How to experience your greatest power

Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.  King Solomon

Focused people focus people.  Your focus, where you decide to place and keep your attention, is your super power--your heart.  It is the most influential thing about you, what most impacts you and those around you.  You're using it right now as you read, if you're paying attention.  (I hope you are!)

What have you been focusing on today, or trying to focus on?

That says a lot about you, perhaps everything.

Let's ask it another way.

What do you really like focusing on?

I'm convinced that God's gifts to you and me are the things we really like.  There is a verse that relates to this, a verse I thought about in a way I've never done before:

"The joy of the Lord is your strength."

What if the joy you have, which comes from the Lord, is the very source of your strength, the source of your talents and abilities?

Think about it.

When you like doing something, focus comes naturally and easily.  Practice comes naturally and easily.  You want to keep doing what you like doing, to get good at it, so that the joy never stops.  I'm convinced that this is a gift from God, as it is written:

"So I decided that there is nothing better than to enjoy food and drink and to find satisfaction in work.  Then I realized that these pleasures are from the hand of God." 

Ecclesiastes 2:24 NLT

God is the source of your satisfaction, of what most captures your attention.  He gave you your focus.  Focused people focus people.  What is your focus?

A message from Jesus to you

Today I speak from heaven on earth by My Spirit.  One day, sooner than you think, I am coming.  Know this.  Prepare for this.  Watch for this.  But before you can know, prepare, and watch, you have to accept me for who I am.

I am the Lord.
I came to seek and save you, the one reading.  If you've accepted My salvation, then You know me already.  I'm in you.  If you haven't accepted me, I'm Jesus, the One you are rejecting.

Why are you rejecting Me?
I am Jesus, the One speaking with you right now.
I died for you.
I rose for you.
I ascended into heaven and I'm praying...for you.
This is My prayer, for you:

Father, convict the one reading by My Spirit if they are rejecting Me, and thus rejecting You.
For those who accept me, fill them with Me by the Spirit.

Surely I am with you if you want me to be.
If you don't, My absence is your choice, not mine.

I am Jesus, the Lord.

How to know your gift from God (Part 3)

"But what does this have to do with your original point, Olatunde?  Who likes to be patient?"

Those who practice patience want to be patient, which means they like being patient better than they like being impatient.  And the same is true for the impatient.  Those who are impatient like being impatient.  They like letting off steam immediately...but they usually don't like the consequences.  Remember, every good and perfect gift is from God, which means everything that you like that is good and perfect is a divine gift. 

That is how you know your gift from God; that is what you will become good and talented at through practice. Everything good and perfect liking that you have is a gift from God--by good and perfect liking, I mean you like the thing, and the consequences of the thing.  It means what you like brings no harm to the Creator, or any creature, or anything in creation. If you like something in this way, you will be naturally motivated to practice it, even if it's hard and time consuming.  The difficulty and use of energy will still be pleasing to you.  What you like in this way is your gift from God?

What do you really like doing?

How to know your gift from God (Part 2)

Say you consider yourself "impatient."  If you have a fixed mindset, it means you think this is just how you are, and that you can't change.  You think some people are born patient, and others born impatient.  But if you have a growth mindset, you realize that impatient people have practiced impatience--and have become very good at it!  The same is true with patient people.  No one is born patient or impatient.  No one is born knowing how to dance, or play drums, or anything else.  Everything we are, and everything we do, has come from learning, and practicing what we learned.

Now, we are born with different likes and dislikes.  And those likes are gifts from God, the motivations behind your actions, the actions that you practice and become good at.

Think more about this.  What's the difference, in actual experience, between someone who is effectively practicing patience, and someone who is "naturally patient," whatever that means?  Say the effective practice or experience of patience simply means listening without interrupting.  You and I are talking, and I listen without interruption.  What if I'm working on that, trying to break a habit of interruption.  And what if someone else has already established that habit.  What would be the difference, if in this one conversation, I listened without interruption?

There would be no difference. 

The act of patience is the same, for the one who is working on it, and for the one who has perfected it.  Now their internal experience may be different.  The one who is working on it may feel a pressure to speak, while the one who has perfected patience may not feel that urge.  And perhaps you would sense the urge from the one who is struggling.  But it's very possible that you wouldn't.  It is written, "No one knows the thoughts of a person except the spirit in the person."  So you wouldn't necessarily know that I'm struggling to listen without interruption unless I shared it with you.

The practice of patience is patience.  The practice of listening without interruption is the experience of listening without interruption.  

Click here for part 3.

How to know your gift from God (Part 1)

"Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows." 

James, the brother of Jesus, leader in the Jerusalem Church

What you do well isn't your gift.  Neither are your talents.  Neither are your abilities. 

The gift God gave you is what you really like to do;

you become good at it by practicing;

you practice it because you enjoy it.

I know this from experience.

