The Audacity of God's Grace: 10 Strategies To Living Your Best Life Now (28 page)

It Takes Great Courage to Think Alone

Charles R. Swindoll, in his book, The Strength of Character: 7 Essential Traits of a Remarkable Life, states that: it takes courage to think alone, to resist alone, and to stand alone - especially when the crowd seems so safe, so right. This was evident in the lives of great leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela. Ordinarily, almost all of us want to be successful and live our best life now. However, not everyone is willing to exert the effort and take the necessary risk to make it happen. That risk begins with courage. Courage isn’t about not having difficult situations to confront us in life; courage is not the absence of fear that the unfamiliar brings, rather it’s about getting through them. I believe that you can break through today because God has given you that audacity through his special grace by equipping you with inner abilities. The good news is that every natural and human resources you need to live your best life now by the special grace of God has been provided to you. The bad news is that you have not tapped into these resources. But there’s always room for improvement. You can take the first step today and win fortunes with courage.

It Takes Courage to See Opportunities

The popular notion that opportunity come, but once, is nothing but untrue because the street of life is littered with unending possibilities and opportunities that translate people into success, but takes courageous people to see these opportunities and possibilities. Many times in life and at all fronts, those who are discouraged will take a flight at every sight of opposition. This is why your life should be dependent on the grace of God to guide you in embracing these opportunities around you and seize them. You probably know or have seen people that thrived temporarily because they were connected to the mighty. When the king maker departed the scene, their life and progress was left to dangle in uncertainty. The problem to majority of this people was their inability to understand that what they needed to excel superbly in life and to attract unimaginable progress was not the grace that men or women provide. When we leave our fate to man’s grace, what happens in return is disgrace.

Reach Out For What God Has For You

Taking what God has given you and making the most out of every God-given opportunity is what will turn your life around. You may have endured loss, pain, betrayal, great hardships, or a handful of negative things in life. The good news is that God is about to take you on a journey that will take you to a new and exciting place that you will breathe some fresh air in life. You may have deep scars from emotional cancers and wounds of your past that seem not to heal no matter how hard you have tried. Take a new step of courage today and reach out for what God has for you. Your wounds can find healing in that fountain filled with blood, drawn from Emmanuel’s veins, where sinners plunge beneath that flood and begin to lose all their guilty stains.

“Don’t let your past life control your best life now.”

The truth of the matter is that there is not much you can do about your past life, but you can decide today by the special grace of God to take courage to face the new and brighter future that God has prepared for you. Just reach out for what God has for you.

Let Go of the Pains of Your Past

Your life will not be decorated with success and the intimidating prosperity that God has now given you if you have not been through some of those fires of your past. It takes courage to pick yourself up, and brush off every smell of smoke fumigated to you by your past life circumstances. You can hardly be brave in life if your life has only been characterized with good and beautiful things and if you have only had all the wonderful things happen to you. Great people decide to overcome the situations that obstruct them from reaching their goals. It is only those who are courageous that will become brave and triumph. Don’t let the feelings of bitterness and resentment kill your joy and defeat the new you. Let go of the pains of your past. God has endless opportunities and possibilities for you.

It’s a New Day. You Can Forgive

Forgive yourself of your past mistakes. Forgive those people who have betrayed and hurt you deeply, and move into your liberation and the freedom and refreshment the grace of God can give you today. Holding onto your past, excuses, unto bitterness and anger; unto your mistakes, blaming others, and negative attitudes will deny you the ability to live your best life now. It’s time to tune into your new you. You are powerfully and fearfully made. Regardless of what the clock is saying right now; today’s date, or how old you are, tell yourself that it’s your new day, your new year; the year that banishes the old; and the beginning of your official year of unimaginable and explosive breakthrough and prosperity. You can definitely succeed. Don’t allow yourself to remain in the shackles of your old life—your past; embrace your new you now. It’s a brand new day! Perhaps someone may have taken advantage of your business, your friendship, toils with your emotions, your love life; maybe, you have been sexually abused, neglected and mentally mishandled. Have you been verbally bruised which now caused you to have low self-esteem and feel isolated and unloved, well the good news is that you don’t have to feel that way. You are a person with great worth. You don’t have to believe the lie you have been told repeatedly.

Have the Courage to Let Go

While my interest is not to undermine the sad experiences you have had to face in your past life, I strongly believe that you can make it. You have a super you in you. You are a very strong person. You can accomplish all things through Christ who is now your new strength (Philippians 4:13). I sincerely believe that it takes courage for you today to do better than you are doing right now. Letting go of your past and embracing the grace and strength God can provide you today is the path to become the productive person God has created you to be. The future of unending possibilities belongs to you now. You can live your best life now and do better than you did yesterday because of the audacity of God’s unlimited grace. The future is yours for the taking! Take advantage of it and make the most out of it. I believe in you because you can do it by the special grace of God.

STRATEGY NUMBER 10
BE STUBBORN FOR YOUR OWN
SUCCESS: INVESTIGATE SUCCESS

Champions are not those who never fail, but those who never quit. Failing is not the worst thing in the world — quitting is. Failure is the womb of success. Success is born out of failure. Better to try to do something and fail, than quit and succeed in doing nothing. Champions practice in private to succeed in public. Success swallows failure.”

