Have you ever believed something for years and then found out that what you believed was wrong? Isn't it devastating when you have sincerely believed something, only to find out that all the time it was wrong?

I would like to share today about one of the most common wrong beliefs. It comes from a very well-known book called 'As a Man Thinketh', written by a man named James Allen.

You will find it all over the Internet. It is very famous amongst the self-help series and amongst all the people out there that are teaching success principles.

Now anyone who has ever read this book assumes that Allen based this on a Scripture from Proverbs that says:

As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.

I must admit I also thought that there was such a verse. And so I tried looking it up in the Concordance and doing some searches on it, and I found out that the exact wording doesn't exist anywhere in the Bible.

In actual fact you will find that most of James Allen's teachings actually come from a writing called 'The Dhammapada' which is a Buddhist Scripture that promotes the concept of karma, or the law of cause and effect.

Allen took this little Scripture, twisted it just slightly to suit himself and founded a teaching. Most of the world believes that there is a Scripture that says, 'As a man thinks in his heart so is he.'

And so a whole teaching has arisen from this idea of what you can do with your thoughts. But before I look at that, let me first give you the correct Scripture and you will see how close it is. But you will see how wrong it is to assume what is being taught from the Scripture.

You will find it in Proverbs 23:6 and 7, and you need to read verse 6 to understand verse 7. It says:

Do not eat the bread of one who has an evil eye neither desire his delicacies. For as he thinks in his heart, so is he. Eat and drink he says to you, but his heart is not with you.

How does this passage even begin to hint to you that this a key to success; that this is a way to change your behavior? No, Solomon isn't teaching a principle here about thoughts at all.

In fact he is not showing us that we can create the life we want by our thoughts. He is actually just stating a fact.

He is saying that we tend to act out what is in our heart and mind, and we tend to express what is in our thoughts by our actions.

That is all he was saying. He was not saying that we can change our lives and create.

False Teaching of the Secret

Now this is a teaching that is rampant today called 'The Secret'. It was first given this title by a very famous self-help teacher by the name of Earl Nightingale.

Today it is being promoted in a film that is called 'The Secret', but Earl Nightingale first called it, 'The Strangest Secret'.

The whole teaching that all of these people are promoting, is that by changing your thoughts you can create the kind of life you want. They say that you are the master of your own destiny; that you have the power to be god.

It all arises from a movement called 'The New Thought Movement', which is anything but godly and anything but Christian. Yet Christians are being drawn into this.

They are being duped by this teaching and thinking, because somebody takes a Scripture like this, 'As a man thinks…', and twists it to suit their teachings. They think that the Word of God teaches these things.

Leaving God Out

I want to set in on record right now that this teaching is false. And you will find that in most success teachings in the world, they tend to leave God out and they tend to leave the Word out.

Because you see if they were to acknowledge God they would have to acknowledge their sin. They would have to do things God's way and they are not prepared to do that. They want to do things their way.

Now those of us who believe in God and have committed our lives to Him need to embrace the truth. What is the truth? What does the Bible really teach about thoughts?

I have touched a little bit on it already, and I am going to be teaching a whole lot more. I am going to be presenting to you self-help God's way, not the world's way.

You will find that as you begin to read all the self-help teachings of the world, they all follow the same patterns and they all overlap together. And what every single one of them is trying to do is to leave God out of it.

They don't refer to God as God in these teachings. They call Him 'The Universe'. They make God part of the creation; that He is an obscure force out there that we have control over and that we can command.

This is heresy to the limit. But I hear God's people speaking about the law of attraction. There is no such teaching as the law of attraction in the Word of God.

It is based on this false teaching called The Secret, where we, through what we can put in our minds and our thoughts, can attract to us whatever we want.

Power from Your Spirit

Now we have authority and we have power, and God has put into our spirits a bit of His divine ability. As human beings He has made us little creators, not in the same magnitude that He is, but on a smaller level.

I have taught this in many different places and I am going to be teaching it again and explaining it to you in more detail.

What is more important is what comes from your spirit, not what comes from your thoughts. What is more important are the words that you speak that come from your spirit, not the thoughts that you think in your mind all the time.

This is because most of the time the thoughts that come to your mind are influenced by the world round about you. This is under the control of the enemy, which is under the control of the World System.

Let's face it, what are the thoughts that most people have? They are thoughts of selfishness and selfish desire and all the things that we want.

That is not God's way is it? That is not the way of the Spirit. It is the way of the world. Now we are going to learn how to do it the right way, and I am going to be teaching you these principles the right way.

And you will be able to embrace them without fear that you are getting some false Buddhist teaching; or some demonic spiritualistic teaching that is being taught by the New Age Movement out there and that has been couched in Scripture.

I am amazed at how much Scripture these people quote, because actually there is no other source out there but the Word of God. But they try to take Scripture and other false teachings and mix the two together. And by doing this they are drawing in a lot of God's people.

Don't be caught by this nonsense. Don't allow yourself to be influenced by it. It is false teaching, it is heresy, and it will steal from you the success that God really wants you to have.

So stick around. I am going to be teaching you the truth. I am going to be showing you these things. And in the days, weeks and months that lie ahead there will be more and more available.

These will not only be what I give out on these Daily Motivationals, but I will be giving sound teaching in seminars and lectures that will be available to you. Then you will be able to learn to prosper and succeed in this world God's way.

I don't know about you, but that is the way I want to do it.