Daily Readings from Next Level Thinking

Day 2

Take the Limits Off

Scripture Reading: Ephesians 1

Becoming a barrier breaker starts in your thinking. Nothing will change until you make up your mind that you are not going to accept mediocrity. Why don’t you take the limitations off yourself? You have so much potential. Break out of that box and try something new. The enemy would love to keep that potential from ever coming out. He’ll use bad breaks, negative comments, people, and circumstances to try to keep you from believing in yourself, from believing that you can rise to the next level. Many people have let their mind become conditioned to thinking they’ve reached their limits. What’s happened? Instead of breaking out, they’ve adapted to their environment.

I saw a study that was done with fleas. Researchers put fleas in a container and then put a lid on the top. The fleas immediately tried to jump out, but they hit the lid again and again. Before long they realized they were stuck. At one point the researchers removed the lid, but, much to their surprise, the fleas didn’t try to jump out anymore. They had hit that lid so many times that they had become conditioned to thinking they couldn’t get out. Even though the lid was off, they didn’t even try.

Sometimes, as with these fleas, because of the environment we’re in, the times we’ve tried and failed, and what people have told us, we’ve become conditioned to thinking, I can’t do anything great. I’ll never accomplish my dream. I’ll never get back in shape. It might not have happened in the past, you might have tried and hit that lid a few times, but can I tell you the lid is coming off? It’s time to try again. You were not created to live contained, to get stuck. Recondition your mind.

You have to be bold and get rid of the thoughts that are holding you back. You may not see how you can do it in your own ability, but you’re not on your own. You have the most powerful force in the universe breathing in your direction. God created you to rise higher, to break barriers of the past, and to overcome bad habits.

Day 3

Live with an At-Possibility Mind-set

Scripture Reading: Joshua 1

A friend of mine grew up in the projects, was very poor, and had almost no guidance. His father wasn’t in his life, and his mother had her own struggles. Because of this poor home situation, he was labeled by the state as a “child at risk.” From the time he was a little boy, that phrase had played over and over in his mind and became ingrained in his thinking: There’s no future for me. I’m a child at risk. He continued to fit right in with the rest of the crowd. Everyone around him was defeated, depressed, and addicted. He adapted to his environment. Your life is going to follow your thoughts. He believed he was at risk, and he became at risk. If you believe you’ve reached your limits, you have. Because your mind has become conditioned with limitations, it will keep you from your highest potential.

One day this young man got into trouble at school and was sent to the school counselor. She tried to reason with him, but he wouldn’t listen. However, she kept on trying and trying. Finally he said to her, “Why are you even bothering with me? I’ll never do anything great. I’ve been told my whole life I’m a child at risk.” She looked him in the eyes and said, “Listen to me: you are not a child at risk, you are a child at possibility.” When he heard that, something ignited on the inside. He asked her, “What do you mean at possibility?” She said, “You are full of potential. You are smart, you are talented. There’s so much you can become.” His whole life, he’d heard just the opposite. That day a stronghold was broken in his thinking. He reconditioned his mind.

Today, this young man owns his own business and is very successful. Plus, he goes around to schools and speaks to other students who are considered to be at risk. He tells them what that counselor told him, “You’re not at risk, you’re at possibility.” As it was with my friend, people around you may be fine with being average, having little goals, working at an “okay” job. But don’t let that spirit rub off on you. That’s not who you are. You’re the exception.

Day 4

You Were Made for More

Scripture Reading: Psalm 65

My father grew up in a very poor family on a cotton farm during the Great Depression. At Christmastime, his family was the one that received the Christmas basket that went to the poorest family in the school. He was never allowed to drink a full glass of milk, because they couldn’t afford it. They could only have a fourth of a glass, and they’d pour water in it to make it last longer. But when he was seventeen years old, my dad was the first one in the family to give his life to Christ, and he also made another major decision about his future. He told me, “Joel, I decided on that day that my children would never be raised in the poverty and lack that I was raised in.” He changed his mind. The people around him were good people, but they were limited. Their minds had become conditioned to accept not having enough, to always struggle and lack. The problem is that if you accept it as your way of life, you won’t do anything about it. It’s easy to get comfortable with mediocrity and just adapt to your environment.

My father felt something stirring on the inside. It was those seeds of greatness. All the circumstances of his life said he was stuck on the farm. But instead of adapting to that environment, his attitude was, This is not my destiny. I can rise above this. I refuse to live in mediocrity, wearing hand-me-downs. I have potential. I have creativity. The Most High God breathed life into me. As a teenager, he left the farm and went out and started ministering in the jails, in senior citizens homes, and in schools, making a difference wherever he went. He broke the curse of poverty in our family and took us to a new level. He was a barrier breaker. He knew he was made for more.

