The 1990s period was an epoch period for me: I went to university, after four years of successful university studies began working. It was when I was working that I got exposed to a plethora of many ideas, or put it simply I came across self anointing ideas.
To use the modern popular language I was attracted to personal development ideas, motivational speakers and gurus. I wanted to develop myself. I wanted to live above daily mundane life. I wanted to expand myself. I wanted to live a life of true bliss. I bought books, tapes and attended motivational seminars. I wanted peaceful living and get rid of the daily irritations of life, the things which annoy so much, go beyond “into the consciousness”.
Notable amongst all these, I bought the most expensive personal development program, Personal Power II by Anthony Robbins, a 30 day program for personal achievement and peaceful living. It is called the driving force, and the message is you can live your life with passion every day. “Live with Passion” that is the signature Anthony Robbins uses closing each tape with “Live with Passion”.
Central to the message of Personal Power II is Anthony Robbins lecturing and teaching techniques of how you can shut problems from your life and live a life above problems, that you can control events in your life. He teaches mastery. He even has a university called Mastery University, where people are taught how to master their lives by “awaken the giant within” using their “unlimited power” to live peaceful lives. Mastery University has a two weeks course “of total immersion to create life experienced on your terms”.
Getting into the year 2000 and beyond, after saturating myself with these kinds of ideas I finally discovered how these ideas are actually waging war on the Divine Wisdom and the sovereignty of God over my life.
In every motivational program, personal development program, science of achievement at the heart of all these is James Allen statement found in his booklet “As a Man Thinketh”. James Allen states: "Man is made and unmade by himself. In the armory of thought he forges the weapons which will destroy him. He also creates the tools with which he will build for himself heavenly mansions of joy and strength and peach. Between these two extremes are all the grades of character and man are their maker and their master. "
From the year 2000 and beyond stormy dark clouds began to melt away from me and I began to see the sun. I began to realize the falsehood that “I am my maker and master of my life”.
It dawned on me that these ideas were dragging my life down into the gutter.
Motivational gurus and personal development coach they affirm God, they believe in God. But their view of God is miserable caricature, a blasphemous travesty of the only Truth, found only in the Bible. The God of the popular mind is the creation of a maudlin sentimentality with savage vehemence carried away infatuation of fleshly superstitions and not inspiration for God’s Spirit. And this spirit has infiltrated Christian churches turning them into social clubs and places of entertainment worshipping a God that they sculptured out of their imaginations.
And so how did I get myself out of this big mess? How did I get myself out from the flesh-pleasing idea of progress of man and his wonderful achievements? The “progress” which has been so much become our lives and acclaimed is merely a mechanical technology one and not spiritual and right morals. We have indeed witnessed in our times remarkable inventions but how far have they contributed to the real good of mankind?
A noble view of life came to embrace me. Life is profoundly mysterious, and the passing of the years growing wiser by the years offer no solution. Nor does philosophizing help us, though we might think it does. Human volition, our choices, the preference we have, is a strange enigma. Looking the world around us and looking at how our lives turn out, gives us a complex: True the power of choice is exercised by us in every move we make. And yet it is plain that our freedom is not absolute. Life is a profound problem, and that we are surrounded by mystery on every side. There are high invisible spiritual forces brought to bear upon us, both good and evil, which are beyond our power to resist or even begin to reason with. That is what is shaping the destiny of this world, both good and dark spiritual forces.
Jeremiah the prophet around 710 BC under great holy inspiration observed, "O Lord I know that the way of man is not in himself: it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps (Jeremiah. 10:23). Jeremiah does not say I think, he says I KNOW THIS.
Here we enter the realm of mystery, and it is idle or playing games to deny it. Better far to acknowledge with the wisest man, "Man’s goings are of the Lord; how can a man then understand his own way?" (Prov. 20:24). How can “man make and unmake himself”. How can “man become the master of himself?” Pride and boasting is hateful to the true eternal God.
"Thine, O Lord, is the greatness, and the power, and the glory, and the victory, and the majesty: for all that is in the heaven and in the earth is Thine; Thine is the kingdom, O Lord, and Thou art exalted as Head above all" 1 Chronicles 29:11.
