Genesis chapter 1
Today we are walking in: Why Were You Born?
Job 34:16
If now thou hast understanding, hear H8085 this: hearken to the voice of my words.
UNDERSTAND
Today we look to the word-UNDERSTAND- H8085 shama`--to hear with attention or interest, listen to understand (language)
The Torah testifies...............
Genesis 11:7
Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand H8085 one another's speech.
The prophets proclaim..................
Nehemiah 8:2
And Ezra the priest brought the law before the congregation both of men and women, and all that could hear H8085 with understanding, upon the first day of the seventh month.
The writings bear witness...........................
1 Kings 3:9
Give therefore thy servant an understanding H8085 heart to judge thy people, that I may discern between good and bad: for who is able to judge this thy so great a people?
Chapter 4
Why Were You Born?
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
—Eleanor Roosevelt
The deepest craving of the human spirit is to find a sense of significance and relevance. The search for relevance in life is the ultimate pursuit of humanity. Conscious or unconscious, admitted or not, this internal passion is what motivates and drives every human being, either directly or indirectly. It directs decisions, controls behavior, and dictates responses to the environment.
This need for significance is the cause of great tragedies. Many suicides and attempted suicides owe their manifestation to this compelling need. Many mass murderers and serial killers confess the relationship of their antisocial behavior to their need to feel important or to experience a sense of self-worth.
This passion for relevance and a sense of significance makes one race or ethnic group elevate itself above another. It also gives birth to prejudice and causes the fabrication of erroneous perceptions that result in grave injustices and the conception of abominable dreams and inhuman behavior. It also gives birth to tyrants and dictators who easily sacrifice the sacredness of human life and dignity for a temporary sense of significance.
This desperate desire to feel important and relevant to one’s existence also causes the sacrifice of common sense, good judgment, moral standards, and basic human values. Many individuals have sacrificed excellent reputations and years of character-building lifestyles for the sake of advancement to a desired position or a place of recognition and fame in their society or workplace so they could feel important and worthwhile.
This passion for a sense of significance and meaning in life is also the fuel for most capitalist and progressive economies. There are millions of individuals who sacrifice their families, friends, and convictions in the attempt to gain a sense of significance. Accumulating status symbols and material possessions, they seek a position of importance and meaning.
In essence, this deep desire and drive for a sense of importance, significance, and relevance is the cause and the motivator of all human behavior and conflict. This passion for significance knows no boundaries. Rich and poor are victims of its power. King and peasant suffer under its rule. Is this passion for a meaningful life a negative craving? Absolutely not!
This yearning for relevance and significance is evidence of an internal vacuum in the nature of humankind that needs to be filled. This age-old passion is the pursuit of purpose, a relentless reaching for a reason for the gift of life.
You Are Not a Mistake
Have you ever felt like you were a mistake? Have your parents told you they wished you had never been born? Are you a child whose parents have said, “I wish you would have died when you were a baby”?
You may have come into this world as the result of a rape. Your mother may have hated you in the womb because you reminded her of a man she wished to forget. But the fact that you were conceived is more important than how you were conceived. People go around dealing with how things happened, but we should be more concerned with the fact that your conception happened.
What matters is that you are here. You are important. Your very existence means you are somebody special simply because you were born.
Although some parents feel their baby is a mistake, their thoughts are not true. The manner in which a child was conceived may not have been the best, but the child is surely part of a larger, more important plan.
If you were brought up in a nice family with a mother and a father who loved you, you may not understand those who have been put down by their family since the day of their birth. You may not understand how important it is for them to know that they are not mistakes. Be patient with them. Help them to see that every child who comes into this world is special and wanted. You were designed to be somebody special, unique.
The people I have met who are progressing in life and affecting other people’s lives—people like Dale Carnegie, a tremendous man who has touched many people’s lives, or Robert Schuler, who helped people worldwide to improve their self-esteem—all seem to say the same thing: If you feel good about yourself, you will feel good about other people. In other words, only after you see yourself as a worthwhile person can you appreciate others as worthwhile people.
If you feel good about yourself, you will feel good about other people.
