Usually the missing piece is my own sincerity. If the sincerity isn’t there, then it becomes hard to find God. Most incidents that I recall reaffirm that God hears my prayers, even though a lot of prayers are still unanswered, but at least he would give me some responses to them. By the way, I feel that many of my prayers remain unanswered because I don’t have enough faith and passion to really get them through. Usually when I am really focus, really get the Holy Spirit to help me, and really are there to stay until I see light at the end of the tunnel, I would get the answer to my prayer.

He is there. He loves to answer any question that you have, but asking questions usually won’t end problems you face in life. They would just keep coming, and the need for answers will always be there until you enter heaven. A good answer would only bring a couple more new questions.

One day you may feel like God is so there, and another day you might not feel him. Sometimes you might feel angry at God and want to ask him “why”?

The problem is, even when you get an immediate answer from God, but if your faith doesn’t grow, you will ask similar questions again. I can see that many people like to ask questions more than to take leaps of faith, which is the main ingredient of solutions to all problems. When Satan strikes again, confusion come back again. It’s the same old same old everytime, but we would fall for the same tricks if we don’t develop our faith.

It’s a tug of war. Each time you gain new insights, or corrections for past mistakes, new attacks will come. Bad things often interlaces with God’s provision. This is how we grow in faith. God allows us to experience evil, not to suffer pointlessly, but to train us to defeat it. Each time we fend off Satan our faith grows stronger.

So again the question—where is God when you need him most?

I have read of many stories about people who’d experienced crises, and God seemed to let bad things happen to them—a Christian girl dreamed of her death 3 weeks before her actual death, and her actual death resembled what she saw about her death in the dreams; a girl who was about to be raped called God, and her rapist told her that God won’t help her, and proceeded to rape her, and he did it; and many more.

I don’t know if these victims really tried hard when they asked for God’s help. There were many times when God intervened a crisis and saved the would-be victim from a situation, and sometimes he didn’t.

For me, I find that God indeed respond to my prayer and give me what I want and need, but usually it’s me who is not skillful at interpreting the opportunities that he sent my way. Sometimes Satan would create counterfeits to distract me from what God has given me. God’s answer might have been around from the beginning.

He wants us to believe that we have what we ask when we ask him for anything. (Mark 11:24)

He also wants us to not come up with pseudo-spiritual explanation such as “God never promised the sky is always blue” when the truth is that we lack faith. He wants us to really believe in his promises and nothing else.

And before you know it, he will fulfill what he promised.

Sometimes you just know it. Sometimes he would send someone to you and give you words for encouragement. Sometimes he would cause “coincidence” to happen in your favor. Each time what happens could vary, but if we pay attention and are patient, we usually see his fingerprints and footprints. He always open doors for us, or give us what we need to keep our faith going.

Many times I read the articles I need to read, meet the people I need to meet, and find the items I need to find. I have to be mindful though. If I lost my focus, then I might pass by the blessings that are there for me to grasp.

Although I would consider myself to be a man of prayer, there are a still so much more to learn. No matter how hard I’d already tried, there are so much more to work on. But I know that it’s going to be easier (Proverbs 4: 18).

God told me that he wanted me to be more child-like—which means more joy, play, passion, love, gentleness, peace, patience, hope, and Christ-likeness. Does it sound hard at all? Not at all, because I will reach there by faith, not by human effort. This is such a good calling. God just wants us to be happy. He wants us to be like a child—child-like, but not spiritually childish. And this is how we connect with God.

When we pray, we tend to have a checklist. We would check off all the items on our checklist and be done with it, and go about our daily routine and business. This is the way of the adults. If we want to pray effectively, we have to open to the qualities I just mentioned in the last paragraph—joy, play, passion… and more. Eastern meditation seeks to find emptiness, but Christian spiritual practices seek Christ, and it should be a happy process. We need to give it the patience it deserves. We should let the Holy Spirit to tell us what he wants to tell us.

For many people, hearing from the Holy Spirit isn’t really hard. The hard thing is spending the time to listen, to acknowledges his messages, to believe that what he said is the only things that matter to you at the moment, and to tell him you will obey him.

And it is not hard to listen to the Holy Spirit, because he knows our limit. He won’t give us assignments that he knew we cannot handle.

For me, it is still a challenge to give him enough time to tell me everything he wants to tell me.

I know if I do, I would fulfill a lot more of my potential, but knowing is one thing, doing is another.

Each time he would gently respond to my fears, doubts, and weaknesses, with the relevant bible verse or passage. It’s so soothing; so much so that I would resist this divine blissful state. Maybe deep inside we are afraid to be child-like, to be happy, and to have things to go so easily. This is the divine state that God wants us to reach. After all the trials and warfare, he just wants us to hide in his sanctuary, and enjoy everything he gives us. This seems too good to be true, but it is.

The world is evil. It is trying to make us suffer and to expect continual suffering, because Satan and our own sin make this world evil. God sometimes allow suffering to cleanse us, but it is a process, not the goals. Many people allow themselves to suffer for too long, and they won’t exercise their faith to get out of their state quick enough.

I believe that the more we go back to the child-like state, the more we will experience God and his divine interventions more regularly. God gets near to those who cling to him. He likes to show favor to those who are optimistic. He can only make us happy when we allow ourselves to be happy. God is always there, and we are the ones who need to practice how to get closer to him.

This “enlarge my territory” is part of the Prayer of Jabez. Here it is the original prayer:

1 Chronicles 4:10

¹⁰And Jabez called on the God of Israel, saying, Oh that thou wouldest bless me indeed, and enlarge my coast, and that thine hand might be with me, and that thou wouldest keep me from evil, that it may not grieve me! And God granted him that which he requested.

It is not hard for God to answer such a request. I find that the only difficult part is to consistently expect my territory to enlarge. It has to do with my own mindset and self-image. If I have a mindset of scarcity, and a low self esteem, it severely limits the blessing I am able to contain. God can give me unlimited blessing, but I have to be large enough to receive them.

I like people-watching. When I have to study or read, I prefer to do it in places where there are many people, so I can observe them. Somehow I feel the energy and inspiration coming from the people.

I want to imagine God using me to intervene and bless the life of these people. When I look at children, I want to be the grandpa who gets to hug them, or the parent who produced them. They are so cute. When I see cute female of child bearing age, well… I imagine what their husbands or boyfriends are like. They are so lucky. (Nothing dirty going on here. It’s normal for a single individual like me to desire a family right? )

And then my self-esteem gets in the way. The feeling of inadequacy make me stop imaging more. I have a hard time continuing my sweet daydream because I would think about my finance, my appearance, my race, my age, and other realistic concerns.

I feel that attractive female won’t marry me because I have no money and am getting old (feel old already at 30!). I feel that I won’t be able to take care of a dog, and let alone children. I feel that exciting people probably won’t listen if I share the Gospel with them because I am not a good example. I feel that I am not successful enough to talk to successful people. To the homeless, I feel that I don’t have enough faith to bring real change to their situations.

But the opportunities to meet new people are everywhere! I can build the church by bring one person to Christ every now and then. If I can bring just one person to Christ each day, and that person refer his or her friends to me also, I would be able to build a church with a few hundred people in about a year!

God does answer the prayer if we simply ask him to “enlarge our coast”. It is always the easiest part, but the real issue is psychological, not physical. Realistically, God can throw everything good our ways, but often times, it’s our narrowed minds that filter the blessings.

In the past, God has answered my “enlarge” requests so many times, that when I did a mental review I found I had never lacked opportunities. I missed a lot of opportunities by spending my time to regret, depress, worry, and complains, instead of grasping them. For the opportunities that I did grasp, I experienced amazing breakthrough.

Indeed, we need to learn how to recognize blessings that come our way, and gladly take them.

I have lived for about 30 years, and I have seen some amazing things happened to some people. Someone said that when God allows us to see someone being blessed, that means he also wants us to believe we can have similar blessing, or something like that. I believe it is mostly true. God sometimes shows us amazing things that happened to other people, not us, not because he wants to discourage us, but because he wants to inspire us to seek more, and believe that we can have more.

For example, a friend of mine has become a billionaire in his late 20s to early 30s. He has been real passionate in his field of study of many years, and not too long after he graduated with his PHD, he was able to make it very big. I was there to see how God’s blessing unfolded in his life, first without a sign, but later like a snowball.

His example might sound too unreal for most of us, but there are also other examples I have seen when God gave people I know many different blessings in amazing ways. I learned something from each example.

The same pattern I see over and over again is this—to receive blessing from God, you have to believe that you can get it. You can’t believe you don’t deserve it. You have to believe that God wants you to have it. You have to be happy and child-like often enough to contain the blessing. For example, if God wants to give you academic blessing, you cannot be depressed. If you are depressed and fearful, you can’t focus on your study. Maybe you think you are too lazy to deserve success, but if you let it go and relax, and study the way you know, you will see the blessing coming.

Similarly, if you know that God wants you to marry, then believe it. Don’t worry about finance, or he or she being out of your league. If you have reasons to believe that God wants you to manage a huge fortune for his kingdom, then receive the money the way you know how. Maybe he wants to help you develop a business supernaturally. Mabe he wants to tell you what to invest through supernatural dreams or other supernatural means.

The key is to be playful and happy, but is easier to say than do. When new opportunities come, they also reveals the self-images we have about ourselves. If we don’t feel we deserve a blessing, the presence of that blessing would only make us anxious and upset. It would make us feel regret that we didn’t work hard enough to become good enough to deserve it, or other negative emotions.

Matthew 7:7 Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.

It’s easy to ask, but the follow up is crucial. We must seek out what we are given after we ask. We must overcome fears of rejection or failures and knock on the door.

Hebrews 11:6 And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.

Faith is a must.

I ask God to also enlarge my mind. When my mind is large, it would allow me to receive more blessing. When you create new space, there will be more rooms for new stuff.

The key is to believe that you really did forgive after you made that decision.

Forgiving someone doesn’t necessarily make us forget the pains, nor does it 100% prevent us from reliving the experience, though it is part of the healing. This is why it is so hard to believe that we really have forgiven the people who hurt us.

If I can forgive, I believe most people also can. Let me explains.

I Can’t Help But Have to Relive Hurtful Experiences Many Times

If not for God, I would be living with a full blown Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder due to my childhood. I am not going to share the details for now, but I want to tell you that even with my walk with God, the way my brain works is still different than those who grew up with a relatively unthreatening childhood. I had a hard time focusing on anything without reliving unpleasant memory, and intrusive thoughts that are upsetting. My conditions have a lot to do with many years of conditioning. For example, if you get repeatedly punished under certain circumstance, that circumstance will trigger a state of fear every time you find yourself in it.

When you are in a state of fear, you would have a hard time focusing, and thus couldn’t function well. For me, I have a lot of triggers because I got repeatedly punished for things big or small. Before I recognized my condition for what it is, I often kept trying to overcome it with more fears and self-punishment. I kept pushing myself to change and to be on par with other people. Sometimes, this appoarch only gives me self-fulfilling prophecies—the more I feed my fears, the more they become real.

For many years, I didn’t realize that they are symtoms of CPTSD, but during my many years of search for answers to my struggles, I have identified many symptoms that I recently came to understand as part of the CPTSD. They sabotaged my relationship, health, spirituality, career, finance, success, and so much of everything in my life. Many times I had to take long walks to cool down my thoughts. People don’t know why I am always alone, and am always thinking. I am always compelled by a strong, persistent need to think about my past, and to ask a lot of questions to many things in my life, especially the failures/disappointments. I have a hard time of letting things go.

I have decided many time to let go of my past, and for periods of times I was successful, but sometimes my condition would come back. Let me explain.

The Arhitecture of My Brain

It turns out that a child who had trauma or fears often enough would have a very different brain arhitecture comparing with a healthy child. Stress hormones surpass the growth of certain brain cells and promote emotional memory. It makes the child retaining emotional memory better. That brain would find it hard to distinguish what is threatening or what not (any emotional or hurtful experience would be perceived as threatening to my brain). It significantly surpass the learning ability of the child.

To me, it means that everything negative that people say or do to me tend to stick in my mind for a long time. My brain cannot distinguish and prioritize these experiences easily. It will relieve the experiences obsessively over and over again until I can find a satisfying closure to them. However, new hurtful experience will trigger the old ones, and the old ones in turns trigger the older ones. I have to find new closures to my experiences when new ones triggers the old ones.

