I’ve Gone into Shafts for the Gold Mine!

I do not know how many times I have picked up a self-help book completely excited about what I would learn only to find out it was what I learned in the last book. If that is the case why do I read so many of them? Why bother to read any at all if they say the same thing? It’s for the nuggets! Did you know there are nuggets of gold in every book that we read but the Bible has a big advantage over all those books; it is the gold mine! All the other books are in the shafts leading to the Gold Mine! I willingly go into the shafts mining for nuggets knowing they will all lead me to the ultimate gold mine.

At this moment around my desk I count five books with bookmarks in them. Each one of them is meant to help improve my life because that is what I am all about! My focus, in reading these books, is about improving my life by changing the way I approach decision-making and problem solving. We can be sure of those two very things; each day we make decisions and each day we solve problems. Those are the two things that also hang us up and get us into more trouble than we bargained for.

At first I was gleaning huge nuggets from the self-help books and my life was improving significantly. I was mining every piece of gold I could get from those books and applying them to my life. These authors are geniuses. I became debt free because of Dave Ramsey and Mary Hunt. I made significant strides in my thinking patterns thanks to many women authors especially Beth Moore. Even though the authors I listed are Christians I don’t shy away from non-Christian books and authors such as Napoleon Hill, Dale Carnegie and the like. Seems I had a fondness for self-help books Christian or otherwise. I had heard the Bible was the book of Life but to be honest I thought they were talking about the verse that tells us that Jesus is the Life (John 14:6). How could a book about Jesus show me how to improve my life?

What I didn’t take into account is our awesome God who knows all and sees all. He continually impressed me with the Words in His Book. I told you in a previous post (blog post) that I write life skills workshops to teach women using the Bible. I decided I would research the Bible, before I actually read the whole Book, to see if each of the topics I was going to teach about was somehow, miraculously, talked about by Elohim. I called the workshop Leading Yourself to Success (2005) having criteria I wanted to follow. First, I wanted them to see themselves as a success right where they were, then begin to change their thinking from negative to positive (James Lehman teachings), discover who they are, set boundaries and goals and finally commit to the change. I knew this to be a task but I started writing and every time I made a point I looked for proof in the Bible that my point was valid. I could not believe my own eyes; the Bible already spoke of every point I made. The workshop became a secular representation of how God wants us to live.

I had found my way into the gold mine through the many shafts. My nose went straight into this Gold Mine every time I needed information about life. Each and every year I live I read other books only to find my way back to the Bible for where the information actually originated. I have discovered every self-help book on the market is published because God ordained it therefore in each one of those books we will find the nuggets we need to bring us right back to the Gold Mine – the Bible.

Don’t stop going into the shafts because they all lead to the Gold Mine! Every written work published is meant to bring us back to God! When you look at these books, meant to help us, we can always compared them to the Book of Life and find multiple similarities. Make sure you set your mind to read the Gold Mine to test this theory for yourself. You will be amazed how our ELOHIM has used secular writers to bring us back to Him. Go to Proverbs first to see wisdom in her full display then find the Gospels (Matthew; Mark; Luke; John) to meet Jesus. Not one day will go by with regret for spending time learning from God Himself, I can guarantee it! If other folks can do it and live a better life as a result so can you!