That’s a very important insight because many people do not feel good about themselves. They look at themselves and wonder why they were born; or they doubt that anyone can find any good in them. But remember, each person is valuable and important. Potential has been placed within each one of us. Our potential is not a trial and error experience—we have a predetermined success story.
Your Life Story
I believe each of us has a book—our life stories that have already been written. You may be playing around in the index or you have spent years in the table of contents. Perhaps you are 30 years old and you still don’t know the plan for your life. That’s playing around on the contents page. You are 30 years old and still wondering what you are supposed to be. You haven’t even started yet.
Others have jumped ahead of the plan. Though the design calls for you to be married in Chapter 17, you got married in Chapter 2. You have ignored the things you should have learned and experienced in Chapters 2 through 16, so you would be prepared for marriage in Chapter 17. You have missed out on many experiences and discoveries because you moved ahead of schedule.
Some people are so busy peeking into Chapter 17 they don’t have time to live Chapters 2, 3, and 4. Or perhaps you have pulled Chapter 17 into Chapter 2 so that the rest of the book is destroyed. You will never have the opportunity to experience all the chapters if you pull parts of later chapters into the early ones.
Or how about a cell phone? A cell phone has many parts, some visible and some invisible. Among the visible parts of a basic phone are the earpiece and microphone, the key pad, the LCD screen, and the power receptor to plug in your wall charger. Internally, there are wires, a SIM card, a battery, and so on.
If the key pad decides it no longer wants to be a key pad, but prefers to be the LCD screen because it is highly visible, the caller would never reach his party because the phone could not dial the number. Or if the earpiece tries to act like the key pad, the phone would make a call but the caller would not be able to communicate with the other person because the earpiece would not transmit sound.
Like the parts of a phone, each person has a specific place within the overall scheme for the world. Character, nature, gifts, and position are specially designed to accomplish whatever task is purposed for each individual. Frustration results whenever we try to fit into a position too early—or not at all— and we fail to fulfill our potential.
You Are the Author
Starting today, you can write the remainder of your life’s story. No matter where you are in life, Chapter 4 or 14, you can make changes to the remaining pages. If you always wanted to be a teacher, take steps to become one! While working as a retail associate you’ve dreamt about opening your own store, research how to make that happen! If you have always wanted to travel, find a way to use your talents and skills, and go!
Many have often cheated themselves because they don’t realize their potential. Why settle for being a doorman when you can own the house? Why settle for cleaning up after dogs when you could open your own dog grooming business? Why settle for being a bank teller when you can be the bank manager? Fulfill your potential by identifying your desires and then planning steps to move in that direction.
Though you might have messed up the first few chapters of your book, you have the chance to write the ending. It probably won’t be the best seller the first book was designed to be, but you have the chance to make changes. Self- acceptance is the key to healthy self-esteem. Accept yourself as you are, then transform your weakness, rather than belittling yourself when you make mistakes.
Knock the Limits off Your Life
Knocking the limits off your life gives you the freedom to dream and imagine that all things are possible. Too often we are not willing to believe in ourselves. Everything is possible if we believe. It’s not true that everything is possible if we get the idea. Things don’t become reality because we have an idea. We have to believe in the idea. We have to believe we can do it by committing ourselves to it, abandoning ourselves to it, even if it costs us our lives. That’s what it takes to believe.
No one is impressed by our dreams. Most of us never wake up long enough to do anything with our dreams. We may have great dreams for our lives, but we prefer to stay asleep because when we wake up reality says, “OK, let’s get to work.” It’s easier to dream an idea than to work it out. Everything is possible if we abandon ourselves to an idea enough that we are willing to lose our lives for it.
Everything is possible if you abandon yourself to an idea enough that you are willing to lose your life for it.
Thinking is great. But all things are possible when we believe. We need to desire a thing enough to want to work for it. The word desire is key. Being interested in or attracted to something is not desiring it. To desire means to crave for something at the expense of losing everything.
From Thought to Action
A thought is a silent word, so a word is an exposed thought. Everything in life starts first in thought form. After it’s said, it is no longer a thought. It becomes a word.
