Your Choices Matter: Finding Freedom from Condemning Voices and Crummy Choices That Poison Your Potential - One Right Choice at a Time

Copyright 2014 Sierra Kinsley.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

ISBN: 978-1-4907-4838-2 (SC)

ISBN: 978-1-4907-4840-5 (HC)

ISBN: 978-1-4907-4839-9 (E)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014917833

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Trafford rev. 10/23/2014

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved. The NIV and New International Version trademarks are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by International Bible Society. Use of either trademark requires permission of International Bible Society.

Scriptures noted niv 2011 are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

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Contents

Note to the` Reader

Introduction

Part One—The Destination Defined

1 The Search for Significance

Your path to divine deliverance or dire destruction.

2 The Overcomers Club

All that stands between a life desired or despised.

3 The Desires of Your Heart

His desires will become your desires.

4 A Journey of Divine Design

With the truth as your life coach, counselor, and guide.

Part Two—What Matters Most

5 Your Choices Matter

Your choices are the brush strokes that paint the portrait of your life.

6 Your Expectations Matter

According to your faith will it be done to you.

7 Your Thoughts Matter

Are you thinking about what you’re thinking about?

8 Your Words Matter

It’s impossible to think positively and speak negatively at the same time.

9 Your Beliefs Matter

You’re misbehaving because you’re misbelieving.

10 You Matter

Whom you believe determines who you become.

11 The Truth Matters

The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

Next Steps

Notes

Acknowledgments

I am the vine; you are the branches.

If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit;

apart from me you can do nothing.

—John 15:5 NIV 2011

To my husband, Brent.

Note to the Reader

This book was designed to both encourage and facilitate individual and group reflection, discussion, and in-depth study so that you may continue growing and connecting long after you have completed reading. The following resources are available to assist you with each of those endeavors along your journey to finding freedom from the condemning voices and crummy choices that poison your potential, in Your Choices Matter.

Discussion Questions

To assist you in putting your newfound knowledge into practice in your life by applying the tools and principles you’ve learned in this book, thought-provoking discussion questions are provided at the end of each chapter and are available online in a printable format at www.YourChoicesMatter.com.

Notes

For your convenience in using your Bible to delve deeper into subject areas of particular interest, notes with references to supporting Scripture are provided at the back of this book for many of the subjects presented in each chapter.

Free Bonus Materials

I invite you to visit us on the web for additional valuable resources and bonus materials at www.YourChoicesMatter.com.

These resources are provided to help you take action, to assist you in making the choices that will change your life. I hope and pray you will take advantage of them all and that they will bless your life as they have blessed mine as you begin to understand and appreciate just how much Your Choices Matter!

Introduction

Your choices matter.

Most people simply don’t realize the incredible importance of each of their individual choices—even the smallest ones—to the direction, design, and ultimately the quality of their lives. Many of us don’t realize how each of our individual choices combines over time to chart a course for our lives. If we fully understood the significance of our daily choices, and the power we have to control them, many of our lives would be very different indeed.

We all make hundreds if not thousands of choices every day, many times completely unaware. Those choices build upon one another over time to create a recipe for life—your life—that is either good or bad, right or wrong, constructive or destructive, beautiful or ugly. Even with this knowledge, most of us wouldn’t know how to translate it into practical steps to harness that power and change our lives. Most of us have no idea of the incredible power we have available to us right now to change the very direction and quality of our lives, to change our destinies, to rewrite the script of our own lives. Throughout the pages that follow, I want to enlighten you, inspire you, equip, empower, and encourage you to build the awareness necessary to live the all-too-often elusive, truly victorious life you have always longed to live, the life God promised you can live, the life He created you to live.

If we are honest with ourselves, if we allow ourselves to think back far enough, most of us could admit that we at one time believed we were created for greatness. I mean we really believed it! We were filled to the brim with courage and hope. We believed we could conquer anything and everything that dared to stand in our way. I believe seeds of greatness were planted in each one of us by our Creator, and regardless of how deeply buried, dried out, and forgotten they have become, those seeds are still there, waiting to be fed, watered, and resurrected, waiting to be nurtured back to health, waiting to be given the opportunity to grow again.

My passion is to get you thinking about what you’re thinking about, speaking about, believing, and doing, to show you how to harness the power of choice to change your life, to convince you that victory is yours for the taking—right now, today—and to help you to grab hold of the victorious life you’ve always dreamed of living. Not another counterfeit, not another empty promise, but the real thing, finally. The choice truly is yours. I will prove to you that it is.

