Itzler) training with a Navy Seal (Chadd Wright) for a difficult race (Last Man Standing) and how he was able to to get past his mental and physical blocks at mile 38. It made me think about how to apply some of the techniques to everyday life in order to live a more vibrant life. There were several phrases that I am turning into a weekly challenge for myself and I invite you to join me. Here is week two:
Spoken Word Challenge #2
Sometimes we get tired when we are trying to do something. The initial thought that we are tired can either make us end up on the couch or can be transmuted into energy to draw from.
Speaking our thoughts is like throwing an accelerant on them. It promulgates them, puts them into effect by decree. If we vocalize that we feel tired the feeling increases. If we instead say something like, “I can do it (define what it is). I have enough energy.“ We find that we are able to continue and we do in fact have more energy stores to draw from.
Our Provider has unlimited resources, that means we have unlimited resources.
For the next week I challenge myself and you to transmute thoughts of tiredness into energy. Choose a phrase that resonates and when thoughts of tiredness enter in say the phrase out loud:
I have limitless energy. I can do it (define what it is). I have enough energy. I have unlimited energy. I never get tired. I am feeling more energized every minute.
Do it. What have you got to gain? Gain it now. The power is in your words.
E.A. Fussell 08.20.2023
Isaiah 55:11 Proverbs 16:23 James 1:26 Matthew 7:7-12 Mark 11:22-24
In my teenage years I played flute in the LaBelle High School band and learned how to read music from the band teacher Mrs. Morgan. My dad purchased an electric organ for our home so I learned a little more about reading music on it. After high school playing musical instruments got left behind, shelved you might say.
In my late twenties I decided to take piano lessons. My teacher was an elderly lady from Jamaica. She was aware of my limited training. During our first lesson while I was playing the song she had placed on the music shelf of the piano, a song I had never seen before, she exclaimed in her heavy Jamaican accent, “OOOOH Child! You must have a Dubby attached to you!” I stopped playing and looked at her with surprise, “What is a Dubby?” She clasped her hands together with a big smile on her face. “In English you would call it a ghost.” She squeezed by shoulders, “Don’t worry child, it is a good one, no one could play like that without a good Dubby.”
Back then I was young and inexperienced in spiritual matters so it kind of freaked me out. I didn’t understand the magnitude of what she was telling me. I just thought of playing the piano as a fun hobby. Suddenly it felt scary and seemed like a lot of pressure. While I didn’t recognize the significance of my talent, I did recognize the amount of commitment that it would require to fully realize it’s potential and I wasn’t willing to sacrifice the time. It was easy to use work and family obligations as excuses to put playing music on a shelf again.
Walking away from the piano is a decision I still regret. I wish I had kept playing as a fun hobby, who knows, I might “coulda” been a great player.
We all have those moments in life. Those “coulda” moments. As we age they sometimes circle back to haunt us. But instead of getting lost in coulda, woulda, shoulda thoughts, whenever those thoughts blow into our mind we can choose to let them pass gently through. We can use them as encouragement, understanding that we still have many forms of untapped potential resting in our being. Each day we get to choose what we will pursue, what we will invest our time in, how we will think, what we will read, listen to, watch, what we will learn, what we will try.
We can choose not to worry about being great at something, just have fun doing it. It’s okay to try something, many things, and not be good at them. Heck, it’s okay to be bad at them. The point is to try whatever we feel our spirit is leading us toward. Just the experience of doing something new, or something old we have wanted to do, will give us fresh insight into ourselves and how we experience life.
We’ll never know what we “coulda” been if we don’t try.
Lord give me the inspiration and courage to try the things you send as my soul desires and help me to eliminate “coulda” from my remaining years.
Let’s write. Get out a piece of paper, a notebook, or your journal and answer the following questions:
What do I want in five years? Where will I live? What will I be doing? Who is in my life? How would I describe myself? What does a typical weekday look like? What does a typical weekend look like?
Write freely from your heart. Be as detailed as possible. Then close your eyes and imagine everything you have written as of it were today. Feel all the emotions surrounding the things you wrote; love, joy, success, health, confidence, worthiness, freedom.
Each night, before you fall asleep, do the imagination exercise. Especially feel the emotions.
Sometimes what we want changes or we get more clear on it, so every six weeks review and update your answers. Remember you can have, be, and do anything so let your heart flow freely without restrictions when you answer the questions.
The universe listens to your thoughts, especially those infused with emotion. It is always conspiring with your subconscious mind to bring about what your thoughts are focused on. So focus on what you want (not what you don’t want).
Believer, remember today, your flaws and shortcomings are covered by grace and mercy. There is unlimited strength, knowledge and understanding inside you. You have unlimited wealth and Kingdom ways available to you for the asking.
When the enemy tries to whisper or shout in your ear reminding you of your weakness and lack of understanding, telling you that you aren’t worthy or that you will fail, shut him up with the authority you inherited as a child of the King. You are fully justified to walk proudly in the freedom of forgiveness.
The accuser does not have access to your mental realm. Your thoughts are under your own control. Your flesh is under your own control. You have the power of the Spirit to master the way you control yourself. You have the mercy, grace and love of our master Creator covering you.
Whatever you need to get through today will be poured out upon you. You have only to ask, seek and receive. Receiving is up to you. It is an action you must take. Sometimes our blessing is there but we block it by not being able to receive. There are many ways to hinder our own blessings. Negative self-talk fueled by negative thinking is one of the most common. Recalling past sins or tragedies is another. Let go of the whip you are beating yourself with. Christ took those stripes on the cross so you could be free from them and experience joy.
Change your circumstances. Reprogram your thinking by switching “no” to “ON”.
