1. Look at your life. What are you frustrated about? What do you not want to continue to happen? No one can decide to change without first hating the situation they’re in.
2. Understand that your life is the result of your decisions. Your life at this moment is the result of hundreds or thousands of decisions that you made (or failed to make) since birth.
3. Decide to do something right now to change your life. If the desire to change remains inside of you, and is not outwardly expressed through some sort of decision, it has no power whatsoever. It has no power to help. Change only happens when a decision is made.
Remember that faith is a decision, and a decision is faith. Before I decide anything, I have to believe (have faith) that it will work, and for my faith to work, I have to make a decision to act on it. The Day of Decision is actually the day of faith in action!
PS. When you don’t make your own decisions, someone will make them for you. That’s when you complain, saying: “Yea, but I didn’t have a choice.” But the real truth is that you took so much time deciding that someone came along and decided for you.
Problems require a reaction of
equal magnitude
Ahab was the worst king that Israel had had up to that point. He did more evil than all that had preceded him. “Ahab did more to provoke the Lord God of Israel to anger than all the kings of Israel who were before him.”
On the other hand, who did God raise up to confront the worst of all kings? Elijah, the prophet of fire.
Elijah was the most clear-thinking, bold, courageous prophet in the history of Israel. To fight the worst king, God raised up the greatest prophet.
This teaches us a very important lesson: My react to a problem has to match its intensity. Proverbs 24.10 says: “If you faint in the day of adversity, your strength is small.” Today we would say: “If you fall to pieces in a crisis, there wasn't much to you in the first place.”
If I want to change my life, overcome something evil that has controlled me, or a warrior that’s imprisoned me, I have to be a greater man of war than he!
A pastor has to be more of a warrior than the devil, who has held people back and blocked them from coming to the church. The wounded must be stronger than their wound, and the poor bolder than their poverty.
If you stop and think about it, this is nothing new. It’s simply a question of common sense and courage.
The power of making one day special
“One person esteems one day above another; another esteems every day alike. Let each be fully convinced in his own mind. He who observes the day, observes it to the Lord.” Romans 14.5,6
Obviously, this passage is explaining our power to decide what we want. If I think all days are equal, then for me they will be. And if I view a certain day as special and elevate it above all others, then for me that day will be special.
But it doesn’t stop there.
This passage says that whoever makes one day more special than another does it “to the Lord”. In other words, God sees and accepts the distinction that I make, and responds by making that day truly more special in my life.
This helps us better understand another passage: “What we bind on earth will be bound in heaven.” Heaven simply confirms what we have already determined on earth! All miracles begin on earth, not in heaven.
Whoever considers the Day of Decision a more special day than the rest, will make it a turning point that divides his life into before and after.
Bishop Renato Cardoso
I will decide to put my toilet tissue over or under
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