Championship Mindset

I feel very strongly that this message is for someone, or maybe many someones out there today. This comes from a YouTube video from the phenomenal Trent Shelton, but I have transferred from video to text because many people pay better attention when it comes to the written word, whereas video can kind of go in one ear and out the other. If this is for you, know that I am praying for you, even though I don't know who you are. Keep moving forward! Be a Champion. Have a Championship Mindset.

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KMFLY - Keep Moving Forward and let nothing hold you back! Today is special. Today is that day that you become that new you. Today is the day that you become that Champion! It's time for you to stop feeling so sorry for yourselves and doing nothing about it. It's time to stop doing the same old things that have gotten you NOWHERE! It's time to stop using excuses to keep you at a place where you know you shouldn't be. Each and every one of you [watching this] is great. Each and every one of you [watching this] is a Champion. But YOU gotta make that decision.

There are 5 truths to every Champion, whether it be Michael Jordan, Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey...people who are Champions in their field, in their profession. There are 5 truths that each and every one of these people have. And today we're going to talk about it. You are going to develop that Championship Mindset. It's time for you to be great.

1. Commitment. The first TRUTH to every Champion is that every Champion has something called commitment. Staying loyal to what you said you were going to do...LONG after the mood you said it in has left. So that means that, for a whole month, if you said you were going to wake up at 5 AM to run 3 miles - that sound great the first week. Excited. What happens when that 3rd week comes around? When it's no longer fun. When it's no longer exciting. When that mood you said it in has left. Are you still going to be committed to it? Is it still going to mean that much to you? So many people live a life of incomplete dreams because they give up, they throw in the towel when that mood has left.

2. Discipline. The second TRUTH to every Champion is that every Champion has a little something called discipline. Tattoo it. That mean's permanent. Tattoo your purpose on your heart. So that your actions are trainable before you. Every Champion gets good at saying "NO" to the things that don't get them the "YES". Right? If it's not helping them, it's hurting them. But a lot of us lack that discipline. We say that our dreams are so important. Our goals are so important. We're so focused. But that first opportunity comes whether it's to to go to the club or do something that doesn't move you closer to your dreams, you go jump on it and do it. Your circle is filled with people who don't share your vision. That's holding you back and not moving you forward. You got to be disciplined! Success is a lonely road. There's not going to be too many people around you. You're not going to have a whole clique of friends because they're not going to be disciplined like you. They're not going to understand the commitment that it takes to make these dreams, to make these things happen. You gotta be disciplined.

3. Consistency. The third TRUTH to every Champion is that every Champion is consistent. We anchor our actions in greatness. So daily, not every now and then, not when we feel like it, so daily we produce nothing less than our very best. You know, when you're consistent, you're reliable. When you're reliable, you become trustworthy. There's nothing better in this world than a trustworthy person because when you're trustworthy, you're dependable.

4. Faith. The fourth TRUTH to every Champion is that every Champion has faith. Belief in the odds are beautiful, even when the odds say it's impossible. You know, there's a guy called David and he fought that impossible Goliath. Well, with us, we have a lot of Goliaths in our lives. Whether it be people doubting us. Whether it be statistics. Whether it be our generational curses. Whether it be genetics. Whether it be where we're from, our environment. But we have to "David" ALL of those things because God tells us that faith will make us well. Faith is what makes dreams come true. Believe it. You gotta throw that blanket over that scoreboard of life. You gotta to keep playing until your final seconds are up. You gotta give it your all. You gotta KNOW where you're going. Not what you're going to do. Not believe in the circumstances. Not believe in the stress. Not believe in the challenges. Not believe in the obstacles. You gotta believe in your finish line, that you're going to get there NO MATTER WHAT. That's what Champions believe in. Faith.

5. Heart. The fifth final TRUTH to every Champion is that every Champion has heart. Finding the strength to keep going, even when your mind, people, whatever, says you have nothing left. You keep pushing through those tears. You keep pushing through that pain. You keep pushing through that struggle. You keep pushing through that hurt. Because your heart won't let you quit. Your heart won't let you find excuses. Your heart makes you go until you reach that finish line in life. That's what you gotta have pumping in your heart. It's not about talent. It's not about money. It's about the person who just wants it the most. You gotta want it. You gotta want it so bad that it's hard for you to sleep at night. You gotta want it so bad that it wakes you up in the morning. You gotta want it so bad that conditions outside won't stop you, that people around you won't stop you. Even if it's just you by yourself. That's how bad you gotta want it. It's gotta be planted in your heart. When you talk about it, it should be hard for you to talk about your vision and your goals and your dreams because it means that much to you. Every Champion has heart.