Are you accepting things that are less than God’s best? Don’t settle there. Break out of that mold. Nothing will be sadder than to come to the end of life and realize what we could have become if we had just lived with an at-possibility mind-set instead of an at-risk mentality.

Day 5

Don’t Settle There

Scripture Reading: Genesis 50

A couple of years before my dad went to be with the Lord, we drove back to his hometown. Daddy wanted to reminisce and show me where he had grown up. We went out onto the land where his farm used to be. He showed me where he used to pick cotton, where he went to school. Before we left the town, we drove around to see if we could find any of his friends. We pulled up to a very run-down house that didn’t even look livable. There was an older gentleman sitting on the front porch, not wearing a shirt, just killing time. My father went up and said, “I’m John Osteen. Are you So-and-so?” Yes, it was his friend. They hadn’t seen each other in over sixty years. This man invited us inside, and the place was very dilapidated. There were buckets on the floor to catch the water leaks from the ceiling, and the broken windows were boarded up. Later we went around and found several of my father’s other friends. They were all in the same situation—extreme poverty, defeat, mediocrity.

They were good people, but it hit me how little they had accomplished in their lives. They had made the mistake of accepting the limitations they were born into and then adapting to their environment. One man told how he’d worked a little here and there at odd jobs, barely making it through the years. Another man had been laid off his job twenty-eight years earlier and said he was not able to find any more work, so he lived off handouts, with no goals, no dreams, no resources. Now they were at the end of their lives, having never tapped into their potential.

My father was raised in the same environment, the same Depression, the same poverty, the same school, but Daddy went on to touch the world and pastored great churches. He made a difference with his life. I saw firsthand what would have happened if my father had not put his foot down and said, “I might have been born into mediocrity, but I am not settling here,” if he had not reconditioned his mind.

Day 6

Get Rid of the Excuses

Scripture Reading: Isaiah 40

I read about an eight-year-old boy who grew up in Kansas in the early 1900s. During the winter, he and his brother would go to school early to light the wood fire in the large pot belly stove in the classroom so that it would be warm when the rest of the students arrived. But one day someone accidentally put gasoline in the kerosene container he used to start the wood on fire. The next morning, when he lit the match, there was a huge explosion. His brother was killed instantly. The teacher found this little boy unconscious but alive, with the lower half of his body severely burned. He’d lost all the flesh on his knees and shins and all the toes on his left foot. His mother was told that if he did make it, he would never able to walk again, and the doctors recommended amputating his legs. But this little boy was a fighter. Against all odds, he survived. He made up his mind he was not only going to walk again, but he told everyone that one day he would run again. His favorite Scripture was the key verse for today. As an eight-year-old boy, he believed that he could defy the odds.

Months later he was sent home from the hospital with no movement in his legs. The doctors advised his parents to massage his legs to stretch the muscles and try to restore some suppleness to his lower limbs. Every day his mother would take him outside in the wheelchair so he could get some sunshine. One afternoon when she wasn’t watching, he grabbed on to the picket fence and pulled himself up. Stake by stake, he began to drag himself along. He did this day after day, teaching himself how to walk again. Two years after the accident, he stood up for the first time. Not long after that, he was not only walking, he began to run and became extremely fast. In college, on the track team, he won so many medals he became known as the Kansas Flyer. In 1934, Glenn Cunningham, the young man who had been told he’d never walk again, broke the world record in the mile run.

Day 7

Recondition Your Mind

Scripture Reading: Ephesians 3

Have you adapted to a limited environment? You have big dreams in your heart. You know there’s a new business in you, a management position, a book, a better house, but you’re doing as well as your friends. You’ve gone as far as your family has gone in the past. No, don’t settle there.

There is potential in you right now just waiting to come out. You have gifts that will cause new doors to open, talent that will bring new opportunities. Quit making excuses to settle where you are. You may be in a limited environment that includes dysfunction, addictions, and depression. The good news is, you don’t have to stay there. That’s not your destiny. Somebody may have labeled you “at risk,” but the Creator of the universe labels you “at possibility.” Don’t settle when you’ve gone as far as your family and your friends—that’s good, but you’re the exception. You’re supposed to go further. Dare to take some steps of faith. Life is flying by. You don’t have ten years to wait around.