Get Out Of Your Comfort Zone

3 Declarations That Will Change Your Attitude And Behavior.

As the old expression goes, “practice makes perfect.” Changing our longtime attitudes and behaviors can be quite a challenge, but with repetition and consistency it is possible to make a true change. And by changing our attitude and behavior, we change ourselves.

By saying these 3 declarations every morning and being confident that slowly, but surely things will change.

1. “I have the strength to take on any challenge!“

As humans, we naturally do not like being uncomfortable. Many of us will avoid discomfort at any cost. But by avoiding uncomfortable situation, we are doing a great disservice for ourselves. When we forfeit our comfort and break free from our comfort zones, we are getting ready to tackle any challenge in front of us. It is by taking on challenges that we grow as people in unparalleled ways.

It is often the most inspirational and successful role-models who have gone through the most trying and challenging of situations. Why is this? It’s because those individuals who are ready to take on any challenge, and have confidence that they will find strength needed are the ones who become what seem like super-human. But there is a secret: we all have super human strength that is part of us. Hidden inside of every individual is a super-man or super-woman waiting to be released. It takes only our will and unwavering adamancy to come out from beneath the surface.

Say to yourself every morning: “I have the strength to take on any challenge!” Say it throughout the day when uncomfortable situations that you really want to avoid arise. You are guaranteed to become truly different and a stronger person.

2. “I have the power to tackle any negative temptation!”

Sometimes the very word temptation itself sounds scary, so let’s put it into perspective. Temptation can be our old habits, flaming desires, quick thrills and speedy passions that distract us from moving in a productive direction. Whether it is pressing the snooze button on the alarm clock, or fighting an urge to be dishonest, even the most seemingly minute temptations seem to take over our minds and hearts.

The mystics teach that a moment of temptation is a moment of insanity. It’s a moment in with logic and reason have abandoned us, and the only thing controlling our actions seems to be the temptation itself. That best thing I have found to release the power of temptation is to distract myself with a positive action.

The mystics also teach us that every negative temptation that lies before us comes with the power to overcome it. Just as a temptation is real our power to overcome it is real, and this is where we have all the power in our hands to choose.

Say to yourself every morning and anytime at temptation tries to cripple you: “ I have the power to tackle any negative temptation!” Do not give up if you fail – keep trying and you will surely defeat your negative conditions.

3. “I am going to take a deep breath and Reign in my emotions.”

Maybe your child comes home sick and you have to rearrange your morning meetings and your stress level is going up. One of your children reach across the table and spilled a full container of milk. Everywhere. Your stress level has skyrocketed; and your anger rises and tears comes to you eyes. Pause – are you actually crying over spilt milk?

Little annoyances that build up during our day are often out of our control. What is in our control how we react to them. When we are already frustrated it is easy to see how a person would actually cry over spilled milk. But do you want to be that person?

Emotions are part of us and like to creep up at the most inconvenient times. But we have the power to rein them in. We can listen to them – but they should always be taken with a grain of salt, as the expression goes. Next time you find yourself about to explode or even cry over spilt milk, say this to yourself: “I’m going to take a deep breath and rein in my emotions.” Tap into your self-awareness where are you at right now? No pull yourself into a higher state of awareness, a place where you can look at your current situation and emotions from the outside. If this were someone else, what advice would you give to them? How do you think someone else would react? How would you like to see yourself react? Now do it. Take a deep breath and always remember what is important in your life.

It is difficult especially in today’s world. Use these 3 declarations every day, and as many times as you need. To change your attitude and your behavior.

Ways You Can Face Your Demons

Demons are like the ‘dementors, from the Harry Potter series. They suck the happiness right out of you, leaving you with sadness, self-doubt, and anxiety. Instead of letting this dragon control your life, you’ve got to tame it and keep the in control. Or else life becomes tough with negativities, and trust me, you don’t need negativity in life.

So next time, when I thought demon appears, Nick him sit down and battle it your own way.

Here are seven ways you can battle of your inner demons and welcome positivity back into your life:

1. Acknowledge Them

Let them be. Listen to them. Note what they are trying to tell you. Are they saying you can’t do something? Are they making you feel bad about your body? Are they making you overthink things? Well, listen to them. Confront them because they act as a signal to tell you that your own thoughts and actions are trying to stop you from achieving the achievable. Being self-aware is the first step to tackling them.

2. Concentrate On The Good Memories

When your demons are trying to pull you down, you’ve got to concentrate on your happy memories. This will help you to get back into your happy zone and would make you realize that you are capable of doing great things in life. And, that your inner demons will ultimately get tired of making you sad.

