Wisdom-Trek / Creating a Legacy

Welcome to Day 749 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.

This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom

Hope For The World – Mindshift Monday

Thank you for joining us for our 5 days per week wisdom and legacy building podcast. This is Day 749 of our trek, and it is time for our Mindshift Monday series. Wisdom-Trek’s primary focus is to assist you in creating your living legacy.

Creating your living legacy can only be accomplished by gaining wisdom in many areas of life. You can only gain wisdom by changing what you allow to go into your mind, which is a result of changing the way you think. In other words, to create your living legacy you must choose to be in a continual mode of mindshift.

It is easy to get stuck in a mindset that your current circumstances cannot be changed. This is not true, but you must understand this fundamental principle: In order to change your life, you must change how you think and what you think about. Our Mindshift Monday podcast and journal will be to provide you practical ways to make a mindshift to a rich and satisfying life. 

We are broadcasting from our studio at The Big House in Marietta, Ohio. During this Christmas season, it brings a feeling of hope that regardless of the turmoil in the world that is accentuated by news media and social media that we can have peace.

Peace between countries and cultures. Peace between political parties. Peace within families. Most important is peace within ourselves. It is when we lose hope that we lose our peace. So today we want to have a mindshift as we explore…

Hope for the World

I read a story about a man who is going through very difficult times and had sought out the council of his pastor. His work was not going well. Some of his grown children had left the principles they were taught and not living as they should, and he was worried about that. The straw that finally drove him to seek council was that his wife decided to leave him. As he sat there talking with the pastor, he was slumped over in despair. It was his final sentence that was alarming when he said, “I have nothing to live for. I have lost all hope.”

The pastor shared with him that hope was the one thing he could not afford to lose. He could lose his business, his money, and even his family and still be able to rebound in life if he kept a glimmer of hope alive. It is the core that allows us to get up one more day and continue on, even when circumstances are dismal.

We can think of Abraham and Sarah who were well past childbearing age, and yet in Romans 4:18 we read, "Even when there was no reason for hope, Abraham kept hoping—believing that he would become the father of many nations. For God had said to him, “That’s how many descendants you will have!"

Campbell Morgan tells of a man whose shop burned during the disastrous Chicago fire that happened on October 8-10, 1871. A man whose shop burned completely down arrived at the ruins the next morning carrying a table. He set the table amid the charred debris, and above it, he placed this optimistic sign, “Everything was lost, except wife, children, and hope. Business will resume as usual tomorrow morning.”

Many people become bitter towards life because of the unfortunate circumstances in which they find themselves. Many quit. Others have taken their own lives. What is the difference in how a person reacts to the difficult situations of life? It certainly is not talent, ability, or intellect. The only difference between those who throw in the towel and quit and those who get back up one more time and keep going is found in the word “hope.”

Romans 5:3-5 shows us a better way, "We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance.