What do you think of yourself? Your self-appraisal is revealed in how you speak, walk, talk, dress, act, and react. Your personality is the expression of what you think of yourself.
The Truth is that you are an individualized expression of God. Within you are the divine qualities of love, life, power, and wisdom. Is this the picture you have of yourself? Do you live and act according to the knowledge of God’s presence within you? If so, you will be a channel through which the vital, powerful, wise, loving nature of Christ is expressed in the world.
God will never be closer to you than right now. God will never love you more than right now. Accept this Truth about yourself. You are made in God’s image and likeness. Live, speak, walk, dress, act, and react according to this knowledge. Your willingness to let God’s Spirit work through you will make you the happy and successful individual you long to be. Stir up the gift of God within you, and you will demonstrate your dynamic personality.
What is your response when your efforts do not appear to be successful? Remember that great discoveries have often been made by those who kept on trying after they met with seeming failure. With persistence, they proved that apparent defeat can be turned into success, if we will just give it another try.
If there is something you have been unable to accomplish, do not become discouraged. Instead, ask yourself why you are not making progress. Is it because you haven’t truly prepared for success? Have you done the necessary background work? Is there a different approach you can try? Have you asked God for guidance? In any seeming failure there is a valuable lesson to learn, a lesson that will bless and enrich your life. Find out what it is.
Turn to God in silence. Listen and you will learn what it is you should do. This wisdom will direct you in the steps you are to take. Accept and follow God’s guidance. Persist. With God’s help you can turn your failure into success.
Do you ever feel weak? Do you sometimes feel incapable of coping with life, problems, or even the people in your world?
Weakness involves one’s seeming inability to exert force—whether physical, mental, moral, or spiritual. Weakness is usually outpictured in detrimental habit patterns, which may be external, obvious habits or internal habits of thought and feeling.
Any form of weakness can be overcome. First, you must give up all alibis, blame, excuse-making, and rational explanations of your weakness. These attempts at justification guarantee a continuation of the habit.
All that is needed to defeat a detrimental habit is what Mahalia Jackson called a “made-up mind.” Once you make up your mind to overcome a weakness, you have willed the means to overcome it. An unwavering made-up mind is essential.
Claim the inexhaustible strength of God. You can use this strength to accomplish whatever you make up your mind to do.
Have you heard of the mental law of substitution? When an unhappy idea comes to mind, replace it with a good thought.
If concern about lack and limitation enters your mind, exchange it for the thought that God is your unlimited source of good. When false ideas of illness and disease appear, instead of dwelling upon them, give thanks that God’s life is now being expressed in and through your body. Should thoughts of resentment or hate come to mind, dispel them with the truth that God is within the other person and within you—and where God is present, only love will be expressed.
These are but a few examples of areas in which the law of substitution can be applied. Practice this principle in your daily life, because taking control of your thoughts is the key to your destiny.
God has given you a great responsibility. You are the one to decide the thoughts you will entertain in your mind. You can select the thoughts you wish. You must decide whether to base them upon the evidence of your physical senses or upon the Truth as revealed by Jesus Christ, who instructed us to “judge not according to the appearance.”
Appearances are unreliable, for they are constantly changing. To base our thinking upon them is to invite disturbing, frustrating, confused, and contradictory thoughts and emotions. There is a divine intelligence at work in all creation. God is at work; therefore, we need not be disturbed by appearances.
Be a wise ruler of your mental and spiritual kingdom. Entertain only thoughts that are good and pleasant. The wisdom you exercise in ruling your thoughts will be reflected in your life.