The Key to Overcoming Every Fear You Face

by Joyce Meyer
 
Everyone experiences fear in their life. There are big fears we are very aware of and little ones we may not even realize we have.
I've learned that it's very important to understand what fear is and how it works against us because if we don't, it can keep us from becoming what God created us to be, which means we won't fulfill our purpose in life.

Fear's Evil Scheme

“ God wants us to walk by faith, and Satan wants us to walk by fear. ”

Fear is a tool the devil uses against us to make us miserable and destroy our lives. It begins as a thought and then creates emotions that can rule us. It often becomes a strong, intense feeling that tries to move us to make a foolish action or tries to prevent us from doing something that would be good for us. Because it's such a common way that Satan attacks people's lives, I think of it as the master spirit he uses to manipulate people and keep them out of God's will.
Simply put, fear is the opposite of faith. God wants us to walk by faith, and Satan wants us to walk by fear. When we learn to live by faith and not let fear rule our life, we can live a fulfilling, satisfying, peaceful and joyful life in Christ.
Like I said before, fear begins with a thought. Proverbs 23:7 tells us that "as [a man] thinks in his heart, so is he" (NKJV). I like to say it like this: Where the mind goes, the man follows.

Finding Freedom

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How to Become a Focused Thinker

By John C Maxwell
 
In his book Focus: The Future of Your Company Depends on It, marketing consultant Al Ries gives a tremendous illustration:

The sun is a powerful source of energy.  Every hour the sun washes the earth with billions of kilowatts of energy.  Yet with a hat and some sun-screen, you can bathe in the light of the sun for hours at a time with few ill effects.

 A laser is a weak source of energy.  A laser takes a few watts of energy and focuses them in a coherent stream of light.  But with a laser you can drill a hole in a diamond or wipe out a cancer.

Focus can bring energy and power to almost anything, whether it’s physical or mental.  If you’re learning how to pitch a baseball and you want to develop a good curve ball, then focused thinking while practicing will improve your technique. If you need to refine the manufacturing process of your product, focused thinking will help you develop the best method.  If you want to solve a difficult mathematics problem, sustaining focused thinking helps you break through to the solution.  That’s why philosopher Bertrand Russell asserted, “To be able to concentrate for a considerable time is essential to difficult achievement.”  The greater the difficulty of a problem or issue, the more focused thinking time will be necessary to solve it.

Does every area of your life deserve dedicated, focused thinking time? Of course, the answer is no. Be selective, not exhaustive, in your focused thinking. And once you have a handle on what you should think about, you must decide how to better focus on it. Here are five suggestions to help you with the process:

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The Best Advice I Ever Got!

Priorities! God first, then my wife, then my children and then everyone else. Love God and love people. The relationship is the task.

Do you have a people strategy? by Seth Godin

Hard to imagine a consultant or investor asking the CMO, "so, what's your telephone strategy?"

We don't have a telephone strategy. The telephone is a tool, a simple medium, and it's only purpose is to connect us to interested human beings.

And then the internet comes along and it's mysterious and suddenly we need an email strategy and a social media strategy and a web strategy and a mobile strategy.

No, we don't.

It's still people. We still have one and only one thing that matters, and it's people.

All of these media are conduits, they are tools that human beings use to waste time or communicate or calculate or engage or learn. Behind each of the tools is a person. Do you have a story to tell that person? An engagement or a benefit to offer them?

Figure out the people part and the technology gets a whole lot simpler.

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