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survivors.sanctuary@gmail.comTIP ONE Know what God says about your hearts desires
One day in my reading of the Bible I came across a very nice promise of God in the Bible.
Psalm 37:4 (NIV)
Delight yourself in the LORD
and he will give you the desires of your heart.
Now isn’t that a wonderful promise that God himself will GIVE YOU the desires of your heart?
If you are like most of us, as a young person you had a dream, things you wanted to achieve in your life. But life, circumstances, and the harsh realities of getting that lucky break, sometimes entice us to give up our dreams as simply a foolish child’s fantasy.
Do you realise that the younger most people are the more pure that they were in thought and deed? Do you know that? As young children we are so carefree and trusting and we can see with eyes that are not jaded by the known evil and experience that we go through to becomes adults.
When we are young we have lofty thoughts.
When I was young, about twelve years of age, all I wanted to do with my life was to become a preacher. Not a minister in a church, but a preacher that spoke to people that were unchurched and people that did not have a living personal, two way emotional relationship with God. I wanted to travel from city to city and speak at events where Christians would bring their non Christian but open minded friends to come and listen to me speak.
When I was young there was a man I highly admired and even travelled four hundred miles to see speak. He went from football stadium to stadium and travelled all around the world to speak about the benefits of being a Christian and lead people into a decision to place their life in God’s hands from the day they heard him speak. You might have heard of this man, if you are old enough, his name was Billy Graham.
Sure, when I was little, I didn’t for one moment think I would be as big as Billy Graham and speak to millions of people in a year like he was doing, but I wanted to do what he was doing full time with my life on a smaller scale.
At 12 years of age, I had that dream and at 40 years of age that dream hasn’t been extinguished or given up on, only it has been added to. Now instead of just speaking pretty easy to understand messages to people that are not Christians in the hope of encouraging them to try the Christian life, I have also been encouraged by God to speak on things a bit more complex about how to live a very productive and meaningful Christian life that is devoid of worry and fear.
I only found out the second part of my life mission about seven years ago and it has caused me to have to grow a lot closer to God, and has caused me to have to have a more thorough knowledge of the Bible and what certain passages mean.
You see the verse above promises the reader that God will give them the desires of their heart, but like every promise in the Bible it comes with a condition- a part of it where we have to do our part. Let me re- print it here.
Psalm 37:4 (NIV)
Delight yourself in the LORD
and he will give you the desires of your heart.
It says one word here that we need to do; we need to delight ourself in God.
Well what do you think delighting yourself in God means?
Let us go to a dictionary, and online one at that. Dictionary.com the first hit on Google says this.
de”light [di-lahyt] Pronunciation Key
1. a high degree of pleasure or enjoyment; joy; rapture: She takes great delight in her job.
2. something that gives great pleasure: The dance was a delight to see
-verb (used with object)
3. to give great pleasure, satisfaction, or enjoyment to; please highly: The show delighted everyone
-verb (used without object)
.4. to have great pleasure; take pleasure (fol. by in or an infinitive): She delights in going for long walks in the country.
So to delight in God would be to take great pleasure or to be in rapture in your feelings toward God.
And yet it means much more then what you can initially get from just a meaning.
When you take delight in your wife or in your husband, you show your delight in relationship by what you do and say. This scripture about taking delight in God and then Him giving you the desires of your heart means more then just having warm fuzzy joyful feelings toward God.
Personally, I feel it means commitment.
When a man delights in a lady and makes him his wife there is a certain commitment that an honest and genuine man of the old school is making. Here are a number of unspoken promises a gentleman would be making in his marriage.
1. He is promising her that he will go to work each day and will do his level best to do his part in providing for all her needs just as he father did before her. If she comes from a middle class home, where she had a nice car of her own and had nice clothes and possessions and was used to dining in nice restaurants once in a while, and once a year her family used to go on an enjoyable vacation, the man that is marrying her is kind of pledging that he too, will give her that kind of life.
2. Coupled with promising to look after her, he is promising that he will always look after her. This part of marriage these days is not highly honoured and valued as many men after a hard time and hardship seem to decide to desert their wife, divorce her and move on to another easier relationship. Yet to make a point, if a man really did delight in his lady, he would do anything in his power to always provide for her and keep her happy even if for some reason she decided to desert him.
3. He is promising to do his best to give her the opportunity to have her own children that they can call a family, and as a father he is pledging to provide not only for her needs and standard of living, but to give her children the type of upbringing and love that she was used to and happy with.
So you can see from this ideal marriage between a male and female, that a man that really delights in his lady will put a good forty to fifty years work and commitment into that relationship.
