Section 01 - Becoming the Best You

Watch Videos in Chapter 20

Romans 12:2 says,

And do not allow yourself to be molded by the world system: but be changed [metamorphoo], by a total renovation of your mind, so that you may confirm through testing [dokimazo] what the good, pleasant and complete will of God is.

And then Acts 3:19 says,

Change your thinking therefore, and return to [what once was], resulting in your failures being wiped away, so that specific [kairos] times of refreshing and revival will come from the presence of the Lord;

Introduction

Our year is coming to an end soon. I don’t know about you, but it’s been a pretty busy year for us. On the one hand, it seemed to go very fast, but on the other hand, it lasted a long time, and it is nearly over now.

Whenever we come to the end of the year, we try to take stock of where we are. I know it’s not quite the new year yet. I should be sharing this closer to the new year. But everybody is starting to wind down a little now, and this may be the last chance I have to get everybody’s attention.

I also have another important reason for sharing on the subject now. I think that you’re going to find it challenging and inspiring. And I hope it will be a blessing to you as you come to the end of this year.

Here are some of the questions that you might be asking yourself.

1. What have I accomplished in the past year?


2. What has improved in my circumstances?


3. Have I changed personally?


4. Am I happy with my progress?


5. And am I reaching my full potential?

If all your answers are positive, you don't need to read the rest of this section because you have already arrived.

But I dare say nobody is in that category. There has to be at least one or two of those questions that you never had a positive answer for. And so I believe I can help you.

Decide What You Want

Before you can become fully who you are meant to be and become the real, the full, and the best you, you need to start by deciding what you want.

Are you satisfied with where you are right now? And better still, is the Lord satisfied with where you are right now?

What can be improved? In the natural we have three things that make for happy living and that make life real.

Health

The first is our health, and I’m not just discussing physical health. I’m speaking about mental health and
spiritual health, but normally, we kind of think of physical health, don’t we?

Are you healthy? Depending on how old you are, the chances are you probably are pretty healthy. As you get older, however, it becomes more challenging to stay healthy.

What is the state of your mind, your soul, and your emotions? And what is your spiritual condition like before the Lord? All of these things combined together make for proper health.

Wealth

The next thing is are you wealthy? I think even a person who has a lot of money would not consider themselves wealthy. Somehow, we never seem to have enough, do we?

But again, what does wealth consist of? Does it consist of money in the bank? Does it consist of the things you possess, or could it consist of more than that?

What about some of the resources that you have? Think about the possibilities you have, the skills you have, and the abilities that you have. I believe that all of these can contribute to your wealth.

Relationships

The final thing is your relationships. Oh dear, this is the one area we tend to fall down the most. Can you tell me how many friends you have? If you say it is zero, trust me you are not alone.

What good relationships do you have in your life? Well, of course we have the best relationship of all, which is with the Lord. But what about your relationships with fellow human beings? We won’t even talk, because that’s a dicey one, isn’t it?

But all of these things make for satisfaction in life. Can you confidently say,

“I’m happy about the state of my health. I'm happy about the state of my temporal life and the things that I have. And I’m happy about the relationships that I have with other people.”

Are You Satisfied?

If you said you were happy about all three areas of your life, I believe you can come to a place of satisfaction. But I dare say, these are all areas that most of the time we fall short in. So, these are some of the goals that you may want to aim for.

Included in all of this of course is your spiritual life. Also, your relationships with the Lord and with one another in the Lord. You also have your ministry and ministry involvements. We have all of these activities.

There is a lot more to these areas of life than just the natural. If you are failing in any of these areas, you should try to identify where you are failing.

I want to just ask one simple little question. Why is it that all of these areas of your life are not satisfactory, and how can you improve them? How can you make your situation get better?

I want you to think back on this past year, and I want you to look at your condition at the beginning of the year. What was your situation like then?

Then I want you to look at your situation now. And I want you to honestly ask yourself what has changed? Has anything in fact changed?

Setting Goals Does Not Work

I remember some years ago sitting and writing down my goals and the things I wanted to accomplish in the next five years. After this time, I lost them. Then about five years later, as I was going through some old rubbish, I found my goals.

Do you know how far I had come in five years? Zero! I was still in the same place as I was five years before, even though I had those great goals and aspirations.

I had heard people teaching that if you write down your goals, it will help you to reach them, but don’t you believe it.

Why is it that we can have great aspirations and desires to improve ourselves and get better, as well as to improve our circumstances and our situation in life? But yet it is just so difficult to do.

The Importance of Change

Here is a simple statement. If you want things to get better, you will have to get better. Because if you don’t change, your outward circumstance is not going to change, neither is your life going to change. Nothing about you is going to change.

Ten years from now, when you look in the mirror, the only thing you will see is an older person with the same problems. Because until you are ready to change, nothing is going to change.

Change is very hard because we get used to doing things in a certain way, don’t we? This is a big subject, and I’m only going to give you an introduction here. I want to get you thinking, and I am going to prepare you for much more that is going to be available soon.

Failing Because of Temperament

I want to look firstly at where we fail because of our temperament. Each of us has a different temperamental mix. We are usually mostly one temperament with some of the others in there. So see if you can find yourself here.

