Here's another hurdle. You need to develop your core belief system. You need to develop your beliefs about yourself, and about life. We all have beliefs, in fact the Bible tells us Proverbs 4:23, it tells us that out of our heart flows our life, so what's in your heart, is what will really turn up in your life. What you believe about yourself, about various things in life, that will eventually be what you attract, and what you outwork. I can tell you now. I've learnt it. I become to realise that I was attracting undesirable things into my life, because of what I believed about myself, for example if you have been shut down, suppose there's been a very, very bad, harsh, severe family situation, and you were just always bossed over, dominated, pushed down, you will, in the pain of it, come to believe certain things about yourself.
I realised in my own background, that some things that had happened to me had caused me to believe I am of no value. Now, you put that in a religious environment where you lay your life down for the Lord, and there came with it huge difficulties to connect with my desires and hopes and longings and yearnings. Why? Because they are of no value. So if you believe I am of no value, your desires won't be either, your dreams won't be either, your needs won't be either, nothing about you will be of value, and you'll always put someone or something before. It may look good in a religious or church setting, you're doing these wonderful things, but actually in God's eyes, He sees that there is a core belief driving you, which is unhealthy. Now I could give you many other core beliefs like that, but core beliefs like that will ultimately sabotage you coming into your destiny.
Think about this - if I'm of no value, therefore my desires are of no value, so I'm waiting to be led, or I'm doing what I should do, but the thing would create the passion, the energy and the fire, which is the desire, is not being explored and developed and grown. Think about that one. Think about that one. Okay, so we need to develop our - I can't give the details of this today of course, but I'm just giving you the hurdles to jump, so one of the things that it will require of you, to become that person God dreams of and wants you to become, is you must shift your internal core beliefs to become that kind of person; I am a generous person. I am a valuable person. I don't let people devalue me. I am a loved person, and I love people. I'm an accepted person, and I can accept people, but I don't let people walk over me. Understand? So your internal life is incredibly important, or you live by external duty, and the law, or what's expected by the crowd, or the church culture. You've gone really quiet - feel a bit uncomfortable now. [Laughs] That's alright, I'll give you the last couple, the last two or three.
Let me just give them to you now, and one of them's going to hit you. Another one is, you need to develop your skills and talents. You must invest in yourself. If you're going to fulfil your destiny, you must pay the price of investing in yourself, whether it be by reading, by study, by going to a course, by getting teaching. Whatever it takes, you are responsible to invest in yourself. No matter how talented you might be as a musician, if you don't develop your gift, you can't realise your full destiny. You have to do something to develop yourself, and so that's an important one.
Here's another one; develop supportive relationships. None of us can make it into our destiny without the help of other people. The sooner we realise that, the better, hence why I need to resolve issues of the past that would stop me forming relationships where someone can speak into my life. Faithful are the wounds of a friend. Do you have a friend that can wound you in love, and help you grow? See, if you've got that, then you are a blessed person. If you haven't got that, it's possibly because you have such walls of distrust and bitterness around your life, you don't trust anyone but yourself, you won't let anyone get that near to you, and you become defensive if they try and talk. I'm sorry, you just fell over a hurdle. The trouble is with these hurdles, no one sees them, you just fall and wonder why you're down, and not getting anywhere. Here's the last two.