The next step is an idea. An idea is the concept of the thought—it has moved into a reality. Ideas are potentials.
The third level of operation is what I call imagination. Imagination changes an idea into a plan. If you have an idea, it can come and go. You have many ideas in a day—what to cook, what to wear, what to do. You may decide the night before what you are going to wear in the morning and then wake up with a different idea. Ideas change.
But if an idea develops into an imagination, it means the idea has become a plan. It is still not written or drawn, but it is in your head. Imagination is therefore a plan that is not documented. It is a visual display of your thoughts and ideas.
If you want to be successful in life, take your ideas and turn them into imagination; then take imagination and duplicate it physically. Put it down on paper. Let it become a plan of action.
Many people never get beyond the idea stage. That’s sad. They are usually followers. The people who get to the imagination stage often talk a lot but they do nothing. They are dreamers. But when people take their imagination and put it on paper, you are looking at visionaries who could become missionaries. Visionaries see great things in their minds. Unfortunately, many visionaries take their visions to the graveyard with them. They had visions, but their visions never made it to mission. When a visionary becomes a missionary, you have a man or woman who is going to change the world.
For Instance If I’m going to create something that will fly, I must first decide that the object’s purpose is to fly. Then I have to determine what function and design will allow the object to accomplish that expectation. In other words, I will put into the kite, the helicopter, or the airplane the ability to do what I am asking it to do. My design will include whatever is needed for the object to fly. Because I intended for the object to fly and I built into it the ability to fly, the object can fly. Therefore, purpose produces design, and design predicts potential. From looking at an object’s design, you can predict what it is capable of doing.
To back up a step, purpose is also an indication of potential.
If you know the intended purpose for an object, you also know what it can do. The minute you know that the kite was created to fly, you know that it can fly. Therefore, whatever you were born to do—whatever was purposed for your life—you are equipped with all the ability, talents, gifts, capacities, and potential you need to fulfill it.
Make Plans—Set Goals
Plans are documented imaginations. If you can document an imagination, you’ve developed a plan for action.
If you are having problems in your life, I mean real problems, you probably don’t have a piece of paper on which you have documented your plans for the next five years. If you are disillusioned with life—bored and confused—I can almost guarantee that you don’t know what is going on in your life. You’re just living from day to day in the absence of a concrete, documented plan by which to live. You’ve been dealing with the same issues and habits and struggles for years. You slide forward a little only to slide backward again. Whenever things get hard, you start reminiscing about “the good old days” and fall back into habits you had conquered.
If there is no goal in front of you, you’ll check the hazardous holes behind you. If there is no vision in front of you to pull you on, you will be dragged back to the path you know well. If your imagination does not become documented, it will soon ferment into vapor and disillusionment.
Let me explain. If you do not have a paper on which you have written a general plan for your life, you may decide something one minute only to change it five minutes later. You will be confused, disoriented, misguided, and frustrated. Progress requires a plan of action. Ideas must be put down if they are to influence the way you live.
Many of us plan our meals for the next week, but we have nothing planned for our lives. The food we eat just goes away —but doesn’t touch the future.
Stop. Set your course. Imagine into your future as far as you can.
Chart what you are going to do for the next five months, twelve months, two years. Start imagining what you want to be, what you want to accomplish, where you want to go, who you want to influence. Do this, and then put your plan in a convenient location so you can check your progress, tracking how close you are to your next goal.
You will be amazed how motivating your chart will make you. It will encourage you to move, to work, to look ahead. Don’t worry about how you are going to meet all your goals; take one day at a time walking always forward toward them.
You have the capability to change the world. You have the potential to be and do much more than is visible now. Make a plan. Give yourself something to be motivated toward. As you dream, think, imagine, and plan who you want to be, you will begin to see why you were born.
Principles
1. You are worth feeling good about—you are unique.
2. There is a detailed plan for your life.
3. Many plans are waiting to be revealed through you.
4. Develop a plan for your life that fulfills some of the possibilities designed within you.
5. Believe and work those possibilities into existence.
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