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Now that you have some tools for interpreting what’s going on in your mind, and for focusing your efforts on your choices, the next step is perhaps best illustrated by a story John S. said that he heard from one of the ministers.

Becoming a Christian is like being a beggar, you’re hungry and a man invites you into a restaurant where you not only get fed, but he tells you that he is going to make you a full partner in the business. You’re not only getting the food you need, but who you are has changed. You’re no longer a homeless and hungry beggar, but you are now a resteraunteur! However, shifting from the beggar mindset to the business owner mindset is a pretty big shift, isn’t it?

The fact of the matter is, a lot of who you think you are is not true, not anymore. You’re playing your life out by a script written for a role that you are no longer suited to play. This script has cast you in the part of a man who is insecure, who thinks that money, looks, or “magic” are the dominating parts of his romantic life, who knows on some level that he should become a better man but doesn’t know how.

As Christians, we know that all sin begins in the heart, in the attitudes and beliefs we form about something before we actually “act”. Perhaps the single biggest enemy you have is passivity in the face of a self concept that no longer applies. We’re faced with challenges and temptations, and our response is, far too frequently, indifference of one kind or another. We have accepted as true impressions of ourselves that are false.

Throughout the Bible, our ability to form a right opinion of something and to take a right action seems to me to be presupposed. It is assumed that you know can see the difference between good and evil. It is assumed that you are capable of acting well or acting poorly. In the Bible, you also seem to be judged by the level of knowledge that you have more than the content of any one action or attitude.

So you shouldn’t feel too guilty, as a general rule, for what was in your past, when you didn’t know any better. You are no longer a beggar. You are learning about how to be a better man, which, if you weren’t before, definitively means you are a better man now. You need to accept that as true and act like it. Fix an idea in your mind of the man you want to become, if you want to become this sort of man, it means that being that kind of man is already a part of you in some way. To become that better future self in practice, ask how this better self , what attitudes would he have? What actions would he take? What would he avoid? What would he think is false?

Remember part II, you can’t avoid all of the impressions and bad attidues from popping into your head, but they don’t become a part of you until you accept them. If you avoid what damages you, and move towards what strengthens you, the better you, the part of you that is strong, good, and happy becomes stronger, better, and happier. The part of you which is the worse part becomes weaker and less dominant.

Michael D.