So too, to delight in God would be to put work into that relationship. The work that God desires in his relationships is that his devotee, obey his commands, walk in love for Him and other creation of His, and spend good quality time getting to know Him personally and doing what He wants His subjects to do.
Simply put, God does not want two hours of your time, once a week at church. He is not at all interested in people thinking they are serving Him and loving him by going to church once a week and singing love songs to him, listening to a preacher speak about Him and the Bible and then for the rest of the week spending no time speaking to Him or doing anything that proves their love for Him.
No, to delight in the LORD, God is a big commitment.
It takes plenty of your time up as you read the Bible to learn more about Him and His ways. It takes plenty of discipline to accept and allow His Spirit to work in your life, so that you don’t hurt people and disobey his commands. And if you are open to hearing from Him, it takes a lot of effort and personal sacrifice to do what He wants you to do.
Sometimes to do what God wants you do will require you to leave your house, your city, your wife, your children, and even your possessions behind to achieve what He is calling you to do. Jesus said that anyone that was not prepared to forsake all of the aforementioned things for Him was not even worthy of a relationship with Him!
That bears reinforcement. Jesus said to be committed to Him our love for our mother and father, our sisters and brothers, and wife and children should almost be called hate compared to the love we have for Him.
Jesus does not want our earning an income, our buying a house, and looking after our family to take any priority over the relationship we have with Him. To say it better, to serve Jesus fully and more effectively He would prefer you to have less expensive houses, cars and all manner of things, and spend your well earned money more on giving to the poor that cannot afford nice clothes and good things to eat.
You see, my dear reader, to fully delight in God and therefore His Son Jesus we must not just pay lip service and play some average Christian game of going to worship God once a week, and living a life contrary to His teachings the rest of the week.
The average born again Christian in the West, is a lazy person, with no real commitment to God and no real knowledge of what Commitment to God really looks like or what it should be.
When your time with God is hours and hours and hours every week, when no relationship that you have on the earth is more important to you than God, and when you are prepared to deny yourself money and time doing fun things and instead will spend your money and time doing hard things, then you are close to delighting in God.
But the good news is, when you have done all that you have an iron clad promise that God will give you your hearts desire!
But hey, wait for it- there is still a catch!
When you have surrendered time with your family or time in front of your computer or TV for God, and when you have surrendered your money to God and are giving Him at a bare minimum 10% of your income, and when you are denying what you like to do like keeping grudges and unforgiveness in your heart, and instead loving your enemies and doing everything else Jesus said to do, you will find that the dreams and desires you might have might have changed.
Instead of being an 80 hour a week manager or CEO of a large corporation one day like was your dream and all your study and work in your life headed toward, you might now have a more modest desire to work forty hours a week earning an average income and being content with less of a lifestyle but now using your knowledge and skills that you have acquired in the workplace to be one of the unpaid heads of a very effective Christian ministry.
As a future CEO your desire was to have power, a sense of real leadership and the ability to head a powerful organisation to really put your knowledge and personality to something that was a challenge. Yet as you grew to delight in God, He worked on your heart to do the same thing with your spare time with a major Christian ministry that was impacting thousands or millions of lives. Instead of the rewards on the earth of a nice car, a nice house and worldly status, you have willingly traded that for rewards that are eternal that include bringing more peace and lifestyle to millions of poorer Christians and non Christians around the world.
I am a poor example of this article in my life as my dreams have not changed one bit but only gotten bigger. Yet, I am a good example of this as my life has seen tremendous pain and suffering and self denial in order to become the person that I am today, whose character now can be used by God more effectively.
I can say without any boasting quite simply that I delight in God and He delights in Me. Through modern day prophets God has promised me personally that I won’t just have a modest preaching ministry that as a 12 year old child wished for, but I too will travel the world and influence millions of people in due time when I have been fully trained and given the opportunity by God.
It is hard to fathom such promises off God through the mouths of men that have been serving God full time for some five, ten and twenty years, yet I have been fortunate enough and loved by God enough to see angels and converse with them, and to meet Jesus on multiple occasions in visions like the Apostle Paul did, and have five times been taken to heaven. All of these wonderful supernatural experiences serve to re-assure me and build my faith in the fact that what God has promised me will come true.
So lets move on to the second tip.
TIP 2 Make sure you develop a habit of reading books by very successful people that you admire
To you the reader, I am simply a no one. All you have of me is my story that I have here. My success to date has included preaching in three churches and having them clap at the end of my message, 110,000 people that have read my articles in the past eighteen months, and a ministry website that has ten prophets that I run that offers Christians free personal messages off God called prophecy.
