The 3 Essentials: All You Need for Success in Life (9 page)

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Authors: Casey Treat

BOOK: The 3 Essentials: All You Need for Success in Life
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Building Strength
God is my strength, my fortress, and my deliverer, He is the strength of my life; of whom should I be afraid? He gives power to the weak, and to those who have no might, He increases their strength. When I wait upon Him, and draw upon His strength within me, I will mount up with wings like eagles and I will run and not be weary; I will walk and not faint. God is able to make all grace abound toward me so that I will always have complete sufficiency in all things and have abundance for every good work. Even when I feel weak, I can be strong in His strength because the power of Christ rests upon me. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.
(Psalm 27:1; Isaiah 40:28-31; 2 Corinthians 9:8, 12:10; Philippians 4:13)
Overcoming Worry
I do not worry or have any anxiety about anything, but in everything, I pray my specific needs to God. Then I trust He has heard me, and I give thanks to Him by faith that He has answered my prayers. I allow His peace that passes my understanding to guard my heart and my mind. I focus my mind now on whatever is true, noble, just, pure, lovely, and of good report. I meditate on these things, not on the negativity from the input of the world.
(Philippians 4:6-8)
VISION
6
What You See Is What You Get
E
veryone around me was cheering and tossing up their graduation caps. After a speech from the valedictorian about how today was the first day of the rest of our lives, the band began to play and all the young men and women of Bethel High School’s graduating class of 1973 were ready to celebrate. Well, almost all of them . . . I certainly was not. I remember this day so clearly because while everyone else was expressing how excited they were to go on to the next place in life, I felt completely empty. They were calling this the best day of their lives, but I wanted to say it was the scariest and worst day of my life. They saw this day as a beginning, and I could only see it as an end. I had no vision.
Remember back in the day when TV was not 24/7? I’m really going to show my age here, but for all of you young people reading this book, there was a time when the television channels did not broadcast around the clock and they would actually go off the air. Programming would end around midnight, footage of an American flag would wave while a sound track of a band performing the national anthem played, and then the screen would go to “white snow” and the sound would simply become static. There were no options to turn to because every single channel did the same thing. No matter which station you turned to, all you’d get was static.
This is kind of how I felt on the day I graduated high school. The structure of daily classes, the natural advancement to a higher grade, and the umbrella of security all this provided was now suddenly gone. Before, when I looked into my future, there was at least another grade level to shoot for, but now all of that had come to an end, and when I looked into my future the only thing I could picture was static. The band had played, the flag had flown, and now I was out of options. No matter where I turned to look into the future of my life, all I saw was static.
That evening, I tried to drown myself in a binge of alcohol and drugs, hoping to numb the fear and emptiness I felt inside. I don’t remember much of the next few days, and it was at this point where everything in my life took a drastic turn for the worse. The next several months were filled with partying, car accidents, arrests, and convictions. Thank God, I did not kill myself before I had the opportunity to meet Julius Young, the man I mentioned at the beginning of this book, who became my spiritual father and mentor during this crucial time in my life. Through this relationship, I came to know Jesus Christ and began a journey of building a vision for my life that has formed me into the man I am today.
If you would have asked me the night of my graduation if I had a vision for my future, I assuredly would have answered, “No.” However, the truth is I
did
have a vision. It wasn’t what I wanted, but it was what I had. My vision for my life was failure, divorce, drugs, and depression. It’s not a vision I set out purposefully to build for myself, but through the course of my life, it’s what I drifted into. It’s the kind of life I saw around me in my family and friends, and it’s what I automatically assumed I would experience. I wasn’t aware I had a choice in the matter, and I certainly had no clue I could change it.
Perhaps this is how you are feeling right now. You may not be experiencing as drastic a lifestyle as one that encompasses drug addictions and police custodies, but maybe you are unhappy with where you are today. Maybe you’re in a job you dislike, or maybe your financial situation is far below what you want, or maybe your family life is suffering. Whatever the case may be, I want to encourage you: you
can
change whatever you do not like about your life right now into what you want it to be. It may take a little time, and it will take some work on your part, but if a convicted drug addict can do it, so can you! This transformation starts with faith—the first of “the 3”—and then is empowered by the second essential key to success: vision.
Everyone Has One
Every single person on this planet has a vision for his or her life. This is the single most important truth you must come to realize as you work to build the vision you want for your life. Whether or not you have purposed in your heart to frame a vision for your life, you have a vision, and it has nothing to do with what you want for your life.
Your vision is what you see and believe for your future.
When you close your eyes, it’s the picture inside your heart that you truly believe you are moving toward. This vision could be good or it could be bad. It could be the exact opposite of what you desire for yourself, but nevertheless, whatever you secretly envision your life will become, so it will be.
Jesus tells us in Matthew 6:22-23, “The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!” Obviously, Jesus isn’t literally referring to your natural eyesight, because no matter how long you might look at the sun, the inside of your stomach is not going to become lit up. He’s referring to your point of view, or how you see things. If you envision good things, and if you are focused on God’s principles and promises, then your life will be lit up with His blessings. But if your point of view is negative, and if you are focused on what is ungodly and worldly, then your life will be dark—and
not
full of God’s blessings.
Do you see the glass as half full or as half empty? When you look into your future, do you see opportunity, or can you only see the limits that hinder you? For instance, some people have a vision to be healthy and fit. They expect it for their lives, they believe they can achieve it, and so they act accordingly and move toward a life that is healthy and physically fit. Others have a vision to be unhealthy and unfit; they may hate it, they may want something completely different for their lives, but if it’s what they truly believe is in their future, they will inevitably move toward obesity and disease.