3. Cut Yourself Some Slack

Tell your inner demons, come tomorrow and not today. Tell them that you are human and you make mistakes and that you will eventually fix them.

4. Don’t Settle, Keep Fighting

The worst thing you can do is to give up. You cannot bow down to them and settle for mediocrity in life. If a certain situation demands you to quit and if you do the opposite, chances are that you will eventually defeat the demon and emerge as a winner.

5. Go For An Intensive Workout

Exercising is proven to be helpful to clear the cobwebs out of your mind. And intensive workout is a good way to push yourself and push out the demons of your mind. A bit of adrenaline rush will calm you down after a tough workout.

6. Let The Positive Emotions Take Control

Think of the demons as negative emotions. It is when you would create happy memories that you will store good memories that will become long-term memories. Therefore, it is very important that you give each emotion if you credit.

7. Tame The Dragon Or Kill It

To face your worst fear, you will have to take the dragon or worse kill it. Imagine it to be like pulling a bad tooth or taking a dive into a deep river. It has to be done or you’ll let the demon have control over you. Which you ideally shouldn’t or else they will drive you crazy.

What Do You Fear The Most?

Fear Of Death

Jesus has a deep intense desire to give you a gift so great you do not yet have the capabilities to conceive of it (1 Corinthians 2:9). But you can catch a glimpse of it in biblical metaphors and imagery and in moments when an experience of glory briefly transcends anything else here on earth.

Jesus longs so intensely for you to have this gift that He pleads with the Father to give it to you.

John 17:24 says, “Father, I desire that they also, who you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.”

This supreme request is the great culmination of Jesus’s prayer in John 17. This gift is the reason why Jesus manifested the Father’s name to you, and gave you the Father’s words, and guards you so you will not be lost. It is why He prays that you will be kept from the evil one and know the joy of helping others believe in Him, and experience the sanctifying wonder of knowing and living the truth.

More than any other good thing Jesus asks from the Father for you, He wants you to be with Him forever. More than anything else, He wants you to see and savor the glory that the Father bestowed on Him from eternity. For He know that nothing else you will ever experience will provide you such profound and lasting joy and pleasure (Psalm 16:11).

But Jesus’s prayer fatuous come with a sober implication, one that may make you recoil, even fear. In fact, one day you might find yourself pleading with God to give you the very opposite of what Jesus wants for you. The answer to Jesus’s prayer eventually requires your physical death. Unless Jesus returns first, you must die before you experience the forever fullness of joy in His glorious presence.

We must endure what we hate and fear most in life in order to enjoy what we love and long for most.

Yes, we hate death and resist it – and we are right to do so. God originally creates us to live, not die. Death is a curse we bear, the tragic wages of rejecting God and His kingdom (Romans 6:23).

Nowhere in the Bible does it encourage us to view death itself as a good thing. Death is not a good thing. It’s a horrible, evil thing. Anyone who has watched love ones die can attest to it’s hideousness. Death is a mortal enemy (1 Corinthians 15:26).

You may ask yourself “how is death a gain?”

If death is a gain, why does God count precious the death of His saints (Psalm 116:5)? And why do His saints even call death a gain (Philippians 1:21)! Because in that most horrible, most evil moment of the death of the Son of God Himself, death as we fear it – the extinguishing of our ,life and the seeming loss of our soul and joy was killed. Jesus conquered our great enemy when He rose from the dead (Romans 4:25; Revelation 1:18), and will ultimately destroy death forever (1 Corinthians 15:26).

In facts it’s so powerful, so complete in Jesus’s defeat of death that He speaks of it as if Believers no longer even experience it:

I an the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die

John 11:25-26

It isn’t death itself that is precious or gain to us. It’s the Resurrection and the Life, who has removed death’s sting and swallowed it up in victory (1 Corinthians 15:54+55), in whom we are receiving an eternal inheritance beyond our wildest dreams (Ephesians 1:11), and in whose glorious presence we will experience unsurpassed joy forevermore (Psalm 16:11). He is precious to us. He is our great gain in death.

Stop Trying To Help God

Let God Be God

There are many songs of praise and worship that declare the glory of God. We’ve all heard the testimonies that magnify God. And Bible stories that remind us of the incredible things God has done for us, and continues to do.

Even when we have not experienced these things personally, we have heard enough stories that show how mighty God is – Yet we play God.

While we are quick to rebuff this idea that we play God. Ask yourself these questions:

1. Whose counsel do we seek when you face challenges, yours or God’s? Who is sitting on the throne of your heart: your flesh with its desires or Jesus?

