Exodus 11:3 The Lord made the Egyptians respect His people. Even the officials and all the people considered Moses to be a very great man.
******
God has caused you to be respected by those who are naturally inclined to disregard you because of race, religion, culture, or economic status. You have gained the favor of those in power because God has placed you in a position to serve them.
You are kind, trustworthy, and compassionate. You are loyal and dependable. You are confident and comfortable in your own skin. Your submission to God’s authority has caught the attention of human authority figures and caused them to admire you.
You are respected wherever you go. You maintain a wide circle of influence and are surrounded by powerful people who are inspired by your call and willing to help you on your journey.
As you hear God’s words, your faith surges. Supernatural energy infuses you with a heavenly mindset. As you focus your attention on Kingdom goals, you are simultaneously improving the world in which you reside.
In this way, you are living in two realms at once. You are a citizen of Heaven, and an ambassador of Christ. Your heart is set on things above, and your days are filled with bringing heaven to earth.
The spiritual sound waves of that still small voice within, creates melody in your mind and harmony in your heart. This music of heaven shifts your gaze away from human struggles and toward the throne room of your King.
You are able to enjoy the presence and comfort of God, while existing in a finite dimension. You reap the benefits of a dual reality where His Kingdom is as real to you as the world in which you live.
A good person can look forward to happiness.Proverbs 10:28
****************
God is rewarding you with a life of adventure, suspense, and joyful celebration. He also promises to bring you home to live with Him forever when your role as a human comes to an end.
As His child, you know that God is able to fulfill all the great and powerful promises He has given in His word.
He promises to never leave you or turn on you. He promises to love and be merciful to you. He promises to give you peace and rest, even in the midst of life’s storms.
The belief in God’s benevolence gives you a positive outlook on life and rewards you daily with a sense of gratitude.
You live your life with confidence, certain that God is managing the details of your life and successfully guiding you towards your destiny.
Eventually, your time on this planet will come to an end, and you will be released from the limitations of this physical realm. Your eyes will be opened to the spirit realm.
There, in the expanse of a dimension too immense to imagine, you will receive your ultimate reward as Jesus welcomes you home with open arms and a cheerful, “Well done!”
As hard as it is for us to believe, we have more power over our thoughts than we ever imagined. We find it is perfectly fine to set a negative thought down. We don’t need to lug it around with us until we make sense of it. We aren’t required to analyze and over-think, searching for some secret solution hiding inside our rapid-fire scatter thoughts. We can just let go and let God.
Unhealthy thoughts are just that. Unhealthy. They can never help us level up. If a thought is not healthy, we can set it down and choose a healthier topic.
As it turns out, our thoughts are a lot like books in a library. If we happen to pick one out that isn’t good, we can just put it back and choose a better one. Using the criteria listed in Philippians 4, while paying particular attention to the instructions following the word finally in verse 8, we can select our thoughts with intention and precision. We don’t need to be saddled with thoughts that hold us down and hold us back.
When comparing our cognitive distortions against the eight descriptive words in Philippians 4:8, we find a way out. With these eight guardrails in place, we can choose which thoughts to keep and which ones to set aside.
Pure
Right
Excellent
Praiseworthy
Lovely
Admirable
Noble
True
Using the acronym, PREPLANT, we can check ourselves regularly throughout the day to make sure the thoughts running through our heads line up with at least one on the list.
If a thought does not meet the criteria, it is deemed unhealthy and carries the potential to make us sick. We cannot level up until we let go of the thoughts that don’t measure up.
You should praise him. He is your God. He has done great and wonderful things for you. You have seen them with your own eyes. Deuteronomy 10:21
**********************
You have been called by God and down deep, you have always known it.
Your destiny will involve many different seasons. It will take on a variety of forms as you move through your allotted time on this planet.
Embedded in the foundation of your spiritual core is an interlocking system consisting of a perfect blend of praise and gratitude.
You are grateful for the peace that replaces discord in your thoughts. You remain ever mindful that gratitude and praise are powerful deterrents to discontentment.
Your gratitude for the things God has done for you is revealed by the enthusiastic way you talk about Him.
You love to get together with friends and family who have this same sense of appreciation for the work of God in their own lives as well.
You love to share stories of miracles and mercy. You openly tell of the times that God has showered you with comfort and compassion during times of great difficulty.