At present though I am not any sort of super hero of the faith. Yet, for you, you need to be reading books by people that are very successful in the field of your dreams.
Some books are quite dry, some books are a challenge to read the whole way though. These are not the types of books you should read, and yet as you read many books you will have your share of these books. However some books, no matter if it is just one story or insight in them, will shake you to your core and you will never be the same after that book.
One book that had a powerful effect on my life and for the first time explained to me who I really was and what my personality is really best suited for in life, was a book called, Please understand me by and author by the name of David Kersley. At thirty years of age, ten years ago when I had a powerful emotional time of finding myself God brought this book into my life to re-enforce my belief that I am to be a gifted communicator and derive a lot a pleasure out of it as a life purpose.
There have been many books by many authors that have had a powerful effect on my life. I have read just as many books written by Christians yet I have read many powerful books written by non Christians.
One book that had a powerful and profound effect on my life was called, The art of war by Sun Tzu who was a Chinese general. I am told that many people in the armed forces of the world consult the principles of that book in modern warfare. If you are a Christian this is really helpful in understanding your battle and your enemy in the Christian life.
Another book that had a life changing effect on my life and taught me how to hear from God and Jesus as a voice/thought in my mind was called Experiencing The Depths Of Jesus by Madam Guyon a Catholic mystic who lived hundreds of years ago in France. This book was one of the most profound books I have ever read, the very best Christian book I have ever read, and today I can testify to knowing some of the depths of Jesus Christ from meeting him and chatting on earth and in heaven, and from my many two way conversations I have had with him over the years since reading this book. This lady, a Catholic a faith that many born again Christians look down on sadly powerfully changed me life.
So there you have it. Three books out of hundreds and hundreds that have made me who I am today.
It’s really simple folks. If you want to be a person of greatness, it serves you well to know what people of greatness have done that have gone before you.
Reading books about champions’ show you how a man called Wayne Gardner who was the 500cc motorbike champion of the world for years got his first company sponsorship deal that gave him the money and bike that thrust him into world dominance. You see Wayne was at a bike race to watch a big race, but he was not entered into the race for some reason. Yet while he was there he was told that company selectors, scouts, from Team Honda where at the race looking for talent that they could back to make their brand look good. When Wayne heard this, he immediately went and found a friend who had a bike at the track, went to the race organisers and paid a late race entry fee, entered the race and won it to impress the selectors. You might not know who this man was but he stayed with Team Honda from that day on until for a number of years he reigned as the world champion.
In a book, not a very big book, it told the short stories of about ten very famous people. The Wayne Gardner story I just told you came from that. Wayne’s story proved to me that it wasn’t just good luck that allowed Wayne to be picked up by selectors. He made his own luck by borrowing a friend’s bike that was powerful enough to win the race, paid his own hard earned cash to the race people to pay for his way into the race, and used his own self esteem and talent to win that important race against good riders on just the right day!
The famous Stephen Spielberg. World film director and producer owner of Dreamworks productions had another story where he made his own luck. He grew up fascinated with film and used a super eight camera to make home movies. I knew a little about those cameras as my own brother also made surfing movies with one. Anyway just like a mad video camera guy today Stephen spent all his time making home movies. One day on school holidays, as he lived near one of the big film studios, he decided he would sneak into the studio and stay there and pretend to be a director and look around. From my memory of reading this some twenty years ago I will do my best. He went into the lot and found himself an unused caravan or building on the lot. He made a sign that said his name and director underneath and set up his office. Then he started to go to the admin building and posting mail to people and looking each day for replies and going around the place introducing himself as Stephen Spielberg, director.
I am not sure how many weeks he did it for. But the guard at the front new him well enough to wave him in as he arrived each day and people didn’t seem to mind him coming onto live sets and watching what was going on. Yet one day a producer was more then polite and quite curious about Stephen when he met him. He asked enough questions to get through Stephens smoke screen and busted him and ordered him off the lot with a laugh.
Some years later on a local beach, Stephen met that producer again that had busted him. They struck up a conversation and the producer remembered him to be that over enthusiastic kid that snuck into the studio. He have Stephen his business card and told Stephen he had a low budget film that needed a director and to come and see him about it. Stephen had made his lucky break. He went to the interview and was selected to direct his first Hollywood production, a film called Duel that came out some twenty five years ago or so about a guy in a car that was getting chased by an unknown truck driver. I remember that scary film full of suspense as a youth and when I read the book I was happy to know I had liked the film that was Stephen’s first major production.
