So few results are obtained from drug or alcohol rehab centers because the odds are 84,400 to 1 against the addict.  There are 84,400 seconds in a day and each second requires the addict to decide whether “to use” or “not to use.”  All it takes to fail is to be wrong one time.  Addicts are trapped in a narrowing downward spiral so tight they can only see life a second at a time.  Even though most addicts hate themselves and the chemicals that keep them dependent, any thoughts of stopping bring such terror they intoxicate themselves with more chemicals.  The small percentage of addicts that do break out of chemical dependency do so by moving past the present into the future.  The rest are so consumed with the immediate they can’t see past the next opportunity to use.  They either don’t like where they are going or don’t know where they are going so they forever lock themselves in the present.

This is the same mental process that happens with the drunk driver.  He can’t navigate, plan, record, or control the course or the position of their automobile because they drive according to where they are instead of where they wants to go.  It is like trying to run 50 miles an hour staring at your feet.  Drunks don’t look down the road they look over the hood.

Don’t be too quick to point fingers at drug addicts or alcoholics as the dregs of society.  According to Jesus in Luke 21:34-36, overeating and worry are just as addictive and equally as destructive.  People afflicted with these either don’t like where they are going or don’t know where they are going. In either case, it is an excuse to inebriate oneself instead of facing the fears of the future.  Overeating and worry are indulgences that lead to the same place of death as chemical dependence: doubt in oneself and unbelief in God.

I have been hearing a great deal of pessimism concerning America’s future – from Christians!

The economy is going south, the war is going to be our end, the market is going to collapse, our infrastructure is falling apart, life as we know it is going to end, nuclear war is eminent, we are doomed!  Worry replays scenarios of death and destruction over and over again until we are absolutely intoxicated.  According to Jesus, overweight and stressed out people are just as drunk as chemically dependent people.  The doomsday preachers and news commentators are either ignorant of what the Bible says or don’t believe it.  No different than any other addict, they are so intoxicated with the present they can’t see the future.

I have always found the advice in Eph 5:18-20 to be especially profound.  Get drunk in the Spirit and forget about everything else. That doesn’t mean be ignorant of the times or stupid when it comes to money management or financial security.  It means to be filled with the Word of God, dependent on Jesus and addicted to His presence.

Jesus clearly says that if we don’t overeat, drink or worry we will qualify to escape everything the end times can throw at us (Luke 21: 34-36)!  In every generation since the flood there as been a remnant that has survived to inherit the earth!  Put the odds in your favor!  Stay focused on your purpose; don’t break rank with the Holy Ghost.  Walk right though the middle of everybody else freaking out, drying up, going bankrupt, or diseased without a scratch (Psalms 91)!  You can walk though the fire of the end times and without smelling like smoke (Dan 3:27)!  The next time you hear bad news about the future laugh out loud and say, “Praise God I am a Holy vessel chosen to fulfill my destiny in Christ and no devil from hell can stop me!”  “I am increased in a time of decrease to be a light unto the world!”   Relax and enjoy the ride, you are going to make it to a victorious end!

Rocky J. Malloy

In the mid 1700s a young Prussian King named Frederick the Great coined the word audacity.  Against overwhelming odds, when any other European monarch would have locked themselves up in the castle and sent emissaries to negotiate terms of surrender, the young Frederick attacked winning the day and eventually the war.  It was a surprise attack because nobody expected light cavalry to charge into a force twenty times their size.  King Frederick’s success against such an overwhelming force still stands today as one of the greatest achievements in military history and is why he is called ‘The Great’.

There was another great man in history that also had the audacity to enter into an overwhelming situation.  His name was Aaron, the brother of Moses.  After an extended ritual Aaron entered the Holy of Holies where he stood totally transparent in the presence of God!  He faced death dressed in a beautiful long robe with golden bells sown onto hem and a cord tied around his ankle.  The bells dragged along the floor signaling to those in the outer chamber that he was still alive; however if any sin was found in him he would have dropped dead.  The cord in that case would have been used to drag him out of the chamber.  To be sure, it was a brazen act of boldness much more daring than Frederick the Great to stand bare before your Creator.

It is all about a pure heart.  As the Creator, God knows how we work.  The reason we need a pure heart to approach God is not because He is ‘The Law’ but because He is The Father.  He is absolutely pure.  He is love.  He is forgiveness.  When we step into His presence without a pure heart He hears us alright and desires to give us our every desire but unfortunately we don’t believe it.  If we don’t believe it we can’t receive it.

