Each month I trust God to give me something timely and special for our World Changers. I never try to figure out what I am going to write; I just trust that when the time comes God will inspire me. Just as I sat down to write this letter the Spirit of God whispered something in my ear to share with you. This very occurrence is a great example of deciding something and then trusting God to provide His part. God has already done His part concerning all of our needs. The challenge is for us to believe and choose to have that provision. No believer is waiting on God because He has given us “all things that pertain to life and godliness…” This month I want to encourage you to make some powerful new choices for an incredible quality of life. If you’ve been around me very much you know that I often make statements like, “I always win! Things always work out to my good! I always come out on top.” Keep in mind I never seek to win in a way that causes someone else to lose. I want everyone to win with me! So, always avoid the desire to see others suffer, be punished, or lose. When I first started making these types of acknowledgments in my time of prayer and worship I was in Bible College. The students and faculty that heard me worship and pray in this manner thought I was all about ego. Ironically, they nick-named me “Mr. Self-Sufficient!” I knew that I was doing things differently. I was acknowledging what God said about me, I was persuading my heart of God’s reality, and I was overcoming a life of pessimism and negativity. I made a deliberate choice to only acknowledge the “good things that were in me in Christ.” Philemon 6 prescribed this as a way to make my faith become effective. There is a tendency for us to think that good things happen to certain types of people. Many times this is an unconscious way to justify our unwillingness to believe God’s truth about us! When we see such a huge gap between the life we live and the life we are promised we tend to find some way to justify where we are rather than face our fears about assuming responsibility and walking in faith! Ecclesiastes 9:11 gives us some much needed insight about success and opportunity. The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to men of understanding, nor favor to men of skill; but time and chance happen to them all. If time and chance come to all men, why do some succeed and others do not? Why do some seem to get all the breaks and others seem to get all the trouble? If you have low self-worth, if you think taking responsibility is unfair, if you have any tendency toward feeling like a victim, or if you struggle with guilt, the solution is the one thing you dread hearing: the problem is the beliefs of your heart. I’m not saying you do not have enough faith! You have plenty of faith. The problem is you are using your faith to believe all the wrong things about you! No one rises to a quality of life that is greater than the beliefs of their heart. The great news is you don’t have to go out and learn about success. You don’t have to go out and do anything, but you do have to go inward and do some things. The place of rest is only found after labor. I’m not talking about religious labor; I’m talking about the labor to persuade your heart of the truth about who you are in Jesus and what you have in Him! When that is your reality you start seeing and seizing the opportunities that have been there all along. Several years ago there was a wildly successful DVD and book called The Secret. Many people were encouraged through it to believe for a better life and believe they would begin attracting to them all the things they desired. Well, I’ll tell you a secret about the real secret. The real secret is this: You don’t need to attract opportunity to you, it’s already there! What you need is to have your eyes opened to see the opportunity that is already there and have a sense of who you are that empowers you to pursue it! This incredible paradigm shift starts with a choice, an intention! Faith sees the end it desires but, more importantly, it chooses the end it desires. Don’t be afraid to choose the life you want. Start by choosing the kind of person you want to be. Decide how you will respond to conflict. Determine now how you will handle challenges. Will poverty rule over you or will you allow prosperity to guide your decisions? For too long we have tried to confess that prosperity would come, that we would overcome all obstacles, but we never decided who we are in Jesus. Use your faith to live who you are in Him, decide what kind of character you want, and everything else will form from that. In the place of rest we decide who we are in Jesus and all else follows. You are surrounded by opportunity. Your ability to perceive it and your courage to pursue it are based on the person you believe yourself to be. When you believe the truth about you – in Jesus – grace will flow from your heart and make you able to “take hold of the promise and bring it unto yourself” (the Greek meaning of the word “receive.”) This week I am on a writing retreat working on my long awaited book on the heart. Brenda and I got away from home to hide out and write. We have a special place we go when I feel inspired and need to retreat. This is one of those projects that I have been making notes on for thirty five years. When it is finished it will probably be four different books. I believe this series of books will be a new door opener for our Operation One Billion. I really do believe this will drastically change the way people see and walk with God. Please consider the things in this letter. Look at areas of your life that you want to change. Decide who you would be and how you would act and feel if that change took place, then use your faith to embrace those qualities in you in Christ.

Blessings to You!