Of the 4 Great Pillars upon which Spirit-Led Success is built, Divine Inspiration may be the most powerful. It is the source of all human creation and the basis of all success over time — both personally and professionally. Understand how this works and you will have the keys to ignite your best life possible.

A Bit of Context…

When we were developing The Believer’s Guide for Achieving Success On Purpose, we asked an enormously important question, “What role does Jesus play in this process… active or passive… and how does it work?” In other words, how does Jesus’ active involvement in the process of Spirit-Led Success result in the material changes we hope and pray for?

Because we are performance experts, we train people based on cause and effect principles that consistently produce the results expected. In faith matters though, it is sometimes difficult to see and understand how things work, and how to approach a problem leading to a step by step solution.

After a great deal of research and prayerful discussion, we identified a simple, yet theologically correct way to depict and explain the process of Spirit-Led Success so people could instantly see the relationship between the work that needs to be done, and the Christian context for actually doing the work.

Thus, the concept of becoming a Spirit-Led Success is structured upon 4 Great Pillars, all built upon the rock of Jesus Christ.

“The Believer’s Guide provides both the strategy and the structure for success in life and ministry. It will take you beyond mere wishful thinking to mapping out details to arrive at levels never imagined possible.”

“Once you can see a clear snapshot of the inner workings of your soul (mind, will, and emotions), the right adjustments can be made in prioritizing your life for your true work and mission.”

“I highly recommend it to every Christian leader that is serious about making a difference in steering this generation in the right direction.” ~ Woodrow Walker, Senior Pastor, Abundant Life Church ~Lithonia, Georgia

Four Divine Pillars…

As you can see, Spirit-Led Success is based on the pillars of Divine Illumination — where we ask Jesus to shed His light on the dark paths in our life… Divine Inspiration — where we ask Jesus to spur our innate creativity… Divine Guidance — where we ask Jesus to guide us to do the Right Things, in the Right Way, for the Right Reasons, all at the Right Time (your 4 R’s of success)… and finally Divine Revival — where we ask Him to renew us, revive us and “Awaken the Spirt Within” our very being.

Clearly, unleashing your full potential is predicated on building your success upon these 4  pillars, and with Jesus leading you through the process, your life becomes a living testament to His plan for your life.

Your MISSION then, is to become the best you possible — to use all your God-given gifts and talents to their fullest extent possible — to achieve a life of true and lasting success. What we describe in The Believer’s Guide as becoming a Success On Purpose by Performing On Purpose.

Important Note: On September 14, 2012 we held a TeleSeminar for all TQ Members discussing this vital concept. If you need additional inspiration, motivation and the instructions for immediately becoming a Champion of Spirit-Led Success, please download and listen to this life-changing seminar as you read the remainder of this article.

This is a long MP3 recording, so Right Click this button and Save / Download Linked File to your computer, then listen via iTunes or Media Player.

The Promise of Divine Inspiration Audio…

The Power of Conviction…

As you will learn in The Believer’s Guide, the Starting Point for success is a highly evolved sense of purpose and mission in your life. The one word that best describes this Starting Point is CONVICTION… the point at which you are absolutely, unconditionally, totally convinced that what you are doing is the right thing to be doing.

Without conviction, there is no way you will COMMIT to taking the actions necessary to achieve your dreams and goals. Without commitment, there is no way you will summon the COURAGE to take any action, let alone the sustained actions necessary to see your dreams realized.

So, how do you arrive at true conviction? How can you possibly know that you are at the Starting Point for lasting success?

Absolute Clarity…

By doing the work in The Believer’s Guide, you will — maybe for the first time ever — discover a level of clarity that has been missing from your life… for most of your life. With millions of records in our database, it is clear to us that the vast majority of people have virtually NO clarity in their life… no clarity of values… no clarity of vision… and little clarity of the roles they play.

Of course, people THINK they are clear about their Values, Visions and Roles, but when challenged, it all gets real fuzzy, real fast. In fact, the single biggest “aha” we hear when people are asked to prioritize their top 20 values — then reduce them down to the top 10 values that they would die for — is “WOW, I GET it! I now see what it will take for me to live a life that matters.”

And yes, this IS a life and death matter. Since none of us are getting out of this alive, we have to make certain that we are dying for the right cause… what you VALUE MOST. Otherwise, you are spending the only life you have to live on things that simply do not matter. Think about it.

The Power of Creation…

Which leads us to one of the most important discussion you can have: the connection between what you VALUE and the VISIONS of all the possibilities and potentialities that will cause you to actually LIVE your values and achieve those visions.

