These are difficult times indeed. Entire fortunes are being daily wiped out as the world economies go deeper into turmoil. Unemployment is rife and many people are looking to the future with distress. But that is the world economy, not God’s economy – because The Maker has equipped each of us with the means to succeed and prosper in spite of whatever is the situation in the world.

There are a few things though that we ought to get out of the way before you dive deeper into this book. It is important that we do this so that you can be able to determine what you may hope to expect.

Yes that is correct. It is not a miracle machine; and it will not instantly make you successful, just by reading it. This is just a book – containing knowledge and very little else. But, until you put the knowledge to work it will remain just a book.

This is a book about how to use proven goal setting principles in tandem with sound Christian motivational doctrine to achieve life and financial goals. It contains material from my personal experience both in secular situations and as a Christian, from success stories of other individuals around the world and also Biblical notes.

I have excluded my real identity from all parts of this book. This is important because I do not want you the reader to relate your expectation or achievement to mine.

On one part and in the off chance that we know one another, it is my wish that you do not look at what I have personally passed through and become overawed at how I have survived it all, and be able to go on to do this much, or look at what I have been able to achieve and it looks impossible to you. My experiences are specifically mine, and what has worked for me may not work for you.

However wisdom from God, and as given in the Bible works all the time. It is my wish that you eventually look up to God , and not to my experience. I offer this book merely as a guide to assist you navigate your way through some of the rough channels of life especially those concerned with finances and a choice of occupation. And even though it shows you how to create a vision that works, it does not seek to replace your God given vision.

Maybe you are at this moment thinking that you have seen so much hardship in your life and you are thinking - it is okay for him to write books ; he doesn’t know what I am going through. ; think again. I can tell you right now how wrong you are. I have passed through it before. I have seen poverty, I have been hungry, I have been homeless. I have seen rejection in all form that you can imagine, I have seen frustrations. And even at the worst time and places and in tandem with miscellaneous misfortunes, I have been in grievous need of medical attention . I have felt quite like old man Job might have been luckier, and similarly wondering what it was I had done to deserve all these. And for years on end I have lived on a main diet of the scriptures:

³⁵Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?

³⁶As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.

³⁷Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.

This book is therefore also my testimony: God lifted me ; took me from a situation of extreme hunger amidst plenty and set me in the middle of a desert where I was by His own hands, well fed. Does that piece sound sensible to you ? If you’ve walked with God long enough, you’d have similarly found that He rarely make sense – but you’d better listen to him anyway .

Now that may not be quite correct. What I meant to say is that I am not asking you to become a member of my church so that you can see how well I can preach. I am also not asking you to send a donation to my ministry. If this book works for you, in that my God-given ministry will be fulfilled.

This book is about rising up its depth and claiming your desired place and purpose in life. It is a bite-size book, not quite so filled with pages of action points and motivational jargon such as you have probably read in a dozen places and you are fed up with them. It is not an exotic ‘spiritual’ book filled with mantras and stuff for you to memorize and recite to yourself several times a day while standing on your head. Read it quickly at first just to enjoy it; then come back read it all over again, much slower this time – to apply it.

I have liberally quoted from the Holy Bible . These quotes are from the authorized King James Version (KJV) the language of which some people may find archaic. I have only used this because it is my preferred version; you should free to substitute whichever you are more comfortable with. Most importantly do read the quotes in context and directly from the Bible so that you can have a greater understanding of their meaning –for God reveals to each of us individually.

I reiterate: what this book contains will have no more impact on than you permit it. What this means is that if you are happy enough with your life ,this book may be of no use to you. However if you are in earnest search for measurable goals, progress and achievements in your life and you earnestly able to commit yourself to that search, then, read on.

LIBERATE YOURSELF

²⁰Then David arose from the earth, and washed, and anointed himself, and changed his apparel, and came into the house of the LORD, and worshipped: then he came to his own house; and when he required, they set bread before him, and he did eat.

²¹Then said his servants unto him, What thing is this that thou hast done? thou didst fast and weep for the child, while it was alive; but when the child was dead, thou didst rise and eat bread.

²²And he said, While the child was yet alive, I fasted and wept: for I said, Who can tell whether GOD will be gracious to me, that the child may live?

²³But now he is dead, wherefore should I fast? can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me.

