No LimitsSample

We live in an age where thinking, more than ever, is an essential capacity that everyone needs to develop. While everyone thinks, not everyone thinks the same—and that makes all of the difference.

I learned this lesson from my father, Melvin. Dad grew up during the 1930s in Georgetown, Ohio. That was the time of the Great Depression, when men and women all across America were out of work and facing difficult circumstances.

An industrious fellow and a hard worker, dad was able to get work running errands for the only three wealthy families in town. And it was during his employment for them that he made a life-changing discovery.

Dad noticed that the members of those three families thought differently than the other families in town, including my dad’s. And despite their differences from everyone else, those three families all thought in a similar way. It didn’t take dad long to reach his conclusion:

Successful people think differently than unsuccessful people.

Dad went on to study the thinking habits of successful people, and he came to understand that thinking positively and thinking effectively were two sides of the same coin.

You see, negative thinking robs you of energy, motivation, and belief; when your thoughts are negative, you see the world in a negative light.

It’s no wonder, then, that negative thinking breeds ineffective thinking; when you only see the problems, you cannot accurately assess the opportunities they contain.

What my father learned, he passed on to me, and my friend, after 40 years of thinking about thinking, I am certain that it is the greatest predictor of a person’s success. And I’m not just talking about money; success is defined in any number of ways. But no matter how you measure it, the people who have it are people who think differently than the people who don’t.

Since you’re reading a devotional on a Bible app, let’s put this in spiritual terms: the people who see God’s hand at work most in their life are the people who look for God’s hand at work. They live expectantly, believing that He is interested and involved in the day-to-day matters of humanity.

People who don’t often see God’s hand at work tend to have a different way of thinking about God. They think of Him as distant or disconnected, and because of this, they don’t expect to see much in the way of His power.

It’s why the Apostle Paul wrote to the Philippians, “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.”

What we think determines who we are and who we are determines what we do. Therefore, our thoughts determine our destiny. So let’s make our thoughts good ones.