The Reframing Success conference was a huge success this year. The meetings were loaded with encouragement, new perspectives and challenges to grow in our relationship with God.

One of the first things we were reminded was that this conference would do nothing for us, unless we resolve to put into practice what we are being inspired to do. This simple truth is so powerful yet statistics show that less than 5% of the people who go to seminars actually put into practice what they got out of the seminar. But we are the people who are resolved to practice what the Holy Spirit is inspiring us to do and to be.

On that note: the theme of the conference was based on the scripture: “Beloved in all things I am praying that you will be prospering, and you will be continually having good health just as your soul is prospering.” 3 John 2 Wuest. God has always intended for you to prosper. Your struggle comes in how you have defined success. What is success? Real success is a state of heart, not some goal that you are trying to achieve. It is fundamentally linked to how you see yourself. Therefore, all success begins in your heart. What is in your heart directly affects what you are experiencing in your soul. What we see in the verse above is that the success you experience externally is directly related to the success you are already experiencing internally.

Ed Elliott taught us that this journey of being begins with our experiencing God’s love for us. The God kind of love is speaking of His value, esteem and high regard for us. Before you came into existence, God had already decided that He loves you. He demonstrated His love for us through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. To the degree that we experience His love for us, our sense of self transforms into His view of who we are. We begin to grow in our acceptance and perspective from a heart level of the enormous value He has for us. “We love him, because He first loved us.” 1 John 4:19 KJV.

Based on this experiencing God’s love and the transformation of our sense of self, we learned from Dr. Richards that it is in the heart that faith occurs. We authentically believe when our deep rooted feelings and our thoughts are in harmony concerning what we believe. Both faith and doubt are forms of belief. Faith is belief in something that is in harmony with reality that the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus has created. Doubt is belief in some other opposing reality. We all have faith and we all exercise our faith continually. Our challenge is not about having enough faith but taking our focus off of the distracting doubts and placing our focus onto the realities that Jesus sacrificed everything to bring to us.

Matt 21.21 Wuest: …if you are having faith, and are not doubting, not only will you do that which was done to the fig tree, but if you say to this mountain, Be lifted up and thrown into the sea, it shall come to pass (emphasis mine).

Our doubt grows as we increase our focus on the risks that seem to surround the promise rather than the benefits of the promise. A great example of this is when a wide beam is placed on the ground and you are asked to walk the beam. You would have no problem doing this. But if this beam was placed about 10 meters above the ground without a net and you were asked to walk it. Now the perspective has changed and your focus is distracted by the risk of falling 10 meters. Doubt now opposes your faith in being able to walk the beam even though you know you can walk that beam.

How would you answer this question:  what would I look like in real life as a someone who believes from my heart that God raised Jesus from the dead and my complete identification with Him in that?  Learn to pay attention to the inspiration you hear and the amount you ponder, consider, study that inspiration you are hearing until you see yourself in what you hear.  Take ownership of it and experience yourself in that end.   Dr. Richards said, “There is no promise of transformation in the Bible apart from some type of meditative process.”  Find a way to imagine, engage and experience these realities of God.

If you haven’t already, make use of some of the various tools that Dr. Richards presented in the Reframing Success conference, in his book Wired for Success – Programmed for Failure, in the Heart Physics programs or that you tasted in the afternoon workshops to begin to send away the various doubts that have hindered you from experiencing more of the promises of God in your life.  Remember though, the tools are not the end; they are simply the path to the end result.

If you are interested in reviewing the teaching that came during the Reframing Success conference or the Wired for Success-Programmed for Failure book, they are available in Doxa Canada’s online store:

Reframing Success:   Messages in CD-Set or mp3 format

Book:  Wired for Success – Programmed for Failure