Teen Chat: 6 Ways To Never Give Up!
You don’t have to be a Nobel Prize winner to be successful. You just need the right attitude and drive, which is something that every single one of us possesses. Even if you feel like there’s no hope left in your life, it is possible to turn it around! Here are six ways you can never give up on anything in your life:
1) Take It One Day at a Time.
2) Remind Yourself That You Are Not Alone.
3) Set Goals for Yourself And Stick To Them.
4) Believe In Yourself And Others Will Too.
5) Look At Obstacles As Challenges Rather Than Impediments .
6) Remember That You Deserve The Best Life Ever.
What you gotta do is take it day by day. All right, let me tell you something. You have to have belief, so when things are dragging on, or they slow down and people are telling you this is gonna happen and that will happen... And they're having a chuckle over there at the world's expense. But what happens is something else finds a way to get through it, if that's what God has for me if that's what he wants for me I'm just not about to sit around and go "Oh well" and say "hey, this ain't happening," I trust the Lord. I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ so much. And if what I believe, this is what God wants for me, I'm gonna get through it and I'm gonna do it. And you know what? If other people don't believe it, that's not my problem. I don't care. All right? All I have to do is get up and move on, and move on with the Lord.
One of the things that I realized when I first got in the ministry was that different people have different strengths. And my strength is preaching. That's what God has called us to do. I'm gonna preach. Not everybody is called to be a rapper. Not everybody is called to be an actor, not everybody is called to be a singer. And I've gotten a lot of flack for being in the ministry, because people don't understand how God can call you to do that, when if you were an actor you could make a lot more money, and if you were one of these other things... But I believe that God has given me this gift and it's my calling and it's my desire to do what I do. So I don't care what other people think. All right? And we're called to preach. We're called to get the word out, and so that's what I chose to do. I believe in Jesus Christ, and I'm a Christian, and I'm gonna keep on doing what God has for me, even if nobody else understands it.
And there are other people who are gonna be like Gandhi, who are great teachers. They're not called to go out there and preach. They're great at teaching things from a book, or teaching principles from a book. And then there's other people who are like Martin Luther King, who will get in your face and demand change because he's not afraid of anyone. He's not afraid to get in someone's face, and get put in jail, and still stand by what he believes. And as Christians, we have to be like that. I think it's too easy for us to just go on and do what God has called us to do when nobody's looking. That is not being a Christian. We are to be witnesses all the time, everywhere we go. And you have to sacrifice our own desires on the altar of Jesus Christ if need be...
I'm just as happy to have people call me a sell-out and a hypocrite. I don't care. I don't go back and listen to those kinds of things if I can hear from God that's what he has for me to do, that is what the Lord has for me to do, you know, no matter what anybody else thinks. And you look back in our history and you see people who had this same kind of heart. When Martin Luther King went down there in jail and stood up for his beliefs... That's not an easy thing to do, but we need to be like him. We need to be like Gandhi. We need to be like Harriet Tubman... All these people who stood up for what they believed in and had the courage to take a stand. And even if the whole world turned against them, they were able to do that.
As Christians... Sometimes I think we try to impress God instead of letting him actually live in us. I mean, we say we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and yet... Why don't we try to act like him? Why don't we treat our wife like he treats his? I mean, he lets her mess up, he lets her make mistakes! He doesn't just love her when she's being perfect; he loves her when she does wrong. I mean, do you know how much I love my wife? I don't love her when she's perfect, I love her when she messes up. And that's the way God loves us too. You know he lets us mess up and he still loves us. He doesn't hold it against us; instead he says, "Well done good and faithful servant." All right? So why don't we try to act like him?
I actually remember a time... When I was a kid growing up in Kansas City, my family actually went down to the studio one day and cut a record for Decca Records. And we were working with Sam Phillips, who's Sam now. He was the owner of Sun Records, which is probably one of the greatest studios in the world, to this day. And I remember being there, we were there for three or four hours. And finally he turned to us and he said, "You guys have done a great job and you've got some talent." And everybody just started to cheer and they're like "Great job!" So I turned around to him and I said "Sam, you gotta let us do another one." And he looked at me and go "Reverend Jones."
And that just about killed the mood. Some people would leave a studio after three or four hours trying to come up with a hit record. But I just look at it as someone saying "Hey, I think you can do more than that." And so I told him you know, "God says to me all the time, 'Well done good and faithful servant.' Even if he don't like what we're doing right now, he's gonna praise us anyway." All right? So why not let him praise us when we mess up?
And so here's the thing: God has a way of showing us what is best for us. I mean, if God says "You know, you guys ought to go do another record," how are you gonna say no to God? You can't! You can't say no; he won't listen to you.
Conclusion
I want to thank each and every one of you. I hope you will continue to use your gifts, the gifts God has given you, and I pray that he will continue to bless this ministry in the future. And I'm so glad to be here today with all of you who have supported me over the years, my friends from Japan who have supported me from day one. Because without your support... I don't know where we'd be today. So I want each and every one of you, who have supported us over the years... Thank you very much!
And with that in mind, I'm going to dedicate this entire birthday to my mother who's coming up on 88 years old and doesn't look a day over 75.