Self-Fulfilling Prophesy

There’s a theory we studied in social work classes about self-fulfilling prophesy. It’s the natural tendency humans have to find what you are looking for. If you are looking for abuse, you will find it. If you are looking for motives in others, you will see your own motives in them (whether there, or not). If you are looking for an excuse to do nothing, just tell yourself you cannot succeed, and it will put you into a place of inactivity where you will not succeed.

Whatever you tell yourself puts into motion the vision you have, whether it is getting in shape, training for the Olympics, or putting your house in order. You can envision it. You tell yourself you are a winner and you will start behaving like a winner. You envision a better future, and you will have a better future than if you give up. If you expect good, you begin looking for it. If you expect opposition, you find it. When you are thankful, you start seeing what you have to be thankful for. When you look for faults or good in others, that is what you will find. When you look for obstacles, you will always be able to find them, and when you focus on them, they magnify. When you look for solutions, you will find them. When you focus on Christ, He is larger than your obstacles and bigger than your solutions.

The Bible puts it this way, “For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he” (Proverbs 23:7). The inner man may be different than he speaks or appears outwardly. Scripture tells us God judges the inner man rather than by outward appearances (Romans 2:16). Setting goals and having vision of where you want to go in your life is powerful. To help women overcoming divorce, we used to do an activity where women would cut out pictures from magazines. For the women who kept those projects, they would find years later that their lives began looking like their projects. Though in poverty at the time, one woman included things like a hot tub and mountains on her poster, and shared years later how she had moved out-of-state into a home with a hot tub by the mountains!

In pregnancy center work, we trained advocates to help women come from places where they cannot see themselves as a mother to a place where they can see themselves as already a mother. Helping a woman envision herself with this child in a positive way – not a self-defeating way – can save a child’s life! The same principle can save the lives of thousands of children in Colorado currently hanging in the balance and condemned to die in the law if we do nothing.

Have you ever been to a football game where the team predicted to lose took home the win? I love stories where the underdog wins! When those who were not expected to win by all the commentators and past football hall of famers and those betting on the game - when that team puts forward that extra grit and determination and effort – and maybe even prayer - to stay in the game while the other guys are too complacent because they think they cannot lose – I love those games! I watch them put everything they have into it and leave everything on the field!  

One of my favorite movies is “Facing the Giants” by the Kendrick Brothers. It is basically multiple stories that had happened in their own hometown the previous six years put together in one story where when you know God, you say, “that looks like Him, that’s how God works”. I particularly identify with the “death crawl”. To me, the coach represents the Holy Spirit in Brock's ear, “Don’t quit! Don’t quit! Don’t quit!” The young man who is blindfolded is able to go further than he ever thought possible. He’s spent, he’s exhausted, but he didn’t quit!

I read in Scripture just the other day that if we have the faith of just a mustard seed we can say to a mountain to move over. And I asked God to increase my faith. Because the abortion industry is a huge mountain and there are a lot of people surrounding and defending it. Identifying themselves as everything from prochoice to prolife and everything in-between, they do not want the death industry to be closed down! Especially not anytime soon!

Have you read the Scriptures where God told Gideon to limit his army because if it were larger they’d say they had done it themselves and not God? Or how God raised an army from dry dead bones? Or how David faced a giant with just a sling and stone? Or Jesus took a few loaves of bread and fishes and fed a multitude with plenty left over?

With God all things are possible. He used an unrelenting Pharoah to show His glory. He parted a red sea. He waited until there was an army behind and a sea in front and no way to get through it that the people could see. Then He did the miraculous, giving them a way through that they could not have predicted when they started the journey, and swallowing up the enemy in the process. They only saw the Red Sea part when they were in need of it.

Children are a blessing from the Lord and nothing comes into being apart from Him. God ordains praise from the mouths of nursing babes. God will someday separate the sheep from the goats based on how we treated Him as shown in how we treated “the least of these” (Matthew 25)

God calls us to do hard things. He calls us to do what is only possible with Him. Engaging in self-defeating prophesy is not a winning strategy except for the opposition. It is not helpful. We need to be focused on what winning looks like and leave everything on the field.

When the people of God stand for what is right, God gets the glory. When what seems impossible happens, we recognize the invisible hand of God. I am praying and working in faith to see the parting of a red sea, an army of dry bones, the multiplication of loaves and fishes. Because I serve an amazing God. We don’t rely on our own strength, our own abilities, our own craftiness or resources. We serve a God with infinite resources, unlimited abilities, and omniscient wisdom that He shares with us freely when we just ask Him.

God loves these children more than we do. God has called us for this purpose for such a time as this. God is at work in the world softening hearts and changing minds. What is impossible with man is possible with God. We do everything God calls us to do, not only to the best of our ability, but with the exponential strength, power, persuasion, compassion, and perseverance that only He can give. We leave everything on the field. And we leave the results up to Him.

May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.  The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it. (1 Thes 5:23)

Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain. (1 Cor 15:58)

And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight,  so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ,  filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God. (Phil 1:9-11)

"The Death Crawl" in "Facing the Giants"

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