The pages of this book are filled with inspiration and information whose sole purpose is to provide you with everything you need to achieve a life of real victory and significance—to break free from the condemning voices and crummy choices that taunt and torment, thus releasing you to begin fulfilling the plans divinely designed by your Creator, just for you. But I don’t stop there. I also will provide you with practical, step-by-step instruction. I will show you exactly how to put your newfound knowledge into practice to make it work in your life.

Along this journey you will learn how to tap into the lifeline that will never let you down, never leave you nor forsake you, never lie to you or deceive you—the lifeline that will ensure your success. This lifeline will never lead you astray or embarrass you, and it’s always right. Jesus said, I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.¹ If you choose to align, and as often as necessary to realign, with this vine, if you choose to tap into this power source, to make the truth your life coach, counselor, and guide,² to make it your benchmark against which all options are compared and considered before your choices are made, you will finally begin living the life you were created to live, guaranteed.

You’ve heard it said before: if you want to get something different, you have to be willing to do something different. This journey will be unlike any you’ve taken before. It will push you, press you, and challenge you. It will require you to be uncomfortably honest, persistently patient, and decidedly determined not to quit. It will force you to face the truth—about you, your choices, and God. In exchange, you will reap results no other journey will ever allow you to reap. Along this journey lies the answers you’ve been searching for. There truly is only one way to the life of your dreams, only one way to finally begin to really live, and this is it. If you’re willing to take up some courage and swallow some pride, you can claim it!

You’ve got the power to live the life you were created to live and become the person you were created to become. God gives you that power when He gives you His Spirit.³ You can live a richer, fuller, more productive life, you can overcome and find significance, you can live the life of your dreams, and you can make a difference. You’ve got the power to do it, because you’ve got the power to choose it—one right choice at a time.

This time really can be different. If you make the choice to take this journey—it will be.

Part One

The Destination Defined

1

The Search for Significance

You were made for a mission. —Rick Warren

There is a time for everything … a time to search and a time to give up. —Ecclesiastes 3:1, 6

My bedroom was cold and dark, the stillness revealing my shallow breathing and anxious heart. The faint moonlight pressing through the tightly closed blinds provided little comfort as taunting thoughts combining with the sound of my rapidly beating heart pulsed and pounded inside my head against the quiet of the night. I don’t know if I was shivering from the cool, vented air brushing across my bare skin or because I hadn’t eaten much for several months and was just weak and exhausted, my nerves frayed and nearly spent. I no longer had the energy to cry, but that didn’t lessen the intensity of the pain and anguish that consumed me. I felt as if I was suffocating in its grip, but like any skilled torturer, it doled out just enough air to keep me alive to continue suffering.

I knew it was late, but the time was unimportant. Sitting on the floor in my shorts and tank top with my back against the wall, knees close to my chest, and with my right hand on the .22 caliber revolver on the floor at my side, I wondered how in the world it had come to this. Not me. I was different. I was strong. I’d always had the will and determination of a pit bull. I’d spent my life refusing to back down or let go until I’d won. It often didn’t even matter what it was, the win was the important thing. Suicide was for the weak, the selfish, the undisciplined. It was the coward’s way out, reserved for those not strong enough to fight through life on the shoulders of their own intestinal fortitude, holding out no matter how long it took to prevail. Only ill-equipped, feeble souls without the mental grit to pull themselves up by their bootstraps chose suicide.

Yet there I was. Battling all the thoughts and feelings I’d felt certain that I, of all people, never would. I had become everything I loathed, everything I had always looked down upon and despised. I had become weak, and in my opinion weakness was synonymous with worthless. I’d lost control of my life somewhere along the way, my hope was gone, and the pain had become unbearable. The dizzying pace and constant struggle spent searching for significance and a way to somehow prove that my life mattered had finally taken its toll on mind and body. I could no longer see any viable options for a way out that didn’t require at least some strength and courage, and I had none left. I was empty, done, pipeline dry.

Weak and exhausted, physically and mentally, I was tired of working long hours day after day, never getting enough sleep, to keep it all together. I was ready for life to end. Discouraged and disappointed, with no fight left in me, I was ready to wave the white flag of defeat. I was ready to lay down a lifetime of trying, to let the nightmare of life finally come to an end. And like a wolf standing over a fresh kill, salivating at the anticipation of the first warm, bloody bite, the darkness stood ready and eager to claim me its next victim prize, cheering me on and tempting me with promises of finally finding the rest and relief I so desperately desired.

But as much as I wanted to end the pain, two thoughts screaming inside my head flat out forbade me to give in and give up. The first was uncertainty about where I would spend eternity. As bad as things were, I had little doubt that hell would prove far worse than anything the world could dish up, and I knew there was no one this side of death who could say for certain whether taking my own life would catapult me into the hands of the harbinger of heaven or of hell.

