You Always Have a Choice (2 of 3)

Mike Connell

Page 5 of 10
Well there's no perfect men, and there's no perfect women, and if you sit around waiting, you'll be single all your life. [Laughter] You can make better choices than that, you understand? But it's like people cloak their helplessness with certain words that sound right, but their mindsets and limiting beliefs that stop them actually engaging God, and changing their life. It goes on all the time, I hear it all the time. If we're going to arise, and be all God intended, one of the things we have to do, is make the decision to become an empowered person, to take responsibility for my life, and work with who I am, and what I have, and believe God to do unusual things through my life. That sound okay? So if you blame people and circumstances, you feel helpless. Of course you're helpless, because you've put the blame out there, blame out there, they're responsible. Now it may well be that other people are responsible for stuff, but you're the one who's still got the problem. If you won't own: I've got an issue - I want to get married! What are you doing to prepare yourself and position yourself? Simple as that. Well I prayed about it, I'm waiting for God to provide. Well isn't that wonderful? We'll see you single for a long time. Come on, think about it. You've got to get out of this sort of thinking.

I've had a bad day - well get out of that bad thinking. What you have - let me just rephrase it. The day has turned up some troubles you didn't expect, and you haven't assumed responsibility to manage your emotions, and do the best with the way the day turned up for you. So what you've done, being irresponsible, is you just have: I've got a bad day, and you let your stuff hang out. You actually sow a bad future. You don't build good relationships by letting everything hang out, you have to actually take ownership, and I found for years, I lived with resentment and anger and self pity and depression, because I felt helpless. The only way to get out of it, was to break the limiting belief: I'm not helpless. I may have been back then, but I'm not now, I'm joined to Jesus. The Bible says in Philippians 4:13, it's very, very clear. It says: I can, I can, I can, yes I can do all things through Christ who indunamo, who empowers me to live a great life! Yes, I can! That's a great scripture. Through Christ, whatever God calls me to do, I'm up for it, because He will empower me to do it - but I've got to make a decision to give it a go, got to own the challenge. Is that right?

So how does God change us? How does God make the change take place? Well let's go and look in 1 Corinthians 10, and I want to show you the process, how God changes us. See God had two million people to change, and a lot of them didn't make it. Of course it's God's fault, He should never have taken them such a hard way. [Laughter] 1 Corinthians, Chapter 10:6, it's talking about Israel. Israel is a picture of the church. Israel was in bondage in Egypt; we were in bondage in the world, in sin. God miraculously delivered them. Jesus supernaturally saves us, so there's the parallel. Now Israel continued to limit God. God had this in mind: not just to get them saved, God had a great destiny for them. But how does He get them into the great destiny? He's got to grow them, and change them. How does He get you into a great destiny? Well you can sing 'I've Got a Destiny' as much as you like, but it doesn't mean you're going to get anywhere near it. I'm sure that they sang 'We've Got a Destiny' all the way from Egypt, all through the Promised Land - and they all died there. I want to know what God was trying to do, and why they failed to make it, and who got there and why. Good questions to ask aren't they?