When someone tells you “no”, think game “ON”. List ways to overcome or get around the no. Use your imagination, step outside your comfort zone, there is always a way to get where you want to go.
Sure, there may be times when no is the appropriate answer and abiding by it is the correct response. But more often than not, “no” can be an obstacle tossed out by life to see just how much you really desire an outcome and test just how much effort are you willing to contribute to the pursuit of your purpose. Obstacles can only hold you back if you allow them to. Faith can move mountains of “no” when you are “ON” a focused mission.
If you can believe something is possible, you can achieve it.
The gift of free will allows us to choose what path we will take. Choose our beliefs, what standards we hold ourselves and others to, what things we regard as important, honorable, admirable. Our choices may not align with each other. That’s the beauty of free will, you choose for you, I choose for me, we do not have to agree. The most significant part of this gift from our Creator is that we don’t even have to agree with Him. He will not force us to follow His way. He leaves it up to us to choose the consequences we face through the choices that we make.
How do we decide what we believe? Many beliefs get programmed into us through family, culture, school, religion, philosophy, education, propaganda. Strong influencers in our lives can make it difficult for us to think for ourselves when we are younger. As we mature other factors enter in like making a living, lack of time, distractions of life, rebelliousness, or just plain laziness all can get in the way of self-analysis. Regardless of why we believe what we believe, in the end when we leave this life to face the next, the only person held accountable for what we believe is ourselves. There won’t be a free pass because someone taught us the wrong thing to believe.
I am always questioning my beliefs to make sure they are my own. Life offers many opportunities to question what the heck is going on and what my belief is. Questioning can lead to deeper understanding, new realization or leave me scratching my head still wondering what the heck? My beliefs are deep rooted and solid in some areas and very pliable in others. Some beliefs I have held tightly to because they have proven themselves true. Others entwine around me and try to bind me up even though I have tried to shake them in numerous ways, they are societies programming that I am constantly trying to cleanse myself of. Certain beliefs pressed on me by well-meaning religious teachers have required significant re-programming of my mind.
It would be easier not to self-analyze. Just go with the flow, be politically correct, follow the latest trends, listen to the preacher, do whatever the government told me to. I’ve tried those approaches a few times in my life when I’ve been exhausted or disheartened. In the end going with the flow somehow always rubs me the wrong way and I eventually wake up and return to my own way. Bold, direct, not politically correct, reading and studying the Bible for myself.
The war to influence our free will is ancient. Competition, jealousy, fear and hate mongering have always been tools the enemy used to control our emotions and work against us. The speed of the internet increases the velocity at which information penetrates our mind and diminishes our ability to decipher one attack before the next one is hitting us. The warfare takes on many forms: political affiliation, color of skin, religion, national origin, sexual orientation. Those shrouds of keeping us stirred up were used covertly up until a few years ago when the enemy became bolder. The camouflage has faded on the shroud of traditional palatable areas of propaganda. Now the war is visible outright as it blatantly rages against our free will and the freedom to exercise it.
Tactics of overwhelm are used as we are bombarded with information and no time to determine fact from fiction before the next barrage is poured out upon us. So much information, so much distraction. Wars and rumors of wars, viruses, wild weather, wild fires, racial injustice, sexual slavery, corruption under every stone. Tying us up in emotions of fear, anger, hate, rage, discouragement, helplessness. They poke and gouge and push our buttons getting us to put love on the back burner and battle with each other on our own soil, in our own homes, with our own friends and family. Their goal is that we don’t use the most powerful gift we were given. They want us to stop thinking for ourselves, stop being accountable for our own actions, stop using our mind, stop critical thinking, stop common sense reasoning, stop exercising our free will.
There is a fanatical radical in each of us, whether we yell at the top of our lungs on public domains or quietly plug along screaming silently, internally. We are creatures vibrating with energy from the electric current coursing through our being that is hard wired to emotion and feelings created in the very image of God Himself by His own hand. With our first breath we are designed to be ever seeking homeostasis and survival at all costs. Fight or flight is a continual unconscious question that our body/mind/spirit is asking itself. Each of us deals with the answer differently. Some people run to the fight, some run for safety, some sit still a little longer than others trying to figure out what the truth is.
The powers that be in this world are seeking to crush and control us. They understand and utilize the weapons of biology, psychology and spirituality. Fatiguing our systems, creating brain fog, depressive moods, trying to deplete our energy so that we are unable to process information, trying to create a sense of hopelessness so that we will grab onto any little pleasure they throw in front of us to numb the pain. Traditionally the pain killers were sports, shopping, cooking, eating, alcohol, drugs, pornography. Now they have added things like celebrity gossip, silly tiktok videos, and ignorant milk crate challenges. Anything they can use to influence and direct the masses is being used. They bombard us with bad news, upon bad news, upon bad news and offer us easily accessible pleasurable entertaining distractions from the bad news. Each is a tactic to control our thinking, to crush our free will. Filling our conscious and subconscious minds with propaganda promoting the direction they want us to move. They move us in masses, as if we were cattle, in whatever direction they choose.
Ponder this: The battle for our soul is the enemy’s ultimate goal. Have you ever thought about how precious our soul must be that such a divisive battle has been waged for it?
Death is eminent from our first breath. We are required to be prepared to meet our Creator. Today if the Taliban, or the little guy in Korea, or the intelligent guy in Russia, or the ancient Chinese, or our own elected president marches into our home and kills us we will be standing before our maker explaining why we believe what we believe.
What do I believe? I believe I’ll continue to take a moment each day to think about what I believe and make sure it is my own belief, then I will conduct myself accordingly regardless of what anyone else believes.
E. A. Fussell 