I want you to look in your mirror tonight and create this new you. I want you to develop this Championship Mindset because God has great things for you. God has planned a future of greatness for you. Only thing you have to do is BELIEVE IT and follow His ordered steps. It's time to be Champions. Remember, it all starts with you. Championship Mindset...

The Logic of the Cross

Keeping up with Holy Week, here is an EXCELLENT piece on the LOGIC of the Cross. This is logic that it is really quite hard to argue with. Again, my thanks to my very dear and recently departed friend, Jack Kinsella, for providing this, and the other in-depth pieces on the Cross and Resurrection this week. This is just one of many reasons why I miss my friend, because he had the incredible ability to explain perfectly what he was wanting to convey...on any topic. But I do not grieve for him for he will be celebrating the Resurrection this year with the ONE who was Resurrected! AMEN!

The Logic of the Cross

Roughly one thousand, nine hundred and eighty years ago, a Jewish itinerant preacher was tried, convicted and executed by Roman decree, on charges of sedition against the state.

When He was arrested by the Roman authorities, His friends, fearing arrest themselves, left Him to face the music alone. One of His closest and most loyal friends denied knowing Him on three separate occasions. Once followed by thronging crowds, only His mother and a couple of friends stood by Him to the end.

And thus ends the story of Jesus of Nazareth, just another victim of Roman 'justice' like the thousands of other unnamed and forgotten Jewish rebels that shared a similar fate.

Or, at least, that is where is SHOULD have ended.

Historically speaking, at the time of His Death, Jesus Christ was just another rebel in a land teeming with rebels. When He preached of the Kingdom of Heaven, his followers didn't understand the term the way that we do.

The sages understood the time of the Judges, when Israel was ruled by Heaven through God's appointed judges, as the Kingdom of Heaven He promised to restore.

Even His disciples didn't understand what He was talking about until after they received the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.

"When they therefore were come together, they asked of Him, saying, Lord, wilt Thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?" (Acts 1:6)

They, like the rest, expected an earthly Jewish kingdom ruled by Jews, restored to the glory it had at its peak under King David.

When their dreams of a restored Kingdom of Israel died on a Roman cross, the event was too insignificant to merit the attention of the historians of the time. Only a few, like Tertius or Flavius Josephus mention it, and then, only in passing.

Crucifixion was common enough, but it was a grisly business, difficult to discuss without repulsing the reader. Although Imperial Rome imposed it on hundreds of thousands during its reign, historians recorded few details of the process itself.

By either chance or design, death by crucifixion served to erase the condemned from memory. It wasn't talked about, so neither were its victims.

On Good Friday, 1980 years ago, it looked like Jesus Christ was on the fast track to historical irrelevance, just another voice of one crying out from the wilderness.


A voice seemingly silenced forever -- by a death too gruesome to discuss in polite company.

Assessment:

Now, imagine you are one of His chosen disciples. You have just seen all your hopes and dreams shattered by the Roman executioners. Not only that, but you aren't that proud of yourself, either.

For three years, you followed the Master. You personally witnessed His miracles, from walking on water to feeding multiplied thousands with a young boy's lunch to healing the sick and raising the dead.

You heard His wisdom; you felt His Power, witnessed His Transfiguration . . . and when the chips were down and it was time to take a stand, you folded up like a Wal Mart lawn chair.

You ran and hid like a coward, not daring to show your face for fear you'd share His fate.

(And you once had the nerve to ask Him if you could sit at His right Hand!)

He faced His enemies alone, without a friend to speak up for Him -- including you, who promised NEVER to forsake Him.

On Good Friday, 1980 years ago, the last thing on any of their minds was writing a detailed record of their own failures. They just wanted to put the entire sordid experience behind them and move on.

He had forsaken everything to teach and prepare them, and when the time came, they not only betrayed Him by deserting Him, they never had a chance to beg His forgiveness afterwards.

To those who loved Him best, Good Friday, 1980 years ago, was anything BUT 'good'.

And it was the LAST story in the world they wanted to spread throughout the land.

"He made big promises, we made big promises, then He died and we all ran away and hid."

If you were hiding somewhere in Jerusalem on Good Friday, 1980 years ago, that was your story. Not a very inspiring story, if that was where it ended.

Every Easter, we are bombarded by secular apologists telling us that is where the story really DID end.

Jesus was dead; His followers were all in hiding, but while they were in hiding for their lives (and after seeing what happened to Jesus,) instead of fading quietly into the countryside, they entered into a conspiracy to perpetuate the same 'myth' that put Jesus on the Cross in the first place.

They made up the whole Resurrection story to keep the movement alive, and then legend took over, the argument goes.