What you see is what you get. In other words, where you are today, the life you are experiencing at this moment, is a direct result of your vision of yesterday, and what you truly believe about your life today is exactly where you will be in the future. You might be thinking, “Wait a minute, Pastor; this can’t be right because I did
not
want to be here, and I don’t like my life the way it is right now.” Yes, this might be true, but for some reason you got here. It is because of the thoughts and beliefs in your heart and the subsequent actions you took throughout the course of your life up until now.
In other words, where you are today, the life you are experiencing at this moment, is a direct result of your vision of yesterday, and what you truly believe about your life today is exactly where you will be in the future.
Most of us are like I was on my graduation day. We aren’t aware we have a vision for our lives, and even if we do, we have no idea how to go about changing that vision. But do not get discouraged! As you read these next chapters, you will not only learn exactly what your vision is today, along with some insights on why you have that vision, but you will also be empowered with practical steps on how you can change that vision into anything you want it to be. In a later chapter in Matthew, Jesus is again teaching about how to live a God-centered life, and He says, “Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or else make the tree bad and its fruit bad; for a tree is known by its fruit” (Matthew 12:33). He gives us a vital key for a vision of success: make it good or make it bad. No matter what your “tree,” or your life, is today, you can
make it
good!
The Accidental Tourist
There is a couple in our church, Paul and Debbie Willis, who have been leaders since the very beginning of the ministry and great friends to Wendy and me. A few years into the church, we all decided to take a vacation together. Neither of us had any children yet, so we had the luxury of going anywhere we wanted, for any length of time, without needing extensive planning. First, we rented a motor home and then we came up with the brilliant idea of just packing our bags and going wherever the spirit led us. We had no plan; we just turned the key and started driving . . . It was a terrible idea!
After the first miles of “Where do you want to go?” and “I don’t know, where do
you
want to go?” we chose to drive to the coast. That took about three hours, and we stood and looked at the Pacific Ocean. Many of you probably have not been to the coast of western Washington; let’s just say it’s not nearly as magnificent as it can be hundreds of miles south. There are barely any waves, and when the tide is out, there can be a thick stench. Needless to say, it was a bit anticlimactic.
We grabbed a quick bite and then decided to take our haphazard adventure north. What if we drove to the farthest northwestern tip of the continental United States? Surely there must be a monument of Lewis and Clark or historic totem poles or something of the sort, right? So we began our trip to a place called Cape Flattery, near Neah Bay. We drove and we drove. As we did, the towns slowly began to shrink in size, and the roads began to shrink in size, until we found ourselves on an old, gravel logging road. One would think we would have turned around at that point, but we didn’t have a vision to go anywhere else, so we thought we might as well keep going the way we were already going.
After a very long time of swerving to miss enormous potholes and dust invading every nook and cranny of the motor home, we finally realized that there was nothing to see! We had devoted all day and much of the night to driving, had to set up camp along that dark and desolate logging road, and it was all for nothing! Granted, we did have nice talks and about a million rounds of cards, not to mention a charming night spent in the parking lot of Dairy Queen on the way home. But this adventure certainly did not go down in our books as one of our favorite vacations. Because none of us had a clear plan for this trip, we got exactly what we envisioned: nothing. In that amount of time we could have driven to see the amazing sights and mountains of the Northwest, or we could have taken a trip to Disneyland, but instead, we had nothing to show for our journey. Our eyes were dim, and so was our vacation.
Many of us live our lives this way: just going with the flow and allowing life to happen to us. The visions we have for our lives are “accidental.” We did not develop them on purpose; they just happened as a result of the circumstances we faced and the lifestyle in which we were raised. As a result, we have thoughts in the back of our minds of what we believe our future will be. We may not even be aware of all those thoughts, but they exist in our hearts and minds nonetheless. If we grew up in a home with happy parents and a prosperous life, our accidental vision is generally one of success and happiness, and we will naturally move toward that kind of life, but if we grew up in a home of divorce, or abuse, or poverty, our accidental vision is generally one that reflects that environment. While we may not want what our parents had, and we may not purposefully try to recreate the same experiences, if it’s the only vision we have in our hearts, then we will inevitably move toward that kind of life.
Many of us live our lives this way: just going with the flow and allowing life to happen to us. The visions we have for our lives are “accidental.”
The vision for your life encompasses so many areas. If the only examples you have of growing old are of people being very sickly for years and needing around-the-clock care, then unless you have diligently chosen to build new thoughts inside your heart, your accidental vision for aging is probably not very positive. Similarly, if the authority figures in your life were abusive and controlling, if you have not purposed to change your perspective about what you think is “normal,” then you will naturally gravitate toward these kinds of relationships. If you grew up in a transient home, moving every few years, then unless you work to change your vision about relationships, you might find it difficult to establish long-term friends. Whatever the case may be, if you are not actively working to create the vision you truly want for your life, you will simply by accident reproduce the life and the environment you were raised in.
It is God’s will, His
gift,
for us to establish our purpose in life, to get a detailed vision for our future, and to go for His abundant blessings. We were created in His likeness and His image, and we have the incredible ability to choose what we want for our lives and make it come to pass. Your eye is the lamp of your body, and what you see for your future is what you will get. Let’s take an honest look at the vision we have in our hearts. Let’s thank God for the areas in which we are experiencing happiness and success, and let’s go about changing those areas in which we are not. Jesus promised all of us in John 10:10, “I have come that they may have and enjoy life, and have it in abundance (to the full, till it overflows)” (AMP). Let’s not settle for anything less than this kind of life! Let’s establish our lives with amazing and exciting vision.

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