Unanswered prayer gets down to mechanics.  The paradox is created when we come to God in need but don’t allow Him to help.  Like Adam we feel too guilty.  Sin creates the guilt.  We feel like we don’t merit help but that doesn’t stop us from asking.

The book of Revelations gives us a great picture.  Jesus is standing at the door of our heart knocking (Rev 3:20-4:1).  He wants to come in but we have the key.  We are calling for help but He can’t do anything unless we open the door.  But we don’t want to open the door because that would expose our messy little lives.

Unfortunately this door is the only way that help can come because it is the door to the things of the Spirit.  Every single thing that God gives to us must come though this door because God is Spirit.  Every thing begins in the Spirit, our healing, our joy and even that new car.  Spiritual things manifest themselves into the flesh.  That is how Jesus was born of Mary; the Spirit becoming flesh.

So we go though the vanity of asking God for stuff we don’t think we can receive.  We keep asking and asking, going through all kinds of formulas and gyrations but with the safety of having the door locked.  God gets a bad rap about not caring or being cruel when we are the ones at fault.

Aaron gave us a great example.  He cleaned up before an audience with the King.  He went through a complete cleansing, sanctification, purification process to insure that he was right with God which meant that he was right with himself.  This is what gave him the confidence to talk with God and the faith to receive.  Even though the tabernacle in the wilderness was under the law, it is a great way to rehearse what Jesus has provided for us in the Spirit.

Rocky J. Malloy

One of Winston Churchill’s most legendary speeches came after series of devastating defeats in Europe.  His country was in the heat of the Battle of Brittan and he said, “Never give in, never give in.  Never, never, never, never – in nothing great, small or petty – never give in.”  His words inspired a nation standing on the brink of destruction.  Alone in Europe against overwhelming odds Churchill stared down Hitler as he threatened invasion time and time again.  Churchill never, never, never, never gave in!  His courage inspired the English to victory!

Too many times in my life I have seen people give in or give up too quickly.  How many times have I heard people say, “God said” only later to hear that God changed his mind?  How many marriages have ended in divorce because one of both parties gave in too quickly?  How many people have given in to the pain of sickness or disease and died hours before a turn around?  How many great ideas have failed because they were never acted upon or given up before proving themselves?  How many people have entered eternity without their reward because they gave in to the circumstance, peer pressure and the status quo never achieving what the Lord had for them?

Paul gives us the Word of God in Hebrews 12:1-4 on how to finish our race never giving in to the negative circumstances or demonic attacks:

• Analyze and investigate others that have gone where you want to go.
• Stop everything that would distract you, slow you down or take you off course.
• Know that the devil knows exactly what would cause you to quit.
• Understand that time is a necessary ingredient to success.

• Jesus wrote your life plan and he has empowered you to fulfill it.
• Look past the reasons to quit to the thrill of victory waiting on the other side.
• Draw energy and strength from the forces arrayed against you.
• Hate the resistance but love the challenge
• Use Jesus as your ultimate example; He overcame the world in his quest for the throne even though it caused his own blood to flow.

As a missionary I have had wonderful opportunities to quit!  Living in another country, speaking another language and dealing with different customs have brought me to my knees in frustration many times.

I have come to understand that worry is one of the devil’s greatest weapons.  It creates anxiety and gives birth to doubt and unbelief.  It destroys self confidence and opens the door to discouragement!  Worry is nothing more than belief in an undetermined future event.  I believe more people have given up because of worry, the mere anticipation of failure, than failure itself.

To stay in the fight and finish strong one must understand that worry is nothing but torment from the devil; it is never an alert from God. God does not communicate that way.

If the devil was going to do anything to you he would never warn you; he would just do it.  Remember Goliath screamed and threatened but he never killed anyone.  The temptation to worry then actually brings relief because it reveals that the devil is incapable of defeating you.

Faith never quits it out lives the problem!

Rocky J. Malloy

The famous first sentence of Leo Tolstoy’s great novel, Anna Karenina, offers a wealth of insight and understanding. “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

Tolstoy built an entire novel on this one sentence.  He demonstrated that in order to be happy, a marriage must succeed in many different respects: sexual attraction, agreement about money, child discipline, religion, in-laws, and other vital issues.  Failure in any one essential element can doom a marriage even if all the other ingredients needed for success and happiness are present.  All it takes to drive a relationship to destruction is one missing element!  However when all the pieces are present the whole is greater than the sum of the parts creating a relationship that radiates love and harmony.  This same principle can be extended to understand much more about life than just marriage.