If the story really DID end at Golgotha, would YOU want to face the same risk that you had just abandoned your best Friend to His Death in order to avoid? Well, would you?

Would anybody?

IF it ended at Golgotha, then what changed every single one of the cowards who fled Jesus on that day to later face death unflinchingly rather than deny Him a second time?

Moreover, what made these guys, who were so self-centered they used to argue over who would sit at His right Hand in some misty, undefined future kingdom, choose to disclose the details of their greatest moment of personal failure, weaving those unflattering self-revelatory details into the fabric of what they already KNEW a monstrous lie?

Since most of it was a lie anyway, why be so brutally hard on themselves?

The Archbishop of Canterbury is on record as doubting the Resurrection as an actual historical event. This defies logic. If the Resurrection wasn't an historical event, then it ended at Golgotha -- and the Apostles knew it.

Every single event from the Cross forward was a lie, and the New Testament record of their zeal to propagate that lie is equally unreliable. THIS is the argument put forth every Easter by the secularists as the epitome of 'rational thought.'

No logical alternative explanation for why the Apostles chose death over denial of what they KNEW, by definition, was a myth. To plug THAT hole, critics say the story was 'harmonized' later as the Bible was being assembled by the Nicean Council.

But nobody ever goes back to Good Friday, 1980 years ago, where they claim it all ended, to explain with any degree of credibility, why it didn't. Because if Jesus was not raised on the first day of the week, where He subsequently appeared to more than five hundred witnesses (1st Corinthians 15:6) then it SHOULD have.

Christianity SHOULD have died with Jesus, and on Good Friday 1980 years ago, to all intents and purposes, it did.

And it would have STAYED dead, but Christianity was raised with Jesus Christ on the third day, and today, it is real enough to have the secularists jumping through logical hoops every Easter season trying to prove its all a myth.

For those who demand empirical evidence of the Resurrection, the existence of the question is all the evidence logic demands.

Had it really ended on Good Friday, 1980 years ago at the Cross, nobody would be asking the question in the first place.

When Jesus appeared to John on the Island of Patmos, He identified himself as the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning AND the end.

The logic of Christianity is that it began where it ended -- without the Cross, there could be no Resurrection. And without the Resurrection, there is no reason to remember the Cross.

To the secularist, this is an unacceptable conundrum, despite the fact his best alternative explanation leaves him with no reason for Christianity to exist for him to question.

It is a logical circle from which he can't escape, because he can't see he's inside the circle.

"But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned." (1st Corinthians 2:14)

As foolish as his argument is, he can't see it for the foolishness of his own wisdom.

"For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, He taketh the wise in their own craftiness." (1st Corinthians 3:19)

So every year, the annual bombardment of articles questioning the 'truth' of the Resurrection continues without their ever seeing the answer is contained inside the very question they are so focused on.

It is as baffling to the natural mind as is the reason we Christians call this upcoming Friday, "Good Friday".

"For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God." (1st Corinthians 1:18)

Too busy for God?

This hit me upside the noggin like a TON of bricks. I do both of those, but neither as often as I should or need to be. How in the world do we let ourselves get too busy for God?! I wanna know. I'm guilty of it. How do we let little trivial, meaningless things take the place of time with our Creator? I'm ashamed to say that I have. Yes, life as a single mother of an 11 year old daughter and 3 year old son gets busy. I barely can grab 3 minutes of peace to potty, but that's life. So what about those 30 minutes online or extra sleep? Shouldn't God be more important?

The Altar Call

If you don't go all the way with me, through thick and thin, you don't deserve me ... - Matthew 10:38 (MSG)

The following quotes really say it all so perfectly, I don't need to add anything...

"The invitation system…encourages people to make a response that “settles things” and, through subsequent counseling, to never doubt that decision. Anyone who is involved in personal evangelism can share countless examples of persons who, though presently living in gross sin, will nonetheless tell the evangelist that they are fine because they “made a decision for Christ” a certain number of years ago. They have never had any change in their life; they have no interest in the church, the Bible, or even God. But they have made their “decision.” Can we not see how dangerous such a system is to the souls of men?"
- Jim Ehrhard ...

"No one is ever saved "as a result" of an altar call. We are saved only as a result of the gospel… We don't want them to think that in order to be saved they must walk an aisle. No! We want them to know that if they look to Christ even while they are seated they will be saved. And so we must tell them that. We must make the message very plain that they must go to Christ, and to go to Him requires no physical movement whatever only a look of the soul… This is too important a matter to erect needless obstacles or distractions. They must be directed not to a geographical location in a building. They must be directed to Christ. Only Christ can lead people home, to heaven"
- Fred G. Zaspel