I have tremendous ideas running through my head pretty much all the time- you probably do too.
How much does that mean if we do nothing about those great ideas? Nothing. Absolutely nada.
Starting is important- the “right time” Never comes. Never.
Years ago I remember a dear friend of mine – let’s call her Tembisa… anyway she started her MBA while pregnant.
“Are you mad!” I asked. “Don’t you want to wait a little?” I blurted in absolute panic for her.
And her response to me was: “There’s always something Hannah. If I don’t start now…”
Oh well the rest is history… She has her MBA now- has great jobs and gigs… She’s kicking serious butt wherever she goes not just because she got her MBA when she did – but because the successes she enjoys today are a result of a series of things she started years ago.
The problem with “waiting a little” is that time compounds.
You wait one day – then a week – then a year… before you know it ten years have passed. Before you know it you’ve waited too long and your whole life has passed.
The time dear friend is now.
I have two small kids – Luke turns two next month – Sky’s just over the three month mark…
Before I continue I must apologise profusely for a silly thing I wrote on my blog mommy24.com. At the time I mentioned how NOT hard being a mom was… To all moms, especially stay at home moms – please do forgive me. There isn’t a harder job I’ve ever done than being home with the kids…
And now I can continue…
So even with my two kids (who I feel drain so much of my productive energy) I am eager to not let my great ideas just swim around my head, go stale and eventually die.
That’s why I work at staying connected on this blog – I enjoy this so much – and sometimes I have to write in the crux of midnight because I don’t want this part of my life to go stale –
Some of my dreams and ambitions are far too big for what I have to make them happen right now – but I’m starting anyway – even if I start small and in a seemingly pathetic way – I’m starting.
Even though fear and the prospect of failure lie very real and taunting in front of me -I’m starting – not because I’m certain I’ll succeed but because I know the mythical “right time” most wait for is just that- a myth.
Also, other than the issue of the “right time”, you might never have “everything” you need to make it happen. Whatever “it” is for you.
The question is not: Are you completely ready and equipped to achieve what you dream?
The question is: Are you ready to go for it?
And the question after that is: How can you use whatever you have right now to start?
No great corporation, business, movement, or project ever started out big. Not a single one in all of history. Go and check…
Everything that ever started, started out small. And sometimes struggling. And sometimes seeming as though it would never make it. But some did make it- because they stuck with it. Because they allowed the power of what they envisioned to conquer the naysayers and everything else that sought to bury them in the ground. It all happened for them because one day they started.
You have got to stop just dreaming. Do something -even if it’s just one tiny, intsy wintsy thing like making a phone call- or logging onto Google for some info – or dropping someone an email to pick their brain about your idea – do something. There isn’t one thing you do that won’t matter. The stuff that fails you can pack on the shelf of experience and move on.
You may be dreaming big but I can almost guarantee that you don’t really know the fullness of what you could accomplish if you just start, keep going and make it happen.
If you do nothing else today, or this week or this month- I hope you’ll at the very least start.
I believe it was with a broken heart that God asked Adam and Eve that question.
To this day I doubt many of us truly understand the depth of that question.
God, in His insane generosity and indescribable love, had given His children EVERYTHING they would ever (EVER) need.
And then one day something happened and He found them fearful, stripped of His beautiful truth– they no longer believed the abundance He had lavished upon them.
As a mom I can perhaps fathom the heartbreak… I mean imagine as a parent… You give your kids the best of you – well at least you try. Imagine how you’d feel if they rubbished all your efforts and sacrifices for them?
As humans we do fail and rarely do we live up to our kids’ very high demands – but God is perfect. He had given SUCH abundance that to this day I don’t think we can know what opulence Adam and Eve lived in.
It wasn’t just the abundance of food, land, animals, and every other beautiful thing you can imagine – they had perfect health, perfect looks, perfect bodies, perpetual youth, limitless energy- everything they could ever want they had – they had no idea – none at all of what it mean to not have. Can you even begin to imagine?
Fast forward to present day… opposites have never been further apart…
And yet I believe that when it comes to abundance for us God’s heart has not changed.
When God said to Adam and Eve: “Be fruitful and multiply,” I believe with everything in me that He didn’t just mean: “Go have a bunch of kids…”
I believe He meant for the people He loved and created to be fruitful and to multiply in every area of their lives.
The Scriptures talk a lot about fruitfulness.
We see some stories where God is angered by a lack of fruitfulness (remember the fig tree He cursed because it didn’t bear fruit? Or the lazy servant who hid his talents and failed to multiply what he was given?)
We are meant to have an abundant life people. That was God’s plan from the very beginning.
