believe

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I Choose To Believe it

We believe what we want to believe, and if we can’t prove it we make it up.

We look for some small truth in the thing we want to believe and exploit it or exaggerate it into something that seems significant.

This week, at the women’s world cup of soccer, the USA woman’s team beat Thailand 13 to zero. 

That doesn’t even sound like a soccer score. That would be a high score for a hockey game. Baseball scores sometimes get up that high. 

For soccer this is extremely rare. In fact, I’d watch soccer more if they scored like that every game. 

In the first round of the tournament, out of 11 games, the average score was only 1.7 goals per game. And the US scored 13 all by themselves.

As a result, there was a furious rage against the USA for this game, with all kinds of bad press all over the world against them. How could they run up the score on a team like that? 

Now, the bad press directed towards the US was not as much about the score as it was about their celebrations after they scored each goal.

They cele’d hard, acting like they were playing in the world cup title match – BIG celebrations! … players holding up the number of fingers of how many goals they had personally scored … group hugs after goals. 

Thirteen times they did this! 

The USA took a beating by the press on the world stage.

Later in the week, I was listening to a Christian radio station that is based in the States. The announcers were talking about the game and the reactions by other media. 

They defended the USA team, saying it was good for the Thai team to get beat, because it will make them better. 

“I love it” one announcer said. “When my kids get beat in soccer, I cheer it. I think it’s great, because it calls them to learn and improve their skills …”

“… So way to go, USA. You did the other team a favour.”

I was steamed at this point! What bugged everyone was that the US team didn’t just beat up on the Thai team, they humiliated them. 

These announcers chose to ignore the truth and make something up that they could believe … because that’s what they wanted to believe. 

They made up a fanciful story to go with their belief.

I would love to see that announcer comfort her son or daughter the next time he or she gets trounced. I bet she doesn’t go off on her kid, saying, “This was great, Johnny! You learned so much today. You are a better player now.” 

The truth is, if the USA players had have gone out and played their game and not whooped it up, not tried to humiliate the Thai team, but just did their work, there would have been far less criticism from the press. 

… And the whole story would have slipped by those radio announcers unnoticed.  

Here’s the thing: We all have a propensity to believe what we want to believe and so we bend or mould truth to fit our beliefs. With your faith, be sure that you are not making up a story to support what you want to believe. Study God’s word so that what you choose to believe is based on what God says is true and not just what you want to be true.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: When have you bent the truth to fit your beliefs? Leave your comments below.

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I Couldn’t Believe The Progress We Made

It’s always interesting to see the progress in the city after being away for an extended time.

There is something about it that’s exciting, seeing what new things are cropping up, wondering if there’ll be something new to do, and new place to eat.

I find it intriguing and in some strange way hopeful. I guess it’s a sign that the city is growing, changing, adapting.

It’s like when you were in public school and your teacher told you to take a bean home, put it in a glass jar and stick a wet paper towel around it.

We would put it under the kitchen sink, but couldn’t wait to look and see if there was any change to the bean.

It was always amazing to see the sprout that would emerge and to track the growth of that new little leaf.

That’s sort of what it’s like to return home and see the changes that have taken place in the city.

I don’t go hunting all over for them. I just look for the progress on my fifteen minute drive to work, along a major route in town.

This year I have noticed lots of progress.

There is a dentist’s office, a stand-alone structure, at the end of my subdivision. I don’t know for sure what they’re doing, but there is now a huge trench that wasn’t there before my vacation.

It’s deep and covers three sides of the building – one more side and they’ll have a genuine, functioning, modern-day moat.

And I say “functioning” because we have had so much rain this summer that there has to be water in that thing.

I’m not sure if the dentist is worried about an army of gingivitis attacking his clinic or not, but he’s going to be prepared when this thing is done.

There are a couple of high-rise apartment buildings that are making serious progress. It’s interesting to see how high they’re getting, and changing the landscape.

Then there are two things I noticed that kind of surprised me. I wouldn’t consider them progress, but they open the door to new opportunities for progress.

One was a RV dealership that has been there for over 25 years, in a prominent spot. You always noticed the trailers in their lot.

On returning home, the place was deserted – no trailers. The building is completely vacant; they are gone.

Then there was an old style motel, probably dating back to the sixties, that closed a while ago. It took up a good chunk of land.

It’s now completely gone. There is not a scrap of evidence that there was a motel or anything on that land.

That was fascinating.

The only thing that didn’t change is the one thing I thought would have progressed: the reconstruction of a section of the mall where the Target store used to be.

You have to wonder if they found an ancient burial ground in the basement or something because the construction hasn’t changed in months.

Here’s the thing:  It is neat to see progress and change in the city, but what about you? Can you say you are progressing in your life, in your spiritual life? It’s easy to just coast along, and not make any headway in your relationship with Christ. Evaluate the last six months or year. Make sure you are doing something to keep your relationship with God progressing.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What can you do to ensure you are making progress in your spiritual life? Leave your comments below.

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It’s All About What We Believe

In my last post, I wrote about setting goals for the new year (click hear to read). In this one, I am going to share a secret that helps me do that. In my next post, I’ll share another secret.

ball and chain

Normally goal setting starts with dreaming of all the things you might want to accomplish. You brainstorm a million ideas, then select the best ones.

But I didn’t start there – I started in a place I had no desire to go.

I began with evaluating my limits … to be more precise, my limiting beliefs. And that’s very different from my limits.

I’m limited by a lot of things. I could blame my parents that I’m not six feet tall or have the mind of a rocket scientist. But that’s just genetics. I can’t do anything about that.

Everyone has limits.

But limiting beliefs, that’s a different matter. They are not really limits; they’re just a bar we set for ourselves that we don’t think we can get over.

The problem with those limiting beliefs is that we live up to them all the time … or should I say, we live under them every time.

What’s worse is they aren’t necessarily true; we just believe them to be true (limiting beliefs like, “I can’t do that”, “I’m a failure”, “No one cares”).

When it comes to goal setting, they keep us from accomplishing the goals we want to reach.

In the past, my limiting beliefs have been the mastermind behind me sabotaging my own goals.

They come from stories I’ve created based on my past experiences. Still, I believe the stories and live them out time and time again.

These limiting beliefs are ingrained in us and you can only change them by replacing them with new stories – a new story that overwrites the old one.

That’s not easy to do.

But this week as I was listing my limiting beliefs, I found a key to begin the process of overwriting those limiting beliefs.

It starts with a truth. Then you have to trust the truth enough to experience that truth in your life and thus write a new story.

It sounds simple but it takes some work.

For me, two truths from the Bible that I read right after I wrote my limiting beliefs will help me write some new stories.

1 John 5:14-15 says, “This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him.” (NIV84)

We can ask God to help us overcome our limiting beliefs. He will hear us and answer.

Then Ephesians 3:20 says “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us,”(NIV84)

Now that’s powerful! Whatever you believe about yourself – whatever I have come to believe about myself – God is at work within us and can do more than we can even imagine.

The first step is to believe these truths, and then go out and experience the reality of them. If you do, you’ll replace that old story, with a new one.

Here’s the thing: If you want to grow deeper with God, if you want to see God work in your life, then address those limiting beliefs by believing and experiencing these truths from God’s words. Then write a new story through experience.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: Do you have limiting beliefs that hold you back from all God wants for you? Leave your comment below.