This Trains Me to Forgive

If normal people experience some small hurts, they would forget or ignore them much easier. They would have to forgive just one or two times, or they would totally forget about it before it even gets under their nerves. For me, I often have to forgive everytime I relieve the experiences.

Not only that, since we have to live with the consequences of what other people did to us, we may from time to time discover that the extent of the damages are more than we thought initially. For example, when I discovered what I had to live with was in fact CPTSD, this new finding wound me in many new ways. I realize that the degree of hurts and handicap I have to endure is much deeper than I thought. I have to re-affirm my previous decisions to forgive my abusers, who gave me this long term struggle that has tormented me for so long.

While I did forgive them for hurting me then, I didn’t prepare to face so many negative consequences that I had been constantly discovering afterward. Each time I discovered a new collateral damage (sometimes the Holy Spirit brought that piece of memory to my mind to explain something to me), I have to re-forgive again.

Trauma Begets Trauma

An abuse victim tends to attract new abusers into his or her life. There are a lot of explanation to this, but this is a fact for sure. I can testify this in my own life. Thank God, because of His grace, I would say this is much less a problem than it could be, but I still have this struggle. I wish I am immune to bullies and abusers, but as of writing I still feel like an abusers magnet!

Attracting abusers is only one way of begetting new trauma. There are also other factors that make a victim’s life very difficult. This is like the rich gets richer and the poor and poorer. Sufferers of abuses are prone to addictions, financial struggles, illnesses, crimes, and other manifestations of trauma. They tend to reinforce and feed upon each other to create a living hell for the sufferers. For example, I have major struggle with focus in workplace, and when I was employed I constantly worried about getting fired. The anixety only made me even less functional in the workplace. Financial and career struggle wound my self-esteem continuously, make me doubt God, and make me financially dependent on others (who could be my abusers).

It is getting better because at least I now understand what caused my career and financial struggle, as well as other struggles, and knowing is a major key to healing. I am looking into Cognitive behavioral therapy, with the help of God, to unlearn my fear and anxiety.

So How to Forgive

I believe each time we discover something new about an emotional wound inflicted by someone, we should forgive. It takes faith, not feeling. If we wait for the right feeling before we forgive, it would be too late. This world is full of trauma and wickedness, so if we wait for the right feeling, there will probably be many more new wounds before the right feeling ever arrives.

Wounds that aren’t healed will fester. They will produce bitterness and curses. The unforgiving person will eventually become the same as the perpetuators who hurt him, because the bonds between the abusers and the victims will shape and mold the victims, unless the victims undo the bonds by forgiveness.

When you decide to forgive someone, believe that it is done. You may use some rituals to help convince yourself of that. You may say, “In the name of Jesus Christ, I forgive *name* for doing *details* to me”. I find it more assuring to clearly outline what and whom I forgive for.

Sometimes, the person who hurts us will be around for a long time. Forgiveness isn’t pardon. We can avoid that person to prevent him for hurting us more, take legal actions if necessary, and cry out to God to deliver us from our enemies if they are hard to get rid of.

