How To Use Your Two Feet In Your Walk With God

"What do my feet have to do with my spiritual walk?" you may ask. Well, a healthy spiritual walk keeps an ever-fresh balance between one footstep (focus on your sin and repentance) and the other footstep (focus on God’s grace and forgiveness). 

How important it is to keep your focus on sin balanced with your focus on Jesus’ grace and forgiveness

Think about it. When you walk with God, don’t just hop on one foot (focus on sin without genuine repentance) or linger too long, ignoring the other foot (God’s grace and forgiveness.)

A godly, spiritual walk is exactly that. A walk. Staying on the path to heaven, use both feet, one after the other.

You take one footstep (awareness of sin and repentance), then you take a step with the other foot (awareness of God's grace and forgiveness).  

And on and on, repentance and grace, repentance and grace. One foot after the other in an life-giving sequence of repentance and grace

Is Science Finally Catching Up To The Bible?

Mental rehearsal”… have you heard the term? According to neuroscientists, this is simply the repeated focus on a thought, feeling, desire, or behavior. 

The latest buzz among neuroscientists is that this processl can cause lasting changes to structures in your brain and body!

Fascinating! This finding seems so interesting for two major reasons. Firstly, the new and exciting news is that dwelling on a thought, emotion, or desire can change the structure of your brain and influence our body.

Secondly, is it not remarkable that God described the power of mental rehearsal all those years ago and that neuroscience is just now catching up with God’s Word?

This scripture for example:“My son, attend to my words; incline thine ear unto my sayings.Let them not depart from thine eyes; keep them in the midst of thine heart (rehearsal).For they are life unto those that find them, and health to all their flesh (the result of rehearsal).”Proverbs 4:20-22 (KJV)

According to this scripture, faithful mental rehearsal of God’s Word creates changes to the brain, nervous system, and body that lead to abundant life and better health. Or to say it another way, your choice to focus on God’s Word can make changes to your brain and body as neuroscientists suggest.

Or, what about this scripture? 

 “And the Lord said, Behold…  nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.”Genesis 11:6 (KJV)

Does this scripture suggest that unrestrained imagining—mentally rehearsing something over and over—transforms it into reality?

It would seem so. 

The following scripture pushes the envelope but certainly provides food for thought.

“But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with       her in his heart.”Matthew 5:28 (NKJV)

Do you agree that a man who has struggled with lust and overcome it would avoid lust-evoking situations? Instead, refusing to dwell on adulterous thoughts, he would have wholesome strategies to deal successfully with temptation and create a better life for himself and his family. 

Understanding the power of mental rehearsal is no little thing. It makes us potential co-creators with God and holds each of us responsible for what we think, feel, and want. 

It is even possible that the healthy thinking and mental rehearsal, first suggested in the Bible and now by neuroscientists, may become part of treatment for all kinds of physical and mental problems.

Reproduction, copying, or redistribution (electronic or otherwise, (including on the World Wide Web), in  whole or in part is encouraged provided the attribution Choice-Cube Publications is preserved.  2014 Choice-Cube Publications LLC. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. 

Want To Strengthen An Emotion And Change Your Behavior? Just Your Intention and Mental Rehearsal May Help!

Years ago, I learned that I could direct my emotions. You can, too. I invite you to try it.  First, put a paperclip on your knee. Focus on it and tell yourself to feel “love” for it. Feel the love. Pretty interesting, huh?  Now, try shifting to anger. If you try, you can even feel fear as you focus on that little paperclip.

That you can direct your emotions is old news. The new news, according to neuroscientists’ research, is that “mental rehearsal”--a repeated focus on a feeling such as love, anger, or fear--can make lasting changes to structures in your brain and body! 

An example of mental rehearsal comes from the University of Wisconsin (Psychological Science 2013).  This research suggests that a daily focus on being loving and compassionate affects pathways in the brain and reinforces those feelings. Equally as interesting, the research shows that this daily focus also changes behaviors, which become more loving and compassionate. 

Along the same positive lines,“compassion meditation” was the subject of a recent study from Emory University. This is where you spend time focusing on your desire to develop feelings of compassion and kindness for others. As a result of this compassion meditation, subjects’ ability to read the facial expressions of others increased.

The takeaway is that the awareness of a feeling and simply focusing on your desire to develop that feeling can activate the neural circuits responsible for producing it thus creating or strengthening it. 

Of course, what is true for positive emotions, is also true for negative ones. For example, noted researcher Candace Pert points out that your repeated focus on a negative emotion such as fear or disgust can lead to addiction to that emotion.