— Edwin Louis Cole

You Can Make It

Why many people miss out in living at their best fullest everyday life and abilities is that they delimit the power of God and the tenacity of the audacity of his grace in their own life. The audacity of God’s grace is favor and mercy at its fullest speed. Most people ride slowly in the back seats of life because they make their immediate needs (i.e., immediate compensation or reward) what they want their only major priority in life. Why majority of these people are failing is that they limit the God factor and the audacity of his grace to stupendously provide. Most of these people think that dreaming big and petitioning God for bigger things may intimidate God. Don’t let that person be you. Each time you commit this atrocious act, you are calling defeat into your life and your future. Success in the truest sense of it begins by dreaming with God because success comes from God. Matt 6: 33-36 mirror a model of success that many worldly people will hardly comprehend how it operates.

Stand For Big Dreams

Although the only success metric in life should not be measured by how much money you have acquired, but how significant you have become in helping others become a success story, I believe that we should avoid being so heavenly minded that we are not earthly good or useful. Although part of success culminate in acquisition of genuine wealth, serving God and others, and seeking him by allowing God’s leadership in your life, success and prosperity will elude people who stand less for big dreams. This is why God gave you the Holy Spirit to continuously give you the ability to think successfully, and be a blessing to others. When you do, you will be a spiritual mentor and help to family and friends. Additionally and very importantly, you will be able to create wealth for yourself and the communities as well as experiencing the culmination of success that only is given to those who will partake in the kingdom of God. Majority of people who will miss the final mark that differentiates the ultimate losers and ultimate winners and receive the ultimate prize set for those who will succeed here and hereafter must learn to be stubborn with their own success. I believe that you can make that number.

You Can Live Your Dream

There is nothing that is so powerful than a God-given dream whose time has come. I believe that your time to live your dreams is here by the special grace of God. The story of Joseph in Genesis 39 according to the Christian Scriptures is a good example of the audacity of God’s grace at full force. Joseph story is a story of encouragement. It demonstrates that no matter how odd your chances to reap a harvest of God’s increase and succeed beyond all limitations, that being stubborn to your own success is the one way you can live your dream. The lesson is this: Don’t fail to maximize your God given potentials. In 2 Tim 1:7 accounts that God has not given us the spirit of timidity, some versions says fear, but the spirit of love, of power, and of sound mind, and other versions says of sound judgment. The story of Joseph quickly reminds the reader or the listener that God is a Giver of dreams and that every good gift comes from above (James 1:17). This story establishes that when we accept the audacity of God’s grace into our lives, our dreams will not die, even though they can get delayed. No matter what you are going through today, the story of Joseph is an announcement that in God, dreams can come through. Dreams are God’s ways of speaking to us. These dreams can make a change. It has been said that President Barrack Obama, the 44
th
president of the United State begun to nurture and dream to becoming the present of our great nation when he was in the 4
th
grade (primary four). This is why you should never underestimate the power of your dreams.

Dreams Make a Change

Throughout the history of the great ones, dreams have always made great social changes that moved the generations forward. There is no great leader who ever lived without great dreams. In the Christian Scriptures, we see how God gave the prophets and his people great visions and dreams that changed the world. Great People like Prophet Daniel in whose dream, God revealed what is to become of the world and the greater things that will happen before the end of the world still speaks to us today. The dreams of Prime Minister Joseph helped save the lives of his people and that of Egyptians. You can make it. You can live your dream, but you must be stubborn with your success. It was the dreams of the late Martin Luther King Jr. that God used to destroy the evils of racial inequality and segregations in the United States. This is why you must be deliberate about your dreams. Don’t be desperate about them because desperate dreams will only achieve desperate results. Your dreams can make a huge difference. In Proverbs 22:29, Solomon who have been perceived to be one of the wisest men who lived on the planet asked: Have you seen a person diligent in their business (skillful in the works of their hands)? He will take his position before kings; he will not take his position before obscure people. When you dream afresh with God, the prophet Nehemiah’s prophetic declarations is that the joy of the Lord becomes your strength (Nehemiah 8:10). This is why you must be confident in your dreams.

Dreams Restore

We can see how dreams restore order in familial, societal, and economic or political conditions. It was in the dream of Rosa Park to see an egalitarian American society. For that singular reason she stood up for something big and takes the necessary risk and yes—the biggest risk of her lifetime when it was convenient to sit down. What are you standing up for, for this generation? Your ability to succeed in life and do exploits begins with dreaming with God. And guess what? Powerful dreams restore joy.

“When you dream with God, you become purpose driven and achiever higher.”

You become a change catalyst and are able to help others live their best lives now. What are you dreaming about today? What are your life goals and dreams? If you cannot answer this question clearly and cannot identify the necessary initiates you must undertake to achieve those life goals and dreams, believing the grace of God to do so, then your life will not have much meaning. But I trust that your life will do.

Defeat the Thoughts of Fear.