The Driver

Firstly, we have the driver. The driver is the hard-pushing one; the one who has a strong will and who says,

“I will make up my mind and do it, and I will push until I do it.”

The driver sounds like the most likely person to succeed, doesn’t it?

So you started with a great big bang and a push. You said,

“I’m going to do this. I’m going to change. I’m going to accomplish and do great things.”

But you know what happened? You rode your car with the pedal flat until something went (pow), like what happened to our car recently. Then you came to a grinding halt.

You just burned out because you cannot accomplish this with natural power. I don't care if you are a driver who has that strong will and can push through. You will eventually reach a place where you can’t keep it up, and you will fail.

The Expressive

Let’s look now at the expressive. This is the temperament most likely to succeed in life, right? The expressive doesn’t even anticipate problems. They just run over them.

The expressive thrives on chasing after dreams and new goals. They say,

“I have this exciting new goal, and I’m going all out for that goal. Yes, I’m going to reach it.”

And if you don’t reach it, I can tell you what will happen. A few more goals are going to pop up along the way.

After a while you are going to get bored with that first goal. This is because an expressive hates routine. They hate doing the same thing all the time.

The expressive gets bored with going in one direction, and ends up going in five different directions one after the other. But sometimes, you never reach any of those goals.

So, you may have started out with a big bang. But all it took was something new to excite you, like a new challenge or a new goal. You got sidetracked, and off you went. You didn’t reach the goal that you desired.

The Analytical

Then we get to the temperament that is least likely to succeed in my economy. That is the analytical.

The analytical overcomplicates things. They say,

“Okay, this is what we need to accomplish. We need to look at this carefully. What if I do this, and what if that happens? No, that’s not such a good idea. Why don’t we try that? No, that’s not going to work. I don’t have enough of that, and what about that.”

The analytical is like a tortoise. They just never get going. The expressive is the hare, and you don’t have to be a hare to win the race, as we know from the old fable.

But you see the analytical procrastinates and puts it off because they have to get it right. They say,

“We have to get it perfect! We’ve got to get all the pieces together and all in a row.”

It is so difficult. And the more you analyze it and the more you look at it, the more you see how impossible it is for you to change. In fact, for the analytical, change is a swear word. They hate change with a passion.

The Amiable

Then we come to the amiable, the nice guy, and the people-person. The amiable says,

“I love people! I will work with them. I need somebody in my life to help me accomplish this goal."

So, the amiable waits for somebody to do something. And if somebody doesn’t do something, the amiable doesn’t do anything either. They say,

“I don't like rocking the boat. I don't like upsetting people and pushing my way. I like to be the nice guy. I like to just fit in, be friendly and help people.

I need somebody to come into my life and help me, organize me and push me. Maybe you can start things off for me, and I can get going.”

Can anybody identify with that? If you are an amiable you know what I’m talking about.

So, which temperament are you, and what are your chances of succeeding using your temperamental power? It is not sounding good, is it?

So don’t think that just because you have a certain temperament, you are obviously going to be able to change, to grow, and become what are you supposed to be.

Problems With Culture and Circumstances

Then we have other problems. We have cultural problems, and we are limited by our circumstances. You might say,

“You know I’m in a cultural situation, where if I were to do that it would just not be acceptable. It is considered bad practice and not the norm.

People are going to look down on me, so I need to do it according to how everybody else is doing. That’s the right way to do it. I can’t do it the wrong way, can I? I am confined to a system.”

If you are in the church system, you are confined to serving the Lord according to a system that has been set up by man, not by the Lord. And it is so difficult to change when you have been programmed into a system like that and when you think like that group.

You have to break out of it now. But who wants to be different? Who wants to stick out? None of us do. We’re afraid to be different. And we are also afraid of being rejected by the rest.

You might say, “If I were to step out and do this thing, people in my culture have never done this before. If I was in another culture or another group, that would be acceptable. But amongst my people, this is not acceptable.

If I were to try this, they would say, Do you think you are part of them?”

You are going to get rejected. It’s a difficult situation to break out of because you are caught in a rut.

How You View Yourself

Then, how you view yourself will also make all the difference in the world. Because when you look at yourself, and you see yourself too small, you say,

“I’m not capable of accomplishing that. It’s just little me, you know, but other people have everything going for them. They have all the abilities and the intelligence. They have the financial resources and the contacts.

But me? I’m just a little nobody sitting on the outside. I’m the little black sheep of the family. It’s very difficult for me to change everything and become what I’m not. Besides, what will people think?”

You see, that is your problem in the first place. You are worried about what people think, and that’s why you see yourself as so small.

You are comparing yourself to everybody else. You’re comparing yourself to those who appear to be succeeding in this world.

You are even doing it in the spiritual life, with those who are succeeding in the Body of Christ and those who are succeeding in ministry. You compare yourself with them, and you say,

“I am small compared to them. How can I break out of this? If I try to do what they do, I will fall on my face.”

You have a wrong view of yourself. And in the end, you’re going to end up with false condemnation. You are going to feel guilty about something that you didn’t even do wrong. All because you have been made to feel,

“You are not capable of this, and who do you think you are for even trying?”

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