The path to success actually requires avoiding many separate possible causes of failure.  Navigation is the most complex of all thought processes because it does not just involve arriving at a predetermined location it also means not choosing millions of other possibilities.  Because avoiding many separate possibilities of failure is much more mentally fatiguing than concentrating on a single factor we have a tendency to assume that “success” is somewhere we arrive instead of the many places we don’t go.  Maybe that is why so few people actually experience the kind of success they think they are capable of achieving.  They have never learned that success is saying “no” a thousand times for every “yes”.

Unfortunately we tend to seek easy, single–factor explanations for success in any area of life.  Millions have bought into “get rich quick” schemes because they are so much more appealing than the real work of discipline and discernment!  The same philosophy has been used to sell weight loss programs, body building supplements, medications and drugs in general.  Even spirituality has many times been approached with the same concept of one size fits all!

Some are so convinced that success was due to a magic bullet because that was the critical factor they were missing.  They generally think that what brought them success is the solution for everybody else.  A powerful personal testimony combined with the evidence of success makes it tempting to buy into “their solution” instead of asking God what you need.

One of the greatest obstacles to success, achieving our dreams or accomplishing our goals is blindness to our own weak link(s): our imperfections or character flaws.  Stress increases and the internal pressures build as we keep working harder and harder only to fall prey to the law of diminishing returns all the while blinded to the answer.

The solution brings us back to the family both terrestrial and celestial.  Marriage came before the fall, survived sin and is waiting for us in heaven because it identifies our weaknesses and gives us an opportunity to grow mentally, emotionally and spiritually.  According to extensive research the happiest and most successful people in life have been in a long term relationship.  A man and woman submitted to each other are more humble, open-minded and capable of being educated and changed than either one alone.

Friends are closer than family when they risk telling us the truth in love.  We need the perspective of someone we trust to help us see the gap in our lives that is creating failure.

Rocky J. Malloy

The deferred life plan means having to divide your life into two distinct parts:

Step one – Do what you have to do.

Then – eventually

Step Two – Do what you want to do.

We start hearing about this plan early in life with expressions like: Walk before you run, no peas no pie, and pay your dues.  All implying that what we must do is necessarily different from what we want to do.  Somehow we grow up believing that the must of life finance our wants.

In the deferred life plan the second step, the life we defer, cannot exist, does not deserve to exist, without first doing something unsatisfying.  We are trained from childhood that in order to get desert we must eat our vegetables.

The deferred life plan dictates that we divorce who we are and what we do in the first step to become who we really are and what we really want do in the second.  Fueled by ambition and greed, we hope that in the end we will be judged by our accomplishments and not by who we are.  Most people never become who they are because they are too busy being who they need to be because they are too worried about the money.  They go to the grave without ever having bloomed into their glory.

Why?  It all stems from the unrighteousness of sin conscious and is driven by fear and peer pressure.  Why not work hard because it is meaningful and fulfilling?  Why not live step two now instead of waiting until you retire?

The distinction between drive and passion is crucial.  Passion pulls you toward something you cannot resist.  Drive pushes you toward something you feel compelled or obligated to do.  If you know nothing about yourself or God you cannot tell the difference and you fall prey to emotional con games in and out of the church.

Knowing the difference between drive and passion is the difference between success and failure.  It is not about quotas or bonuses or cashing out.  That’s drive!  Passion is doing something you love to do.  True commitment can only come with passion.  That is why serving God can only come with passion and never obligation.

Deferred life dominates the lives of most of the people I know.  The vast majority of them are working so hard they don’t see the trap.  They have accepted must do as status quo never imaging that what they want to do can fund their needs.  The joy of doing what you want can bring with it great success.  But what if it doesn’t?  Would it be so bad living your life doing what you wanted to do instead of what you had to?

Those who get to step two many times find themselves aimless without direction.  Either they never really knew what they wanted or they spent so much time in step one they are completely lost without it.

In the deferred life plan, drive pushes you through the first step.  The second step, the deferred life itself, is the home of passion if we ever get there.  Don’t wait, step into your passion now and start doing what you want to do.  Don’t chase money chase God and your dream will chase you. That is what Jesus said in Matt 6:33 “But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.”

One of the reasons I have such great passion for what I do and who I am is that I know I help other people enjoy who they are and what they do.  If all I did was work to pay my bills and buy toys I would be the most miserable man on earth.

I know that by giving to missions many people find meaning and greater fulfillment in their life.  They work with more purpose and joy knowing that they are helping others on a scale that would be impossible in America.

Have Fun – Serve God.

Rocky J. Malloy