You also enjoy hearing others talk about what God is doing in their lives. You adore being surrounded by people who openly express their gratitude for the blessings of God. On the other hand, you find it tedious and exhausting to be around complainers. You know that a very high level of toxicity is contained within a complaint so you combat its effects with the purposeful practice of praise.
Our minds were filled with fear, but the fears were not always clearly defined. So, we examined our fears more closely and realized they were rooted in two basic lies.
1. We Were Not Enough
We feared that we weren’t smart or capable enough to maintain our place on this planet. We feared we would not be able to make good enough plans and follow through on them. We feared we would not be able to earn enough money to pay the bills. We feared we could not meet the expectations others had for us, or those we had for ourselves.
We feared that our ‘not-enough-ness’ would be discovered and we would be humiliated. We feared social settings because we were not interesting enough. We feared being forgotten because we just weren’t very remarkable. We feared being abandoned because we just didn’t bring enough to the table.
We feared that we were ill-equipped and woefully inadequate to handle the overwhelming responsibility of life on this planet.
2.We were too much.
We feared that we were too much trouble and not worth the effort. We feared that we were too boring, too impatient, too greedy, too lustful, too resentful, or too lazy.
We feared that we were too insistent on getting our own way. We feared that our sense of entitlement and list of demands were turning us into tyrants.
We feared being alone because sometimes we were too much, even for ourselves.
“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Jeremiah 29:11
Waiting on God and being certain of His blessings is not pie-in-the-sky or wishful thinking. This faith choice is not presumptuous or improper. Blessings are the divine energy of God empowering us to succeed because we choose to believe in His goodness. He has equipped us with a divine destiny. He wants to see us succeed as much as we do.
And so, we wait for what God has promised, in the same way we might wait at a bus stop, in eager anticipation. We aren’t sitting at some random corner, hoping a bus might drive by. We are positioned at the right place at the right time, waiting for what we know is on its way. We aren’t waiting to see if a hopeful future will appear. We are waiting with confidence, certain of it.
These needs keep us running from one relationship to another; one career path to another; one church to another; one substance to another. We play the blame game, accusing our parents, our partners, or our culture. We know we have unmet emotional needs, so we are naturally drawn toward people and situations that promise to meet them. Of course, it is only a matter of time before they fail us. No human can fully meet our deep emotional needs. It is a painful lesson we have to learn time and time again, until we begin to understand what it means to level up.
We must accept the fact that no human being is equipped to completely fulfill another human being’s emotional, spiritual, and psychological needs. It is just not possible. And it is not their fault.
To level up, we must set aside our petty resentments about how others have failed us. We must admit, we are foolish to think they won’t. They are human too!
From this new perspective, we begin to see Philippians 4:19 much differently. God promises to meet all our needs. Not just physical and spiritual, but emotional as well. So, we must now ask ourselves, “What are some of my emotional needs?”
After escaping Crazytown, David finds a cave to hide in, alone (1 Samuel 22). It is a safe place, where he no longer has to answer difficult questions or pretend to be someone he is not. However, his alone time to power down and reboot doesn’t last long. Members of his family hear of his whereabouts and come to join him.
We find that nothing spotlights our dysfunctions quite so vividly as when family shows up to help! Granted, it is a blessing to have family who care enough to show up, but we also know the risk. For those of us, whose tendency is to shut down emotionally when family dynamics are in play, our emotions become glitchy and start to malfunction. We say the wrong thing, blurt out secrets, wear the wrong clothes, belong to the wrong social groups, and vote for the wrong candidate.
It has been said that family is everything. Families can teach us about loyalty, behavior, and self-preservation. They can teach us work ethics and responsibility. Families also teach us how to be manipulative, sarcastic, and selfish. All families have their own layers of drama, chaos, and distrust.
Some families are quite ordinary. Some families are quite extraordinary. All families have dysfunctions, traditions, trauma, and mixed messages.
Family members know too much about each other and the history they all share. Family can push our buttons like no one else. Family can make us feel included or rejected; loved or despised; powerful or weak. Although family dynamics are messy, they are God’s plan for a place to start. Unfortunately, each generation has an ancestry made up of humans, so we all possess some elements of dysfunction within our family code.
_________________
Eventually, David enlists the help of a neighboring king to look after his family so he can heal. We can’t help but notice that this sounds an awful lot like an Al-Anon topic. Family members can be part of the recovery process, but it is not appropriate to become cave dwellers too, just to show their support.
Finding Total Recovery in the Words of Christ, "It is Finished!" 