An Offer You Can't Refuse

We have one BIG choice to make in our lives...to Prosper or Die

It sounds scary...and is. No matter who we are, where we are, who our parents are, how gifted we are, how smart we are, our how well off we are…we must make a choice. We have to choose to follow God or to snub our nose at Him and go our own way. It’s the BIG decision of our lives. 

So much of the time we treat God as an annoying parent trying to ruin our good times and make life miserable. The truth is he’s trying to save our lives and lead us into a prosperous, happy fulfilling life! The reality is that He knows we were born spiritually dead and must be born spiritually if we are to have eternal life. 

Whether we admit it or not, without Him we are doomed
That’s why he sent His Son…to be the substitute for our sin and give us the chance for a fresh start with a new, permanent spiritual life! God takes this dead serious! We need to do the same.

So we have choices. This is highlighted by who we associate with, who we listen to and who we choose as friends. 

The options- the Righteous and the Wicked, are contrasted in Psalms 1:

1 How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked,
Nor stand in the path of sinners,
Nor sit in the seat of scoffers!
2 But his delight is in the law of the LORD,
And in His law he meditates day and night. 

You may say, why is that? They are nice, they are “good guys,” they're fun to be around, so what’s the problem? Psalms 5:9 tells us why…

There is nothing reliable in what they say;
Their inward part is destruction itself.
Their throat is an open grave;
They flatter with their tongue.

They appear as nice, fun people but it’s all a delusion. They are headed to disaster. They have no foundation..it’s all false. So what are the results from focusing on the Lord and His words, of choosing to put your focus on the Lord? Let’s go back to Psalms 1.

3 He will be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water,
Which yields its fruit in its season
And its leaf does not wither;
And in whatever he does, he prospers.

It’s like investing in the stock market. How are you going to invest? Wisely, on solid, well run and profitable companies or foolishly on flashy fly-by-night operations? Except this is much more serious, you aren’t investing money, you are investing your life.

4 The wicked are not so,
But they are like chaff which the wind drives away.
5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
Nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.
6 For the LORD knows the way of the righteous,
But the way of the wicked will perish.

Wise or foolish, righteous or wicked…you have your free will, no one is forcing you…so which do you choose?

For me it's an offer I can't refuse...God and Life or wickedness and death? I choose God!

"I Had Confidence in One Thing"

Dive in with confidence and focus. Now isn't the time to flounder.Young Brett Burks had a problem.

After graduating from college he dove head first into starting his own financial services company. He spent a good amount of time apprenticing the business, getting all the licenses and mastering the basics. He was excited and successful. Eventually he branched out on his own.

In spite of overwhelming odds, he not only got his new business off the ground, he built it into a national leader! His life was set. He had paid the price of starting up a new business and now he was looking forward to a lifetime of rewards. Sure, he would continue to work hard but the nasty, scary and round-the-clock start up phase was behind him.

Until he went to a January convention.

That’s when he met the bubbly and beautiful Andrea. She was perfect! AND she also was already involved in the same business. Young love! PERFECT love!  Except as we all know, life doesn’t work that way. Andrea is from Ft. Lauderdale, Florida—a long way from Virginia where Brett had gone to school and lived. She wasn’t moving. Brett realized if they were going to have a life together it would have to be in Ft. Lauderdale.

He now faced the problem - he would have to put himself through another start up. This time it would be even more difficult since he knew no one there and had never lived there - no familiar stomping grounds. He swallowed hard and decided to move. In 90 days, he and Andrea had made a breakthrough and things started to compound.

Three years after the move their team had grown larger than the one he left behind. Their income exploded as well and they earned well over $1 million in that third year.

I asked Brett what was going through his mind when he made his move.

I knew it had to be nerve wracking for him because when you start something new, you can never be sure how successful it will be. And this time he knew how much work he was getting into since he had just done it.

I wanted to know what gave him the confidence to go. He told me he had total confidence in one thing.

“I was sure of one thing and that gave me confidence. I was confident that I would do WHATEVER it took for as long as it took to win. That took all the insecurity away. I had done it before and I knew I could do it again if I paid the price.”

Talk about a winning attitude!

You win when you do 2 things: 

1. Stop worrying about all the things that can go wrong 

2. Focus on what you can do and to commit to do it until you win. 

Brett did exactly that and it paid off for him big-time.