It used to take repeated effort for me to make certain that I have forgiven someone. I might have to relive the hurtful experience against my will from time to time, but I make it very clear to myself, to God, and to Satan that I already forgave and the hurtful feeling is just a feeling. In my earlier years, I used to doubt if I was being bitter, but after many years of practice, I learn to distinguish between bitterness, and natural feeling that comes with memory. I am not God. I cannot make myself forget certain things at will, but when I forgive, it usually turns out that the memory doesn’t hurt as bad in the long run.

~~~~~~~~

Forgiveness is the beginning of healing and blessing. If we don’t forgive, God won’t forgive us (Matthew 6:14-16). If we live without God, we are the same as the sinners who hurt us. We will do something equally bad, if not worst, to people like what they did to us. Unforgiveness puts us on the same ground as our worst offenders.

It is only the first step. The healing process can be long and painful, especially for those who have lived through major or prolonged trauma, so let the healing start as soon as possible.

Let us all forgive. Unforgiveness is probably one of the biggest reason why people fail to make it into heaven. If you are a born again Christian, make sure you don’t let any unrepented sin, including unforgiveness, to hinder you in your walk with God.

God bless you and one day we will meet in heaven.

Today, many Christians would feel that this “me and God” vs “the enemies” attitude is uncalled for. They might think it’s only relevant for Christians from the third world countries or the middle East.

But it’s not. I myself can testify from experience that you can get persecuted anywhere if you strive to live according to God’s commandments and seek to manifest the full gospel and its power. (2 Timothy 3:12)

You will get a lot of persecutions from, first of all, the Christianity religion. Religion is never the true victim, but it’s often the persecutor to those who are the true followers of the true, biblical God.

If you are just being religious, going to church every week, being churchy and nice to people, and never do something that rock the boat, then not only will you not get persecuted, you might enjoyed the best of both worlds.

But you will not be relevant to the kingdom of God, nor to the world and the enemy.

Let Says You Are A Biblical Christian

Then you are a real threat to Satan, the world, and religious institutions, including some of our own Christian Churches and denominations.

Many church leaders will say harsh things about you and to you if you actually live obediently to God. Be prepared.

Satan, of course, will send his army from hell to harass you, to steal from you, and to destroy you if he can. And humans are one of the main type of instruments that he uses to attack us.

God’s Main Way Of Dealing With the Enemies Is To “Preparest a Table Before You In The Presence Of Your Enemies…”

Don’t expect the enemies to simply disappear and everything to go easy on you.

Rather, God has a wonderful plan. He is powerful enough to set you a table of feast in the middle of your enemies and make them watch you to eat, drink, and merry. They will say all kind of harsh things to you. They will growl, threaten, and insult you. They will do all kind of things to try to take away your peace. But who gets to enjoy the feast?

YOU.

But are you up for it?

Only those who understand the way of God, have strong faith, and are hardened by battles can participate in this. They understand that as long as they place their full faith in God, they will receive no real harm. (Unless their times are up and God let them choose to be a martyr, which only happens once in a lifetime)

Religious leaders might use slanderous talk to attack you, but God will make you a “fisher of men”. (Mark 1:17; Acts 2:46-47)

The world will attack your faith. They will call you stupid. And the modern pharisees will try to conform you into their denominational doctrines, but God will grant you the power of the full gospel and co-labor with you. (Acts 4:16-17; Mark 16:15-20)

Satan will try to keep you sick and poor. Religious people will try to brainwash you into believing that being sick and poor are spiritual. But God wants you to prosper in all things (3 John 1:2) See my post on Biblical Definition Of Prosperity.

God Won’t Remove The Enemies

God wants to demonstrate His power and glory to the enemies through us. If God makes our enemies disappear, then who are going see His power and glory? It is because of His mercy that He does this to the enemies, so that the enemies might repent and give glory to God when they see what God can do through us and for us.

Deuteronomy 28: 10

¹⁰And all people of the earth shall see that thou art called by the name of the LORD; and they shall be afraid of thee.

The world will hate us, but some can choose to follow our examples.

John 15: 18-20

¹⁸If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you.

¹⁹If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.

²⁰Remember the word that I said unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also.

Jesus Christ is infinitely bigger than the world and the enemies.

John 16:33

³³These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.

So what Should We do?

Knowing that God wants to prepare a table before us in the presence of our enemies, we should focus on our part— to merry along, have faith, and allow God to demonstrate His tremendous blessings through us by sitting happily right there at the table. If we succumb to fears and complains, we will fall right into our Satan’s scheme and he will overcome us.

It’s like being in a storm’s eye. On the exterior everything might look chaotic, but if you stand in the middle of God’s will, and place your will, mind, and emotion right there, you will enjoy great peace through it all. Don’t be mad about what people say against you, but let them see your supernatural prosperity and let it be your best vindication. If you take matter into your own hand you will lose it.

Remember, if you have enemies, that’s because they have a reason to be jealous of you. This is why you will get persecuted. Because if God is with you, favors will always go your way, and people who are not so close to God would feel bad about themselves so they will try to bring you down to their own level.

I have seen happy and successful people got bogged down by negative people. I myself was a victim of people who accused me wrongly when I had God’s favors on my side. I allowed myself to become negative because of some of the vicious things they said, and I complained (A lot), and at the end I was burn out and lost the favors.

Looking back, I wonder why I didn’t just sit at my table, relax, and let them see how much God had blessed me. A blessed life is a lonely path, but it’s better than the broad path of mediocrity and compromise.

If I hadn’t been negative and complaining at those times of favor, my life would have been continue to be a display of divine blessing. I might already have married, have kids, a successful career, and stuff. (I am serious, read my journals if you want to know more about my life. I mentioned a bit of my previous time of favor in this post.)

Once the enemy scare you away from your God-given table, you will lose your relevance and divine blessing. This is what the enemy is trying to do. So stop caring about what the world think, what carnal Christians think, and what your enemies think. Just enjoy your feast of blessing and prosperity! They will eventually reflect on themselves when they can’t stand your happiness and divine success, and some might turn to God because of that.

1. How exactly does a Christian receive healing
2. How exactly does a spiritual giant bear fruits of the Holy Spirit while most Christians still struggle
3. How exactly does one resists Satan, scripturally
4. How the principles identified in this post can be applied on every area of your life such as finance, relationship, ministry, accomplishment, and anything that pertain to life and godliness (2 Peter 1:3)

Before you proceed onward with this post, you may want to know what faith can do and how to act upon whatever faith you have, and then you too, can start experiencing miracle in all areas of your life. Go to Parable Of The Mustard Seed: Scriptural Analysis of Faith if you want to do that.

Then, you can come back to this post, which contains several quote about faith (Actually, they are testimonies and excerpts, but I call them “quote about faith” so people can find this post by typing that phrase in the search engine)

Where does faith come from? How come some Christians experience God’s supernatural power but I don’t?

Faith comes by hearing (Romans 10:17). In the testimonies that I copied and pasted below you will find that all the testimonies involved hearing of God’s word. Upon hearing the Word of God, the believers accepted them with his whole heart and confess the Word with believing lips (Romans 10:10-11), and then God does what He said (Isaiah 5:11).

Every Christian receives revelation from the Holy Spirit. The job of the Holy Spirit is to guide us into all truth (John 16:13-15) He does it all day long. You can trust this fact. Satan and the circumstance will try to deceive you and make you think that the Holy Spirit isn’t interested in talking to you or the truth isn’t what it seems to mean, and thus steal the Word from your heart and mind (John 10:10).

However, we have the authority from God to resist the Devil (James 4:7) and rebuke our circumstances (Matthew 8:26). If we persevere, we will bear much fruits eventually (Luke 8:15).

Truth will set us free (John 8:32), but only truth that we understand and believe will set us free (Matthew 13:23; James 1:21). The entire Bible is useless to us if we don’t understand the words (2 Corinthians 3:6).

One of the best strategies to substantiate the truth into personal experience is to follow the prompting of the Holy Spirit like this: let Him reveals a verse or a passage to you one at a time, and jot them down on a piece of paper or card, verbally proclaiming it, mixing it with your own words if you want, for as long as and as frequent as you want until the truth manifests in reality. When you sense the Spirit impressing upon you another verse or passage, add them to your next card and do the same. Memorize them too.

Testimony #1 The Fruit of the Holy Spirit

Have you wondered how to bear the fruit of the Holy Spirit? The following excerpt is one of the clearest explanations I have read.

Excerpt from The Normal Christian Life, by Watchman Nee Pg 78

Some of you have no doubt had an experience something like the following. You have been asked to go and see a friend, and you knew the friend was not very friendly, but you trusted the Lord to see you through. You told Him before you set out that in yourself you could not but fail, and you asked Him for all that was needed. Then, to your surprise, you did not feel at all irritated, though your friend was far from gracious. On your return you thought over the experience and marveled that you kept so calm, and you wondered if you would be just as calm next time. You were amazed at yourself and sought an explanation. This is the explanation: the Holy Spirit carried you through.

Unfortunately we only have this kind of experience once in while, but it should be a constant experience. When the Holy Spirit takes things in hand there is no need for strain on our part. It is not a case of clenching our teeth and thinking that thus we have controlled ourselves beautifully and have had a glorious victory. No, where there is a real victory there is no fleshly effort. We are gloriously carried through by the Lord…

We have spoken of trying and trusting, and the difference between the two. Believe me, it is the difference between Heaven and hell. It is not something just to be talked over as a good thought; it is stark reality. `Lord, I cannot do it, therefore I will no longer try to do it.’ This is the point where most of us fail. `Lord, I cannot; therefore I will take my hands off; from now on I trust Thee for that.’ I refuse to act; I depend on Him to act and then I enter fully and joyfully into the action He initiates. It is not passivity; it is a most active life, trusting the Lord like that; drawing life from Him, taking Him to be my very life, letting Him out His life in
me.

A lot of Christians, including you and I, have also experienced something similar once in a while, but the experience never lasted. How come? What is the formula that will deliver all the time? The first step is to trust! We have to trust the Lord to see us through every situation in life. What come after trust? Let’s continue The Normal Christian Life Pg 79

God will not give me humility or patience or holiness or love as separate gifts of His grace. He is not a retailer dispensing grace to us in doses, measuring out some patience to the impatient, some love to the unloving, some meekness to the proud, in quantities that we take and work on as kind of capital. He has given only one gift to meet all our need — His Son Christ Jesus, and as I look to Him to live out His life in me, He will be humble and patient and loving and everything else I need — in my stead. Remember the word in the first Epistle of John: “God gave unto us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son hath the life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not the life” (1 John 5:11,12). The life of God is not given us as a separate item; the life of God is given us in the Son. It is “eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 6:23). Our relationship to the Son is our relationship to the life.

The key ingredient is “Christ my life”. If you have the life Christ, you have to let this life live out in you. Only trust can activate His life. You trust the Lord to see you through and He will live out His life in you when you trust Him. This is the general idea, but can it be more specific? Let’s get to the specific, read on: The Normal Christian Life Pg 80

That is why Paul speaks of “the fruit of the Spirit” as one (Gal. 5:22) and not of `fruits’ as separate items. God has given us His Holy Spirit, and
when love is needed the fruit of the Spirit is love; when joy is needed the fruit of the Spirit is joy. It is always true. It does not matter what your personal deficiency, or whether it is a hundred and one different things, God has one sufficient answer — His Son Jesus Christ, and He is the answer to every human need. How can we know more of Christ in this way? Only by way of an increasing awareness of need. Some are afraid to discover deficiency in themselves and so they never grow. Growth in grace is the only sense in which we can grow, and grace, we have said, is God doing something for us. We all have the same Christ dwelling within, but revelation of some new need will lead us spontaneously to trust Him to live out His life in us in that particular. Greater capacity means greater enjoyment of God’s supply. Another letting go, a fresh trusting in Christ, and another stretch of land is conquered. `Christ my life’ is the secret of enlargement.

As God reveals our deficiency and the need to grow, we are to stop right there. Don’t rush in to apply your willpower and common sense to try to improve yourself, because it will only prolong the struggle. When God gives us awareness of a need, we are to trust Him to live out His life in us in that particular!

As you read more excerpts and testimonies, you will find a similar pattern of how it works: The believer becomes aware of a need, such as financial need, spiritual need, or health need, and God speaks to him through His word, and the believer acts upon the revealed truth by boldly declaring the revealed truth, and believe the word from his heart.

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Testimony #2 When you should stop praying and start declaring victory that was already won

God has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness (2 Peter 1:3).

Once His Spirit reveals to us a specific truth or promise, we don’t need to pray anymore. Instead, we should keep proclaiming that piece of truth or promise until it manifests – the Bible tells us to calls things that are not as though they were (Romans 4:17). The more we hear our own proclamation, the more our faith will increase (Romans 10:17).

What if we meet severe resistance before we see the fulfillment of God’s Word? We rebuke it!

The Normal Christian Life Pg 33-34

I once had an experience which illustrates this principle. Some years ago I was ill. For six nights I had high fever and could find no sleep. Then at length God gave me from the Scripture a personal word of healing, and because of this I expected all symptoms of sickness to vanish at once. Instead of that, not a wink of sleep could I get, and I was not only sleepless but more restless than ever. My temperature rose higher, my pulse beat faster and my head ached more severely than before. The enemy asked, `Where is God’s promise? Where is your faith? What about all your prayers?’ So I was tempted to thrash the whole
matter out in prayer again, but was rebuked, and this Scripture came to mind: “Thy word is truth” (John 17:17). If God’ Word is truth, I thought, then what are these symptoms? They must all be lies! So I declared to the enemy, `This sleeplessness is a lie, this headache is a lie, this fever is a lie, this high pulse is a lie. In view of what God has said to me, all these symptoms of sickness are just your lies, and God’s Word to me is truth.‘ In five minutes I was asleep, and I awoke the following morning perfectly well.

