A teenager hanging out for the first time with an acquaintance from school attends a party with strangers who are drinking and doing drugs. Then the police arrive. The young man must face the consequences of being at the wrong place at the wrong time. And when a young couple buy a house for nothing down, default on the loan, and lose the home because they cannot make the payments, they, too, are not in a place they want to be.
Each person’s destiny depends on decisions he or she makes. They could continue making foolish decisions or they could change the process.
Life is further complicated because some people wish they were on another road for financial reasons. Others want out of a relationship because it no longer satisfies.
The common factor of each of the examples is that life is not always what we planned or anticipated, but what can be done? Many do not believe change is truly possible. Others wish to be on another road, but hoping and wishing does not solve the dilemma, neither does imagining what life would be like if I had not made a particular decision or if I had made a better choice when I was 24, if I turned left here or right there, if I had only moved to a certain country when I had the chance.
Are people then slaves forever to the road they chose? Not at all. The voice we listen to determines the road we travel. Up to a point, different roads can appear identical, just as the 60 and the 57 freeways run together for a stretch here in Southern California, but one gives way to the other. Many people overcome poor circumstances. While a photo of a small section of highway gives the impression that two different roads follow the same route, actually the destinations can be as different as night and day.
The highway we are on can lead to freedom depending on our choices. Reliving history is no more possible than going back to our childhood neighborhood can make us a kid again, but the choices we make today can transform the road we are on now, redefine our past, and determine our course for the future. We must not allow circumstances define us no matter how contrary to our hopes our environment appears.
A New Economic and Geo-Political Counterculture
Governments rest on certain values. For the United States, the foundational ideals in the Declaration of Independence form a collective past, but now they are being corrupted. A government that goes on forever, however, must defeat all its enemies and be incorruptible. Only one government rests on the shoulders of a faultless person, the Lord Jesus the Messiah, who defeated sin and death. His reign and rule will never be subject to the influence of worldly military, economic, or social agendas.
The God-given inalienable rights of life, liberty, and and the pursuit of happiness sustained America for over 200 years, but popular wisdom—actually pseudo wisdom—is decimating those rights. Something must happen, but since we cannot literally go back in time, we must transform the present and move forward.
National governments around the world and a new hidden economic and geo-political reality characterized by humility, righteousness, and wisdom are running concurrently like the proverbial shared stretch of highway. The new revolutionary government, however, is guaranteed never to wear out and will extend forever in every direction into the future.
Christ’s governance expands through the judgment/discernment of His followers through the study of Messiah's teaching and responding to His voice by faith working in love. The authority of this government is iron and its expanse limitless. This also has huge economic implications for the communities and nations in which we live.*
Anytime people question conventional knowledge, they run the risk of being misunderstood, but this is the means of true success, not rejecting anything for rejection sake, but making choices based on truth. Following the beat of a different drum may mean buying when others are selling as Warren Buffett did when finding and buying undervalued companies, which is a foundational wealth creating strategy. It may mean starting a business as Mattel did ahead of a business expansion cycle after many closed their doors because of business market contraction. Some may choose serving the needs of people in a small town being led for the eternal promise of a harvest while others head for the big city.
Though we cannot be dogmatic about this, the fact is that most businesses fail in the first three years shows that following prevailing wisdom leads to failure. In the big picture, failure is integral for success, but a person who starts a business on a whim with the hopes of a big payoff is in a very different place than a person who chooses a business based on perceived market need and so forth. For a short time, the two roads look the same.
The 80/20 rule in nature reveals that 20% of the pea pods produce 80% of the peas. In the business of the Kingdom of Heaven, the parable of the sower, shows that 3/4 or 75% of the seed did not produce because of ground conditions. 25% (the seeds that were planted in good soil) produced thirty, sixty, or one hundred times as much grain as had been sown. Three actions open the door to highest yields: understanding the message of the Kingdom of God, establishing roots in ourselves, and being strengthened by faith in opposition to worries of the world and the glamour of wealth. Faulty ground conditions hamstring growth and lead to poor decisions.
Taking one or more of the actions above depending on the need will put people on the path to be one of the 25% who produce a one hundred, sixty, or thirtyfold increase. I shifted the percentage from 20% to 25% to highlight a difference between between the Pareto Principle (the 80/20 rule) and the parable of Jesus. The three actions mentioned before—Seeking to understand what Jesus teaches, establishing roots in ourselves which re-connect us through Christ to God our Creator, and relying on His voice instead of what we see or feel —all these put whoever-will-listen on the road to infinite returns and guaranteed fruitfulness.