We are meant to be fruitful and a failure to do so takes away the fullness of the lives we’re meant to live.
Often I find myself mad when people are not fruitful. For the most part, it’s not the people who’re not fruitful that I’m mad at- I’m mad that they’ve been so deceived into believing the lie!
One of the themes I repeat often in my work is: Don’t believe the lie!
With many of my clients I find a lot of their struggles with confidence stem from lies that were spoken to them over and over until they believed them!
I believe brokenness and lack come from believing a lie.
Eve believed the lie that there was something they lacked. In believing that lie they lost everything. In believing the lie they moved from opulent abundance to back-breaking poverty.
Poverty is a perfect example of believing lies that prevent fruitfulness.
If you observe individuals, families or communities that are poor you’ll often see a very common thread that goes way deeper than the lack of money: it’s an entrenchment in their minds and in their spirits that no amount of money can fix.
Poverty angers and saddens me because it’s no way for anyone to live.
The only way to uproot poverty is to uproot the lie and replace it with right thinking. Right thinking comes with knowing the truth.
For years I battled with financial lack. I felt helpless in its grip and knew it had no intention of letting me go.
One day I heard a message that told me that poverty was NOT MY PORTION.
Immediately I decided to believe the truth about the abundance that was essentially my right.
It’s so important to note here that money didn’t miraculously start making its way to me! It really doesn’t work that way. Instead I started to learn important principles about how money worked.
One of them was to immediately pay all debt I owed and to stop borrowing money.
Another principle was to never buy anything on credit… I decided to live on the principle that said: If I couldn’t pay cash for it then I couldn’t afford it. (Things like property and investments let’s leave for another post…)
Another principle I learned was saving…
It was really hard at first. For a while I didn’t have much – but I had such a joy knowing I was on my way to living the abundant life I was meant to live!
There were many nice things I could have acquired but it gave me greater pleasure to get out of debt. It’s an awesome feeling to owe nothing to anyone.
And so my learning continued – the more I learned and put into practice the more money I found I had… It all begun with the truth: I was meant to be fruitful in my finances.
May I suggest a break here perhaps?
I’d suggest we have some tea or coffee for the next half…We’re about to change gears 🙂
They’re many kinds of poverty – people can have all the money in the world and still be poor.
I looked up the word “Poverty” – other words that can be used in its place include: deficiency, scarcity, shortage, insufficiency…
Most of us have a poor area in our lives – wherever and whatever the poverty in your life is today I challenge you to uproot it. It has no right to be in your life.
It’s with absolute conviction and confidence I can tell you that you have the power to uproot it because the God that created you commanded you to be fruitful. He would never have done that had He known it would be impossible for you.
“Be fruitful and multiply,” was both a blessing and a command from God.
He didn’t say: “Oh please try and be fruitful. All I can ask is that you do your best…”
I believe God commanded fruitfulness and then gave us the complete ability to bring it about.
So friends with that kind of power invested in us failure is not an option. You have got to believe you were designed and destined for success.
Because you were created in God’s image success is in your DNA!
Fruit starts with planting seed. The seed is acquiring and ingesting right thinking.
So as a plant must grow before it can bear fruit your success in a “fruitless area” might not happen immediately – it may take a while- but if you decide in your mind that you will eat the yummy fruit that has been destined for you to enjoy – you’ll get through the rough and tough parts that come.
For years my area of fruitlessness was the inability to have children. I share this openly because I know they are so many women and men around the world who battle with this. And I share it openly because it is with absolute confidence that I can tell someone who is going through what I went through that you can have the babies you desire – don’t let anyone tell you it’s impossible.
During my time of struggle to bear children the lie I believed was that I couldn’t have kids.
Now you may say – but Hannah how was that a lie? You really couldn’t have kids! And there, my friends, is how we get roped into thinking and thus believing nonsense about ourselves.
If you think you’re poor, you’ll believe it and, you will never be rich.
If you think you’re sick, you’ll believe it and, you’ll never be healthy.
If you think you’re stupid, you’ll believe it and, you’ll never be smart.
If you think you don’t have a “business mind” you’ll believe it and, you’ll never be successful in business.
If you think you’re a rubbish parent, you’ll believe it and, you’ll never be a good parent.
If you think you’re barren, you’ll believe it and, you’ll never have kids.
Note how I start each sentence with “If you think?…” That’s because we’re told in The Scriptures that what we think is what we are.
It starts with what we have running in our minds.
Don’t let junk get into your head.
Sometimes you can see junk a mile away – but often Junk is disguised as something that will benefit you… it’s a lie. Run!