2 Samuel 12: 20-23

Now if you are not familiar with the Bible , you may not quite understand the foregoing passage, but never mind. The illustration is about a certain important king called David, who fell into a situation which led him into many days of sorrowing and asking God for mercy. Until, one day, he stood, forgave himself of his mistakes, and resolved to get on with life once again.

This chapter is not for everybody. If your life is going exactly the way you want it, skip this chapter and hop on to the next, because you’ll probably get nothing from this one. This chapter is for people who are fed up with being losers. It is for those who have fasted, moaned and grieved long enough and need to stand up and say ‘enough is enough’. I will not cry for the rest of my life. I intend to shake off this misery that life has afflicted me with and press on forward. This chapter is for people who have become lost in life and need to find themselves again .

How Do People Become Lost ?

Now, many of the suggestions that you will find in this book may actually be so obvious that you will be asking yourself why they hadn’t occurred to you earlier. Yes, how do people become lost? The easy answer is that you become lost by going in a direction which you never intended. There are several ways this can happen but I will mention the three most common:

You become lost by looking at the wrong road map.
You become lost by following after some other people without asking them where they are headed.
You become lost by wandering aimlessly in the hope that by chance you will end up somewhere nice.

It does not take a genius to tell you that if you are navigating by looking at the wrong map, especially one which does not even have your intended destination on it, you are unlikely to get where you want to go. There is the possibility that you may get to some other destinations with similar sounding names or with similar climates ; but will that be the same as reaching the destination that you intended ? Absolutely not.

The second mistake is similar to the first. Some of us just look at our friends and neighbors and because they have some things that we desire, we follow them wholesale. We make them our role models , even without stopping for a minute to ask ourselves if also we want the kind of troubles that they have in their lives, and which of course they have kept carefully hidden from us. We seek the same kind of work they do, seek the same kind of social habits that they engage in, even seek the same kind of food they eat. But all that we may eventually achieve is to get to their destination and not ours; if we survive the trip.

I stress the last bit because in this life every person is specifically equipped for his or her own trip and not someone else’s trip. If you want to cross the Sahara like a Bedouin, better make sure you are equipped with a camel and not a horse; otherwise stick to the fields. This situation is prevalent amongst young couples, who seem more easily susceptible to permitting their selves to fall under peer pressure of their friends and neighbors.

A man was traveling and stopped at an intersection. He asked an elderly man, "Where does this road take me?" The elderly person asked, "Where do you want to go?" The man replied, "I don't know." The elderly person said, "Then take any road. What difference does it make?"

Now the third situation is even more common and disastrous. I say so because there are far more persons in this world wandering lost, not quite sure where they want to go in life. They are the sort who jump aimlessly from one sort of job to another job sometimes with completely unrelated skill requirement, just because they need the money, or they need the excitement or they need to be able to pay their bills.

The truth of life is that if you are heading nowhere in particular, you are quite certain to get nowhere eventually; and you will get there weary, tired and fed up with life. An aimless wanderer is also a disaster, a crime, a distasteful statistic just looking for somewhere to occur. This situation even though more often a teenage affliction also manifests in persons experiencing extended disappointments– long periods of joblessness, exam failures, or similar especially exacerbated by psychological abuse of a spouse or close relation. It is however one of the easiest to quickly recover from.

What Are The Symptoms That You May Be Lost ? .

I know of a lady who had this annoying habit of greeting all her friends “Happy Moan-day” , every Monday morning. I think this quite summarizes her mood and hopes for the rest of the week.

You know you are lost when life becomes so uninteresting to you. For example you are in a wrong job when Mondays are never days that you look forward to with any kind of happiness and Sunday evenings fill you with dread for the next day. You are lost, when joy has almost completely disappeared from your life.

Other symptoms could be something like any of these or even a combination:

Is your health suffering without any visible cause?
Are you losing sleep and you can not figure out why ?
Are your precious relationships degenerating and there seems to be nothing you can do about it ?
Is your life generally going contrary to your expectation and promise to remain that way?

The situation may manifest in several other dozens of symptoms, none of which is ever pleasant either to the body or to the spirit. Sadly the most common response always has been to address the symptoms rather than the root cause. For example a situation of continuously deterioration health will usually drive many to persistently seek medical attention or to abuse prescription medicine, even though the solution may be simpler. I was able to completely recover from a prolonged illness simply by getting myself away from an unpleasant environment. This is a serious matter indeed.

Your First Step To Getting Back On Track

INTRODUCTION

LIBERATE YOURSELF