Don’t be afraid to try something new, or afraid of what people around you will say, when you commit to doing things differently, so long as they are God-given and God-driven goals. Being afraid of what the church will say or has said, afraid to offend your cycle of friendships, afraid of rejection, afraid of the unknown and afraid to engage into necessary risk and sacrifice will limit your success. This is what President Roosevelt meant when he stated that: “The greatest thing to fear is fear itself.” In his book “As A Man Thinketh” James Allen stated in the chapter he captioned the thought-factor in achievement that: “Thoughts of doubt and fear never accomplish anything, and never can. They always lead to failure. Going further he affirms that “Purpose, energy, power to do, and all strong thoughts cease when doubt and fear creeps in. Doubt and fear are the great enemies of knowledge he said, and he who encourages them, who does not slay them, thwarts himself at every step. He who has conquered doubt and fear has conquered failure! His every thought is allied with power, and all difficulties are bravely met and wisely overcome. His purposes are seasonably planted, and they bloom and bring forth fruit which does not fall prematurely to the ground. Thought allied fearlessly to purpose becomes creative force…. “A man can only rise, conquer, and achieve by lifting up his thoughts. He can only remain weak, and abject, and miserable by refusing to lift up his thoughts and I said Oh my days! There can be no progress, no achievement without sacrifice, and a man’s worldly success will be in the measure that he sacrifices his confused animal thoughts, and fixes his mind on the development of his plans, and the strengthening of his resolution and self-reliance.”

See Failure As Setback

In order to live your best life now, one of the things you must not fail to acknowledge is that failure do occur, but you must also understand that “champions are not those who never fail, but those who never quit.” What that mean is that there will be times and moments of failure, of difficulties, and obstacles. See failures as setbacks. What matters after all of these is how you pick up yourself, and how you dust off the dirt after such exercise. Whether you keep your spirits high, whether you align yourself to God and the audacity of his grace will determine the next chapter of your life. Don’t embrace a life of defeat.

It’s in Your Mind

When the Christian Scriptures admonishes us in Philippians 4:8 “Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise,” it wasn’t asking us to do things that will kill us, or things that will be easy or to continue doing things the way things has always been done. This admonition was rather challenging us that if we must succeed, if we must live our best lives now by the grace of God, we have to put fear aside and embrace the God-factor if we have to get it right. We are challenged to invest our thoughts into creativity; we are tasked to invest our time into reclaiming the dominion and purposes for which God has created us for. And I state again, if you must achieve success, if you must live your best lives today, I am willing to remind you to be stubborn with your success. Those who are not stubborn with their success cannot overcome fear and doubt and embrace the grace of God that leads to victory. You must make them a do or die affair. Without these, you hardly will be able to live your best life today. Those who are not able to become stubborn for their own success will always live a wishful life, a life of mediocrity, and a life infested with poverty diarrhea without any satisfaction.

If you are presently going through some challenges in your life, your marriage, your children, business or career, there is something in the power of God’s promised word for you according to (Isaiah 43:1-.7 NIV) The promised power of God’s word declares:

But now, this is what the Lord says—

he who created you, Jacob,

he who formed you, Israel:

“Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;

I have summoned you by name; you are mine.

2
When you pass through the waters,

I will be with you;

and when you pass through the rivers,

they will not sweep over you.

When you walk through the fire,

you will not be burned;

the flames will not set you ablaze.

3
For I am the Lord your God,

the Holy One of Israel, your Savior;

I give Egypt for your ransom,

Cush
and Seba in your stead.

4
Since you are precious and honored in my sight,

and because I love you,

I will give people in exchange for you,

nations in exchange for your life.

5
Do not be afraid, for I am with you;

I will bring your children from the east

and gather you from the west.

6
I will say to the north, ‘Give them up!’

and to the south, ‘Do not hold them back.’

Bring my sons from afar

and my daughters from the ends of the earth—

7
everyone who is called by my name,

whom I created for my glory,

whom I formed and made.

You Belong to God

The sum total of our life is not all about our present economic status, although that is important. What should motivate you and encourage you more however, is that you belong to God. Your ability to live your best life now does not depend only on your ability to master all the principles of economics, neither does it come to everyone who has acquired wealth handsomely. However, your ability to live your best life even today, when you fully understand what that means is when you can comprehend that you belong to God. It means that there is therefore, now no condemnation for you (Romans 8:1). You must learn to live your best life now, because you are God’s children who are called by his name. In (2 Chronicles 7:14 NIV) we are reassured of God’s promise of grace that: If my people (God’s creatures, created in his image) who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray, in fact, the Bible in Basic English translation says: “If my people, on whom my name is named, make themselves low and come to me in prayer, searching for me and turning from their evil ways; then I will give ear from heaven, overlooking their sin, and will give life again to their land.”

Worry Less

While it is very important to acquire degrees or technical skills and trades, these alone do not confer success. Our ability to living our best life now does not solely depend on our degrees and diplomas but by trusting the God of grace whom we can depend on to provide our every need. This is why Jesus in the Gospel according to (Matthew. 6: 25-32 NKJV) command us
Not to Worry.
Jesus’ instruction states:
25
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your [everyday] life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothes?
26
Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?
27
Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?