God isn’t a bully. He doesn’t twist your arm behind your back and make you do what you don’t want to do.

It is your responsibility to be responsible. It’s a mistake to suppose God is your fairy godmother and you need not practice personal responsibility.

Excuses are just that: excuses. Let’s avoid excuses and instead embrace the best God offers us. As we love God and let God love us, proven prosperity will result.

Follow a Winner

Here are two verses from 1 Corinthians 6:19,20 that will cause us to hesitate and consider the determent of irresponsibility: “Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself, for God bought you with a high price. So you must honor God with your body.”

We are called to a higher standard. Say this out loud, hear yourself say it, “I’m a child of the King!”

Our position, in our new life, is one of dignity. Nehemiah in your Bible is an appropiate example. Nehemiah had his priorities lined up accurately. God first, everything else next. I don’t know how long it took him to get to a place of humility and reverence, but after praying to God, King Artaxerxes asked him, “How can I help you?”

God is wrapped in the details. Nothing escapes his capability. God knows what to do in each situation. Nehemiah said with courage and respect to the King of Persia, “If it please the king, and if you are pleased with me, your servant, send me to Judah to rebuild the city where my ancestors are buried.” Nehemiah 2:4,5.

This took courage. It takes courage to venture outside your familiar surroundings. When you’ve arrived here, though, you’re standing in an explosive place called faith. It’s faith because you do not understand what may take place on this side of your circumstances. Faith is something more and different from reason or senses.

Perhaps the first time Nehemiah struggled with trying an unfamiliar behavior, the results frightened him. Surprise! How about us? When we dare to have the courage to cross into the territory of faith. What doors suddenly open? This territory is foreign to our senses or reason.

With Eyes Wide Open

The Lord gives us constant opportunities to grow our courage, to smash excuses causing our failure.

In my life, when I’m overwhelmed by my situation, when I’m stuck by my inability to fix “it,” when I’m tossing the bath-water of endurance, when I’m certain it’s okay to give myself an excuse, God requires me to decide to prosper instead of fail.

I know a lot about failure, I don’t know as much as I’d like to about prospering. When I worked up the courage to replace my darkness with light, God responded with limitless illumination.

Sometimes God is calling for me to get tough with myself. I’m saying, I must shatter excuses. This is (whatever is keeping me in difficulty) my responsibility. I need to push through my uncertainty, evaluate my strangling doubts, and learn to employ liberating faith.

This is a gut-check moment. It’s tempting to play it safe. But playing it safe is exactly what we cannot do if we’re serious about our prosperity. Pulling the trigger on excuses will absolutely challenge the best in us. Are you ready to give up being a victim?

This is a big revelation: to discover how to be successful at anything means that you’ve become personally responsible for you. You’ve walked away from excuses. You understand that it’s senseless to expect, to make anyone responsible for you, rather than you.

So What If It’s Scary?

Yes, it’s hard. It’s painful. However you learn how to grit your teeth, learn that determination is the companion of responsibility. Gradually, sometimes all-at-once, you forget wimping out. God is building heaven in you.

As you break through the fog you come to see: today belongs to you. Today is what you make it. Your choice. And your choice for today says, “No more excuses!”

Okay, so, reality check, does this mean your life will then become trouble-free? Of course not. But it does mean you’re discovering the power of free will and have begun to comprehend how your want to is going to affect your life today and tomorrow for personal prosperity.

We become a terrorist effectively crippling what dares to tempts us. We build our personal prosperity on dozens of courageous steps of faith. Understand your education level, your gender, your economic status, your race, or your political affiliation doesn’t have any significance here. God means to lift you above and beyond all this fluff.

Another fact: your age is meaningless. You start from where you are. You become responsible for you. No excuse you might come up with is your buddy.

Write a Better Legacy

Said simply, we have this in common: A story. You have a story. I have a story. Your story is not my story. My story is not your story. Your story is a mix, a blend, of your history. Mine too.

The challenge is to apply constructive action to your story and make it work for you instead of against you. Me too.