The circumstance is not going to change the second you choose to believe, rather it can be just as bad or even worst than ever. Satan will work very hard to deceive you so that you will never stick it out until God’s truth manifest.

A skillful liar lies not only in word but in gesture and deed; he can as easily pass a bad coin as tell an untruth. The Devil is a skillful liar, and we cannot expect him to stop at words in his lying. He will resort to lying signs and feelings and experiences in his attempts to shake us from our faith in God’s Word.

Satan is a thief. He comes to steal, kill, and destroy (John 10:10). Since Satan cannot do it in the open, he has to lie to achieve these purposes. As Christian, we have real authority over Satan and his army, but if we are deceived by him and fail to exercise our authorities in Christ, we will live like a poor kid who has inherited billions of dollars but live as though he is still poor.

The key is to call things that are not as though they were, until they are. No one can stop that formerly poor but presently rich kid to go to the bank and withdraw some cash from his bank account that has billions of dollars, but he has to go through some paper work and stand in the line the first time he goes to the bank. He has to show his identity to the teller and exercise his legal right as a billionaire.

Testimony #3 Rebuke Satan, temptation, and evil thought. Call it a lie!

Satan and his demons can manipulate your emotion and thinking. Sinful thoughts inside your head might actually originated from unclean spirits from within or without, and they can disguise their implanted thoughts as your own thoughts. If you doubt whether a Christian can be manipulated by demons like that, go here.

Here is an excerpt of a testimony from Grantley Morris’ website: Calling temptation, accusation, and evil thought a lie

I resisted the devil by not believing his lies. But I also hit him with the truth. That makes me feel real good. I only use short statements of truth. The devil wants me to have a debate with him but that would be giving him the upper hand. I’ve found it’s important not to get too involved with the Tempter. Jesus didn’t strike up a conversation or debate with the devil. He boldly and emphatically declared Bible verses and told him to get lost – nothing more! (Matthew 4:1-10) I’ve discovered that’s all any of us have to do. So I don’t bother arguing with the devil; I know the truth and I’m holding on to it, no matter what.

The devil might throw a bad feeling at me but I remember he’s hurting ten times worse. Every time Satan hears me saying, “That’s a lie!” it hurts him bad. The feelings he puts on me are just his desperate attempt to get me to stop because he’s scared. He knows he’s losing.

If demons want to put awful thoughts into my head, they are going to hate being near me because I’m committed to worshipping Jesus until the day I die. For the first time in my life I’m winning and I’m not going to let some thought or feeling rob me and drag me back to the black hole in which I used to live.

I used the same tactics when fighting urges to look at porn or women other than my wife. If the thought wasn’t good, I called it a lie. If the Bible doesn’t say it is true, I called it a lie. When I feel unforgiven, I call it a lie. It worked. The devil has little power over me now.

The demons can actually give you bad feelings! Likewise, they can make you feel like you have sinful desires while the fact is that the desires are coming from them.

What we can do is to expose the scheme of the enemy and call it a lie. A bad feeling can be a lie. An evil thought can be a lie. A physical pain can be a lie. We have to pay attention to the Holy Spirit and rely on Him to discern what’s going on behind the scene. Once we identify that something actually came from the enemy, we call it a lie and rebuke it with the truth!

Testimony #4 How to substantiate the promises of God that were already done deals in the spiritual realm

Most of the time the promise of God is considered done when the Lord had said it, and many other times, our prayers are answered the first time we prayed or even before that (Matthew 6:32)!

However, in the physical realm, God’s Word hasn’t manifested yet, but I am telling you, the answer to your prayer and the substance of your hopes already exist (Hebrews 11:1)! They are just warped presents sitting somewhere in the unseen realm, waiting for you to substantiate them with your faith, action, and patience.

The following testimony is one of the best examples on how to substantiate the truth that already existed.

Joel Osteen Your Best Life Now Pg 129

In 1981, my mother was diagnosed with cancer and given just a few weeks to live…

And my mother never gave up. She refused to speak words of defeat. She didn’t complain about how sick or weak she felt, or how awful her life was, or how hopeless her situation looked. She chose to put God’s words in her mind and in her mouth.

She started speaking faith-filled words. She started calling in health and calling in healing. All during the day, we’d hear her going through the house speaking aloud, “I will live and not die, and I will declare the works of the Lord.” She was like a walking Bible!

I’d say, “Mother, how are you doing?”

She’d say, “Joel, I’m strong in the Lord and the power of His might.” She pored over her Bible and found about thirty or forty favorite passages of Scripture concerning healing. She wrote them down, and every day, she’d read over them and boldly declare them aloud. We’d see her walking up and down the driveway, saying, “With long life, He satisfies me and shows me His salvation.”

Mother mixed her words with God’s Words, and something powerful began to happen. Her circumstances began to change. Not overnight, but little by little, she began to feel better. She got her appetite back and started gaining weight. Slowly but surely, her strength returned.

What was happening? God was watching over His Word to perform it. God was restoring health to her and healing her of her wounds. A few weeks went by and Mother got a little better. A few months went by, and she was even better. A few years went by, and she just kept on confessing God’s Word. Today, it has been more than twenty years since we received the report that Mother had just a few weeks to live, and as I write these words, Mother is totally free from that cancer, healed by the power of God’s Word!

And she is still confessing God’s Word. She gets up every morning and reviews those same Scriptures on the subject of healing. She still speaks those words of faith, victory, and health over her life. She won’t leave the house until she does it. Beyond that, she lives to remind “Mr Death” that he has no hold on her life.

The Bible contains a lot more promises than just those that talks about health! Ask the Lord to help you be more creative and ask for more things!

Testimony #5 Rebuke the lies and substantiate God’s truth!

What happened in this testimony is a very real and typical situation, and everybody will face something similar, sooner or later, if he or she is to live on earth (1 Peter 5:9). In the previous testimonies, we discussed the importance of trust, rebuking lies, and substantiating truth. This testimony is a typical case which demands all these skills.

Watchman Nee’s testimony of his terminal illness

When I first became aware of my illness in 1924, I was feeling feeble, there was pain in my chest, and I had a slight fever…

Dr. Wong told me that I was afflicted with tuberculosis and that my condition was so serious…

Day after day passed without my tuberculosis being cured. Though I exerted myself to write and to study the Bible, I found it exceedingly strenuous. I had a slight fever each afternoon, I could not sleep at night, and I frequently experienced night sweats…

After praying for over a month, I felt that I should write a book concerning what I had learned before God…

At that time my disease became so aggravated that I could not even lie down. While writing I sat on a chair with a high back and pressed my chest against the desk to alleviate the pain. Satan said to me, “Since you will soon be dying, why not die in comparative comfort rather than in pain?” I retorted, “The Lord wants me just like this; get out of here!” It took four months to complete the three volumes of The Spiritual Man. The writing of this book was a real labor of blood, sweat, and tears. I despaired of life, yet God’s grace brought me through. After completing each time of writing, I would say to myself, “This is my last testimony to the church.” [Sai Kit: Now, I highlighted this sentence because it is not biblical. Don't ever curse yourself like that. I believe Watchman Nee's generation had very little teaching on the power of the tongue so he didn't know better at the time. However, if he was born in this generation I am sure he won't speak any self-imposed curse like this. And I also believe that the reason why his illness was getting so serious and prolonged was because of his own negative words.]

…Following the publication of the book, I prayed, “Now let Your servant depart in peace.” At the same time my disease worsened. [See!? Self-imposed curse was working against him! The moment he prayed for death his disease got worst] I could not sleep peacefully at night, and when I awoke I turned incessantly from side to side. Physically, I was a bag of bones. I had night sweats, and my voice became hoarse. People had trouble hearing me speak, even when they placed their ear to my mouth. Several sisters took turns waiting upon me, one of whom was a veteran nurse. Whenever she saw me, she would weep. She testified, “I have seen many patients, but I have never seen one whose condition was as pitiful as his. I am afraid that he can live only three or four more days.” When someone told me of this, I said, “Let this be my end. I realize I am going to die soon.” [He did it again!] One brother telegraphed the churches in various places, telling them there was no more hope for me and that they need pray for me no more [Even Christians can bring curses upon you, if you receive their words that are speaking against you without rebuking these curses with the name of Christ and His blood you will live under these curses].

One day I asked God, “Why are You calling me away so soon?” I confessed my trespasses before God, fearing that I might have been unfaithful concerning some matter. At the same time I told God that I had no faith. On that same day I devoted myself to fasting and praying and presented myself to Him once more. I told Him that I would do nothing but what He assigned me. From morning until three o’clock in the afternoon I fasted. At the same time the co-workers earnestly prayed together for me in Sister Ruth Lee’s home. As I prayed to God to grant me faith, He spoke His words to me, words which I could never forget. [Please note, when he asked for more faith, the Lord gave him his words instead. Faith comes by hearing! (Romans 10:17)] The first sentence was, “The just shall live by faith” (Rom. 1:17). The second sentence was, “By faith you stand” (2 Cor. 1:24). The third sentence was, “We walk by faith” (2 Cor. 5:7). These words filled me with great joy, for the Bible says, “All things are possible to him who believes” (Mark 9:23). I immediately thanked and praised God because He had given me His words. I believed that God had cured me. [When the Lord has spoken, consider it done. Stop praying but start thanks giving and praising.]

The test came immediately. The Bible says, “By faith you stand,” but I was still lying in bed. A conflict arose in my mind: Should I get up and stand or remain lying down? We all know that human beings love themselves and consider it more comfortable to die in bed than to die standing. Then the word of God manifested its power, and ignoring all else, I put on my clothing, clothing which I had not worn for a hundred and seventy-six days. As I left the bed to stand, I perspired so profusely that it was as though I had been soaked through with rain. Satan said to me, “Are you trying to stand when you can’t even sit up?” I retorted, “God told me to stand,” and I rose to my feet. Being again in a cold sweat, I nearly fell down. I kept repeating, “Stand by faith, stand by faith!” [Our hero of faith started confessing God's Word!!] I then walked a few steps to get my trousers and socks. After putting on my trousers, I sat down. No sooner was I seated than the word of God came to me that I should not only stand by faith but also walk by faith. I felt that the ability to rise and walk a few steps to get my trousers and socks was already something marvelous. How could I expect to walk further? “Where do You want me to go?” I asked God. He answered, “Go downstairs to Sister Lee’s home at number 215.” A number of brothers and sisters had been fasting and praying for me there for two or three days.

Walking within the room might be all right, I thought, but how could I walk downstairs? I prayed to God, “Oh God, I can stand by faith, and by faith I am also able to walk downstairs!” Immediately, I went to the door leading to the staircase and opened it. I tell you honestly that when I stood at the top of the staircase it seemed to me to be the tallest staircase I had ever seen in my life. I said to God, “If You tell me to walk I will do so, even if I die as a result of the effort.” But I continued, “Lord, I cannot walk. I pray that You will support me with Your hand while I am walking.” With one hand holding onto the rail, I descended step by step. Again I was in a cold sweat. As I walked down the stairs, I continued to cry out, “Walk by faith, walk by faith!” With each step down, I prayed, “O Lord, it is You who enable me to walk.” While descending those twenty-five steps, it seemed I was walking hand in hand with the Lord in faith.

Upon reaching the bottom of the stairway, I felt very strong and went quickly to the rear door. I opened the door and headed straight for Sister Lee’s home. I said to the Lord, “From now on, I will live by faith and will no longer be an invalid.” I knocked at the door just as Peter did in Acts 12:12-17, but without Rhoda to open the door. When the door was opened and I entered the house, seven or eight brothers and sisters gazed at me. They were speechless and motionless. For about an hour everyone sat quietly as if God had appeared among men. I also sat there full of thanksgiving and praise.

The above testimony revealed the key principles of faith. I am going to summarize them in the conclusion of this post.

Conclusion

The key principle is: confession, proclamation, thanksgiving, and praise. (That’s why you see a similar pattern in the book of Psalms and the Old Testament all the time)

In each and every test and trial that we encounter daily, we have to do this one thing correctly– speak exactly what the Bible says about it. We have to “hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering” (Hebrews 10:23)

On our own, the Bible will always seem too thick to find a relevant verse to confess with, but with help from the Holy Spirit we will know what to say at the right time.

Anything that doesn’t fall in line with the truth– be it feeling, appearance, symptoms, evil thought, desire, or anything that people say– we are to call it a lie. Rebuke them the way Jesus did! (Matthew 4:1-10; Matthew 8:26; Matthew 16:23)

Lastly, I want to share with you the last quote of faith.

I am the sum total of what I have been confessing through the years. Joel Osteen

Same for me! 99.9% of the negative words that I have confessed in the last 10+years have manifested! And so were the positive confessions that were inspired by God.

The positive confessions were done naturally when I eagerly shared with my friends some of the most recent revelations I had received a the time. I did it because I thought it could help others, but little did I know that this action alone had turned out to be the key to manifesting those revelations.

Negative confessions came very easily. They came through while we participated in gossips, or simply trying to vent our frustration or confusion about certain things with others.

Praying about or analyzing the negatives in a situation also is a form of negative confession. We will get caught by our words (Proverbs 6:2) and see our self-fulfilling prophesies fulfilled (Numbers 14:28)! I was there and got the T-shirt! Don’t repeat my mistakes!

Let’s hold fast the confession of our hope with out wavering!!

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1. Overcoming depression
2. How to have more faith
3. How to stop sinning
4. Managing stress
5. Overcoming anxiety
6. Overcoming procrastination
7. Overcoming bad habits
8. Overcoming lust
9. Overcoming Fear
10. Overcoming Adversity
11. Seeking and fulfilling God’s plan for your life
12. How to be prosperous and successful in a conservative, biblical, and godly way

Now I wouldn’t dare giving you the above grand promises if I hadn’t received some major revelations from the Lord recently, which I believed would change my own life dramatically from now on.

I want to share this blessing with you, and the blessing of these revelations are meant for every Christian, and to a certain extent, even for the non-Christians. Everyone can receive the benefits of God’s promises. It makes me think of Psalms 119:130, “The unfolding of your words gives light; it gives understanding to the simple.”

