Wednesday, December 30, 2009

We did it!-Day 30 of 30 Negativity Fast

Today is the last day of our 30 day journey to rid our selves of negativity. It started Dec 1st with 15 reasons to fast from negative words. All the past blog post can be found here. Through facebook, twitter, word of mouth, church, and posters we have made a statement, "Negativity is out and positivity is in as we roll into 2010." I learned 10 key things on this fast.

  1. It is a minute by minute battle to combat negative words and thoughts.
  2. You can not tame your tongue you must tend to the condition of your heart
  3. The only way to get your heart right is to allow the forgiving and cleansing power of Jesus' sacrifice to cleanse it properly.
  4. Filling your heart with the Word of God smothers the negative thoughts and leaves them powerless.
  5. You really can address negative circumstances in a hopeful way. I learned to say "let me rephrase that" alot over the last 30 days.
  6. The greatest challenge to stay positive is often with the people you are closest to. (i.e. marriage, family, friends, and coworkers)
  7. "Dis" or "En" is a small prefix in front of the word courage that will determine if you walk in faith or walk in defeat.
  8. Discouragement is real and leads to other things like: Fear, dismay, feelings of abandonment, sadness, forgetting what God has said, terrified, weak, fear of enemies, disobedience out of fear, terror, you want to quit, doubt, intimidated, dread, and you believe lies about you.
  9. Encouragement is real too. We have the power to put courage in our hearts and other's hearts through our words and through the Word of God.
  10. This fast reminded me that God have given us a wonderful tool in our words and we can create atmospheres of peace and life or turmoil and death.
My friend Nathan Williams came up with a working definition of the word encourage.
Encourage: to put courage in (en) the heart. To have HEART means to have inner strength and courage.
Speak words to others that leave others with H-E-A-R-T:
H -Hope
E - Enthusiasm
A - Assistance
R - Rejoicing
T - Total Confidence

I need to thank you for joining us, my wife for all of her great blog post, my friend J.D. Stegall for his encouraging blog post, my friend VERSES for his poster design with Thinqbold media, all of the businesses, churches, families, individuals, etc. that took the challenge to be negative free for 30 days. And also for the greatest church family (Church Ablaze) who had to listen to me beat the drum of encouragement all month. NOW LET'S MAKE IT A LIFESTYLE..SHALL WE!
Take a minute and comment on what you learned?

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