2. When you achieve success, awards, money, or a host of good things, what’s the first thing you do? Do you reward yourself for all your hard work, accept the praises you get for being so smart? So charming are the many honors that this world throws our way.

3. Do you find that you often forget to thank God for things and do because you feel guilty and not necessarily for because it is what you truly want to do?

4. When you do go to God for His help, do you find it hard to wait on Him and often find yourself helping God in His answer? After all, it may take God forever to do it God’s way and you only have a limited amount of time, so you do things God’s way?

5. Do you find you justify helping God by declaring that faith without works is dead, even though you know deep down that what you’re doing may not be what the Bible was talking about?

If we are being honest, we may have answered most of these questions Yes, I know I did.

I listen to praise songs, worship God and even read my Bible but once I’m faced with real-life challenges, I tend to turn to my life experiences to make decisions instead of God’s

But God is so busy, and I’m a strong independent person who can resolve her own issues.

And when I do go to God, or try to do things God’s way, the time required and the fruit of the spirit to be exerted makes it less than an attractive option. Sometimes I find it hard to be patient or to be kind or loving and gentle. Sometimes I just want to get what I want when I want it. No matter the consequences.

Maybe you’ve said similar things. It’s very easy to take the easy route, and help God along the way.

Here’s example of what helping God looks like it scripture:

The scriptures say that Abraham had two sons,one from a slave and one from his wife. The son of the slave was born in a human attempt to bring about the fulfillment of God’s promise. But the son of his wife was born as God’s fulfillment of his promise. (Galatians 4:22-23).

From the above account we can see a few things:

  • Ishmael, Haggai’s son was born because Sarah and Abraham had been trying to fulfill God’s promise to Abraham by human effort.
  • Isaac was God’s own fulfillment of his promise to Abraham and came 25-years after God first told Abraham that he would be the father of many nations. 25-years!
  • There’s always a difference between blessings obtained by human effort and by godly effort. For the latter, the glory always belong to God not man, can rightfully state that they did it in their power. A 90-year old Sarah could not have given birth under human circumstances.

Abraham’s account is one of the most popular Bible stories.

This story teaches us that God will make good on his promise if we trust him and wait on him.

We may believe we wouldn’t have done what Sarah did. Isn’t it funny how we think we would have done things better than the Bible characters that got it wrong?

I have realized with Sarah and Abraham’s story, how hard it must have been to want a child so badly, and the pressure and shame she must have felt about being barren. But it didn’t change the fact that she was using human effort to fulfill God’s promise.

Living Each Day In The Calm Of The Storm

Does anxiety haunt you? Are you ever jolted awake from a sound sleep? Or maybe you’re driving along and I thought crosses your mind, and immediately anxiousness grips your soul. What storms of anxiety overtake you without warning? Jesus tells us, “Be still.” That’s easier said than done right?

Many of us spent numerous hours of the day worrying and fretting over things we have no control over. Our stomach churn, our minds spin, and our hearts hurt. We can’t enjoy a beautiful spring warning, I walk in the park, working a job we love, or being with the people we love because of the anxiety we are experiencing. What is it that we are afraid of?

Rather than peacefully walking through the day confident in God, resting in His character, Trusting in His power, and believing in His word, we are overcome with worry and fear instead.

Some of us navy so accustomed to feeling this way but we don’t even realize how much it impedes on our boldness, our energy, and our focus. We don’t see how much it impacts our early relationship and ultimately a relationship with God. We live half to enroll by the waves of our flesh which hampers our ability to live fully in the Spirit of Christ and enjoy communion with Him each day.

Every time I start to worry I hear Jesus say, “why are you afraid, O you of little faith?” It is after He said these words to the disciples that “ He rose and rebuked the winds of the sea, and there was a great calm.”

Can we learn to find the comb by faith among the waves of sin and storms of emotion within our hearts? It may seem impossible, but there is hope, and there is comfort to be found. First, know that you are not alone and that this is not any surprise to God. We need realize He is with us and everything and He loves us no matter what. Second, know that you are not a failure and His sight because you struggle with this. It is an age old calendar for all gods children. Even the great. The Lord told Joshua, a valiant leader in Israel who followed the Lord fully, to not be afraid. Finally, remember that with Christ nothing is impossible. He is able.

When we understand that we are weak and learn how to look to Christ and cling to Him, we will begin to experience the calm in the storm.

Traits Of False Teachers

Let’s begin with the scripture 2 Peter 2:1, “ there were also bullshitters among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you.”

There are no ifs or butts and Peter’s words. There were false prophets among the people of Israel and the Old Testament. That’s a matter of history. Faults profits were a constant problem in the Old Testament, and those who falsely claim to be prophet of God were to be stoned. The people rarely had the Will to deal with them, so they multiplied, causing disaster to the spiritual life of God’s people.

