July 21 - The Power to Change Our Lives?

• The Power to Change Your Life

  I am reading Rick Warren's book entitled "God's Power to Change Your Life", and it has some great tidbits in it. Yesterday I read the following: The interesting thing about how God uses circumstances is that the source of the circumstances makes no difference to Him. We often bring problems on ourselves by faulty decisions, bad judgments, and sins. At other times our problems are caused by other people. Sometimes the devil causes things to happen to us as he did to Job. But God says the source of our circumstances is irrelevant. "I will still use it in your life," He says. "I will fit it into my pattern; I will fit it into my great plan for your life, to make you like Jesus Christ.". So there is no circumstance in life from which we cannot learn if we'll just have the right attitude. Sometimes it takes a painful experience to make us change our ways. in other words, we are not as likely to change when we see the light as when we feel the heat! Why? Because we change only when the fear of change is exceeded by our pain. (Or the "work" of change is exceeded by our current pain). The first step in change is usually discomfort. He goes on to say that we have to change our thoughts first. We have to change what we think about. Then our emotions will follow, as will our actions. Willpower is important, but it will only take you so far. If your "autopilot" is set on eating whatever you want, unless you change that, your "willpower" will only get you so far before the tension created between your autopilot mentality and your actions has to resolve itself, and it usually does that by reverting back to the autopilot thoughts. So we must change our self-talk, change our thoughts and what we dwell/think on. Eventually, our autopilot (as mine has become) will be set to Medifast, and the willpower will not be necessary to maintain at such high levels, which frees us up to concentrate on other positivie changes we hope to make in our lives. Again, the willpower, for me, was only temporarily necessary until my autopilot could be reset. Then I went on to change my autopilot as far as exercise is concerned. The raw willpower and self-discipline was really only necessary for a few weeks until the autopilot took over. Now I only need willpower and self-discipline in a very few cases where I'm "feeling" blah, to get myself out there anyway. But the autopilot on exercise has been reset by me, from a "Non-Exerciser" to a "Runner". The next two positive changes I hope to tackle are my housekeeping and my finances. Reseting the autopilot from a messy-messy to a clean freak, and from an impulsive spender to a frugal saver. I am encouraged by my successes on Medifast and with running, that REAL, GENUINE change IS possible in anyone's life. How does God come into it? He gives me the strength to back up my good decisions. So, today I will run. Today I will Medifast. Today I will clean. Today I won't buy anything online. And it will be a 100% day for me! Yay! posted Saturday, July 21, 2007 11:36 AM by goalbysummer | 13 Comments [Edit Post]

•