Do you really want to change an area of your life, but you just feel stuck?

Do you take 2 steps forward and three steps back? Have you been trying to do it on your own? Then read on for a tool that can help you finally make some real progress!

I’ve been learning about the power of the heart and mind to change things in our lives. This learning path started for me when I gave my spiritual life a kick start by gaining a truly awesome mentor who helped me get unstuck from religious duty and showed me in the scriptures where it says that God wants our hearts. In order to get to our hearts, a lot of our mind patterns need to change. I’ve had significant breakthroughs in my life in the area of my mind and heart being literally changed and renewed. This change has manifested in my emotions being set free. I have gone from feeling numb and living like a zombie to feeling love, joy and excitement again.

Right after this spiritual discovery, I came across a book called Cash in a Flash by Mark Victor Hansen and Robert G. Allen. Many areas of my life need transforming and my finances are one of them. Low and behold, this book is about changing your mind and heart to enable you to do the things you know you should do! These two men have done many seminars and teachings on helping people make changes in their lives, but they noticed that for many of us, we learn what we should do, but we don’t know how to make ourselves do it! We are stuck with wrong thinking patterns and blocked with negative emotions in our hearts.

If we want true change in our lives on the outside behaviours, we need true change on the inside power sources of our minds and hearts.

The other power source that again comes from Biblical principles and is reiterated in the book Cash in a Flash, as well as many other sources, such as books on changing our bodies through diet and exercise, or overcoming addictions, is the power of others. We need support. We need accountability. I have spent most of my life as a loner with no accountability to anyone. Even as a teenager I was an only child raised by a single mom who was at work a lot and I was left to my own devices. Let’s just say I didn’t make wise choices. This pattern carried through my life. I carried the burden of many things alone trying and failing to make the changes I wanted to make.

There were many ‘gaps’ in my life. In every area – spiritual, relational, financial, physical, mental, emotional and even sexual. Gaps of lack of knowledge and self-discipline. Gaps created by blockages of hurt, frustration and anger that I had tried to stuff and hold in. All it did was clog me up and make me numb emotionally and all the negative attitudes and thoughts in my mind were like rubble on the road blocking my progress in all areas.

The fellowship group that I’ve become a part of is built on the foundations of a book in the Bible called Nehemiah. We’ve been asked to study it so we understand what we are being called to do, which is get our own lives straightened out, then help others to rebuild theirs. It’s an interesting story of a Jewish man named Nehemiah who was a cup-bearer to a Persian king. The Jews were in exile at the time, but a few of them had escaped and gone back to Jerusalem. Nehemiah was asking his visiting brother how they were doing and found out that the walls of the city that had been built for protection had been knocked down and the gates had been burned. The city was wide open to attack. The people living there were living in a ‘victim’ situation rather than from a place of security and strength.

He was grieved at hearing this and was able to talk to the king he served about it and received favour and supplies from him to go rebuild Jerusalem’s walls and gates. Nehemiah got everyone from high rank to low to work together by rebuilding the areas closest to their homes. Pretty smart, because they had a vested interest in providing protection for their own families. They had to fix all the ‘gaps in the wall’. It had the immediate provision of safety for themselves and their families and the ultimate security for their entire nation.

They had many enemies who tried to prevent the work. They mocked them, then made plans to attack them. The Jews had to literally work holding a weapon in one hand and a tool in the other. They had others watching their back while they worked. Because of my recent discoveries about needing to change our hearts and minds so we can rebuild the broken down areas of our lives, one of the passages really stood out to me. In Nehemiah 4:6 (Amplified version) it says, “So we built the wall; and all of it was joined together to half its height; for the people had a heart and mind to work.”

Even though they had enemies on every side and even a few within that they had to deal with, they made a huge accomplishment in a short period of time by working together and by having a heart and mind to work. They had been living in insecurity and fear. They had been exiled from their homeland because of war, then returned to the chaos of rubble and destruction. They were living as victims. Then along comes Nehemiah with a plan and provision and pulls them all together. They learned to fight and build together. They each had to be accountable to rebuild their own area. They went from a victim or poverty mentality to a mind and heart of strength and faith that they could do it together.

I have seen this lived out in my own life recently. I have come into a place of connection and accountability with a group of people that hasn’t always been easy, but the gaps in the walls of my life have been getting rebuilt. I am seeing it in healthier relationships in my family and a strength, joy and peace in myself that is showing itself in a boldness to do things that I never had before. Some days my independent nature chafes at turning to others for prayer and counsel, but I see the power in it. I had God in my life, but I didn’t listen to his counsel in the Bible where he says how much we need each other and that he wants us to have deep love, fellowship and communion because we are vulnerable to ‘attack’ in this war of life. That attack is often our own self-sabotage! I thought I could do it on my own. I was just like the Israelites, each hiding in their own home in fear trying to defend their own little patch of land. Together we have the strength to rebuild the things in our own lives and then to help rebuild others until the whole nation is changed!

Accountability and connection are strong weapons in our arsenal for change. Whether you have an accountability group for your spiritual life (I strongly suggest more than just going to church! Having a smaller group that are more intimately connected is vital!), business/financial, health and fitness, parenting, addictions or whatever sphere of change you’re looking for, I encourage you to be vulnerable and transparent and really turn to each other for help and support. Call them when you’re tempted to eat that doughnut! Call them for encouragement to get back up after eating the whole plate of doughnuts! Get together and encourage one another. Each one has experiences and ideas that you don’t have on your own.

I hope this helps you and encourages you to step into the wonderful, yet challenging world of accountability!

Your partner in ‘filling in the gaps’,
Noella