Oh I cannot emphasise enough the importance of teaching our kids to think right!
Research has shown us how powerful what we believe is – a child who’s constantly told they’re stupid or average become exactly that simply because eventually they believe the lie.
How many geniuses have we lost this way?
So let’s go back to me for a moment- I thought I couldn’t have children, eventually believed it and ultimately was robbed in this area of my life.
Even my prayer in this regard was wrong.
Man! I cannot tell you how many times I was on my knees (literally on my knees) begging (and I mean BEGGING) God for a child!
For years my prayers went “unanswered” and I didn’t know why.
I condemned myself: What had I done wrong to deserve this? I would ask.
Over and over I would ask God for forgiveness for things I believed had caused my struggle.
All the while, while trying to conceive, I sought the help of fertility specialists…
So when did the turn-around happen? When I came to know the truth about my situation.
I found an amazing resource on the internet that dealt with what I was going through head-on. The resource was ENTIRELY backed by Scripture. The very first thing I discovered was that God WANTED me to have children.
To this day it brings tears to my eyes when I remember what that meant to me.
Really God? You really want me to have the babies I desire?
His answer was a resounding: YES! YES! YES!
All those years I’d believed I was barren meanwhile God’s desire for me from the very beginning, was: “Be fruitful and multiply!”
As I read through the Scriptures I found so many women who had gone through what I’d gone through. I clearly remember God asking me: “Who told you that you were barren?”
It sounded so similar to the question God asked Adam and Eve in the garden: “Who told you that you were naked?”
Our forefathers had believed the lie. And by so doing they were robbed of the abundant life God had freely given them…
So dear friend the question I ask you today is: What lie are you believing?
Your area of fruitlessness might not be in the area of fertility – but whatever lie you’ve been led to believe- it’s only when you stop believing it and you start thinking right that great things can happen in your life.
So eventually as I continued to ingest knowledge of what God had planned for me I begun to think right! And right thinking was I was not, nor was I ever meant to be, barren! I was fruitful! That was the truth! God’s truth!
Armed with the knowledge of that truth I was no longer taking any nonsense from my body.
My body was going to do what God had commanded and that was to be fruitful.
I cannot tell you how often I spoke to my body and told it to submit to what God had intended… it’s quite a story – I wrote it all in my book Lula my Sun – you can read it for free by clicking here
Today I have, not one, but two children- without the aid of fertility drugs.
Both my children are gorgeous and remarkable beyond anything I imagined.
Anyway all I wanted to tell you is decide today to believe the truth about you: In every single area of your life you were designed to be fruitful and to multiply.
Find resources that will help you THINK right about your situation (whatever it may be). Be determined to devour as much of this knowledge as possible because it’s in knowing the truth that you will be armed with the tools to have what you desire.
God made man absolutely perfect, in His very own image.
He gave man everything he (and she) would ever need.
God gave everything He could give and held nothing back. Not one thing.
A while ago I heard someone say: “God is not holding out on you.” The truth of that is too much for us to even begin to fully compute.
The greatest lie ever told is that God’s holding out on you. Every kind of poverty stems from this lie. My friend God is SO for you! Change your thinking about you and your situation today.
The greatest truth you can believe now and always is God wants and abundant life for you.
For those that believe you know with absolute conviction of what I’m talking about when I say He gave us His very best: Jesus- His only Son.
What then dear friend will He withhold from you?
Start thinking right about your situation.
If your business is not doing well as it should be – get the knowledge you need to do better. Your business is meant to be fruitful and it’s meant to multiply beyond anything you can imagine.
Do you constantly find trouble in your relationships? That’s not your portion. Your relationships should bear beautiful, yummy, fruit and should constantly be multiplying into something greater.
Are you battling some health issue that fills you with dread? That is NOT God’s will for you! You can’t be full of purpose and sick! That will frustrate you and rob you of an awesome life!
He said He came so you can have an abundant life.
There isn’t any part of your life God’s not concerned with. He wants every area of your life to be fruitful.
No one is ever disqualified.
Some women may have given up on having babies they’ve so desired all their lives because they feel they’re too old – Sister girl If you still want a baby – you can still have your baby from your own body. Don’t believe anything anyone tells you and stop listening to people who say it can’t be done. Look up to God and tell them it wasn’t them you were asking to change your situation!
If all your life you’ve dreamt of owning a business but now feel you’re too old – if you still have breath in you your business can still happen.
Whatever your circumstance dear friend, I ask you this day, please don’t disqualify yourself.
Believe the greatest truth – God’s attitude toward you is utter love. His desire is for you to enjoy abundance in every area of your life – now and always.
