I always share stories about what happens to me in order to encourage and motivate others who may be going through difficult challenges in their lives. I’ve been having a lot of conversations lately with folks who are frustrated, tired, scared, or just burdened with a lot of negativity in their life. My mom taught me early on that life is full of fights. You have to fight for peace and happiness in this world. Whether we like it or not, this is a battle that we have to engage in on a daily basis in order to attain success. It makes me sad to see that there are so many people that don’t know how to fight or where to even find the strength to do so.
This is one of the main reasons why whenever I ask someone regardless of how well I know them, “How are you?” I’m incredibly genuine when I ask that question and a lot of people who know me can attest to the fact that I’m genuine. It’s not just me being polite. I really do care about people and I know that not everyone has someone rooting for them to win in life. I can tell when someone needs help and 9 times out of 10 I’m usually right. I’ve had perfect strangers tell me their entire life story in line at the grocery store or just sitting at a park bench by myself. I’ve encouraged some people to go back to school, take baby steps to start their side hustle, the list goes on…
So anyway, I went to one of my favorite stores and I know the owner really well we’ve been friends for years. Like I always do, I asked him, “How are you?” He then shared with me how frustrated and concerned he was with the way the world was headed. His fear that the Republicans may get back into power, and a variety of other topics that were on his mind. We had a really good conversation.
All of the topics that we discussed were distractions. We can’t control other people’s actions. I can only control my reaction and my reaction is to focus on God and leave all the consequences to Him.
When you focus on God, this is going to help you not compromise on your beliefs and your dreams. A strong belief system is going to help you get your dream so I want to do the belief first. I’ve got two Bible stories that I’m going to share with you to help illustrate my point.
Let’s talk about Daniel. I feel like there are a lot of similarities with what is happening today with this pandemic and Daniel. Be sure to check out the Hustle in Faith website or the show notes description for the scriptures if you want to read these stories in further detail (Daniel 6).
Anyway, Daniel was a model employee. He never did anything wrong. He did his job to the best of his ability and excelled over everyone. Daniel’s boss respected Daniel so much that he had plans to make him in charge of the entire kingdom. Now when Daniel’s co-workers discovered this news, they were jealous of Daniel. They knew that Daniel worshipped God and since they couldn’t get Daniel fired on his work ethic, they attempted to get Daniel to compromise on his beliefs. These jealous co-workers tricked the king into creating a law that would force Daniel into a situation that would cause him to go against his beliefs. This law was telling people that if they didn’t pray to anyone other than the king they would be thrown into the lion’s den. Daniel’s co-workers knew that Daniel would NEVER go against God’s law. He already demonstrated on several occasions how deeply he cared about his health, because he refused to eat the king’s food, and his co-workers knew he prayed to God three times a day.
Long story made short, Daniel defied the law. He was thrown into the lion’s den. God protected him. The lions didn’t hurt Daniel. When the king saw this, he had those evil co-workers who tricked him into creating that ridiculous law thrown into the lion’s den themselves along with their families. The King issued a new law stating that everyone needed to worship Daniel’s God and he continued to live a prosperous life.
Daniel’s co-workers created a lot of different man-made laws that made absolutely no sense in an attempt to jeopardize Daniel’s relationship with God because the laws they implemented contradicted everything God told Daniel to do.
A lot of this is currently taking place within the pandemic today. There are mandates and laws that are being made that make absolutely no sense but yet are not so subtle attempts in trying to affect people’s livelihood. I’m not going to get into all of this, but check out Ep. 151 Make it Make Sense: When Will Sanity Make a Comeback? and Ep. 148 Why should you take control of your life by starting a garden? go into much greater detail in how I feel about those mandates and laws.
If you know in your heart that what is going on today does it make sense and insist on going along with it out of fear or duress then you know you’re compromising on your belief. I know a lot of people may say, “I need this job.” My reply is, “Do you really need that job?” How do you know if you decided to compromise on your belief and went along with these ridiculous man-made laws that you will still have that job? How do you know that?
Companies are being bought and sold every day. They can sell the company without you knowing it. The company can change the rules whenever they want to and play innocent that they didn’t force you to get a vaccine or take a test. Let’s say you do it and get sick. Then you’re up a creek. You risked your health now you’re unable to perform the job the way you were able to before you took the vaccine or tests so then the company fires you. Companies will fire you without giving you a reason and then make up a lie for why they chose to do so. These companies are not going to be there for you, therefore, you should never compromise your beliefs.
