DISCIPLINE –TOOLS TO DEAL WITH PROBLEMS

     Life is a series of problems.  Discipline is the basic set of tools we require to solve life’s problems.  Without disciplines we can solve nothing, with discipline we can solve all types of problems.

     Life is difficult, this is true. Many have complained that “Life isn’t fair.”  I simply reply, who said the life was supposed to be fair?  What makes life difficult is solving problems is very painful.  Problems evoke in us a great deal of emotional pain, such as sorrow, fear, anger, anxiety, sadness, etc.  These are uncomfortable emotions.  It is in meeting and solving problems that life takes on a greater meaning.  Since life invokes a series of problems, life also unleashes a series of pain.

     Problems are the cutting edge that distinguishes success and failure.  Problems are what cause us to grow mentally and spiritually.  Without growth, we’re doomed to stay as we have always been.  Wise people learn not to dread problems, but to welcome and expect problems.  Fearing the pain involved from problems causes most people to avoid problems.  Most people do anything to attempt to avoid confronting problems.  They avoid problems because they wish to avoid pain.

     Avoiding problems is the root to all psychological, emotional and mental illness.

Most who avoid problems build elaborate fantasies to hide behind or live within the false sense of protection.  Those who create such fantasies also escape reality.  Psychoneurosis is a substitute to legitimate suffering.  But the substitute becomes more of a suffering than the pain one seeks to avoid.

     Then people will build another layer upon layer of fantasy to avoid the emotional instabilities, pretending everything is alright.  In avoiding the problem, we stop growth which we learn from the problems that life brings.  Therefore, we avoid real life for the replaced fantasy.  When we stop the growth, we also stop the healing we could have attained if we faced our problems and pain with proper responses.  When we stop growing, we also stop the very meaning and purpose that problems can bring to us.

     Problems are a part of real life.  Avoiding problems is our attempt to avoid true life’s learning opportunities. True emotional and spiritual health comes from acknowledging that life is full of problems.  And with this truth, we discover the tools to dealing with these problems.  The tools we must discover is found inside discipline.  When we develop discipline within every area of our life, we also develop the tools we shall need to successfully confront and overcome all problems.

© 2012 by Dr Tim McClure

HOW TO STUDY THE BIBLE

            "Search the scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life:  and they (scriptures) are they which testify of me" (John 5:39).  Search the scriptures yea, the deep things of God (I Cor. 2:10).  Study to show yourself approved unto God, a workman that needs not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth" (II Tim. 2:15). 

            We are to inquire, research, meditate the Word of God (I Tim. 4:15).  We are called to read the Bible (I Tim 4:13).  The three main ways of studying the Word is SEARCH as if we are looking for treasure, STUDY, that is run reference, comparing scripture with scripture and READ; just simply reading the Bible with no intended purpose in mind.

USE THE "5 INSPECTOR W" METHOD

1.      Who is the author writing to?  Who is he talking about?

2.      What is the author writing about?  What is the subject or his main thought.  What is he trying to get across to his readers?

3.      When was it written?  Was it in time of freedom, oppression?  Was it before Jesus Christ or after.  Was it under the Law or under Grace?  Was it during the church age or after the rapture?

4.      Where were the people at?  Were they in heaven or in earth?  Where was the author at and where was the subject at that he was writing about?  Was he writing to someone there present or future.

5.      Why did the author write the letter?  Why is he saying what he is? Is he commanding them or reprimanding them.  Was he prophesying or instructing?

 

For example, let me show you how to use the "5 Inspector W's" method:  "That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved." (Rom. 10:9).  Many today try to use this passage of scripture in dealing with sinners, trying to bring them to salvation.  Using the "5 Inspector W's" method you ask:

 

a.  WHO is the author of Romans?  Paul (Rom. 1:1).  Who is Paul writing to?  Christians in Rome - Rom. 1:7; 6:4; 8:9, not sinners.

b.  WHAT is Paul saying?  That if "thou" (believers) shalt confess with your mouth, (it must be public, voiced, said, exposed, can't just be in the heart or mind only (Rom. 10:6) the Lord Jesus (no one can say that Jesus is Lord, except by the Holy Ghost (I Cor. 12:3). 