Pareto failed to discover the eternal aspect of the 80/20 principle, which Jesus, the King of kings and Lord of lords embedded in His parable. People who follow the voice of Christ wherever He leads are guaranteed more than money for life after 60. Along the way, they have transformed their past, redeem their present, and created an eternal exit strategy. The Most-Traveled Road fades as a new day dawns over the open road ahead.
The Stuff of Life
Life happens in the between times. Businesses do not bloom overnight. All the choices along the way compound into what looks like overnight success. Wise choices define the road we are on without letting it defining us.
Jesus said He would come at night, the time obviously between one day and the next. If we are awake, or of the day, we can hear His voice. He spoke to the Samaritan woman in the middle of her daily activities, which distracted her so much and quenched her thirst so fully that she did not even fill her bucket with water from the well.
Right now, at this moment, is one of those between times to transform one road, the wide road most everyone travels, to a unique road focussed on the eternal and paved for us with the purpose God has for our lives.
Transformation happens inside before it is visible to others around us. To people looking at a clear plastic cup, it may appear wet because of the illusion that the inside is the outside, when in reality the inside is completely dry. It takes a while for outside conditions to correlate with inward change.
For the prisoner who plays 18 holes of golf every day in his cell, he has already overcome his environment until outside reality catches up. When freed from his chains, his improved golf game validates the truth of his experience.
The great thing about an inner life and thinking conformed to eternal truth is that truth reaches into the past. It was always true. It also lives in the present moment and is just as reliable now as it was throughout history. Additionally, truth stands the test of time, so that decisions based on truth carry forward into the future. Alignment with the truth brings satisfaction to life because it integrates our past, guides our present, and assures our future. A life truly lived establishes integrity.
The Road to Success: You’re On It or Not
Seeing success as our road and being truly successful requires us to change our thinking. Is success based on getting what we want, all we can get, taking for ourselves what belongs to someone else? This kind of selfish thinking shows the need for discernment about boundaries and explains why some people do not experience God’s best in their lives. How can they receive what God says about the matter when the ground of their thinking is thorny and rocky, when their mind has been made up? We need to be conformed to Christ not to our false assumptions. No stone will be left on another. All must fall, so all can be raised up new.
True success unselfishly benefits those we serve. Repentance (changing our minds) leads to discovering the means of success not giving them up. As a matter of fact, repentance frees an individual to succeed at a whole different level because its foundation is sure.
Mt. Sinai, or physical Jerusalem as a philosophy, perverts the word of God into rules and regulations which always bind and cannot set free. This is slavery to a system which always has the last word, but when we hear from God above, the founder of the New Jerusalem, the miracle working power of God is at work in us to make good on all His promises and produce fruit that remains forever. This is true on earth as it is in heaven.
God’s word instructs not to move the ancient boundaries of another established by God, but God also promises to expand the boundary of the territory of His people. How can both be true?
The secret is that the infinite returns produced by obedience to the voice of God never encroach on His purpose for another person. This is how we who serve Christ by being empowered and changed by our connection to God participate in a glorious and ever expanding Kingdom which has no end. The blessings we experience as a result of our obedience are ever increasing. The blessings are furthermore compounded as each person, re-connected to God under the reign of Christ, together produce unparalleled glory to God and the manifestation of His governance in the lives of men and women across the earth.
All this is being done undercover, a glorious remnant being raised up underground. This hidden Kingdom will be fully manifest at the glorious appearing of Christ, the one who defeated death, empowers each one of us to overcome through His promises, and reigns until God puts all His enemies under His foot. Then death itself is thrown into the Lake of Fire with all those who refused to turn to Christ, the beginning and the end of all things, and give all the glory of God.
Will we be able to hear when Jesus is calling whenever that may be? If we allow His voice to transform us inwardly and respond to His call to life, we will not only be led on the road tailor-made for us, but we will have the name of Jesus and the name of the heavenly Father and the name of the New Jerusalem written upon us. We are also given a new name that only Christ knows and the person receiving it.
When He calls us by name, we can walk the road He has chosen, regrets and accusations banished forever, and in the matter of time, we will all be walking heavenly streets paved with gold.
*Study the life of Israel’s son Joseph for more about this.
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