Mysteries of the kingdom of God revealed!

Jesus told the disciples that he had explained to them the mysteries of the kingdom of God (Luke 8:10). In other words, the mysteries that had been hidden since time of  Genesis were revealed in his teaching.

What mysteries?

Items 1 to 12 from the top of this post, and even more!

The kingdom of God is as close as you want it to be. From now on, stop acting or speaking like you don’t know how to live victoriously. Stop thinking that you shouldn’t be held accountable for things you don’t know.

Why do I say that?

Just days ago I was like most people. I was not above complaining about what I didn’t know, and what I didn’t have. I would say things like, “how do I stop sinning?”; “I am confused!”; “I don’t know why I am like this!”

The Kingdom of God is as close as you want it to be

Right after Jesus talked about this mysteries, he explained why the multitude didn’t understand his parables.

Luke 8:10 And He said, “To you it has been given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God, but to the rest it is given in parables, that ‘ Seeing they may not see, And hearing they may not understand.

People who don’t really want to receive more from God will not receive. They see but they don’t see. They hear but they don’t understand.

In the kingdom of God, the more we have the more we will be given. It’s like capitalism.

For example, have you tried to repeat a refreshing conversation you had with a dear friend to another person?

If that person is a bad listener, or if he doesn’t have the intimate knowledge or experience your dear friend has, you would feel like your words get caught up in your throat. That person might think that he understands you,  but your message is oversimplified and desensitized into something that is far less than the conversation you had with your dear friend.

It’s similar to when God is trying to reveal His mysteries to us. The more we have, the more He will be able to tell us things. The less we have, the less He will be able to explain deeper things to us.

An insincere, passive way of listening is not going to bring us far.

But you are not like that. You obviously want to know more. So don’t worry. You are going to understand the mysteries of God. God Himself guaranteed that. Seek and you will find! (Matt 7:7)

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A perfect answer to the question “how?”

Sincere and God-loving Christians often ask “How?”, which is a good question. The fact that you are interested in finding out the answers to items 1 to 12 on top of this post indicates that you like How-to articles, right?

Great, I am a How-to kind of guy. I like clear step by step formula for spiritual matter.

God said, “sin no more!” (John 8:11) And I asked”How?”

God said, “Be joyful always” (1 Thess 5:16) I asked “How?”

God said, “Be perfect, because I am perfect” (Matt 5:48) “How?”

“Have faith in me!” “How?”

“Meditate in my words day and night, and you will be prosperous and have good success!” “How?”

“How do I stop this depressive thought?” “How do I get rid of this bitterness?” “How do I stop sinning?” “How can I become more diligent?” “How can I stop being lazy?” …

God always reveal the answer, although many times I didn’t get the answers quickly. It sometimes took years. God doesn’t answer my questions in essays. The answer often requires God using my own experience and adding bit and piece of enlightenment along the way, which eventually form a 3-D testimony of my own that finally give me the answer.

It’s like putting puzzles together into a picture.

Regarding the question of “how?”.

The perfect answer to the Hows is…

You don’t know how!!!

Yup, that’s the answer. That’s right, you don’t know how. I am not kidding.

Mark 4:26-27 And He said, “The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground, and should sleep by night and rise by day, and the seed should sprout and grow, he himself does not know how.

If you ask God how this happen, how that happen, and how to do this or that, God might actually answer you, but usually the ultimate solution is “just be”.

The words of God change what you are. The Bible is not written to give us a list of How-to, but to give us life.

How often do you see the Bible give you a list of how-to and formulas? You can find them in a cook book, but probably not the Bible.

How does it related to the Parable Of The Mustard Seed?

The key is hidden in the seed.

You might never understand the hows, but if you plant the seeds, and wait patiently, they will give you a harvest. The seeds will change you from within, and release the power of God in everything God called you to do. Problems solved. No need for the hows anymore.

You don’t need to worry about the hows anymore. They are irrelevant.

You have everything you need already. The Bible says God has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness. (2 Peter 1:3)

What is life? Productivity certainly is. Joy, peace, health, and success are also important parts of life. Life isn’t just merely surviving and putting up with sins, defeats, and pains.

And there is godliness. Godliness is perfection and holiness. It’s living above sins!

Life and godliness are the solutions to items 1 to 12!!

Before I go on about actually planting the seeds and getting a good harvest of life and godliness, let me develop my case a little bit better.

How come some Christians are more Christian than the others?

This is the question I had for years. I often heard that some spiritual giants had a major revelation and suddenly they no longer sin. (such as Watchman Nee, Hudson Taylor)

I had been seeking this elusive, mysterious revelation for years, but I didn’t really understand. I read their testimonies but I didn’t see through the surface. I heard but I didn’t understand. (Luke 8:10)

If you have the same experience, welcome to the club! Congratulation because my years of struggles may serve you well!

I often asked Christians whom I admired questions such as “How do you keep yourself from sinning?”, “How come you are so self-disciplined?” “How do you manage to achieve so much within so short a time?”

I’d even asked pastors about this, but they didn’t really answer my questions.

For the victorious Christians, often time they really don’t know how they came to be victorious. They simply are what they are.

I know it’s not about self. It’s about relying on God. I rely on God, too! But how come I fall short while some people always do better than me? And they don’t even know how it happened!

Look into the seeds!!!

The mustard seed has faith, power, and transformational properties within it

Just scatter the seeds (The word of God) on the ground (Your soul: your heart and mind), preserve them with a good heart, and you will reap a harvest. (Luke 8:15)

The mustard seeds are the word of God.

Your faith will increase simply by listening to the word. (Romans 10:17)

Every word of God contains power. (Hebrews 4:12)

The word of God can be implanted into your soul, and save your soul through its living, growing, and transforming power. (James 1:21)

The word of God will accomplish everything it says it will accomplish. (Isaiah 5:11)

How come I don’t experience the word of God that way?

If God’s word has the aforementioned properties, then why do I go to the church so often, read the Bible a lot, and hear the sermons so many times, but still get stuck with certain struggles in my life?

The main reasons can be found in the parable of the sower (Mark 4:1-20, Matthew 13:1-23, and Luke 8:1-15) You and I know that only good seed (not to be confused with the mustard seeds) who persevere, who refuse distractions, who suffer persecutions, and who listen to word of God with a “good heart” will produce a great harvest in the end.

What else? The rest of this post will focus exactly on that.

For the sincere Christians who seem to belong to the category of good seeds : they go to the church, they study the Bible, and they do this, this and that, but they still had problems with lust, depression, laziness, sickness, fears, and etc.

What’s wrong?

You have to unlock the powers within the mustard seeds!!!

God has done His parts, and the only part left is ours.

The Bible says, “His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue” (2 Peter 1:3)

God has already given us everything, absolutely everything that pertain to life and godliness. He doesn’t need to give us more. We have enough. We should.

So how do you unlock the power of God’s word? How do you get the seeds working?

Simple. So simple that it’s almost hard to understand.

#1, speak the word of God in faith and speak it often. (Joshua 1:8)

I don’t mean intellectual conversation or discussion. We can study God’s word intellectually, but that’s another subject. Here I want to let you know that even simple, verbal declaration of God’s word can trigger the power of God.

God said, “Let there be light!” and there was light. The physical world didn’t ask “how?”. It simply obeyed. There was nothing too intellectual or too complicated about it.

Jesus rebuked the sea and the wind, and they listened to him. (Matt 8:26)

The principle of faith is that if you confess with your mouth and agree in your heart the things you want, they shall be given you. (Romans 10:10; Mark 11:22-24)

Jesus taught us this,

Mark 11:22-24 So Jesus answered and said to them, “Have faith in God. For assuredly, I say to you, whoever SAYS to this mountain, ‘Be removed and be cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that those things he says will be done, he will have whatever he SAYS. Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them.

Matthew 17:20-21 So Jesus said to them, “Because of your unbelief; for assuredly, I say to you, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.

You can speak God’s word. You can pray God’s word. One thing is necessary here, faith. If you say it and believe it in your heart, God’s word will manifest.

Don’t pray in a way as if God’s promise isn’t there. For example, don’t pray for victory over sin, or strength over sin, because the Bible say that you and I already connected with Jesus Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection, and therefore we also shared His victory over sins. (Romans 6; Galatians 5:24)

Miraculously, whenever I speak Christ’s victory with all my heart, temptations and the power of sins would collapse and victory would manifest. It isn’t about my willpower. The victory has already been won so don’t attempt to win it again.

If you believe that God’s promise isn’t what it says it is, and pray or speak in a way as if His promise is powerless, then the reality will come out that way.

If you say, “I really don’t know…” or “I am just confused…”, then you will indeed become “don’t know” and confused. You put faith in the words of doubt, so your faith in the negative and your negative words work against you.

Word of faith works in both negative and positive. The negative side of faith is doubt. Doubt means negative faith. It’s one kind of faith. It works.

“I am tired” So you get tired. “I think I am sick” So you get sick. “I don’t know why things get so bad lately” So things get bad and you don’t know why.

In the past many years, I often talked about my sins, my bad habits, and my confusions. I had tried many formula, listen to many godly men and their teachings, but the perfect formula still eluded me. So I kept talking about my sins, my bad habits, and my confusions, and they remained with me faithfully for as long as I talked about them and put my faith in those words.

Countless Christians speak in words of defeats, of their bad experiences, and of their feelings, than they speak in the word of God in faith. No wonder their situations never change. (Me included)

It doesn’t matter how godly you are, how sincere you are, or how much you love God, if you apply this spiritual principle of spoken faith, this principle will work.

You can apply this spiritual principle in ignorant, but this principle doesn’t filter the results base on what you really want. Like electricity, it can hurt you or serve you.

When you speak the word of God often, you hear it often. When you hear it often, your faith increases often. Faith comes by hearing. (Romans 10:17)

I learned to stop trying to find faith from within. I learned that I was only given faith that was the size of a mustard seed. I need to speak it and exercise it to release the faith of God within it.

#2, Deal with the tongue

People often want to know how to have better self-control, productivity, and all that. They also wonder why they don’t have the full life that Jesus promised. (John 10:10)

Some Christians even struggled with bondage such as suicidal thoughts, depressions, angers, bitterness, and all sort of things.

Christians who are willing to obey everything God ask of them might still live a powerless and unfulfilled life, and most often the source of problems trace back to their tongues.

James 3:2-6 For we all stumble in many things. If anyone does not stumble in word, he is a perfect man, able also to bridle the whole body. Indeed, we put bits in horses’ mouths that they may obey us, and we turn their whole body. Look also at ships: although they are so large and are driven by fierce winds, they are turned by a very small rudder wherever the pilot desires. Even so the tongue is a little member and boasts great things. See how great a forest a little fire kindles! And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity. The tongue is so set among our members that it defiles the whole body, and sets on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire by hell.

Psalm 34:12-16 Who is the man who desires life, And loves many days, that he may see good? Keep your tongue from evil, And your lips from speaking deceit.

Proverbs 15:4 A wholesome tongue is a tree of life, But perverseness in it breaks the spirit.

Proverbs 18:21 Death and life are in the power of the tongue, And those who love it will eat its fruit.

The Bible says that evil words of the tongue came from hell!(James 3:2-6) Hell is the home of demons, and there they torture the damned souls whom they had successfully deceived till the end of their earthly life.

For example, people who had self-hatred, suicidal thoughts, and depression were actually victim of demons. They planted these thoughts and deceptions in their victims’ minds.

The purposes of the demons are to steal, kill, and destroy. (John 10:10) The Devil can only achieve that by planting evil thoughts and deceptions in people’s minds. The demons will move on to the next victim after they have done their planting, and they will come back to check their work from time to time. (Job 1:7; 1 Peter 5:8)

If these victims died in sins, or died without Christ, the demons that tortured them on earth will continue their torments in hell.

The tongue is a battle field of the Holy Spirit, the flesh, and the demons. ( Gal 5:17) The demons want to use our tongues to curse, to defile our whole body, and set things on fire!!

Sounds crazy? One time Jesus rebuked Peter with these words, “Get thee behind me Satan!” (Matt 16:23) Peter was just trying to talk Jesus out of the Crucifixion, but Jesus identified the true author of this plead as Satan himself.

The heaven and hell know that if they can control your tongues, they control your whole body.(James 3:2) Which side do you prefer to yield your control over?

When Christians speak evil of any kind, even if they think it’s just harmless venting or teasing, they are actually giving power to the enemy. Words of self-pity, doubts, complains, condemnation, and idle words make the Devil powerful.

The Devil has no power over us unless we give it to him. The Devil cannot order the mountains to move, but we can. The Devil knows it. Therefore, he works very hard to get us to say things that he wants us to say.

Through self-inspection and revelation from God, I learned that I had a pattern of self-fulfilling prophesies. I used to talk about my fears a lot. I was taught to tell things as it is. I was taught to vent it out. For every 1-2 years, some of my worst fear would come to pass, exactly the way I didn’t want it to happen!!

For example, I predicted that since I was so bad in self-discipline (A result of self-fulfilling prophesy in its own right), I would probably suffer lack of achievements. And I predicted that if my dream girl came along, I would be so inadequate and unproductive that I won’t deserve her.

Since immigrated into Canada, I had always worried about my broken English and the fact that I was too lazy to improve it, and when I did meet a dream girl (Second one, see below), she did loath at my accent!

The snobbish attitude that girl had toward me was part of my self-fulfilling prophesy as well. Prior to meeting her in reality, and after I met her, I had been talking about my inadequacy, broken English, and lack of social grace for so many times. I also kept saying and thinking that if I met a dream girl she would probably see through my inadequacies.

A couple of dream girls did come along(Respectively, each for 2.5 years, with 1 year of break in between, so my torments lasted for 5+years), and it did happen the way I predicted. “Better guys” beat me to it, except that the guys weren’t even Christians. They weren’t really superior than I was, but I prophesied my own defeats and contributed to it by the words of my mouth.

It didn’t help when I had been complaining about the snobbish attitude the second dream girl had occasionally expressed toward me, what was I thinking? You can’t get something you really want by complaining about it!!