c.  WHEN was it written?  After Pentecost, therefore after the church was established.  No longer were they under Old Testament jurisdiction but under grace.

d.  WHERE?  The church at Rome (Rom. 1:7).

e.  WHY was it written?  There were Jewish people telling these gentile saints that they had to be physically circumcised in order to be saved (Rom. 4:1-10).  These Roman believers were being confused in thinking that their salvation was dependant on a Jewish ordinance instead of the "GOSPEL" - Death, Burial and Resurrection (Rom. 6:1-6, 8:1-11, 21-23, 10:16)

© 1996 by Dr Tim McClure

FOCUS

Prov 4:25-27 Let thine eyes look right on, and let thine eyelids look straight before thee. 26 Ponder the path of thy feet, and let all thy ways be established. 27 Turn not to the right hand nor to the left: remove thy foot from evil

            Everything God does in your life he will do to increase your concentration and focus on your assignment – single most purpose in life. Everything Satan does will seek to clutter and fragment your focus.

            The only reason men fail is because of broken focus. Every time God speaks to you, writes you or appears to you, it is to support your focus so that your focus will facilitate your assignment in life (Prov 4:25-27). As hard as it is for me to accept, God will move things I love out of my life to keep me Focused on my single most definite purpose in life.

            Satan cannot destroy you, he can only distract you. Anything Satan says to you, reveals to you or attracts to you will be to break your focus. Just as the devil showed up in the Garden to get Adam to break his focus by looking at the fruit God said to stay away from, so will the devil come at you for the purpose to break your focus: Get you to look at something that will cause you to be disobedient.

            Focus is the absolute Criteria of all relationships in your life.  All and any relationships in your life that enhance, support, add, grow and promote the Focus in your life are the relationships that are permitted.  All relationships that break, subtract or diminish your focus away from your purpose or assignment are the relationships that you need to reject. Anybody that breaks your focus on God is being used of the devil. Anybody that increases your focus on your assignment is being used of God.

            Those who are attracted to you that subtract, weaken or hinder your focus, they are the people you should restrict your relationship with. Those who enhance, add, inspire and encourage your focus, they are the people you are to have a relationship with. If they’re rebellious, leave them. If they’re sinful, shun them. If they’re negative, upsetting, hate or against what you are for, disconnect from them. You can be respectful but not submissive.

            Focused light turns into energy. Focused attention turns into talent. Focused faith turns into a miracle. Focused work turns into prosperity. Focused prayer turns into availing much. And focused planning turns into accomplishment. Turn away from distraction and FOCUS. You can DO what God has placed inside your heart to do.

© 2012 by Dr Tim McClure

IF I WERE 35 AGAIN- Part 2

   One morning in my devotions I do every morning, God asked me the question: “What would you do if you were 35 years of age again?”  Wow, what a great question to get you thinking and reevaluating!  I wrote in my first BLOG that such a short blog would not allow me to share the list that I created over the following months. However, with many emailing me and requesting me to share with them some of my thoughts, I offer you a few things on my list in this blog that I pray you can use.

   KNOWLEDGE- I would place the greatest value upon WHAT information I would obtain and place inside my soul (mind). Jesus said, “The truth you know shall make you free” (John 8:32). The Bible reveals that we are saved by knowledge and knowledge is the first principle to life (Prov 1). The principle is this; the measurement of knowledge we have equals the measurement of life we shall enjoy.  Ignorance is the key to sin and being lost. If you do not know God, you are lost. If you do not know how to communicate, you will be alone. If you do not know business or economics, you will always exchange a lot of your time for a little bit of someone’s money. 

   Ignorance and deception are the core of every destruction known to man.  Ignorance is the key to poverty, sickness and psychosis. The right kind of knowledge is power. The right kind of knowledge is essential to freedom.  One can know all there is to being a drug dealer, but that will not lead one to a secure freedom.  People possess a lot of wrong or bad knowledge that leads to false beliefs and this has lead many of us to live a strained, hurtful and difficult life. 

   As I look back over the past 20 years and think of the many things I never was able to have or had lost, it almost all had to do with the wrong kind of knowledge which created wrong set of beliefs.  If I were 35 again, I would be very studious and scrupulous about what I allowed into my soul (mind).

