Developing a Supernatural Lifestyle Review (3) - Challenges of Kingdom's Lifestyle

Every kinds of life faces challenges of its own, to adopt Kingdom's lifestyle, expect not only abundant grace but also moutains of challenges. Christianity is not only about blessings, favor and success, as it is clearly stated in the bible in the gospel of John 16:33: "....In this world you have trouble...."

The problem is that we always thought that once we had accepted christ, we should not be going through any kinds of hardship nor challenges. As long as we cling on to this false perception, we will never achieve the destiny that God had imprinted in our lives. Our God is a graceful God, but at the same time He is also a stringent King, whom of Him all rules were layed. He knows that only through challenges that His people would grow, turning from a crude rock into a refined diamond.

The process of refining is not enjoyable, it is more of endurance. It wouldn't be fun going through tough times, having needing to go through the fire of refining. 

Christians have to start believing in God and expand their capacity for God's work. God is always bigger than our challenges, He is always victorious but for some christians, our faith is too small to believe that God can pulls us through our difficulties, it is too small to believe that we can achieve more success through Christ who strenghthen us. Our faith is the key to unlock God's blessing, is the measure to how great can God bless us.

In facing challenges, we may fall. That is not an issue because failure is an inevitable part of life, not only inevitable but indispensable as well. Learning how to fail is a process of gaining more knowldges about ourselves, learning that we are not perfect and that we still have room for improvement. It is important for us to realise that faith is one thing that pushes us to take risk. Yes, risky and out of the comfort zone. 

Things that is under your control do not need faith, because you know you can do it. But it is in those area that you are in risk of failing that faith is required. Meeting challenges is like getting out of your comfort zone, you will never know how far you can go if you never take a risk to venture into an unknown realm, and that requires faith.

Do not be worry, do not lose faith, because God had already promised in John 16:33:

"I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world."

Character X (2) -- Discipline

The talk of character continues. In the first post of this series we talked about humility and how it would help us if we'd integrate this into our daily lives. Discipline, is another ingredient in the recipe that we need in order to be successful or to live our life to the fullest.

Discipline, what it is all about?

"Discipline is the refining fire by which talent becomes ability"

-Roy L.Smith-

I've heard many people, including myself complaining about how limited is our time, how wish we could have 48 hours a day! Having said that and relising what is the problem with it, I knew that I had to change, I had to be more discpiline. You may think that discilpline restricts your creativity because you may think that it does not give you the freedom to do whatever you like to do at any given time or moment.

Think again.

Discipline is not restricting, in turn it releases and enhances your ability to be creative and at the same time being efficient. It helps you to finish your task in hand in the right duration and that allow you more time to do more things that you can ever think of. Be disciplined and you will find that you are having more time to do things than before.

Being discipline is to endure and finish off given task no matter how much you hate it. Being discipline is not an emotion-based decision, it is an rational-based decision. Meaning one day you might not be feeling to be discipline, but you chose to be discipline. For instance a property agent would have to have enormous self-discipline in order to achieve higher sales, it is not emotion-based decision because the agent may not have any income at all if him/her based on their own emotions. There would be tough times in life, time that we would have to dig deep and overcome it with a rational-based decision, to be discipline, to be persistant to overcome the situation.

So be discipline, and remember discipline does not restrict or stop you from being creative, but it enhances your creativity and turn them into enormous ability!

Down but not out

Any grown ups or kids that had watched any episode of Ultraman could tell you the ending of each episode without watching it: The bad guy had few shots at the Ultraman, the light turns red and blink, then the Ultraman fights back with the killer strike, Ultraman wins.

An epic example of never stop fighting, when you had fell, come right back up and fight again. 

It is easy to be condemned in past failures, bragging about it all our lives and that's it, there goes our lives, wasted due to our failure to get right up when we fell. Great man and women in the history were not great because they did not failed in their lives, they were great because of how they overcame their failures and moved on to make success in their lives. Abraham Lincoln overcoming time and time of election defeats and finally being elected as the president of the United States; Thomas Edison overcoming times of failure in finding the right material to make the lgiht bulb and so many more other great man and women in the history.

There are 2 example in the bible that we could use to illustrate what differences it could be when we decide to either condemn ourselves in failure, or to move on from it.

King David (2 Samuel 11-12)

In the story of King David, recorded in 2 Samuel, had sinned against God, by committing adultery and set up the husband of the women whom he had gone to bed with, to death ultimately. Knowing this, God sent a prophet in the name of Nathan, to rebuke him and pointing out what he had done wrong and immediately King David confessed and asked forgiveness from God. A King we are talking about, he could have just ordered marshalls to take Nathan down and put him to sentence because of accusing the king. But he did not, he knew what was wrong and switfly admitting it and submitting to God once again. He then became one of the greatest king in the history of Israel and God stated in Acts 13:22 :"I have found David son of Jesse, a man after my heart..". 

Apostle Peter (John 18,21)

Apostle Peter was one of the greatest apostle the bible had ever recorded. But one of his most infamous act was his denial of Jesus during Jesus' presecution, which then led to a temporary heart breaking period for Peter. But in chapter 21 Jesus talked to Paul and 3 times He asked Peter whether he loves Him, and all 3 times Peter said yes. Peter had 2 choices, one is to condemn himself to what he had done, or two to accept God's love and grace and bounce back to serve Him more. Peter chose the latter, and because of that He went on to spread the word of God so passionately that 3000 accepted Christ in one of His sermon.

So my friends, I urged you that in life, all man and women would fail in one way or another. The question you should ask yourself is not how could I possible fail, or fall but to ask yourself where do I go from now, do I stay one and keep bragging about my failure or to take the failure as a lesson so that you will never let it happen again?

The decisions are yours to be made.