Stephen has gone from strength to strength, so that now he runs his own production company, a bit bigger then Mel Gibson’s ICON productions, which is called Dreamworks productions. When it plays on the screen before the film you’ll remember all the films you have seen that you have watched if you can recognise this picture. It has a picture of a little boy sitting in some clouds with a fishing rod in his hands and Dreamworks is written across the clouds. Now Stephen only rarely personally directs a film but has people that direct them all for him. You see he was not the little kid any more getting met by a producer with the power and authority to hire him, now he is the producer with the power and authority to give young keen directors their own lucky breaks.
Why did I tell you these stories? I tell you to show you that if you have a strong enough dream and you want it bad enough God will allow you to have your lucky break. It is important to know as a person that comes from quite a low income family as I did, and without college education like I did, that just having a strong belief in your dream and the passion to see it come to pass will allow God’s universe to present me with the right opportunities when I need them.
In books you can learn so much. If you have given your life to Jesus and you have the Holy Spirit living in you, and you pray for God to open your eyes each day before you read the Bible, you will find the Bible come alive to you and teach you great things that you won’t need a pastor to teach you. It is important that the whole world and all its purpose and meaning and essentially all meaning for every human on earth can be found in the pages of the Bible. It is one book that you should not neglect on your quest to achieve your dreams. To the people that are not Christians that are reading this, let me tell you that before you can really understand the Bible and know what it is saying you need help from the Spirit of God. You can only have that help when you invite Jesus to be the ruler of your life and His Spirit comes to dwell in you.
Now let’s look at tip three.
TIP 3 Surround yourself with people that believe you are going to achieve your dream.
Mothers and fathers are great people and very supportive of you and as parents they have a tremendous love for you and wish you great happiness and success. It is important that you share your dreams with them, no matter how late in your life you chose to go for that dream and no matter how big the dream is.
Parents are really a gift from God. Yet sadly some parents might never have read the books you have, and have never had the experiences you have, and so when you tell them your dream they might not have the faith in life or in you as a person to really achieve that dream. Don’t let that make you sad. Love them the best way you can and get on and start working toward what you want to do.
If your parents haven’t the faith in God, or the faith in the world’s providence to see your dream coming a reality, that does not matter, go and do your dream and let the experience be a blessing to your parents when you do it.
Ask God, in a simple request, whether you know Him personally or not, to simply bring into your life and older and more successful couple of people. God for a season or for a long time will answer that prayer and give you a relationship with kind of a foster mother or father or both. These people must never replace your love for your own mother or father and can give you the wisdom and encouragement and know how for you to reach your full potential on earth.
God brought a few millionaires into my life for a season. Each of them loved me like their own son and listened for hours on end and sowed precious faith into my life. Each of them was very successful in life and business and they were all worth multiple millions of dollars.
One day I even did something in a multi level marketing business that I was in to win me a couple of hours with a man whose personal worth at the time was a hundred million dollars. I had heard him on tapes and heard him speak live and in that business he was my number one example of success and taught me many great things about life and making good contacts with total strangers that helps me to this day in witnessing.
That cruise in boat with him for two hours and the chat that the eight of us that were invited to lunch with him, let me know that he was an ordinary guy who had a deep faith in God and who had simply gone hard after his dreams and made a success of it. One day, I saw him share his faith with thousands of people in the audience that were not Christians and after he shared what Jesus had done in his life I saw about a thousand people come forward and give their lives to Jesus in prayer. It was that day, that I saw this successful business man stand on a stage that was to be my future and do what was my hearts desire.
A lady that was a friend of mine for a season until she found a life partner bought me a fridge magnet that says essentially what you are looking for in friends. It says:
A friend is someone who understands your past, believes in your future and accepts you today the way you are
I think their the kind of friends that you need to get you to those big dreams. As you work through the hurts of the past, they are there with you holding you while you might cry. When you share your dreams with them they don’t scoff they 100% believe that you are going to pull off the impossible and they travel with you today while you are on the journey.
If a friend does not know you well enough to believe in your dream that you are working for how close is that person really to you?
In order to go places, reach heights that few people reach, you might need to let go of some people that are not good for you. It does not mean that you won’t have a coffee with your friend you have known for years, but you need to have friends around you that are busy reaching high with their life and when you are together its really charged with energy and positive things.
As a Christian who has his mind set on delighting in the LORD as I explained in point one, you need to find for yourself friends that also spend a lot of time with God and in his manifest presence. Your closest friends need to be able to correct you when you are out of line and share the journey with you in Christ.
As I have said, the Christian church is full of people who simply sing songs each week and are not fully committed with time and resources the rest of the week. You need friends around you that are already being used by God in various ways to touch people and whose hearts desire is to the very best for God I this life that they can.
I pray that each reader applies this and gets their hearts desire.
God bless you all.