   1.) I would take careful time to research and discover my single most definite purpose in life and give myself to study the right kind of information / knowledge that would facilitate my success in that purpose.  I would study to know the right kind of information that would move me towards the ultimate purpose that I was placed on this planet. I would give myself to know the best information for the use of my purpose for the betterment of myself and everyone else I came in contact with. I would not waste my time learning to know information that mattered little to nothing to me nor those around me. 

   2.) I would read the top ten books on any one given subject of my passion and purpose.  We will all have the same life, same conditions and same results of life if we do not increase the quality of information and knowledge.  It has been said, “If we keep doing what we’ve always done, we shall get what we’ve always gotten.” If I were 35 again, I would pick very carefully the time and energy I would invest in growing myself, my mind and my soul in order to become exactly what God had intended on me to become. If I were 35 again, I would not just allow every fly by night junk that the world, television, Hollywood, so-called news, neighbors, associates and friends said I should allow into my mind and soul. (to be continued…)

© 2012 Dr Tim McClure

IF I WERE 35 AGAIN

   I found myself some time ago sitting down by the river doing my morning devotions pondering my evaluating stages I often go through.  I was reminiscing the many opportunities that I had found myself being offered but because of my upbringing, background and training, I either didn’t see it, understand or outright rejected what now I know was God giving me favor.

   Ignorance comes to many of us at a cost that we will never be reimbursed for.  However, if we are so blessed and gifted by grace we can use our failures, mishaps, misunderstandings or ignorance to our future advantage.  I found that on this one morning I had one of those enlighten moments:

   That morning in my devotions I hear the Lord say; “What would you do if you were 35 again?”  Wow, will something like that get your attention or what?  I found myself instantly pulling out things and ideas that I would do and or not do. My mind raced for several minutes before I stopped long enough to start writing down a list of things I would do – if I were 35 again. (I can just hear many of you reading thinking of the questions, “well, what are some of the things would you do?”)

   This short BLOG will not suffice such a list, however, I found myself working with my son, Tim Jr that particular week of which he was going to be having his 35^th birthday in just a few weeks away and I said, “Son sit down, we need to have a talk.”  As we sat there, I told him what I had been hearing God ask me and about my list. Then I pulled it out of my pocket and said, “I want to give it to you.”

   I will never be 35 again, but you’re about to turn 35 and you can use this far greater than I could.  As we sat there talking about ministry, family, finances and the future, I tried in a short simple way to suggest the viability of such a thought and the list.  Yes, Tim Jr started the process of the list and is still working it (to my prayer in a far greater success than I could ever make of it).

   With that thought in mind, let me ask you; “What would you do if you were 35 again?  Perhaps you are 35, 40 or 25.  Can I challenge your emotion today and suggest that you can take this simple devotion and start to jot down a few things and make your own list of what you would love to redo, change or start afresh. 

   What would you do different? What decisions would you have made or not have made? What so called friends would you have avoided or gone out of your way to make? What book would you have read or not read? How would you have spent your time more productive and what wasted stuff would you avoid?  Whatever you would do or not do is merely a thought you may wish to ponder for your future and for your success.

© 2012 by Dr Tim McClure

WILL FAITH DISAPPEAR ON EARTH?

Luke 18:8 when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on earth?

            Jesus posed this question just after the story of the widow woman who cried “Avenge me of my adversary.” Trying to teach his disciples the warning of this earth becoming so detached from God and Moral absolutes, Jesus lead them to the thought and question: “Will there come a time on this planet that we humans disconnect ourselves from FAITH? Can we become so carnal that we disrespect the spiritual?

            The Humanist Francisco Petrarch in the 14^th Century coined the Name Dark Ages though speaking of the falling and loss of the Italian Culture and Literature upon Europe: his hypothesis soon was used by the church to explain the decay of the Moral and spiritual truth in society.

            This FEAR was Real since we first read of this very disconnect from God during the days of Noah: “GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. 6 And it repented God that he had made man on the earth (Gen 6:5-6).

            This was later repeated by man in Gen 11 when they thought to create a way by imagination to eradicate the very thought of God, his laws and truth from earth. They even thought to make their OWN heaven. Could they have so disconnected themselves from spirituality till they would have built an earth void of FAITH?