In the same way Peter says. “There will be false teachers among you.” Notice the words “among you.9 Peter is writing to the church and says, “There will be faults prophets among you, so he is not talking about the new age people on television he is talking about people in the local church members and the local congregation.

Know that there is no such thing as a pure church this side of heaven. You will never find it. The wheat and the tares grow together.

“ satan is a counterfeiter he has a false gospel (2 Corinthians 11:12-13). producing false Christians (2 Corinthians 11:6). Satan planted counterfeits wherever God plants true believers (Matthew 13:38).

Authentic Or Counterfeit?

How would you recognize counterfeit Christianity?

In Peter 1 we read about genuine believers. And in 2 Peter 2 we read about counterfeit believers. If you put these chapters side-by-side you will see the difference between authentic and counterfeit believers.

Where does the message come from? What does the Bible say? Peter says, we do not follow cleverly invented story when we were told about the power and the coming of the Lord” (Peter 1:16). Always question what others say, use a different source, (The Bible). And then Peter says the false teachers will exploit you “with stories they have made up (2:3). So the true teacher source that he says from the Bible, The false teachers relies on his own creativity. He makes up his own message.

What is the substance of the message?

For the true teacher, Jesus is central in everything. We have everything we need for life and godliness in him. For the false teacher, Jesus is at the margins: they were secretly introduced destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who brought them Peter 2:1).

Notice the word secretly. It’s rare for someone in church to openly deny Jesus. The movement away from the centrality of Christ is subtle. The false teacher will speak about how other people can help change your life, but if you listen carefully to what they are saying, you will see that Jesus is not essential to their message.

In what position will the message leave you?

The true Christian escapes the corruption in the world caused by evil desires. (1 Peter 1;4), listen to how Peter describes the counterfeit Christian: “They promised freedom, while they themselves are slaves in depravity, for a man is a slave to whatever has mastered him” (Peter 2:19). The true believer escapes corruption, while the counterfeit believer is mastered by it.

What kind of people does this message produce?

True believer pursues goodness, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, godliness, kindness and love Peter:1:5). They are experts in greed and her eyes are full of adultery (Peter 2: 10; 14). They also despise authority. This is the general characteristic of a counterfeit believer.

Why should you listen to the message?

A true teacher appeals to scripture. We have the word of the profits made more certain and we will do well to pay attention to it. (God says test the Spirit). God has spoken, and the true teacher appeal to his Word. The fog feature makes a rather different appeal: by appealing to the left Fork desired I’m simple human nature, they entice people who are escaping from those who live in the error (2:18). So it’s true kick your asked, “what has God said in his Word?” The false teacher asks “ what do people want to hear? What will appeal to their fleshly desires?

What results is the message have in peoples lives?

Does it bear fruit? The true believer is effective and productive in his or her knowledge of Christ (Peter 1:8). The counterfeit is “like a spring without water.” This is an extra ordinary picture. They promised much but produce a little.

Where does the message ultimately lead you?

Here we find the most disturbing contrast of all. The true believer will receive “a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord“ (1:11). A false believer will experience “Swift destruction.” “ their condemnation has been hanging over them and their destruction has not been sleeping” (Peter 2:3).

Jesus tells us that there will be many who have been involved in ministry in his name, to whom he will say, “ depart from me; I never knew you” (Matthew 7:21). Who are these people? Surely Peter is describing them in this passage.

Don’t be naïve

We must not be ignorant: there will be false teachers among us. So how do we apply these warning?

First, Peter plan statement reminds us that the church needs to be protected. Among the many wonderful people who come through the doors of the church each year, some would be more harm than good.

They may seem the nicest of people, but they do not believe in the authority of the Bible or the exclusivity of salvation in Christ. We welcome such people, because they need Christ just as much as we do, but we must not allow them to have influence over us.

Second, skeptics well also be able to porn to hypocrisy and inconsistency in the church. They’ve already done it, and they always will. One of the strangest reasons for not following God goes like this: i’ve seen people in church who are hypocrites. So you will not follow Christ because some people who claim to do so are hypocrites.

That existence of a counterfeit is never a good reason for rejecting the genuine. Peter essentially tells us, “Of course there are counterfeit Christians. Of course there are teachers who do the church more harm than good. What else would you expect in this fallen world? Grow up! Don’t be naïve. Don’t miss what’s really simple because you have seen the counterfeit.”

Point to Peter to 2 :1 the next time you meet someone hiding behind this excuse.