The biggest single question we raised as we were creating The Believer’s Guide was, “How do we help people use Jesus’ promise that ‘I am with you always’ to foster a powerful new level of personal creativity and innovation in their lives… sparking the inspiration needed to ‘Awaken the Spirit Within’?”

In other words, how does Divine Inspiration work… and how can we help people make it work for them?!

An aside before moving forward…

This is a much bigger problem than you can even begin to imagine. With 17 years of scientific research behind us, we can tell you one thing with absolute certainty: People have no idea what they personally value, and tend to live someone else’s life… maybe an old teacher’s values, their parents values, a coach, a professor, an old bosses values… anybody but their OWN values.

Thus, they remain stuck living their life on hold awaiting further instructions — or worse — live a life of prediction and extension… merely hoping to get through the day… the week… the month or the year.

When they wakeup, they find that they just spent half their life trying to be someone else, and have no Authentic Direction in their lives… simply because they unwittingly chose to live values that are not authentically theirs.

This is tragic, as a life built on the power of CREATIVITY leads you to the success you ultimately desire, where a life of prediction and extension limits your life to only those achievements you can somehow predict.

“Imagination is more important than knowledge…”
~ Albert Einstein

For those of you who have completed the Values Exercise in The Believer’s Guide, you now see that this is a simple process of connecting the dots between the emotions contained in each of your top 10 personal Values… and the Visions fostered by the emotional connections between your here and now… and your Someday Dreams.

For example, if you VALUE Faith, Physical Challenge, Adventure, Compassion, Education, Camaraderie and Beauty your exciting VISIONS of the future might include becoming a Missionary in war torn Syria teaching children survival skills. Or, you might see yourself putting together a team of church members to go down to Honduras and teach young adults to use the internet to market their wares to the world.

With the above array of VALUES, there are an endless series of VISONS that would evoke a strong emotional response from you to “get after it”! Just thinking about this might be INSPIRING to you right now.

Where others would say, “Why would I want to do THAT?!” I don’t value Adventure, Camaraderie or Physical Challenge. While I do value Faith and Compassion, my biggest values are Security and Serenity — to be at peace — and all that adventure would make me nuts!

Exactly!

Each person is driven by a whole host of different values which evoke an entire series of different emotions — which lead us to take an entirely different series of actions. As obvious as this sounds, it eludes 99% of the population who just do not get the connections between their own UNIQUE values and the VISIONS inspired by those Values.

“The best way to predict the future is to create it.”
~ Peter Drucker

Now the question becomes, “HOW can I repeatedly, systematically inspire these emotional connections to create the future of my dreams?” How does THAT work?

Two words: Divine Inspiration!

Complete the work in The Believer’s Guide  and you will have your list of Authentic Values, Visions and Roles. This gives you absolute CLARITY of what’s most important to you… absolute CLARITY of what visions, when realized, will permit you to live those values… and absolute CLARITY of the roles you will play to live your values and achieve your visions. Yes, this CLARITY leads to the unstoppable CONVICTION that what you are doing is right for you to be doing.

Hence, the starting point for achieving Spirit-Led Success. But, just below the surface, Jesus is hard a work sparking all those Divine connections, leading the process with what we have dubbed Divine Inspiration.

Get good at this simple 4 step process and you will find yourself on the leading edge of success every day you are alive. Fail this process, or miss a step, and you will quickly sink back into a life of confusion, conflict and drama.

Inspiration in 4 Simple Steps…

Step 1: Quite all the chatter in your brain. Pray. Meditate. Clear your beautiful brain of all the negatives that might be bombarding you. Turn down your emotions… flip them off if you can. Relax. (With practice, this is easier than you might think.)

Focus inward. Ask Jesus to engulf you with His Divine Inspiration and spark the hidden powers of your imagination.

Many experts in the field of Creativity and Innovation have added a nice twist to the above and have enunciated the 3 B’s of Creativity: Bath, Bus, Bed. They have found that by reducing the stress level and all sources of negative energy, “things” start to pop into your head from well below your “conscious” level of thinking.

Take a long hot bath… a road trip where you are removed from your normal surroundings… or take frequent naps to renew your juices. The point is to call upon your inner-child to come out to play… to ask Jesus to be your Creative Muse… and just let your brain function at the pure emotional/feeling level.

Step 2: Free-form your thoughts — let them race through your brain without interference from or restricted by any form of logic. What you want to do is stream incoherent images, thoughts, flashes of words… and let your natural values start to drive your inner-emotions. What is starting to make you smile? What is making you sad… angry… upset… emotionally connected?