We need to say to ourselves, “Let’s do this now!” No more waiting. No more dodging. No more hide ‘n seek. Instead, “I’m doing this!”

What you do will perhaps be different from what I do, (God’s plan for you and me is individual), still our constructive action will remove failure and launch us toward the moon. Let’s label this: positive inertia.

Your story will begin working for you and conquer (little by little) what works against you. Are you ready to two-step forward? Sure, why not?

Reading this has already planted a tenacious seed in your fertile attitude. At this moment you know your attitude has changed. The seed is exploding, refusing to die. You feel a flush of hope. And hope propels you. Very soon people will know something has transformed in you. They may not know or understand what it is, but they will notice.

Miracles Happen

Your positive constructive action works to your (gasp!) advantage. Because you’re taking personal responsibility. You’re not blaming anyone or anything for your story. Your story is simply your story. And the quest in your undertaking is to make your story work for you instead of against you. “Get out of my way!” You warn. “I’m heading for personal prosperity.”

Feels good, huh? It feels good and you begin to take note that the “good feeling” is happening on various levels. These levels affect your entire being. You feel good mentally. You feel good physically. And, you feel good spiritually. God designed this to take place as you make triumphant choices and settle into personal responsibility.

The uplifting feelings flow (for me) in this manner: I feel good mentally; this flows into feeling good physically, which flows into feeling good spiritually. The staggering effect of feeling good is felt in my entire being. I see things in a fresh way. Things smell different. Taste buds pop and savor whatever I fork into my mouth. The way I touch things is not the same. I hear things I’ve never heard before. My sensations are brilliantly alive.

The benefit to you is that your senses and your ability to reason are (again) working for you. “Wow!” you say, because you have no desire to leave here. Always the task is to carry these feelings into your world and use them for the common well-being and plainly, your well-being. This is, then, a new writing in the chapters of your story.

Follow through is your task today, tomorrow, and all the days that are ahead. Practice doesn’t end. And it doesn’t matter because you’re willing to pay the price (whatever that might be). And you’re happy about it. You’re happy because you’re discovering your story does have purpose and meaning. Much more than you imagined.

Defying the Bully

One caution: Don’t try to manipulate your circumstances. Let the game come to you, so to speak, and aim to remain in that zone. Make constructive action and personal responsibility your definite choice. Let these choices internalize, crystallize, in you.

It’s about growing but not manipulating growth. When this happens, others in your world start growing with you. You’re seeing improvement consequently, you and others are making the world around you healthier. Improvement begets improvement. It doesn’t have to end.

As you bully irresponsibility with positive action you will succeed more and more in every area of your life. This isn’t an accident because the brazen choices you make will ensure your personal prosperity. You will do the things that failure refuses to do. You’ll be willing to pay the price to be a grownup because you’re learning the value of pursuing the narrow path. Few ever do what you’re doing. Welcome to the minority. Have fun.

Finally, ask yourself what you’re going to do with your time?

What legitimate excuses do you have to waste anymore time? From this moment on make your excuse work for you not against you. Be responsible and take constructive action. What’s at stake? Your prosperity. Hold yourself to a higher standard.

Anyone can wimp out. Don’t do that. Get in bed with a winner.

Go ahead. Crawl inside responsibility.

May God give you the boldness to rid yourself of the revolting smell of excuses.

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Delight someone by leaving a comment.

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If you’re like me you want things to get better, they absolutely can. Change is a choice we make moment by moment of everyday.  Perhaps at first, because it’s a new thought, you’re hesitant to move forward because you have to think through the ramifications of your actions. Okay, so do that.

Then as you commit to practice change and actually follow through, it will become more natural, and then it will become an out of the cocoon, unfolding butterfly tale of the next chapter in your story.

But there’s more in store and when you commit to practicing you’ll add to your euphoria about the progress you’re experiencing. More good feelings are waiting for you. So, take responsibility and prepare to do this too: Dare yourself to resist returning to what didn’t/doesn’t work.

Thanks for your company on Lee’s Nite Radio.

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