I remember discovering that I liked music.  It caught my attention like nothing else did.  It motivated me to move, and I remembered melodies easily--because I liked them.  (The strongest memories are those that are most pleasing, or most displeasing.  You try to hold on to the pleasures and avoid the displeasures.  In other words, you begin to practice finding the pleasure, and avoiding the displeasure, hoping to become good at both.)  I liked rhythms and melodies and music.  I liked dancing and playing mallet percussion.  So I did both of these...all of the time.  I liked going to drum practice, which means I liked practicing.  And I became good at drumming and dancing...because I liked doing them.

My liking music is God's gift. 

The musical talent and ability come from liking music.  

If I don't practice singing, dancing, and composing, then I can no more do these and anyone else.

There is a book that beautifully explains this called Mindset.  It distinguishes the fixed mindset from the growth mindset.  The fixed mindset means that some think we are born with certain abilities and that those don't change.  The growth mindset is the opposite.  We learn, we develop, and we can ultimately do whatever we choose to practice, as it is also written in scripture, "He who practices righteousness is righteous, just as Christ is righteous."  

You can be liberated by what I just wrote.  Think about what it means.

Click here for part 2.

Your calling

"Follow me."  The Lord Jesus to His disciples

Following the Spirit is every believers calling, no matter what.  No matter where you are in life, you have one thing to do:  follow the Spirit. 

This is our very salvation, which is our calling, the essential meaning of being called. 
This is our full time ministry.  To be saved, to be a believer, is to be called by God.
Jesus' simple command to follow Him was the call and salvation of his first followers, and of His followers even today.

This means a lot to me because I always wanted to be called to do "full time ministry," meaning to get paid to follow the Spirit.  But I didn't realize that  by simply working as a believer I am getting paid to follow the Spirit, though I'm not part of an institutionalized ministry.  Whatever I do, I am to work with all of my heart as towards God and not man, as Paul said.  It's God whom I serve.  I've always been a full time minister, and if you believe in Christ, so have you, no matter where you are in your life.

Say you're feeling like your life is a mistake because you took a job you shouldn't have taken.  Or you moved to a location that you regret.  Maybe you're in a relationship that is no where near what you hoped it would be.  Now, living in regret, you're retracing your steps and wondering how you can start over, how you can fulfill your calling.  I have good news for you.

Wherever you are, stay there. 

God will lead you while you are in your situation,

or He will lead you out of your situation. 

It is written, 

"Each person should remain in the situation they were in when God called them."

1 Corinthians 7:20.

Say you were an unbeliever, married to an unbeliever, when you first believed in the Lord.  Like Paul says, you should remain married, which is the situation you were in when God called you, even though your spouse is an unbeliever.  This is a hard situation to be in.  But God will lead you in that situation, or out of that situation.  Until He leads, stay where you are.

Or say you were working a particular job before you believed in Jesus.  Now that you believe, you're wondering if you should change jobs.  Again, stay in that situation, and God will lead you while you're in it, or He will lead you out of it.

Of course, the exception to all of this is if you were doing something illegal as a job, or if you were committing adultery against someone else's marriage.  In those situations, your salvation means that you leave your sinful life. You never stay in a sinful situation.  God never calls you to sin, or to stay in sin.

But if you simply regret where you are, stay there, and follow the Spirit.  Pray for God to set you free, and even look for His liberation.  Don't try to liberate yourself, unless you are resisting or leaving a situation of sin.  Stay where you were when you were saved, when God called you.

This is your calling:  follow the Spirit wherever He leads.  This is all the apostles had to do when Jesus said, "Follow me."  Wherever He went, they went.  Whatever He commanded, they obeyed.

It's the same for you and me.
This is my calling.
This is your calling.
Follow the Spirit.

Our Imaginary God (Part 2)

Anyone who chooses to do the will of God will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own.~The Lord Jesus

How can you find out God's will and know it?  First, you have to reject your Imaginary God, like we talked about last time.  This is the god who likes everything you like, loves everything you love, always agrees with your common sense.  The true God is more like this.

Say you're thinking about taking a new job.  You like it, it makes sense, it's everything you're looking for salary wise.  Yet something isn't "right."  You feel a faint uneasiness, something (or Someone?) suggesting that you wait and keep looking for jobs.  

"But why wait?" you reason.  "How could the God (of your imagination) have a problem with you taking this job?  It's a good job, meaning you actually would be doing good in the world.  Doesn't the Bible say that you should do good?"

Assuming you really care what the Bible says.
You know what I mean.

You know that for most of your life's decision, you aren't consulting the Bible.  You're consulting "common sense," or what makes sense, or more honestly, what you want to do...assuming that what you want to do is what God would want you to do...if it's not a crime at least...

How much of our lives is based on a genuine desire to do God's will, even if it wasn't what we were thinking?  Is it possible that God would want something we didn't think of?

Of course not.  God gave us common sense for a reason, right?

He did, if we redefine what "common sense" is in the first place.

Click here for Part 3.