It's Martin Luther King, Jr. Day as we start the study of chapter 14, The Power of Words. How appropriate! I remember many years ago reading that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. told his mother that someday he was going to get himself some big words. He did get some big words and changed the lives of a lot of people. He said, "We will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends." And, who can forget his "I Have a Dream" speech? King knew the power of words. We need to know the power of our words. Joel says, "Our words become self-fulfilling prophecies. If you allow your thoughts to defeat you and then give birth to negative ideas through your words, your actions will follow suit.....If we speak positive words, our lives will move in that direction." James 3:4 compares the tongue to the rudder of a huge ship because although it is small, it controls the direction of the entire ship, just like our small tongue will control the direction of our lives. Joel suggests using positive self-talk and saying, "I am valuable. I am loved. God has a great plan for my life. I have favor wherever I go. God's blessings are chasing me down and overtaking me. Everything I touch prospers and succeeds. I'm excited about my future!" He reminds us that there is truly power in our words.
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Hi all. Me again (Frank) I'm a couple of Chapters behind Patty as I am on a long term project at work and didn't have access to the book so I bought the paperback version for travels with me. I just love this book. Anyway, I am on Chapter 12 the "Choosing the right thoughts". How powerful is that? You know I am the king of quotes and even Buddah said this thousands of years ago, "All that we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think we become.” Like Patty said before your brain is like a computer. You can program it anyway you want. That is the reason that Patty does her devotions and spiritual reading first thing in the morning before she will listen to the news or read the newspaper. She is programming her brain/computer with positive thoughts so as to not be overly influenced by all of the negativity in our world. I need to do a better job of this and in fact I have created a vision board with positive photos, quotes and inspirations to help me with my personal goal. In the morning one of my rituals is to stumble to my computer and do my Jumble puzzle and daily Sudoku. My vision board is on the wall in my office so I can view it and take it the positive message it delivers (I learned this from the movie, "The Secret".
By the way, I have adopted a personal mission statement to help me define my purpose for my life. Here goes...I want to help influence the future development of people and organizations.
I want to teach my children and others to love and laugh, to learn and grow beyond their current bounds.
Being a corporate trainer, insurance professional, husband, sibling, father, grandfather, son and a myriad of other roles I hope I can live up to this mission.
Awesome, Frank. Yay, you're back. Hello to you in Madison, WI. I bet you are cold up there! It's plenty cold here too. Anyway, speaking of thoughts, Ann Stewart said "Words are physical 'containers' of spiritual thoughts." I love that chapter you are reading about spiritual thoughts. That is my favorite chapter so far in the whole book. Thanks for acknowledging my time in the morning too. It's sweet that you noticed that. Thoughts are so important because they precede our words. If our thoughts are right, then it's important to have our words line up with them. The Bible says we have what we say. Mark 11:22-24 says "'Have faith in God,' Jesus answered....'Whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.'" In other words, if we say and believe in our hearts that what we say is coming to pass, then we will have what we say. If we tend to get easily depressed and upset over things, it is possible to turn it around with happy, healing thoughts. Even when talking about the weather, if we would look at the wonder of the snow, thinking and saying, "Isn't it wonderful? Isn't it awesome?", our spirits would raise and this in turn would influence others that we meet and greet on the street. I'm grateful today for everything, even the cold weather. It's kind of invigorating.
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