The Audacity of God's Grace: 10 Strategies To Living Your Best Life Now (18 page)

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Supervision
—this means to be on the alert and sober minded, constantly supervising our own lives and areas of improvement. Where are we struggling in life? What sin or poor attitudes and lifestyle choices or behaviors do we cherish most that defeat us? Where do we need help? When are we the most temptable and vulnerable? (1 Peter 5:8; Ephesians 1:22; Hebrew 13:17).

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Restoration
—this means that you should expect and ask God for big things because God is able to give you double for every trouble you have endured. It means that you can ask God to perform the impossible, something out of the extraordinary in your life. It means that every stolen resource in the treasury of your life can be restored back to you with compound interest because of the audacity of God’s grace. Your dreams may look impossible. You may not have the funding or the connections you need to reap a harvest of increase, but God is saying I am the master restorer. Elisha prayed that it wouldn’t rain, and for three and a half years there was no rain. Joshua prayed for more daylight, and God stopped the sun from setting until victory was secured. Follow their example and step out in faith and watch out for what is next: And now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think.” (Ephesians 3:20, NLT).

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Perfection
—This means to make Jesus your model, to strive to be like Jesus; to keep looking unto Jesus, the author and perfecter—finisher of our faith who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God (Hebrews 12:2; Ephesians 4:13).

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Glorification
—this means liberation from pain, injustices, disease, and the finality of all your life failures; the ultimate defeat of poverty, death and sorrow, and everything evil. It demands that you prepare yourself, your friends, your community, and the general populations to get ready for Jesus second coming when we all shall be glorified together with Jesus Christ. This is one of the areas where I have greater respect for the Seventh-day Adventist Church ministries, and her health/medical and educational institutions around the world. For more than one hundred and sixty years of the Seventh-day Adventist Church history, this Christian denomination have constantly taught and prepared people for Jesus’ literal soon return. (Mark 13:26-27; John 14:1-3, Revelation 21).

Feed Your Thoughts Positively

Many people are making a big mistake of thinking that their pastor or mentor is their only superior teacher. To such people I say: Your pastor does not know a lot of things like the Holy Ghost. If she or he and their mind are not subjected to the power and teachings of the Holy Ghost, they probably are as empty as you are. As I have continually upgraded myself in formal education to a doctoral level, what I found out is that there are so many things that I still do not know.

When I taught freshmen courses in Religion during my days at Babcock University, I delude myself that because I have been trained to be a theologian, I must have all answers or satisfactorily answer every question my students asked me. One day as I was teaching a class I believe in the Pre-degree program or God in Modern Society course for the first year students, one of my students challenged me. She was Microbiology major and was taking a required course in religion. I Believe we were discussing something on the immaculate birth of Christ when she rose up and told me point blankly that it does not make sense biologically for a virgin to give birth without having sexual relation with a man.

As a young theologian then, and the lecturer, I mistakenly tried to show her in retrospect, that I have been in school for a number of years by using all my “theological jargons” to win the argument. To my amazement, when I thought we have settled the matter, she still told me: “Sir, it doesn’t make sense.” As I retrospectively reflect into my strategies and the approaches that I used to answer that young lady that day, my knowledge then, and how I approached that question, I believe that I failed miserably by every professional standard in trying to use my theological jargons—mental dictionary to answer a simple question of “faith and biology.”

I could have agreed with the student by affirming that indeed, it does not make sense biologically for a virgin who have never ever had any form of sexual contacts or relations of any sort with any man to become pregnant. Scientifically this is what it is. However, faith has demonstrated in uncountable ways that God specializes in miracles. God is not dictated or subjectively controlled by biologic or scientific functionalities. This is why Jesus walked on water without sinking and commanded wind and storm to cease (Matthew 14:22-25; Mark 4: 39) and nature listened to the voice of the creator—the commander-in-chief of the armed forces of heaven. God is life. Life is the study of biology, and God is the master and creator-scientist and therefore, can rule supreme over the cross-road of predetermined scientific conventions, and this is where faith comes in. It takes faith to believe that God exists. It takes faith to accept the love of God and his Son Jesus Christ into our lives and to allow him lead that life towards the most exciting and beautiful destinations of life as the Christian Scriptures tells us in (John 3:16) that: For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

One day, Jessica, my first daughter when she was in second grade surprised me as I picked her up from school that afternoon. Obviously, she was reading her bible and we have discussed about heaven earlier that afternoon as she asked me what firmament—a vocabulary she saw on her bible meant. She had learned a new vocabulary and was excited about it as she just finished reading some portion of Genesis chapter one in her bible which she read aloud while I was driving. Jessica has learnt to pray, to read the bible, to play the piano, and sing in church. She has grown to become a pastor’s daughter and very excited about Jesus and his church. However, on this particular day, as I picked her from school, just before I reached my office she said with all sincerity and innocence in her face: Daddy, do you honestly believe that there is a God in heaven or do they just make us believe that”? I was overwhelmed with passion and love for my daughter, and yet astounded by the audacity of the question and the timing too. I took my time to explain in the most simplest terms possible to Jessica my sweet little girl that indeed, there is a God in heaven and that I believe so much in God’s existence and his second coming. I also tried to explain to a seven year-old the benefits of developing personal faith in God, trust in a God you can’t see, and why she should continue to see the realities of God’s abilities and God’s existence even in her own everyday life. At the end of our conversation that afternoon, she was more excited about Jesus and heaven.

