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World Changer Letter: December 2016

I hope you had a great Thanksgiving! But even more than having a great holiday, I hope you are being thankful every day for the benefits God has brought and is bringing to your life. If you took me up on my free gift offer for Creating Happy Holidays and if you applied what you learned, I know you have already started seeing a transformation in your holiday experience.

I also hope you have taken advantage of our special offer on The Miraculous Power of Thankfulness. This series is designed to move from Thanksgiving as a holy day we experience to a way of life that shapes our experiences.

I’ll never forget a journey God took me on several years ago. I began to realize a phenomenon trying to emerge in my own life that I had seen in the lives of pastors I worked with and advised. A pastor could have 195 people in his congregation who were happy with his ministry and have five who were critical and negative and the five unhappy influenced him/her more than the 195 that were satisfied.

Usually the pastor would change his messages to something aimed at the five discontented instead of continuing to nurture the 195 contented. I saw what had been good leaders change the focus of their ministry, drive their church down over a few discontented people and ultimately have a completely negative paradigm shift because of a handful of discontented people.

This is exactly what happens in our daily lives. We focus on what’s going wrong instead of what’s going right. This trains our brains to magnify the negatives and ignore the positives. We know that wherever we place our attention we expand our brain’s sensitivity to that problem. It seems as if the problem is growing when it’s actually our capacity to experience the problem that is growing.

Since we have authority over ourselves anything we continue to do is like giving a command to our mind, brain and nervous system that says, “This is what I want to experience!” The more we experience that particular factor, the more it spreads into other areas of our life. Before long we have a complete shift in the way we see and experience everything in our world. Why? Because we chose to focus on the negatives instead of the positives!

The real problem comes as we, over time, so affect our heart that we can no longer find the good things in life. Proverbs says the crooked heart can find no good. A crooked heart is one that has been so trained to see life a certain way that it even bends God’s Word to conform to its negative perception.

This is what the Lord spoke to my heart when I was being tempted as a pastor to focus on the negatives. “Any day you are not thankful you are beginning to backslide.” Unthankfulness may be the very first indicator that we have lost awareness of God since God daily loads us with benefits His mercies are renewed daily and He is continually trying to lead us out of the valley of the shadow of death and into green pastures. We always have things for which to be thankful. So, I know that any day I am not thankful I have taken my eyes off of God and His provision and placed my attention on my lack, pain or struggles.

I know that when I put my attention on the negatives it will first affect my attitude and it will eventually affect the people around me because of the way I will treat them, but ultimately it will affect my heart which means it negatively affects my faith and changes my sense of identity! Then, just as Jesus warned in Mark 4, unless you influence your heart you simply get more of what you’ve got.

But just as sure as this can be a destructive syndrome, I can – by shifting my focus – create a life-giving scenario where my life gets better and better. The more I choose to focus on the benefits I have in Christ, my identity in Christ, the fact that Heaven is my eternal home, my sins are forgiven, I am loved by God or anything else that is working, my heart and mind become more aware of all the other good things in my life. In fact, the more I focus on and give thanks for the good things, the less I am able to even recognize the things that are not working. Even if nothing gets better I feel like they are getting better. I enjoy more of what I have instead of thinking I need more to enjoy!

The word “holiday” comes from the words “holy day.” From a biblical perspective holidays were days of rest and celebration set aside to enjoy life, enjoy our family and celebrate God’s goodness in our lives.

As a New Covenant believer I have the Holy Spirit inside me and I have a special connection to God every day; therefore, every day is a holy day. Proverbs 15:15 says, “He who is of a merry heart has a continual feast.” My translation of that is, “every day’s a holiday and every meal is a banquet!” It is my goal to help you discover life to its fullest (John 10:10), but it’s also my goal to help you enjoy and celebrate life.

Remember, if you haven’t downloaded your free copy of Creating Happy Holidays it is still available. And, if you’re ready to take a whole new step in a life of thankfulness check out The Miraculous Power of Thankfulness.

Thank you for your friendship and financial support. Your continued faithfulness is going to make it possible for us to reach farther than ever before. In 2017 we will expand the reach of our broadcast, we will publish new books and teaching series, we will start Third World Bible Schools, we will have more seminars and expand our school of ministry to leaders in America, plus a lot more. Because of you we will continue to

Change the way the world sees God!

In the service of the King,

Jim Richards