            Journey through the Bible and find every great man of God became great by challenging man to repent, fleeing from sin and stop selfish destructive living.  Read history and find every great Philosopher or inventor who challenged the status quo such as the Earth is round, not flat; we can fly, or germs were the cause of illness.  They were ridiculed, imprisoned, and even killed.  Nostradamus, George Washington and Booker T Washington called Nations to change from evil ways. Sir Winston Churchill, Dr Martin Luther King and hundreds of men and women who became great did so NOT by becoming LIKED, but by doing RIGHT.

            It is possible in 2012 that we are on our way in America – in Europe and the world that our fallacious flirtation with funny, fancy and filth is pushing Faith right OUT of our Families, Finances and Future.  America just 50 years ago had a deeper and higher respect and appreciation to church, preachers and faith than they do today.  Ladies and Gentlemen; “When the Son of Man cometh, shall he FIND Faith on earth?”

            This sobering question is not meant to leave us depressed, but rather to shake us away from following the “cows to the slaughter.”  Allow me to challenge you to leave off the excuses why you don’t attend church like you should anymore.  Let me provoke you to find your faith, increase your faith and add to your faith.  We cannot just sit by and allow the Faith of God and faith in God to disappear.

            “Faith comes by hearing a preacher preaching what thus saith the Word of God” (Rom 10:17).  Let me motivate you to tune your ear to hear a real man of God today seeding the word of God into your spirit till you can rise to BELIEVE that God can and will bring a miracle crusade of Faith back to America again.

© 2012 Dr Tim McClure

CONDITIONS OF UNCONDITIONAL LOVE

FREE LOVE – The biggest Paradox of the last Century. The two words in the same sentence, Free and Love is a joke. Let alone using Free as an adjective describing the noun LOVE.  It’s as false as saying “Dry Water.”  Just as Galileo, Sir Isaac Newton didn’t charge the world to use their discovery, did not mean that their discovery came FREE. The cost and value of such wisdom is priceless and extremely expensive to those who invested life to discover it. Even though we hold it free.

            However, those who have dared to use Einstein’s Theory of Relativity without the reality that such expensive knowledge has brought the world to a near peril. This single piece of FREE knowledge has cost and is still costing the world $trillions (Nuclear Weapons).

            Trying to teach a parent to give a child love unconditionally will cost that parent his life. For I as a Preacher of the Bible or counseling Psychologist try and teach a man or woman to love their spouse unconditionally will advise them in the Art of Sacrifice.

            “For God so loved the world that he gave…” is still the most expensive “unconditional Love” known to the world. True, it cost YOU nothing for God to LOVE you unconditionally. It cost YOU nothing for God to display his love when you were unloving. Yes, it is true, “God loved us in while we were yet sinners” (Rom 5:8). When we could not love him, he loved us. Not because we deserved it but when we were at our worse. “Christ died for the ungodly” (Rom 5:6).

            However, even when Jesus loved and gave his life for us, yet his death could have or would have done us NO good unless we would have RECEIVED his gift. “And whosoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.”

            What are you saying pastor? I’m saying that LOVE, true love is real. It is not mere words on a card. It is not a flower in a vase. True love is blood, sweat and tears. Therefore, true love and selfishness cannot be in same room. Unconditional love is expensive. It is self sacrificing and can hurt. But the rewards are unparallel.

            Every Blessing comes with Brokenness. Every gift comes with a price. Every love comes with a sacrifice. It is impossible for me to give or receive “Unconditional Love” by itself. I must RECEIVE unconditional love if it is to impact me.  God can give unconditional love, but it will never reach me until I Receive it. The condition is “Whosoever believes.” The dynamics work in the Ebb and Flow. “We love him because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19).

            There is no greater subject in all the world like that of LOVE. Love is the greatest feeling for feeling. Love is the eternal motive and cause for all creation. Love is seen in the father’s eyes and the mother’s embrace. Love is known by many and craved by all. Love is the most common subject yet one of the most perplexing subject.

            Love has been the cause of wars and the cause of peace. Love has been the death to many and the life of most. Love is seen in the face of a two year old with his daddy. Love, true love is WORSHIP. To love God is to worship God. “Great love has no one than this that a man would lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). Jesus loved you so much he did MORE than just TALK. He GAVE – his all.

By Dr Tim McClure

www.promiseland.org