Make the Best Use of Faith in God’s Promises

It takes more than faith to believe that in Jesus, there is life and health, liberation and satisfaction; and that when Jesus comes into your life, that part of what should occupy your life as Jesus rules supreme therein is joy and abundance and and peace. The Christian Scriptures announces that Jesus is crazy about you and has a purpose for your life as we are told in (John10:10), that: The thief’s purpose is to steal and kill and destroy. My purpose (i.e. Jesus ultimate purpose for your life) is to give you a rich and satisfying life. It takes a purpose driven faith to believe that Jesus is able to decorate your life with everything you need to do well and live at your best.

It takes faith to believe that after twelve long agonizing years, a woman who had a uterine sickness with constant menstrual flows could be healed by Jesus (Mark 5:25-34). But there are historical evidence and real life accounts that documented that, in fact, the woman received liberation from this condition. More than 2000 years after Jesus physically left the earth, it takes faith to believe that Jesus borrowed five loaves of bread and two fishes (probably from a young boy whose mother has packaged the bread and fish in his lunch bag) and looking up to heaven, gave thanks and broke the loaves. However, Matthew account, according to the Christian Scriptures in (Matthew 14:13-21NLT) reported that: Then Jesus gave thanks and feed the people about 5000 of them. When everyone has eaten to their satisfaction, Jesus’ disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over.

Therefore, it will take also a good amount of your faith to believe that Jesus is able to set you free or your loved ones from cancer, HIV/AIDS, depressions and addictions demonic possessions or whatever manner of sickness you are going through right now, if you believe. This does not mean that you stop taking your prescribed medications or going for treatment if you have these maladies. Most importantly, it will take significant faith to believe that God is alive and not dead and buried as was argued by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche—the German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philogist. The central piece to Nietzsche’s key idea included the “death of God,” the Übermensch. Many people who believe that God is dead by not either believing that He exists, or giving their life to him by their lifestyle many times are plagued with instability from many fronts in life. I have seen a large majority of people and families in the US and as I travel around the world whose dreams would have come true; nice people whose children would have done better than they did, but because they trashed God and his principles for their lives, nothing is getting any better. Many times, such people are depressed. They cannot deal with the day to day issues of life. A lot of them are paranoid and their lives are fragmented with multiple problems.

Life’s Opportunities Happens around What You Believe

Life is built around belief, values and the opportunities that you take advantage of. I have seen patients who took placebo medications and became well. Placebo medications are medicinal preparations that have no specific pharmacological activity against the patient’s illness or complaint given solely for the psychophysiological effects of the treatment and for observation. More recently in science, we have been able to administer dummy treatments or these placebos to the control groups in controlled clinical trial studies in order to measure the specific and nonspecific effects of the experimental treatment and to effectively distinguish the difference. Many people who took placebos have done well because in their minds, they believed that by taking the placebo treatment, they will be well, and sure enough, what they believed worked wonders for them. With this understanding, what I want you to know is this:

“Your life’s success and opportunities will come from the neighborhood of what your beliefs are, your values, passions, and how you take advantage of life’s opportunities.”

This is why you must choose what you read, what to watch, who to listen to, the group or team you collaborate with, and what to believe. If you fail to carefully choose what to believe, what to stand for, and who you want to become, significant life opportunities will elude you as your life will never become meaningful or purpose driven. Having a level of skepticism has immense benefit, if you want to grow your success and happiness. This is why you are the one to design your own life architecture for failure or success. John Rohn once said: “if you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you will fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.” At the end of the day, you discover as they say that it is the—you, that will make you, the—you, you are!

As our global economy is increasingly sloping downhill, crimes, gun violence, recession, political fights and correctness, corruption in the polity, the educational system questionable; with increasing abortions due to unwanted pregnancies and increasing numbers of disease and divorces each month, we must be willing to take responsibility for our own lives; see the positive side of life and feed our minds on those things that keeps our spirit up to be able to function mentally well. Some of life’s circumstances are exasperating. But these are not new. In addition to these, there will always be news about robberies, killings, terrorism and other crimes in almost every corner of the world. Who would want to continue to live in such an environment? Most of the breaking news that is seen on the television screen and heard in our local neighborhoods seems to be all negative, most of the times. This is why you are the one to pick yourself up, and keep moving forward. Perhaps there would be a handful of people who would be able to courageously face all the tribulations mentioned above. But why not let those people begin with you? Tell yourself, I will be a success story, no matter the odds. Robert Kiyosaki noted that: “every successful person in life began by pursuing a passion against all odds.” Therefore, if you want to do better than you are doing right now, you must learn that:

• You are very powerful and are the one that will dream your own dreams

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You are the one that will make your own success story a reality

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You are the only one to defeat what defeats your goals for living.

Nevertheless, with the increase in population and migration, where would people go in order to escape troubles, scarcity, and get everything they want out of life without having to work hard for it? There is no other remedy for this but to face the present situation you are in right now with strength and courage. If you have strength and courage, you will reap a harvest of increase by eating the fruits of the land. In the midst of all the negative happenings, the only weapon that could destroy negativity and antagonistic events to enable you pursue life’s opportunities and live your best life now and perform excellently is to choose your belief system and think positively. Psychologists, motivational teachers and even philosophers understand the power of positive thinking because they believe that there is a superior power that comes through our thoughts.