Pastor Bill Hybles calls this Holy Unrest… that feeling that comes upon you where you get an image of something you know is wrong, and want to make right. It starts to bubble up to your conscious brain as that Popeye effect: “It’s all I can stand and I can’t stands no more!” You have a strong feeling of calling.

Step 3: Now, form a coherent thought. Explicitly state what you are experiencing on the inside in a way that you can start to see it in the outside world around you. Run this coherent thought through your mind for a few seconds. Does it stick? Does it make any sense? Focus even more and get the words in the right order so you can articulate them — especially to yourself. Do these words start to inspire other visions? Do you feel a strong calling to the vision?

With a little training, you can take Steps 1-2-3 in seconds — at any time — anyplace. Jesus promised to “be with you always” and He is. Draw on this promise and engage in this process. (How else do you think you can become His hands, eyes, feet, heart and body here on Earth?)

Step 4: Write it down. This is the all important first step at making your dreams real! Pick up a pen, a sheet of paper, and create a short “mind map” of the Inspired Thought you just had.

The pen is real. The paper is real. The ink on the paper is the first form of physically moving your ideas from thought into action. Again, from years of research, we find that people needlessly fail simply because they do not capture opportunity-creating thoughts and WRITE THEM DOWN. They believe they can keep everything in their head, and have no need to journal their thoughts.

Every performance expert on the planet will tell you that it is impossible to chase a fleeting dream. You MUST connect that dream with a point in time — and write it into your schedule.

“The difference between a dream and a goal is a deadline.”
~ E. R. Haas

What a pity it is for people to call on the power of Divine Inspiration — become inspired — and do nothing with it! Drives us crazy. Imagine how it must make Jesus feel?!

He inspires you… gives you some great ideas pointing you in the right direction… and you do nothing with it? Really?

Yes, Divine Inspiration is a huge pillar upon which Spirit-Led Success sits. It is the basis of all creativity and innovation… the source of both spiritual and earthly riches.

Remember, Thoughts are Things…

Napoleon Hill, in his groundbreaking book, Think and Grow Rich, detailed the connection between our thoughts and our actions. He properly recognized that everything you will ever be, do or have originates in your THOUGHTS. But we must move these thoughts out of our imagination and into the real world.

The secret to success is not in having Divine Thoughts… it’s taking Divine Action on those thoughts!

James Allen probably said it best in his book, As a Man Thinketh, published way back in 1902, that your success is dependent on the thoughts you think. (The title is influenced by a verse in the Bible from the Book of Proverbs chapter 23 verse 7, “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.”)

“Cherish your visions.
Cherish your ideals.
Cherish the music that stirs in your heart, the beauty that forms in your mind, the loveliness that drapes your purest thoughts.
For out of them will grow all delightful conditions, all heavenly environment, of these, if you but remain true to them, your world will at last be built.”

Do you now see how Divine Inspiration leads to clarity of values… which leads to clarity of vision… which leads to clarity of roles… which leads to the absolute conviction that what you are doing is the right thing to be doing… which leads to the unconditional commitment necessary to take courageous action?

And without Divine Inspiration, you remain stuck or worse… running in circles thinking that you are making great time!

As you will learn as you become familiar with our research, there is a huge difference between people who struggle and ultimately fail vs. others who find the winning path to a life of passion and purpose. Put simply, and to reduce a massive amount of research down to a sound bite…

Winners Succeed, simply because they EXPECT to win…
Losers Fail, simply because they don’t EXPECT to win in the first place…
Because they never get to the Starting Point for true success.

Put the Power of Divine Inspiration into Your Life…

Now, you have a simple choice.

To maintain status quo, business as usual thinking…

Or…

Follow The Believer’s Guide and Achieve a life of Success On Purpose.

You CAN become a Spirit-Led Success.

You CAN count on Jesus to provide you with Divine Inspiration.

You CAN ratchet up your expectations for what is possible for your life — reaching for the stars — and become all that He meant you to be.

Pray this simple prayer for Divine Revival… to help you and your church achieve a heightened capacity to Love, Serve and Glorify God by equipping all your members to become a Spirit-Led Success…

Dear Lord Jesus, you are the light of my life, please shine your beacon of Divine Illumination on the dark paths ahead of us…

Please shed your Divine Inspiration on us, prompting us… motivating us… engulfing us in the power of creation… to stop living out of want, but to start living a life of passion, purpose and abundance…

We ask you to provide us with Divine Guidance… to help us see your plan for our life… so that we stop running in circles… and start winning our 5 most important missions to Your glory…

Empower us… expand our vision… excite our emotions… to create a Divine Revival of sprit… such that we not only find true and lasting success… but we become all that you meant for us to become…

A Spirit-Led Success.

In His Name

Amen