Side note: Don’t complain about people. Don’t gossip. The more you condemn, the nastier those people would become. Your verbal curses can make people worst than they already are.

Side note#2: I know a lot of failures can be attributed to others, but talking about their incompetence, problems, and attitudes will not make things work. It will actually deliver your worst predictions- “Oh! because so and so … [have done something or failed to do something], it’s going to be … [thousands words description of how bad consequences are going to be]…”

You have faith on the negatives, and you speak it often, so it shall be done for you.

[Back to topic.]

And I did suffer financially and academically because my lack of discipline. I had talked about my lack of self-discipline so many times for so many years, but I had rarely talked about the fruits of the Spirit, which include self-control.

For the 3 years that followed, I cut back on negative words and thinking by listening to God and believing in His perspective on things, rather than in my own perspective– my perspective always lean on the worst angle.

The cut back helped a lot. My depression stopped.

Recently, when I finally had a better understanding of the principle of speaking faith and used it to serve me, bad habits and laziness lose their grips on me!! It’s magical.

Control your tongue, and speak the word of God, and you will get the power of God’s word to work for you. God’s word always deliver when you speak it in faith.

An article I find helpful:

Idle words leak life

#3, Have Faith

Have you ever asked God to increase your faith? When the disciples did this this was Jesus ‘s reply.

Luke 17:5-6 And the apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith.” So the Lord said, “If you have faith as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be pulled up by the roots and be planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.

John 14:12-14 “Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do he will do also; and greater works than these he will do,

Everybody has faith. If someone believe in doubts, rather than in truth, that person is putting his faith in doubts.

If we believe in our feelings, circumstances, and ourselves, more than we believe in the words of God, then we are putting our faith on these things rather than on God.

Jesus didn’t grant his disciples the request for more faith, but he told them how they can exercise the faith they already had by speaking it.

Faith is like a mustard seed. It’s alive. It can grow.

It grows by hearing the word of God. Faith comes by hearing. (Romans 10:17)

The more we speak our faith, the more powerful our faith become as we listen to our voice of faith.

As we experience the power of God, victories will begin to manifest, and the more we experience victories, the more our faith would be strengthen. It’s a positive circle.

We can duplicate what Jesus did, and even more, if we exercise our faith properly.

# 4, Persevere

Luke 8:11-15 ¹¹“This is the meaning of the parable: The seed is the word of God. ¹²Those along the path are the ones who hear, and then the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts, so that they may not believe and be saved. ¹³Those on the rock are the ones who receive the word with joy when they hear it, but they have no root. They believe for a while, but in the time of testing they fall away. ¹⁴The seed that fell among thorns stands for those who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by life’s worries, riches and pleasures, and they do not mature. ¹⁵But the seed on good soil stands for those with a noble and good heart, who hear the word, retain it, and by persevering produce a crop.

Perseverance is perhaps the most important key to get the word of God to work in your life. People who just try and see what happen will not last.

The Bible says life’s distraction and time of testing will come. It will look confusing. There will be unpleasant feeling.

After we plant the word of God into our souls and into our circumstances, things probably aren’t going to look very different immediately. It might actually seem worst than before.

The longer you have been a Christian, the more boring things will look like in the short-run. The honeymoon with God has long passed, but if you persevere, God will deliver His promises.

God doesn’t want whiners who whine at the first hint of hardship. God want us to speak the word of faith regardless of our circumstances.

Hebrews 11 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

2 Corinthians 4:13 And since we have the same spirit of faith, according to what is written, “I believed and therefore I spoke,”we also believe and therefore speak,

When situations look bad, and when you feel negative from within, keep speaking the word of God.

You might feel sick, but if you know in your heart that God has promised you healing, then keep speaking your healing out loud. If you are unemployed, but know in your heart that God is giving you a good job, or income of any kind, keep speaking abundance.

When I feel like procrastinating or being lazy, I speak out what I am going to do and why I am able to accomplish the tasks. Although I still feel lazy, my body and mind would find new energy that push me onward, and go ahead to do the tasks that I used to procrastinate under similar situations.

Romans 4:17 As it is written: “I have made you a father of many nations.”He is our father in the sight of God, in whom he believed—the God who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were.

The proper way to do it is to calls those things that are not as though they were. You don’t call things that are as though they are. You call thing that are not as though they were.

Man of faith call things that are not as though they were, until they are!!

Man of Doubts call things that are as though they are, until they are.

# 5 , Walk with the Holy Spirit

To be filled with God’s word is to be filled with the Spirit. You can’t have one without the other. Only the Holy Spirit can help you control the tongue.

Go to How to Live A Spirit Filled Life for deeper discussion on the Spirit.

Without the Holy Spirit, we are only as good as non-Christians who practice positive thinking and affirmation. This is why there has been a lot of buzz with The Law Of Attraction and all sort of new age techniques that have to do with verbal affirmation.

You see, many non-Christians can also create abundance and influence others by speaking positively about their situations. They have observed that there was this phenomenon, but they didn’t know why. It was like the discovery of the law of gravity.

The Bible says,

Matthew 7:21-23 “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’

1 Corinthians 13:2 and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.

It is possible to have the faith of God without obedience!! It is also possible to have perfect faith without the love of God.

The principle of spoken faith can work for you in this life, but without obedience to the Holy Spirit and the love of God, one will lose his heavenly reward, and it might even be possible to lose his salvation.

Therefore, even a non-Christian can be blessed in this life by the principle of spoken faith. No wonder there are so many successful non-Christians out there who rely on their own strength and their idols.

We as Children of God have much more powerful allies– God’s word and His Spirit– and if we work with them to our full capacity, we will indeed overcome this world and be on top of things. (Deu 28:13)

God does not show favoritism, whoever obeys His law of spoken faith will receive its benefits, but whoever violates this principle will suffer loss. In terms of this principle, it is not how much you love God or how sincere you are that counts, it’s whether you work with this principle that determines whether this principle serves you or hurts you.

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Other resources that I find useful

The Power Of the Tongue

Charles Capps Ministry of Faith

Coming Next: Testimonies Of Faith

The best way to learn a spiritual lesson is combining both scriptural teaching and practical experiences. In the next post I am going to show you the testimonies of faith in actions– How people recover from terminal illness, handicaps, sins, demonic influences, and financial hardship.

Go from Parable Of The Mustard Seed to the Next Post

Shame has been one nagging problem for me since 1998 when my dad forced me to participate in a ceremony that had to do with idols in Hong Kong.

I remembered how one time he stormed my room and counted with his fingers what he had done for me with his money, such as education, food, shelter, clothing… yet I chose to obey God. Since then, I became obsessed with getting a real job that can support my own living expense so I would no longer have to put up with this stress, and the shame that came from the fact that I, a Christian son, had been relying on my dad’s income from working as a priest of idols.

I was 16-17 years old then.

Long story short, now I am 27 years old, turning 28 in the coming September, yet I have been unemployed for a couple of years now, although I had attained a bachelor degree from a University and had worked a few jobs in the last 10 years. Right now I am jobless and still rely on my dad’s support.

Every day is a rehearsal of the same, but unemployment isn’t a problem that can be fixed overnight. Over the past 10 years I had became more timid after some rejections from jobs interviews, lack of interviews, and falling behind my peers in term of career.

But the last two years I had received a lot of consolations from God. It has been sabbath years for me.

Shame is still a nagging problem, even though I have been trying to avoid thinking about it most of the time. I just want to earn my own bread like the Bible instructs. (2Th 3:8)

Even my Christian brothers and sisters were judgemental about my financial situation. As I was dealing with the defeats and the shames in my memory, their hurtful words came up.

Shame.

My dad no longer pressured me like he did 10 years ago. But everyday I see him worrying about my future, going out to work in a job I know is not pleasing to God, and getting old. It pains me to no end.

No one whose hope is in you will ever be put to shame, … Psalms 25:3

In the past 6 months my dad has almost died in a couple of could-be-fatal accidents. The first one I was there. He barely maneuvered his van to dodge an incoming truck that drove by carelessly in a small road. The second one, his van lost control and turned 420 and crushed to the road barrier on the side of a highway. Had there been a vehicle that were coming near from behind, it could have collided with my dad’s van and killed him.

My fear is that my dad might somehow die before he sees me financially independent and accept Christ as his personal savor.

My worst fears usually turned out to become real. For example, being unemployed and rely on my dad was one major fear, now it totally realized. Another fear was that if I met a dream girl she would find me inadequate. I did meet a girl whom I thought was exactly the dream girl that I imagined, but she despised me. She is a Chinese Canadian, and is fluent in English. I was like a joke to her, and my broken English at the time must have aggravated that.

I sought the Lord, and he answered me; he delivered me from all my fears. Psalms 34:4

Suicidal thoughts

I know it’s wrong for a Christian to commit suicide. But I have been tempted to think about suicide for many years, to the point where I had been afraid of carrying it out. Not that I was afraid of dying, but I was afraid of being too fearless and impulsive one day I might actually kill myself).

For those of you who had suicidal thoughts, don’t be surprised. You are not alone. The thoughts came from the enemies – Satan and his dark force. See further below where I will explain more about our enemies and the spiritual battles.

So far by God grace I have never compromised. In the past I had brought a life insurance that would paid my family even if the insured (me) committed suicide (effective after 2 years of the 1st premium), but I’d canceled the insurance policy recently. I trust that God will keep me from falling into the suicidal trap.

Was it a generational curse?

As I go through the Freedom Journey Course , it instructs me to confess and pray about the sins that my ancestors have committed. Was it the generational curse that was part of the root causes of the problems that I have been struggling with? Such as financial struggle (Unable to land and hold a decent job), relationship (A few dream girls but never worked out), and mediocracy in general?

Nevertheless, I confessed all the known sins of my ancestors very completely, had to deal with some negative emotions that arose in the process, and probably suffered some demonic resistance during the whole thing.

After confessing my ancestors’ sins, and doing other steps in the Freedom Journey Course, I experienced greater spiritual freedom. The problem with a major addiction seemed to have shrunk so much. The Lord had mercy on me.

Go to Spiritual Cleansing if you want to know more about the warfare I had launched against this addiction, and I will update you on my journal if the freedom last over 30 days.

See? Spiritual battles are brutal. The enemies will attack you, curse you, and try to keep you in bondage. They will tell you to die. They can even use careless bro or sis and attack you through them. Just like what I had been through in the last 10 years.

Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that your brothers throughout the world are undergoing the same kind of suffering. 1 Peter 5:8-9

Did God lie?

So I have quoted two verses that promised I will not be put to shame, and that he would deliver me from my fears, but according to my real experience, it seemed to tell the opposite. Did God lie to me?

No, I don’t think so.

Let me explain the fear part. My dad hasn’t died yet. And he wasn’t the same oppressive dad that he was 10 years ago. Since I came home he had been taking care of me. I was surprised by the peace at home. God had been blessing my family and gave us more peace, comparing with 10 years ago.

And the girl who despised me wasn’t really my dream girl anyway! How could a true godly girl acted so immaturely and brought so much hurts and tears? (No we didn’t date, we were just bro and sis in a fellowship, but she went very far to let me know that she wasn’t interested. Rejection is fine, but she overdid it too many times) My real fear might actualize if I do marry her, a girl with an issue with pride!  God is reserving the best for me.

As for shame, although I am unemployed, I am called to work on this blogging ministry for God. In the future, it might just turn out to me a glorious job that I will forever be thankful for. Right now it’s still small, but who knows where God will lead this to?

No eye has seen,
no ear has heard,
no mind has conceived
what God has prepared for those who love him 1 Corinthians 2:9-10

A depressing day is a day goes wasted. Just one depressive thought can sap you of strength and motivation for an entire day.

Most of the time, regret is a product of creative thinking and excessive guilt, rather than a godly remorse. As long as we live, we will have setbacks and missed opportunities; and we will make tons of mistakes along the way. If the way you see things are pessimistic- meaning, you only see a glass half-empty instead of half-full- there will be no shortage of reasons for you to regret.

Regrets for the past

¹³… But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, Philippians 3:13

If you look back in life and regret choosing a certain path, or mourn for missed opportunities, just stop thinking that way the moment you catch yourself doing that!

It’s not fair to judge your past self based on the hindsight that you now have.

When you see missed opportunities, it means that you have become more mature, that you have made significant progress in term of insights and competence, and that you are able to achieve much more if you encounter similar situations again.

So the next time you see missed opportunities that you’d failed to see in the past, you should celebrate because it indicates that you have been growing. The more frequent and the sooner you spot missed opportunities that have passed you by, the more it indicates that you are rapidly improving and growing.

A lot of people can’t spot a missed opportunity! This is called unconscious incompetence.

Given abundance time, or the ability to travel back in time, anyone can make things perfect. But in reality, time is limited; it is always in the passing mode; you will lose it whether you use it or not.

The optimal way to live is to balance speed and quality; accept imperfection and just go along and improvise. You will make mistakes, but reality is not going to wait for you to correct every single mistake before you deliver- reality has deadlines!

And don’t spend time mourning for the past, because while you are doing that, opportunities in the present will elude you too, fast!

In my college years, I developed a habit of regrets. I would often mourn for opportunities I missed, and soon developed stress and worries about the future ones as well. Now that I am more wise, I look back and see that while I had intensive worries and stresses, I often failed to see opportunities that were abundance.

