“If you want God to expedite your PRAYERS, then learn how to expedite God in your life.”
“If you want to be someone else’s everything- then learn how to be ‘everything’ to someone first.”
“If you want priority service, then learn how to give priority service.”
Personal truth: Here I am praying, working, and striving each day for more..burning with desire to be used more in God’s kingdom….to be something more than a seat filler. For God to open the doors of opportunity wider and allow me to walk through them; and FULLY EXPECTING HIM TO DO SO…
Yet while expecting- I continue NEGLECTING: the things I need to change about myself.
I may be working hard every single day, both physically and spiritually, but that is NOT enough.
What good is all my hard work, blood, sweat, and tears- if the ‘quality’ of the work being done is not usable. I become a product that nobody wants- a ‘reject’ that remains on the shelf to be discarded at a later time.
If ‘in the doing’ of my work I continue allowing myself to become easily frustrated, angry, and/or fall into fits of repeated cursing, regardless of reason-
then- I should not be expecting, until I begin CORRECTING.
By correcting- we demonstrate to God we are listening and more importantly ‘engaged and responsive’.
I am currently in the process of actively refinishing part of a church, which I view as active in God’s ministry work. But if I allow myself to ‘explode in fits of anger, cursing, or maintain a overall frustrated mood, then what good is the work?’
‘I am here working to serve God, to spend time with God, as I work… to be worked on by God.’ How can this happen if I work in a begrudging frustrated mood? Regardless if I live in pain, I must change the condition of my heart to one of gratitude and thanks for being allowed the blessed opportunity.’
Colossians 3:32– Work cheerfully at all you do… as if you were working for God Himself, because we are!
Effect Of Thought On Circumstance– James Allen ‘As A Man Thinketh’
Men do not attract that which they want, but that which they are. Their whims, fancies, and ambitions are thwarted at every step, but their inmost thoughts and desires are fed with their own food, be it foul or clean. The “divinity that shapes our ends” is in ourselves; it is our very self. Only himself manacles man: thought and action are the gaolers of Fate—they imprison, being base; they are also the angels of Freedom—they liberate, being noble. Not what he wishes and prays for does a man get, but what he justly earns. His wishes and prayers are only gratified and answered when they harmonize with his thoughts and actions.
In the light of this truth, what, then, is the meaning of “fighting against circumstances?” It means that a man is continually revolting against an effect without, while all the time he is nourishing and preserving its cause in his heart. That cause may take the form of a conscious vice or an unconscious weakness; but whatever it is, it stubbornly retards the efforts of its possessor, and thus calls aloud for remedy.
Men are anxious to improve their circumstances, but are unwilling to improve themselves; they therefore remain bound. The man who does not shrink from self-crucifixion can never fail to accomplish the object upon which his heart is set. This is as true of earthly as of heavenly things. Even the man whose sole object is to acquire wealth must be prepared to make great personal sacrifices before he can accomplish his object; and how much more so he who would realize a strong and well-poised life?
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