Better Than You Think
By Drenda Keesee
“Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t, you’re right.” –Henry Ford
I’ve discovered that people from all walks of life want a key to success. They want a five-step program that assures them of quick, fail-safe results to make them more popular, beautiful, wealthy, and happy; and the culture is eager to sell it to them at top dollar.
Unfortunately, most of the culture sells empty promises of overnight success: get rich quick schemes, fad diets to lose 10 pounds in 10 days, magazines advertising 21 steps to make any man fall in love with you, a lottery ticket to become an overnight millionaire, and many more…. There are real solutions for you, but the culture’s gimmicks are not your answer!
Do you think the shade of lipstick or the kinds of shoes you wear are going to make you happy or more successful with men? They might make you feel good for a moment, but when that moment runs out, you’ll be searching for new promises to buy into and more temporary happiness to give you a moderately satisfying life. That is why people that rely on material things to give them an identity are always searching and always trying to find…
…more to satisfy themselves.
When people reach the world’s standard of success apart from God, they still find themselves depressed, tired and hurting because their success is founded on the wrong things. They’re busy and rundown by the uphill struggle. Families go into hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt to keep up with the Joneses, but it’s still not enough. Maybe if they had nicer houses or newer cars, or more money, then they would be happy? But they’re not! Since their success is based upon the wrong groundwork, it only magnifies the turmoil on the inside of them and creates more pressures.
Romans 8:6 says, “The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace” (author’s emphasis).
God placed a desire in you for success and happiness. He created you with the innate hunger to find out what you were crafted to do and to succeed at it. That is why those cheap promises of success the culture sells are so appealing—they mimic the promises of God. You were born asking, “Who am I?” and the culture is communicating on hundreds of media platforms, “This is who you are.”
It’s easy to get caught up in the loudest voice when it tells you what success should look like and how it should feel. You were designed to look to God for your identity and your answers, not to the culture. As long as you trust the culture to give you something it can’t give—happiness, love, value, purpose—you will always be disappointed!
Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—His good, pleasing and perfect will. (Romans 12:2)
Your success can’t exist apart from God. It starts with God, His Word, and your thoughts. That is the key. Success comes from inside of you, from your attitude, from your perspective on life, and works its way out.
Our thoughts become our WORDS.
Our words become our ACTIONS.
Our actions become our HABITS.
Our habits become our CHARACTER.
Our character determines our DESTINY.
– Gandhi
Your success story begins with a change in your thoughts—when you learn to think right, you can literally think your way to success!
You may believe that the term “thinking right” is a little vague, unattainable, or even impossible. What do we base right and wrong on anyway? There has been some debate about that, which is why we see the nation in the mess it’s in now. But “thinking right” isn’t as complicated as it sounds. The word “right”’ is a result of righteousness, or the “right way” to do something—God’s way. You find righteousness when you seek God. He has given you the amazing gift of salvation, but that is only the beginning! God has made a way for you to live in success. He has given you His Word to help you see the way He sees.
The Creator of the Universe sacrificed His Son for your salvation. Salvation means welfare, prosperity, deliverance, preservation, health, wholeness, and safety. All of those things are a part of your inheritance. Jesus paid the price for you to live successfully in every area. If your spirit is alive to God, then salvation (and all that encompasses) is yours!
God has a real fail-safe plan for success in your life. He doesn’t rely on empty promises and sales gimmicks.
He has a genuine program to give you real results in your life—results of confidence, beauty, peace, wealth, and fulfillment.
The key to walking in your full potential is to tap into the amazing ability to see life through God’s perspective. You can think your way to success and see everything God has for you come to pass!
Listen in Now to Faith Life Church!
Drenda Keesee’s contagious zeal and humorous personal experiences help make her ministry of spiritual, emotional and relational wholeness one that will bless your life and spark a new fire in your spirit.
A wife of over 30 years and a mother of five children, Drenda has ministered at churches, seminars, and conferences, and through the mediums of television and radio, for more than 20 years.
Her books, The New Vintage Family, Better Than You Think, and She Gets It are available wherever books are sold. In these heartfelt books, Drenda shares her personal journey and the life lessons that have brought her to where she is today, as well as practical answers that all people need to live a joyful life.
Drenda and her husband Gary founded Faith Life Now, a ministry designed to spread the message of freedom in the areas of finances, faith, marriage, and family. Tune in for their weekly messages here. Faith Life Now hosts conferences worldwide, and sponsors both Fixing the Money Thing, which Drenda co-hosts with her husband Gary, and Drenda.
Through their own life experiences, the Keesees have found the principles from God’s Word to be powerful and effective. At one point, Drenda was a young, suicidal feminist with no hope of ever being “good enough” for her own standards of perfection. She never wanted the “inconvenience” of a husband or children, and she was on her own path to success. But the stress of trying to achieve perfection and perform for love left her broken and used. She had success, but it was nothing compared to the pain and loneliness it had also brought.
That’s when God got a hold of her heart. It was there—at her lowest point—that she found the One who accepted and loved her, faults and all. Since that transformation, Drenda has had a passion to reach women who find themselves where she once was.
She married Gary after attending college, and there she found herself in a personal boot camp of sorts. She says, “I cried and told God, ‘I can do anything but be a wife and mother.’” She committed to learning how to do it God’s way. Through the many years of raising their children and struggling to make ends meet, Drenda learned from their mistakes. “I didn’t know how to be a wife and mother, but God saved our marriage, taught us how to parent our children for success, showed us how to have financial success, and then irony of all ironies, He called us to ministry.” It’s truly because of these life experiences that Drenda can now share so many insightful principles for people who are now going through the same struggles.
