“Guard your heart above all else, for it determines
the course of your life.” ~ Proverbs 4:23
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Yes! You read that title right. It’s not a misprint, although you may be questioning it, or even loudly disagreeing with it.

If so, I can certainly understand. Like most of you, for a good part of my life I heard the opposite: that seeing is believing. People I loved and respected would say it. And so would TV commercials and magazine ads. In fact, I was so sure that seeing is believing that if there had been a local chapter of the Doubting Thomas Society, I would have been a charter member.

But then, in 1970, I had a personal encounter with Jesus Christ and my whole way of thinking began to change. I began to realize that much of my thinking, which I had thought was right-side-up, was, in reality, upside-down. I began to understand what God meant when He said in Isaiah 55:8, “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways.” And so began my quest to learn God’s ways and God’s thoughts.

My logical starting point was the Bible since this great book is God’s manual for man. I knew that in it I would learn how God operates and how He expects me to operate.I learned that just as there are laws on earth that govern us (the law of gravity, for example), there are also laws that govern God’s Kingdom. Since those who are born again are now part of God’s Kingdom, it would behoove us to learn the laws of that Kingdom so that  we can function in it with power and effectiveness.

As I studied the Bible, I saw that in order to receive anything from God, I needed to have faith. And I further learned that faith is simply believing before seeing.

God has given us many promises in His Word. These promises belong to us, but the only way we will see them come to pass in our lives is if we believe them. 

For example, one of God’s promises is the promise of healing. God said in Psalm 103 that He “heals all our diseases.”  This means He heals ALL our diseases. God says what He means and means what He says.  If we want to experience healing from disease, then we must believe that what God said is true. Furthermore, we must believe that we are healed before we see any sign of healing in our physical body.  BELIEVING the promise precedes RECEIVING the promise.

This principle—that believing is seeing—is called the Law of Faith. The Law of Faith is a basic law in God’s Kingdom.

In Hebrews 11:1, the Scriptures say that “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen.” According to this verse, in order for faith to work, hope must first be present because hope is what faith builds on. Without hope, faith has nothing to work with.

Let me give you a simple illustration. If you are going to build a house, you acquire a blueprint. The builders will use that blueprint to build your house. That blueprint is not your house; it is simply an image of your house as it looks on paper. Yet, when your friends and relatives come over to visit, what do you do? You eagerly show them your blueprint and say, “This is my house!” But it really isn’t your house; it’s just the blueprint—or the hope—of your house.

In order for that blueprint to turn into your actual house, however, you must purchase materials and then build the house or have someone else build it for you. The materials are what give substance to your blueprint. The materials are the faith.

The same principle applies to every area of life. For whatever goal you want to achieve in life—whether it’s financial freedom, health, a great marriage, responsible children—you will need to have a blueprint or image of that goal on the inside of you before you will see it come to pass in your life. For example, if you want to be debt-free, you will first have to see yourself as debt-free. If you want to be healthy, you will first have to picture yourself as healthy.

If you’ve been wondering why the things you desire have not been happening in your life, take a look at your inner blueprint. Is it a blueprint for success or a blueprint for failure?  In other words, what picture of yourself do you hold in your heart? You will become on the outside just like your inner picture on the inside. So, if you want to change the outside picture of yourself, first change the inside picture of yourself that you hold in your heart.

If your inner blueprint is not what you want, take it back to the drawing board and design another blueprint. But make sure your blueprint adheres to God’s building code as found in His Word. If not, the house you build will eventually collapse.

Questions: 1) What pictures of yourself do you have on the inside of you?  2) Do you need to replace any of those pictures? 3) If so, which ones?

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Copyright 2015 by MaryAnn Diorio, PhD, MFA.  All Rights Reserved.