Think and Grow __________

I've been reading Napoleon Hill's book Think and Grow Rich and have realized that a lot of what he is talking about in there is straight from the Bible. God has told us throughout the ages that "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." Hill has simply turned that around to say, where your heart is, is where you will build your treasure! If your heart is in money, you will begin to seek ways to gain more money. If your heart is in family, you will seek ways to spend more time with family. If your heart is in God, you will seek ways to grow more God-like. Now, I have been taught this principle since grade school, but I've suddenly seen it in a whole new light.

Hill speaks in his book about repeating your goals and desires aloud when you get up, and before you go to bed at night. This way you train your subconscious to focus on acquiring whatever it is that you desire. This may as well have been pulled directly from scripture! God has told us time and again to meditate on His principles and values so we can ingrain them into ourselves. There are many laws that God has built into our world that are unseen, and yet as real as the earth we stand on. Gravity, you can't see it, but you see the law of gravity in effect all around you. The same thing applies to your desire. If you desire something, and focus yourself and your energy towards acquiring it, you can have it! You need to make sure that what you are desiring is something that is not in conflict with God's values of course, but in truth, anything is possible!

I think one regret I have is that I didn't focus early enough on what I wanted to be when I grew up. We are asked this over and over throughout our childhood, but I never really spent much time thinking about it. I seemed to think that I would just kind of do it when I got there. I've found out that you never really get there. If you don't choose your life, life chooses it for you. What bothers me most, I think, is that I'm good at many things, but I never spent the time to become great at anything. I could never make up my mind to the point that I said "This is what I want to do with my life!" because I always looked at what that pushed aside. If I decided to become a Doctor, then I would loose all that time and all that sleep during med school, and I would miss being able to hang out with friends and family as much as I did. If I became a Pro Baseball player (not that this was really a choice I had since I'm not very good!) I would be on the road all the time and would have to commit myself to a life of practice. What kept me undecided was wondering if I would miss out on something else. Let me tell you from my experience, JUST DECIDE! Make a decision and stick to it. Everything you leave behind is replaced with something else that is just as good if not better! I have spent a lot of my life looking back. I spend a lot of time trying to keep everything under control. The only way to keep everything under control is if nothing ever changes. You have to train yourself to thrive on change. There is so much out there, but before you can get it, you have to make room be getting rid of something else.

I think the next biggest thing that kept me from choosing is fear of failure. I knew that if I choose a certain career, I would have to be very good at it, and people would be judging me on how good I was. If I didn't choose, I could just say that this was my job and not really worry about whether or not I was the best at it. I could always just say "I just work for him" or in other words "I'm just doing what I'm told". I think this is one way I kept myself out of the spotlight, and therefore, out of the position one needs to be in to be recognized. If you are just doing what you're told, who do you think will be recognized for the successes you accomplish? You have to put yourself out there and do something that can only be traced back to you. Then you will know how good you really are at it. Only when you know how good you are, can you make yourself better.

Let me make one thing very clear at this point. I am very happy with my life. I've got a great wife, lovely children, and lots of wonderful friends. I wouldn't change anything about my life if it meant loosing any of these. I'm just writing this in the hopes that it will encourage someone to make that choice early on, and make something more of themselves. I'm not just talking about making money either. God put this law in place for a reason. If you put your mind to something, you can achieve it! Make the choice early that you will be pure. Tell yourself when you get up every morning and before you go to bed, that you will not give in to the temptation of the perversions of the world. You will be amazed how easy it becomes to resist temptation! Choose to be that person you admire. Choose to do the things that you think make them who they are. If you see something you admire in someone else, add that quality to your personality. If you don't make yourself into who you want to be, no-one else is going to!

A kind of Christianity

I have been presented with an interesting situation. I have met the people that I have heard about all my life. The people who profess to be Christians, but you would never guess by watching them live. It's very strange. And the thing is, they are not evil people. They are nice, well spoken, and they are my friends. Up to this point I have known who my christian friends are and who my non-christian friends are, so this is an odd situation I have found myself in.

I first learned of them when I was reading Lee Strobel's The Case for Christ. One of my friends saw it and commented that he had read it and it was a great book. This is a friend who lives with his girlfriend, uses foul language regularly, goes out drinking every night with the guys, and generally acts like every other person our age in the world! I'm sure I had a very funny look on my face.

I have since talked with him several times about our faiths. He grew up Catholic, which I think will do more harm than good a lot of times. I don't mean to offend anyone (that's what we all say when we are about to offend a bunch of people), but my general feeling about Catholicism is that it is a lot of empty works so you can feel like you are doing at least one thing right in your life and by that, earn favor with God. Every other branch of Christianity can be bad too if it is forced on a child, but Catholicism I feel is empty even at it's core. Anyway, this is not a post on Catholicism.

In speaking with him, I have found that he does, in fact, have a lot of knowledge about the things of God. What I don't understand is how that knowledge can exist without affecting your life. There are others also. Many other people have joined in our conversations, all people that I would never expect to darken a church door. One of these is a preacher's son, which explains a lot. He's the result of what I was talking about earlier where religion is forced on a child. When you have religion shoved down your throat as a child, you tend to reject it when you are older. Children need to be taught the truth, but not forced to believe it. We teach them right and wrong, but we need to be sure we know right and wrong first. At some point everyone makes up their own mind, we need to give them info, and an example so they choose wisely.

The problem with my friends, I believe, is not that they don't know the truth, but that they don't know what to do with it. They have the info, but they have never had the benefit, as I have, of seeing it put to practice in practical daily life. I had the luxury of watching my parents live out Godly principles in their lives throughout my childhood. I know that everything in the Bible works if you put it to use. I don't always obey and live like I should, nobody is perfect, but I have that foundation. I know that if I do attempt to be holy even as He is holy I will have a successful, fulfilling life. I know that the things I mentioned above, the drinking, cursing, fornication, these are not things that void a relationship with God. If you know Christ as your savior, then you are forever held in His hand and no one can remove you. What these things are though, is an indication of where you are in your life. A substitute many times for the greater blessing we could have if we are obedient. They are trading the great for the good, because they can have it now.

Overall, this is a new situation I have found myself in. I am very excited about what could happen here. I hope that I can be a witness with these people. I have already had questions about how I am able to "make it work" with one income and a wife and child (about to be children). Maybe I can be the example to them, as my parents were to me, of what Christ can do with a life if given a chance. I am scared also of what can happen if I let them down. If I don't act like I should. If I tell the wrong jokes, say the wrong thing, or start to be "preachy". I only hope they see Jesus and not me.

I Hate my FREEDOM!

So I'm sitting in training today at my new job, and I'm talking with some of my co-workers about the cost of cable vs. available channels (very thrilling stuff I assure you). One of the ladies that I work with was saying how she had heard that there was soon to be a law that would require cable providers to let you pay per channel for your cable. This means you would basically be able to come up with your own packaging for your cable service. Neat right? Sounds like a good idea.... if you spend most of your time thinking with your knee. A LAW!!?? A freaking law telling cable providers to let you choose your channels! I couldn't believe it. Here we have companies providing a service that in no stretch of the imagination could be considered vital, and yet some people out there are willing to walk all over the owner's rights as Americans for the ability to pick their own channels! Where in our constitution does it say you have a right to cable, and the right to pick your channels? How stupid is that? This just pissed me off to hear about the ease with which some people would give up their rights and the rights of others. Grow up America, there are some things you can't have, and you shouldn't use the government to get. Get over it, and move on with your life!