It’s the old law of sowing and reaping. (Whatever you put out there, gets you more of it.) It would seem that based on neuroscience research the old law has become the new law. 

So what about you? Will you spend a few minutes each day focusing on some positive emotions and memories... on what you feel grateful for? If you do, the likelihood is that you will strengthen the brain pathways and connections that produce those positive feelings and get more of them.

If, however, you have trouble finding and focusing on the positive, you might be interested in how to overcome the things that block you. I invite you to take a look at Become the Person You Were Meant to Be  The Choice-Cube® Method: Step by Step to Choice and Changehttp://amzn.to/Ug268G. You can retrain yourself, change, and grow to engage life more fully. You can also check out my website to learn more about the method.

2014 Choice-Cube Publications LLC. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Reproduction, copying, or redistribution (electronic or otherwise, (including on the World Wide Web), in  whole or in part is encouraged provided the attribution Choice-Cube Publications is preserved

Stay Aware and Enjoy Life’s Little Pleasures. You Can Create a Happiness Habit.

“What in the world are you doing?” I asked with a smile. 

Jim was gently rubbing his collarbone with his left hand.

 “Rubbing it in.” he smiled back as he gave one last, quick rub. 

“Rubbing what in?” 

“The good feeling of being here with you, of course.” he replied.    

Then it dawned on me. Jim was taking time to focus on the good feelings we were sharing as he “rubbed it in.”  He was programming his subconscious mind with this positive moment to create his “happiness happy.

You’ve heard the phrase,  “ Take time to smell the roses.” Corny but true. It takes a little effort to stay aware savoring and being grateful for the sweetness of a ripe peach, the good feeling that comes with a genuine compliment, the joy of a family at dinner having a good belly laugh together, or like Jim, the pleasure of just hanging out together.

Positive psychologist, Dr. Barbara Fredrickson, suggests that these “good” events are typically subtler than the negative ones and harder to recognize. Also, she says that we tend to take positive feelings in stride because they are less novel, not necessarily out of the ordinary, and not threatening. Studies show, however, that good events outnumber bad events by three or four or five to one and that staying aware of them is good for us.

Happy people generally have better medical, dental and psychological health, suggests Dr. Kurtz of the University of Virginia and coauthor of Positively Happy. Positive people also tend to see improvement in the physical and  psychological conditions of people around them.

Here’s the point. Do you tend to focus on the negative? Do you find yourself craving continuous moments of high passion and intensity and disappointed with the small things in life? Or do you have a mindset that allows you to look for and enjoy those micro-moments of positivity? You have choice!  Instead of automatically going to the negative, you can choose to look for, and enjoy life’s everyday small moments of pleasure, good relationships, satisfactions, and joy. And there’s more good news. You have lots of them.   Your choice…

2018 Choice-Cube Publications LLC. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Reproduction, copying, or redistribution (electronic or otherwise, (including on the World Wide Web), in whole or in part is encouraged provided the attribution Choice-Cube Publications is preserved.   

Gratitude And Pride

Gratitude and Pride

Can’t live side by side.

You must choose one or the other…

If you choose Pride, run for cover!    

First pride, then the crash—the bigger the ego, the harder the fall. The Message (MSG) Proverbs 16:18

Gratitude comes with the awareness that all good things come from heaven and that ”I can of mine own self do nothing” (John 5:30 KJV).Gratitude reflects Satisfaction with God’s handiwork and with our best efforts or “personal best.”

Gratitude can express itself as Satisfaction, which is a healthy sense of  worthiness and integrity. Both Gratitude and  Satisfaction are emotional rewards for a job well done. Here are some feelings of Satisfaction:

• accomplished, balanced, comfortable, dignified, excellence,
• flexible, fulfilled, honorable, in-order, overcoming, personal best,
• playful, positive pride, righ­teous, truthful, tuned in, worthy.

The Pride presented in this short poem is a negative pride. Unlike Gratitude and Satisfaction, with this Pride we compare ourselves to oth­ers in order to feel better or superior to them.

This negative Pride is the flip-side of shame. We pump ourselves up and focus on the ways we may be superior to avoid feeling shame. Here are some feelings associated with negative Pride: 

• arrogant, better-than, boastful, cold, condescending, contemptuous, critical,
• disdaining, judgmental, lusted-after, one-up, perfectionist, pitying,
• well-positioned,  prejudiced, self-righteous, self-satisfied, shameless,
• stiff-backed, supe­rior, uncompromising, vain.