For example, I wasn’t good at finding a job in the co-op program (A program that students find a full-time four month job after every four months of study), and I had to quit it. Although I quitted co-op, I still had plenty of time in school that I can start a part-time business- i.e. create my own job- such as blogging! I didn’t need to feel bad about my situation.

Remember, there are always opportunities lying around, you just have to train your eyes to see them.

Regrets for sins

¹⁰Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death. 2 Corinthians 7:10

If you’re struggling with certain sins in your life, but are otherwise a solid Christian, then you don’t need to regret.

How do you define solid? As long as you sincerely repent every time you sin, rely on God and walk with Him every day and hour, and is seeking knowledge of Him and doing what you know is the right thing to do (Deu 29:29), you’re solid.

If you keep up this way, in time you will grow out of the sins that you are struggling with, so don’t make things worst by regretting.

Regret is rehearsal. By regretting sin, you’re rehearsing it in your mind, reinforcing the memory. What you think will become what you are; You will get stuck with the sin you regret.

The Bible makes it clear that no one is exempt from sin, but if you confess your sin, you will receive forgiveness (1 John 1:8-9). True repentance leaves no regret! This is God’s promise.

Repent! Regret isn’t repentance. Regret only brings negative emotions and thoughts, but don’t confuse it with genuine repentance and humility.

What about sins that have major consequences?

Forgiveness doesn’t guarantee pardon. Pardon is a remission of the legal consequences of an offense. You can’t expect people to forget and treat you the same as before. You will have to live with consequences of sin, in some cases consequences could last for life.

Sins also produce natural consequences, such as damaged health, financial loss, broken relationship, and dishonor.

All sins have consequences, we have to accept them as reminder of our weakness and to humble ourselves before the Lord.

And, who knows? God might just heal you and remove the consequences of sin.

Conclusions: How do you get over regrets?

Here is the list:

1. Be successful now: No need for regret or mid-life crisis. You can have success now if you start meditating on God’s word and obey, because God had promised that we will prosper if we obey His commands and think about His words day and night. (Psalm 1:2-3, Deuteronomy 28:13, John 15:4-7)
2. Let God speaks to you: God is the giver of consolations. If you practice spiritual disciplines such as prayer and solitude, in time you will learn how to pay attention to God’s voice, and every time He speaks, He gently reminds and comforts. Although the Lord does rebuke us, He will never do so carelessly like humans do. I tend to have excessive guilt and regrets easily, but instead of forcing myself to be positive, I let God speaks to my heart. Every time I do that, my self-doubts and imaginary guilt will be gone.
   
3. Speed over stall: Most obstacles are psychological rather than real. Regrets breed stalls. You have to realize that it doesn’t take really long to really make real progress in anything, be it skills, academics, careers, relationships, or any other achievements. If the matter you worry about is mainly an issue of competence, please understand that competence can be improved very quickly if you just stop stalling and start taking action.
   
4. Forgive yourselves: If you keep beating yourselves up over past sins and the consequences of sins, you haven’t forgiven yourselves yet. The Lord make it clear that if you don’t others, He will not forgive you (Matthew 18: 21-35). This includes forgiving yourself! If you don’t forgive yourself, the Lord won’t forgive you!
   
5. Repent and Godly Sorrow: Don’t beat yourself up and create worldly sorrow. A Christian is to walk with the Spirit, so he or she should feel guilty only if the Spirit of God rebukes him or her, and bring his or her sins to light. It’s easy to become legalistic and perfectionistic.
6. Write Journals: You don’t know what your thoughts are until you write them down. Memory is unreliable; it is a subjective interpretation of what really happened. And the longer time passed, the more easy it is to twist your memory. To prevent imaginative regret, make journal entry regularly so when you doubt yourself in the future, you can always refer to the journal and check what exactly were going on in the past. This help you sympathize with your past.
7. Acceptance: Almost 90%+ of the outcomes in life have occurred because of your choices and character. In the future you are likely to repeat the way you have done things in the past anyway, so don’t spend your energy to regret the past, but focus on character growth and learning to make wiser choices now. No matter how imperfect you were, this was you. You have to accept yourself, knowing that you have been trying the best, with the resources and experiences that you had at the times.

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True romance is like a wine, the best favor takes time to come out. It requires consistent prayers, and a lot of effort.

In Part 3, we discussed how hope, faith, and love related to purity. This time I am going deeper: How do these pillar concepts of Christianity relate to intimacy and romance?

In fact, the Bible says a lot about love between a man and a woman. Some passages are even metaphorically graphical, such as passages from the book of Song of Songs.

It is God who created romance and physical intimacy. He Himself has said a lot about it through His inspired words, so of course He has the best way to fulfill such needs.

Remember in Part 3 I said that hope can give us strong endurance? Knowing that God will fulfill our needs and give us a happy ending can help us endure temptations much better.

⁴ Delight yourself in the LORD
and he will give you the desires of your heart. Psalm 37

If we find delight from the Lord, it will become much easier to wait, to wait for God to give us what we desire. It is not the other way around. Immature people like to satisfy themselves first, before they will satisfy the requirements or conditions for the rewards.

It’s frustrating to deal with such people. They always scream for what they want, but never accept their responsibilities. They keep fighting for their rights, but never take up their obligations first.

We can do things our way, but…

Imagine if we entertained these God-given desires in our own ways, wouldn’t it be chaotic?

If we shared our most precious gift with more than one person, in random timing, would you still call that gift precious?

¹⁵ Drink water from your own cistern,
running water from your own well.¹⁶ Should your springs overflow in the streets,
your streams of water in the public squares?

¹⁷ Let them be yours alone,
never to be shared with strangers.

¹⁸ May your fountain be blessed,
and may you rejoice in the wife of your youth.

¹⁹ A loving doe, a graceful deer—
may her breasts satisfy you always,
may you ever be captivated by her love.

²⁰ Why be captivated, my son, by an adulteress?
Why embrace the bosom of another man’s wife?  Proverbs 5:15-20

God created marriage. It is the only way, and the best way, to fulfill sexual needs, legitimately and morally.

Sex and intimacy before marriage, or outside of marriage will only bring you sorrows and curses in the long run. Pleasures and excitement from sin are but a moment! Um… make that a few moments if you like!

Marriage is an effective measure against sexual temptations!

One of the chief functions of marriage is protection. It protects both man and woman from sexual temptations:

²But since there is so much immorality, each man should have his own wife, and each woman her own husband…

⁹But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion. 1 Corinthians 7:2, 9

Does that mean marriage will fix your problems totally, even with lust?

No, marriage is a lifelong classroom. If your spouse was the nicest person on Earth before marriage, he or she could turn into your meanest coach who revealed and rebuked your character flaws, until you were willing to change or repent.

If a Christian believe he or she can use marriage to replace his or her problems, such as family conflicts or lust, he or she will be disappointed.

God loves us too much to give us an easy way out.

I personally know many people who think they can finally get spoiled when they get married. Some of them who did get married actually signed up for the harshest training camp that will last for the rest of his or her life.

Many dating couples broke up before they could make it to marriage, because they never admitted their wrongs when conflicts arose. They just kept pointing fingers at each other, hoping the other person would say sorry first. And if they don’t get their ways, things can escalate. I have seen someone badmouthing her ex on the Internet, guy who acted hysterically and carried a knife around in mediation meeting, and wife who would call every friend of her husband and leader of his church and make a scene every time they had a fight. Nasty!

Till the end, very few people repented, but then they get into new relationship to heal the previous wounds! And the cycle repeats!

Happily ever after belongs to the humble and meek, not the narcissist and stubborn.

Marriage can be sweet, if you invest yourselves into it, before and after marry

We will sow what we reap in marriage. Even for single Christians, if they want to marry someday, it is crucial to start investing in their future spouses now by praying for that special person regularly. Yes, even before they meet that person.

When you start doing that, you will notice a few major changes.

Change 1: Sanctification

I started praying for my future wife when I was 10. It was a starry night… I think… I don’t exactly remember the stars but it was at night for sure, and I did look up at the sky the first time I prayed for my future wife.

Since then, my view toward relationship had started to change over the years. I had changed from wishing to have many girl friends and sexes before settle down to have one girl friend only; and later, from one girl friend only to no premarital sex; and from there, to no physical touch before marriage; and eventually down to no dating at all!

Now I believe in Christian courtship! Meaning, no random try out, but to carefully observe and discern a girl’s characters before making any attempt to discuss possibility of a relationship with the girl’s parents/guardian… then talk to the girl!

Change 2: Romantic

Over the years, I have become more and more romantic. As a single person, I can’t prove that to you, but I can sense it. I started making songs for my future wife a few years back. I have been writing journals, hoping someday a special person will read it. I have been learning about how to be a man and a leader, so I can lead my future family when the time comes. I have been taking good care of my body, exercising frequently, and even learned some beauty cares!

I have fantasied about massaging my wife after I get married. One time I was receiving a massage from a massagist, when I told him I wanted to learn massage and why, he rebuked me strongly! (I was in mainland China. Chinese men still have this pride thing)

Change 3: Dating-Resistant

Many friends I know who are close to my age have been in a relationship more than once.

If you believe that God has someone special reserved just for you, you will have peace and security. You will not date around for fear of aging alone.

⁹However, as it is written:
“No eye has seen,
no ear has heard,
no mind has conceived
what God has prepared for those who love (or wait for) him” 1 Corinthians 2:9

If you believe in this promise, anything less than God’s best will fade.

God’s plan is beautiful. Once you see it with your inner eyes, everything else, including and especially lust, will reveal their ugly selves comparing to the beautiful picture that you see.

You will not be able to date someone you know you are not going to spend the rest of your life with. You can’t, because that will make you worry what happens if God’s best suddenly shows up tomorrow! Or shows up but withdraw immediately after he or she sees that you already have someone!

I wonder how many guys and gals have repelled God’s best because they have been going out with someone! Heh heh! (You think I am mean? No, I’ve seen too many of that I don’t want to be heartbroken anymore!)

Deep in your heart, you know what you want. You know when a person isn’t the husband/wife that you like to have. And similarly, you will be very confident when you finally meet someone you can grow old with. Anything in between is NO! And God’s best will only appear in your life once, assuming that you have obeyed God’s plan A!

What if you miss out God’s best? Well… God always has a plan B, because He know that you and I are weak. But let us focus on plan A while it is still intact!

Beware of dating, especially with non-Christian, for you can adopt destructive habits through dating.

It’s a lifelong practice

Again, we sow what we reap. What you do before you marry will have consequences that last through your marriage. And for those who have married, it’s important to know that your spouse will change if you change first. Lasting romance only come from hard work and spiritual disciplines.

At the end of the day, it’s inner beauty that counts. Outward beauty will fade (Proverbs 31:30). However, every spiritual blessing that come from hard work and obedience will eventually become outward beauty! For example, many godly men in the Bible were handsome, and had beautiful wife or children. It was a bonus blessing from God.

But if you hurt relationships and family by sinning, how can you expect wounded souls to become beautiful outwardly? Guilt, abuse, or immorality can turn attractive persons ugly.

Ultimately, it’s God’s love that can strengthen marriage and repel lust. With God’s love, marriage can become an effective defense against lust. And hope of marrying God’s best will strengthen us against temptations even if we’re single. (Unless you have the gift of celibacy. In that case, you are waiting for the marriage between Christ and the Church)

Coming Next

I am going to talk about God’s word and how it can cleanse our soul and shield us from all temptations.

Go to Part 5, Spiritual Cleansing

Go to Christian Purity

Do not be grieved, for the joy of the LORD is your strength. Nehemiah 8:10

¹⁶Be joyful always; ¹⁷pray continually; ¹⁸give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. 1 Thessalonians 5

Depression, or merely sadness, can sap you of energy, motivation, and strength. In a long run, it also saps you of health!

The side effect of depression, whether clinical or not, is lethargy. It can disguise itself as laziness, which produce guilt. Guilt is a fuel of depression.

I used to be stern serious! I would often analyze the past and come up with reasons for regrets. Regrets had become my greatest fears.

I also used to compare with others. I would see things that others had achieved and concluded that I could have achieved the same things if I were more careful, more courageous, more etc… Then I would feel like crap.

Even when I just achieved something, I would feel the urge to look for my inadequacy and criticize it, instead of celebrating the achievement.

As a result, lethargy became a strong hold for me for many years, until I realized the problem and grew out of the habit of depressive thinking.

Then the power of joy became obvious. When I am joyful, my productivity would increase much more and become more stable.

Give Thanks

Thankfulness rewards the good, but too much self-criticisms punish everything. It kills both the good and the bad.

To give thank is the best cure to the habit of complaining, bitterness, depression, and by extension, lethargy.

Try and give thank for even the tiny little things, you will be amazed at the result if you do it consistently for a few days and carefully observe the change.

For example, when I give thank for completing a small task such as posting an article on my blog, I would find more strength to do the next task, instead of lacking motivation and needing to take more breaks.

2. Do Not Fear

¹³ The lazy man says, “There is a lion in the road!
A fierce lion is in the streets!” Proverbs 26:13

It’s easy to associate work with fears such as pain, failures, illness, danger, and whatever that makes you afraid.

Here is a personal example, I have a quite heavy condition of astigmatism, and medium shortsightedness on my right eye. I also have bothering floaters floating around that often distract me while I read.

These conditions started to develop when I was 15, I was very much concerned. I worried about my eyes day and night, and tried to avoid using my eyes for intensive activities. After many years, I had unconsciously developed the habit of avoiding study, and my attention span became shorter than my peers by the time I entered University. That put me at a serious disadvantage.

But entertainments that were close vision intensive such as watching TV, computer gaming, and reading manga could numb my fears, and so as the years passed, I became hopelessly, progressively addicted to those activities. Whenever I felt depressed, I would go back to them for temporary comforts, even though I was fighting to resist and force myself to do productive things instead.

The more I fear, the more I got trapped by that fear and actualized it.