The second thing that refused to release its grip on me was the remote possibility that my deliverance might be right around the corner, the thought that if I held on a little … while … longer, God might actually show up to rescue my sad, sorry self and finally turn my life around. I couldn’t stop wondering: what if I were to shut my eyes for the final time, only to realize I’d been standing just days, hours, or even moments away from my breakthrough? I couldn’t bear the thought. What if the only thing I’d not yet tried, God, was the answer I’d been searching for all along? That little what-if was the last bit of lingering hope left in my weary body and mind, but it was enough to keep me from pulling the trigger as each agonizing moment passed.

As the night dragged on, I began pondering what it was God had created me to do, what that thing was that I would never do if I took my life. I wondered, Had my life mattered at all? Would all the pain, all the suffering, and all the striving have been for nothing? The thought that I would have wasted my life made me tremble with the deepest disgust, remorse, and regret.

The thought that I might give in only moments before life was about to suddenly and miraculously change grew even more troubling than my pain and exhaustion. I could never stand losing, and even from the depths of my life’s deepest and darkest pit, I still couldn’t accept it. If there was even the slightest possibility I could still overcome, I couldn’t let go. Not yet. Just in case. As much as I hated myself and my life, I hated the thought of missing my victory by a hairsbreadth even more.

Years later, I would read Brendon Burchard recount his own near-death experience in The Millionaire Messenger. I was surprised to find that as Brendon skidded into death’s doorway, he had asked himself questions very similar to those I had asked myself as I stood at my own version of death’s door. In the midst of a terrifying car crash, before being knocked unconscious, Brendon asked himself, Did I live? Did I love? Then upon waking up injured, shaken, and bleeding, thinking he was dying, he wondered, Did I even matter?¹ I felt a chill pulse through my body as I read his words, remembering the hopelessness, desperation, and deep despair of my own dark, difficult night as if it were only yesterday.

The trying, tedious, tortuous years I spent in that deep, dark pit of hopelessness and despair are what I now refer to as part two of my three-part life story. What led me to that point of burnout and brokenness in the first place was how I lived part one of my life—in a relentless, oftentimes reckless, and ultimately failed search for significance.

The Search for Significance

We all do it. Regardless of how, when, or where we grow up, regardless of the hand we’re dealt—we spend at least some part of our lives searching for significance. In every case, the most important part of the search is the choice we make regarding the direction we take. As my own life story proves, your search for significance can deliver you or destroy you, depending on where and in whom you choose to search.

Your search for significance can deliver you or destroy you, depending on where and in whom you choose to search.

Few of us will go through life without asking at least one question as a telltale sign that we too have engaged in the search: Why am I here? What is my purpose? Am I making a difference? Do I matter? Questions like these have perplexed mankind for centuries. They have left some people destitute and distraught and driven others completely mad in a search for answers. Those fortunate few who finally find the secret to significance will tell you that the secret lies not with what you do or whom you know, not with what you achieve or accumulate, but with what and whom you choose to believe.

No more than a glimpse into our lives is necessary to tell the story of our own personal search. The search is revealed in the woman who shares her body freely and indiscriminately, longing for love and acceptance; in the man who lies with another man, searching for the male approval his absent father denied him; in the derelict teen who joins a violent gang, striving to fit in; in those who work nonstop to accumulate money and things, searching to earn their mother’s approval, their father’s respect, or anyone’s notice to validate both them and their lives. It’s revealed in the people who pour themselves into good works with civic, religious, or other benevolent organizations, desperately wanting to prove to others and themselves that their hearts are good and their lives matter, and it’s evident in the woman who spends a small fortune on clothes, cosmetics, and plastic surgery, looking for someone to affirm that she is beautiful and desirable. The search can be seen in the exhausting pursuit—oftentimes an obsession—to be the prettiest, the wealthiest, the most educated, the strongest, the smartest, the most popular, the most needed, the most respected, the most connected. Regardless of the reason, your misdirected hunger for significance can steal your sanity and keep you separated from God and all that He has planned for you.

My Search

I spent the entire first part of my life in a desperate, unrelenting search for significance—a search that more than once nearly cost me my life.

After being told by my mother for years that I was ugly, stupid, hated, and unwanted and after watching my father stand by, refusing to step in and protect me, I set out to prove my mother wrong and earn my father’s love and approval. My quest to find acceptance became an obsession that developed into a way of life.

My search for acceptance began with my experimentation