Keep in mind, you only need one time to destroy your body or life. I personally know people that have taken a shot/vaccine that ended up ruining their lives. That company you risked your life for could sell the company and/or replace you and keep going on with their lives as you fight to put together the pieces of what remains of your own life. Learn from Samson (Judges 16). Samson married Delilah. Delilah kept asking him for the source of his strength in other words why was he so strong. Samson kept playing with fire and finally got burned when he told her the truth. That one time he went against God and shared his secret doomed him to live the rest of his life in misery.
Again, your body is a temple. You need to do what is best for you. If you want to take the vaccine that is your choice. However, you should not put pressure and force other people to do the same. You wouldn’t want someone doing that to you, so don’t do that to someone else.
If the efficacy of the vaccine is determined by other people taking a gamble on their health, then you really need to evaluate whether this is the avenue one should pursue taking in the first place. Especially, if you’re not willing to take into consideration the case for natural immunity. Let your immune system do what God designed it to do.
Plus, how do you know that God wouldn’t give you something better if you didn’t compromise and choose man-made laws over His will? Many times if we stay in faith and trust that God will bring us through the difficult times instead of compromising, more often than not it is a blessing in disguise or He’s already removed that landmine for you.
We just need to stay in faith and live ONE day at a time. Again, easier said than done I know. However, if you keep in mind that we’re not promised tomorrow so it’s in your best interest to focus on today I guarantee that will help you to put things into perspective. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve felt backed into a corner, but God saw that I was willing to fight and He made a way for me to escape. Listen, I’m not anyone special. I’ve made more than my fair share of mistakes, but if He did it for me He can do it for you.
One of the best quotes that I’ve seen so far this year and I’ll leave it on my website. You are replaceable at work. You’re not replaceable at home. Home is your real life. Keep that perspective. Always. I thoroughly agree with that statement. Don’t get it twisted and forget which one matters the most.
Do what’s best for you but do not compromise your beliefs in order to appease other people. In the end, Daniel stood strong and won EVERY battle that he came up against.
When you win the battle over the desire to compromise that means you have a solid foundation that will place you on the right path to achieve your dreams. You know that regardless of what circumstances you encounter in life, you will not go back and forth on what you believe because you already made a decision. God will see that this person has clearly made their decision.
What your decision looks like will look very different to me. I put God first, do what’s best for me and leave all the consequences to Him. Once you have a solid foundation of who you are then you know what you will be able to achieve. It’s important that we don’t compromise our beliefs so we can get to our dreams.
There’s the story of Esther (Esther 2 – 10) CliffNotes version Esther was a Jewish girl raised by her cousin Mordecai. The King chose Esther to be his Queen, but he didn’t know that Esther was Jewish. Meanwhile, Haman was very upset with the fact that Esther’s cousin Mordecai would not bow down to him.
Haman decided to create gallows to hang Mordecai on for not wanting to bow down to him. Again, Haman wanted to kill Mordecai all because Mordecai would not bow down to him. Now when Mordecai would secretly go to visit Esther he would have to walk past those gallows EVERY day as a reminder of how much Haman hated him and how Haman’s goal was to kill him one day on those very same gallows.
Now, I’m going to bring that back to what I’m experiencing right now, and hopefully, this story resonates with you. What are your gallows? What are people constantly using to try to deter you from your dream?
I want to share a little story with you, I know I’ve mentioned this before, but I’ve got crazy neighbors. I’m in the process of getting my issues with them resolved. These crazy neighbors continue to do certain things that irritate me because they are trying to use those irritations as a way to force me to give up my dream, which is to live in this beautiful lakefront condo. It’s up to me to decide whether or not I’m going to allow that to happen. You can use the gallows that we encounter as motivation and leverage it to take you to the next level in life or you can succumb to the fact that those gallows are there and resign to fear and defeat. It’s up to you to determine which path you choose to take.
All of this ties back to the fact that you cannot allow distractions to cause you to compromise on your beliefs and dreams. There are always going to be barriers in life, but it’s up to you to decide which ones are worth climbing so you can get to the other side.
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