When you create fears, you are at the same time conditioning yourself to avoid the fears you created. Whether you are doing it consciously or not.

While you and I are surely not as stupid as the “lazy man” as is depicted in the bible, who made up a lion in his head, you and I could make up a lot of fears in our minds.

For me, my made-up fear was going blind. I didn’t know that my eyes conditions were results of improper diets and mental stress, not just strenuous activities for the eyes, and that the conditions of my eyes can be reversed!

Similarly, a salesman might find it hard to sit down and make sale calls, for fear of rejections. A unemployed person might dread taking actions to look for work for fear of landing in an abusive work environment, or fear of working hard to make someone rich.

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3. Avoid Perfectionism and Accept Uncertainty

⁶ Sow your seed in the morning,
and at evening let not your hands be idle,
for you do not know which will succeed,
whether this or that,
or whether both will do equally well. Ecclesiastes 11:6

Being uncertain of the results and worrying about failures produce procrastination. Most works involve more than 2 steps, and it is uncertain whether the current step actually lead to the end result.

It is uncomfortable to shoot for the stars, because you never know whether you will hit something. You don’t know how many more steps you have to take before you get the desired result.

While in University, one of the required class for my major was programming. For that course, the term project was to simulate the game of Monopoly. And we were working in groups.

In my group, I was always the last one to take actions. I had very little understanding of programming at the time, so during most of the course I felt lost. I usually came to understand what each assignment and project was about at the very last minute.

I hated to come up with new code to solve a problem I had never seen before. I hated the feeling of uncertainties: uncertainty of whether the solution I just made up would work or not.

So I chose to debug the code for my group, since debugging came last. They usually finished their parts on the weekdays, and I spent the weekends to debug and perfect the code.

I just didn’t have the guts to “just do it”. I was a person who needed to have complete information before taking actions. I would wait for the doers in my group to tackle the uncertainties first, so I could work on the information they left behind.

Many time when my group tried to run the program and crushed I had a very uncomfortable feeling, because I never knew when the code will ever run properly.

If you have ever been a novice of programming like me, then you know what I am talking about. There are no guarantee whether you will find out all the bugs and whether you can come up with something that solve the next technical challenge. And you don’t even know what the next technical challenge maybe.

You just don’t know when you will finish the program. There are full of uncertainties in programming!

But every time when I do finally summon up the courage to tackle the code, the task would eventually get done. And I would question myself, “it was easier than I thought, why didn’t I just go for it and finish it at once? “

And so is everything in life.

Ecclesiastes 11:6 says it clearly. You never know which specific action you take will bear fruit, but you have to keep taking actions, because some of the actions will bear fruit. Don’t wait for certainty. If you’re programmer, just program. If you’re writer, just write. If you’re composer, just compose.

Don’t wait for good mood. Don’t wait until you feel certain about it.

And don’t worry about the quality of the result, why?

Because…

If you wait, and work very slowly, you will make mistakes slowly, then you correct them slowly, and you will get the result slowly.

If you work quickly, you will make all the same mistakes within a shorter period, then you correct them quickly, and you will get the same result, quickly.

Slow or quick, you make the same mistakes. Same result, but quick is better than slow.

4. Prepare Your Tools

²⁷ Finish your outdoor work
and get your fields ready;
after that, build your house. Proverbs 24:27

If you want to build solid habits, you should do all the preparation at the beginning when your willpower is still strong.

For example, If you want to adopt a healthier diet, or develop a habit of going to gym, you can make regular appointments with a gym coach, or enroll in any training class in a fitness or recreation club. You have paid the money, and there are people doing it with you, such as a coach or classmates, so it is easier to maintain the commitment in the long run. As for healthier diet, you may order grocery online and make recurring order that ship healthy food to your home regularly.

That way you do the prep work only once, but the momentum will serve you continually.

Everyone’s willpower is the same. Willpower alone will not establish solid habits for you. It may give you a burst of energy initially, but it dies out very quickly.

You need to build a mechanism that provides accountability, quick reward and punishment, and ease of convenience.

Invest in expensive tools such as juicers, blenders, chair, bicycle, laptop, or whatever that give you ease and convenient for the purpose of developing the habits you want.

Poor investment in tools will give poor results. For example, I was a very frugal person. I needed a big computer monitor and a good chair because of long hours of work before the computer, but I refused to admit that I needed them. I just settled with my laptop screen and a cheap dinner chair. Soon I had severe pains in my neck and my entire back.

I had to receive acupuncture and massage treatments. And my focus were heavily reduced by the back pains. I wanted to work more, but my psychological instinct refused to let me work by reducing my attention span.

It was an subconsciously self-defensive response. My instinct sensed severe consequences that were coming if I worked more.

But my conscious mind interpreted that self-defensive instinct as laziness.

Finally my parents bought me a big screen and an office chair. The chair wasn’t the best, scientifically designed chair ever, but after I used it my back pains were gone. And the big monitor allowed me to read longer hours, and with better neck posture. Going to yoga class helped too.

I used to believe that tools and classes were for weak persons and procrastinators. I thought they just didn’t want to work, so they spent the money and time to buy the pretty fancy stuff and joined some expensive programs to make themselves feel better, instead of just putting up the effort.

Now I am a believer.

Also, an organized and intelligently designed office do improve productivity by tons. Better to put some picture, fragrance, and plants there too.

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5. Avoid Heavy Meals and Drowsiness

²¹ for drunkards and gluttons become poor,
and drowsiness clothes them in rags. Proverbs 23:21

Drowsiness and gluttony are twin brother! Heavy meals decrease energy. Also on the anti-energy list are greasy, sugary, dairy, and junk food in general.

Sugar and caffeine filled food or beverage make you hyper, but reduce attention span and focus. Back in the day when I didn’t know better, I took them while I studied for exams, and I couldn’t do any significant learning afterward even though I felt very much awake.

I used to be a believer in milk. I used to have a glass of milk before exams. Now I understand why my mind turned blank during the exams! Drink soy milk instead! I mean pure, organic, and sugarless soy milk (No refined sugar, but natural ones are fine. Some brown sugars in the coffee shops are essentially white sugars in brown color).

Raw fruits and plants, on the other hand, give stable energy and nutrients to the body, and cleanse the body of toxins that come from the environment and standard diets. I am not talking about one apple a day or 1 to 2 oz of vegetables. I am talking about filling your stomach with them! Drink large dose of juices! Eat a lot of fresh vegetables!

Speaking of stable energy, natural, organic rice is stable fuel for the body. The energy that comes from natural sugar in the rice can last for many hours.

One time I did a 40 days fast, and on the last 20 days I only needed 4 hours of sleep. I was very energetic and alert. I realized how drowsy I was when I was consuming regular diets.

6. Wake Up with The Sunlight

¹⁹He made the moon for the seasons;
The sun knows the place of its setting.
²⁰ You appoint darkness and it becomes night,
In which all the beasts of the forest prowl about.
²¹ The young lions roar after their prey
And seek their food from God.
²² When the sun rises they withdraw
And lie down in their dens.
²³ Man goes forth to his work
And to his labor until evening.  Psalm 104:19-23

Different creatures have different biological clocks. Some beasts were created to be active at night, and some are to be active during the day. Humans operate best when we wake up as the sun rises.

It is now pretty well known that the morning is the most productive time. Some say an hour in the morning equal to 3 hours in the afternoon in term of productivity. I totally agree.

As the day pass, the burden and usage of our mind increase as well. We can’t reserve our energy and capacity of our minds for later in the day, because our minds are always active.

The brain will invent tasks for itself and keep itself busy, whether you like it or not. Taking deep breaths will relax it, but the default mode of the brain is to find something to release its energy upon.

If you don’t assign important tasks for your brain first thing in the morning, it will go after low yielding tasks such as checking emails, social chattering, worrying, daydreaming, fidgeting, surfing the Net, and etc.

Divide your day into two half. There are approximately 16 hours of wakeful time for an average person. Allocate your first 8 hours for work. Assign the first 4 hours of the first half of your day for important tasks such as studying for professional exams, or intelligence intensive works such as drafting a proposal.

Use the remaining hours of the first half for less important but urgent work such as business calls, checking and replying emails, and any other low yielding work.

8-10 hours of works per day should be enough. Any more than that is a waste of time due to diminishing returns, and can even be harmful to your health.

It is important to wind up the day. Release and let go of all petty concerns of the day and enjoy a quiet evening. Reduce factors that is bad for sleep hygiene such as lights, noises, crappy food, alcohol, coffee, and upsetting conversations or TV programs.

Bad sleep hygiene results in drowsiness during the day, which is one of the major factors for laziness. (See number 6)

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7. Observe and Emulate

⁶ Go to the ant, you sluggard;
consider its ways and be wise!

⁷ It has no commander,
no overseer or ruler,

⁸ yet it stores its provisions in summer
and gathers its food at harvest.

⁹ How long will you lie there, you sluggard?
When will you get up from your sleep?

¹⁰ A little sleep, a little slumber,
a little folding of the hands to rest-

¹¹ and poverty will come on you like a bandit
and scarcity like an armed man. ^[a] Proverbs 6:6-10

Emulation is the natural product of observation. When you observe something or someone attentively over a long period of time, you will emulate its qualities.

Ant isn’t smart, but they are good at being consistent and at dividing tasks into smaller parts. They probably don’t understand what difficult means, since an ant’s brain is 1/40000 of the size of human’s.

Size, complexity, and difficulty of work cannot intimidate ants; Therefore, ants don’t procrastinate!

They just look for the next thing to do and do it. When they encounter a food that is bigger than they can carry, they divide it.

Also, the scripture warns us of napping. Napping can be bad because it reduces qualities of sleep for the night, thus create the need for nap on the next day. And the cycle goes on.

8. Go Hungry

¹⁰For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: “If a man will not work, he shall not eat.” ¹¹We hear that some among you are idle. They are not busy; they are busybodies. 2 Thessalonians 3:10-11

²⁶ The laborer’s appetite works for him;
his hunger drives him on.  Proverbs 16:26

Slothful man is oftentime a meddler. Slothful man will busy himself with all kind of things, but will not commit to any major responsibility.

If you meddle in other people’s affair or gossip, then you probably have too little responsibilities of your own and are being too idle.

Meddling Christians bring so much trouble to the church. They create stress for the real producers, leak secrets to third party, and throw accusations at others.

Meddler has no clear job description, but love to throw advice at everybody, especially at the authorities and the real servants of the church who do real work with sweat and love. Meddlers (Busybodies who are actually idle) regard themselves highly. (Proverbs 26:16)

They also respond bitterly when they think their advice is not heeded. This is why they are often the originators of gossips! They feel bitter at people who don’t seem to follow their advice and complain to others about it. They use secret information they coveted through all kind of means as evidences to convince a third party who is not involved with the issue.

Hunger is a great cure for slothfulness or meddling. When I did my 40 days fast, someone said I was meeker than usual. I was able to sleep much less due to the benefit of detox. My mind was crystal clear.

If you are struggling with a lack of motivation to work, try to reduce your food intake. This is what I do to myself. It’s actually healthier this way. Often time, your body is fatigue and overwhelmed due to the toxins that come from unhealthy diets.

In a developed country, we tend to eat much more than we need, and we eat meals that make the stomach full but lack real nutrients. Gluttony!

If you’re not exercising your body, your body doesn’t need as much food as it does when you engage in physical labor such as going to gym.

As for mental work, it’s the same, if you tend to avoid work, then avoid eating more than your body needs too. Keep your food intake to the bare minimum.

Don’t let security or gluttony take away your drive and will to work.

Appetite is a great source of power, utilize it.

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9. Move Your Body

¹² The sleep of a laborer is sweet,
whether he eats little or much,
but the abundance of a rich man
permits him no sleep.  Ecclesiastes 5:12

On top of other benefits to health, exercise is also important for sleep hygiene. A rich man who lacks physical labor but only engages in mental work such as counting money will find it harder to have a good night of sleep.

Studies show that it is optimal for a healthy adult to walk more than 10,000 steps per day, and no less than 5000 steps.

10. Avoid Idle Chatter

²³ In all labor there is profit,
But idle chatter^[a]leads only to poverty. Proverbs 14:23

“He who only does the talk but no chop chop will produces nothing!” (By Me)

Conversation is addictive.

It’s easy to mistake idle chatters for “fellowship”.

When I had the addiction of idle chatters, I believed I needed regular heart-to-heart meeting with like-minded Christian and pour out my heart to them, and during the meeting I just went on talking.

You can get addicted to spiritual sharing!

Recently, I have been burying myself into this blogging project, and realize that I can go on without heart-to-heart conversations like this for more than a month. I don’t even talk much at all for most days of the week, except on Friday and Sunday when I take Kung Fu classes.

Building this website is a profitable project. If I talk to someone and share my spiritual insight in person, I am only serving one person, and all that are said during the conversation will pass. But for written work, it will work 24/7 for me for years to come, and a lot more people will receive the benefits.

Building a website is a lot of labor. Obviously when I am working on this project, I can’t talk. But thinking about the future this project will bring is a great joy that keeps me going.

Idle chatter grows.

Like any other addiction. The more you enjoy idle chatter, the more you become dependent on it. You will feel a void if you’re deprived of it suddenly.

When I was in University, I often end up talking with random friends I run into, instead of just quietly engaging in my studies. Years later, I don’t know where these random people are and what they’re doing right now, but the idle chatters produced nothing of lasting value for me today.

Use your time to build things that last!

Last words

By now you might be able to spot a slothful person very quickly. I admit it usually took me quite a while before I realized the damage and the true character of a slothful person.

Cut all association with them. Don’t trust them with anything, even if you feel lonely at working by yourself. Otherwise you will get hurt, you will be meddled, you will be gossiped against, and you will be disappointed!

In the near future, I might write a post about slothful people, and what kind of traps they will pose to the good-meaning, but unaware individuals or groups! That means YOU!

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