Counselor's Corner: Choose to Magnify the Good in Your Life

Dictionary.com defines magnify as to make greater in actual size or to enlarge.

What are you magnifying in your life? God’s blessings and goodness or all your difficulties?

What you CHOOSE to focus on will become larger. Our problems become larger as we mull them over and over again. A magnifying lens will actually make something smaller look larger, but if you pull the magnifying lens back what you were looking at will get smaller. If we stop gazing at our problems and focus our eyes instead on Jesus we will gain His perspective on our situation-our problems will get smaller in His presence.

Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfector of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Hebrews 12:2

I recently had many opportunities to focus on what was going wrong in my life, but I have made a decision to reflect on what is right instead. For a season in my life, I magnified all that was negative in my life. The enemy had me so consumed with what has not come to pass in my life, or my losses, or my trials that I had difficulty seeing any good. Now, I know none of you have ever magnified the bad over the good, but if you ever have done this you will know that it makes matters worse. I did not intentionally set out to amplify my circumstances, but sometimes life hits you with one curve ball after another, and before long you can find yourself deep in the pit of despair.

When we have difficult trials in our lives, magnifying the good will be a conscious choice. In other words, you will not feel like focusing on the good in your life. Heartache and pain can cause you to look at what is wrong in your life, and the enemy will then magnify or distort the true reality of your anguish.

Set your minds on things above, not on things that are on earth. Colossians 3:2

Start your day by writing (5) things that you are grateful for. Doing this will shift your thinking from the negative to the positive. Even if you feel nothing is going right, think again! Dig deep and take some time to reflect on what you do have. Practice the skill of gratitude daily and you will begin to think differently about what is wrong in your life.

We all have problems and situations in our lives that if we stare at them to long, we will become overwhelmed, anxious, worried, depressed, and full of fear. This is exactly what the enemy wants. What if instead we gave our problems over to the Lord, and daily cast our cares upon Him? What if we began to magnify the blessings in our lives and stopped gawking at our problems? What would your life look like if you did these things?

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Word of Encouragement: Counselor’s Corner : Water Your Seeds

Just like when you plant seeds in the ground and you wait patiently for the seeds to sprout by regularly watering the new seeds, we also should be careful to “water the seeds” we are believing for. If you stop watering seeds that you just planted in the ground, those seeds most likely will not spring up. When we begin to believe God for change, we must speak the opposite of what our fears, worries, and concerns says about our situations and “water our seeds” with scripture, walking in faith not by what we see with our eyes, and by speaking daily affirmations that lines up with God’s promises for us.

Seeds are tiny, but with the proper care and over time seeds can be transformed into flowers, bushes, trees and even fruits and vegetables. One of the keys to having a successful garden is to make sure not only to water regularly but to pull up weeds often that try and choke the life out of your plants. As we should do in our lives on a regular basis, pull out anything in our lives that would choke our “seeds.”

What chokes out the “seeds” in our lives:

·        Unrepented sin

·        Fear of the future, fear of the unknown

·        Worry and anxiousness

·        Over reacting to problems

·        Magnifying your problems, focusing on the negative

·        Thanklessness

·        Complaining

·        Speaking negative

·        Doubt and unbelief

·        Filling your mind with everything but the Word of God

·        Undisciplined mind

·        Guilt and condemnation

When you begin to plant DAILY the Word of God and daily positive affirmations of faith into your minds, those seeds of faith will produce a crop of blessings and abundance in your life. Just like when you plant, you need good soil with fertilizer, the Word of God spoken out loud can be the good soil that when you plant your seeds of faith (the promises that God has given you), a harvest can be produced. We reap what we sow. If we plant the Word of God into our minds and speak by faith DAILY (even though the promises and prayers may not be manifested yet), we will reap what we are sowing.

If we want to have the fruit of the Holy Spirit (Galatians 6:7-10), we should be careful what “seeds” we are allowing to be rooted into our soil (hearts and minds). To conceive and give birth to the miracles in your life, you first must plant God’s Word like a seed into your heart and mind, and not allow that seed to be choked out by the cares of this life.

In Luke 8:11-15, Jesus compared speaking the Word of God to seeds being sown in various kinds of soil. He was saying that words are being planted!

What words have you spoken over yourself, others and your circumstances that need to be uprooted? What new words do you need to begin by faith to speak over these areas?