How Successful People Think Order Printed Copy

Author: John C Maxwell
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About the Book

"How Successful People Think" by John C. Maxwell explores the mindset and habits of highly successful individuals. The book highlights the importance of cultivating a positive and proactive mindset, the value of continuous learning, and the significance of embracing challenges as opportunities for growth. Maxwell emphasizes the power of thoughts in shaping actions and ultimately determining one's level of success.

John Owen

John Owen’s life was incredibly difficult. Born in 1616 and dying in 1683, Owen lived through the deaths of his first wife and all of his children, several of whom died in very early childhood. He supported his last surviving daughter when her marriage broke down. He contributed to a political revolution, watched it fail, saw the monarchy restored and wreak a terrible revenge on republicans, and lived in and around London during the persecution that followed. For twenty years he would have seen the decapitated heads of his friends on display around the city. He died fearing that the dissenting churches had largely abandoned the doctrine of the Trinity and justification by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone; and, with Charles II about to be replaced by his openly Catholic brother James, believing that the English Reformation was almost over. Owen was one of the most published writers in the seventeenth century. He published around 8 million words. These writings included books on theology and spirituality, politics and economics, and ranged in length from the largest commentary ever published on the epistle to the Hebrews to a short Latin poem that has never been reprinted. For not all of Owen’s works have been kept in print. The most widely circulating nineteenth-century edition, most of which is published by the Banner of Truth, did not include Owen’s sermon manuscripts that are kept in various English libraries, nor the book for children that Owen published in 1652. Owen was one of England’s earliest children’s authors. The catechisms that Owen published (1645) outlined what he expected children in his congregation to know. These catechisms were published before the Westminster Assembly published its better-known examples. But Owen’s catechisms are in many ways simpler. The Primer (1652), which Owen prepared after the death of several of his children during the years of poor harvests and disease at the end of the 1640s, showed what Owen expected of an ideal Christian home. Its routine would be built around Bible reading and prayer, he believed, and his little book included sample prayers that children could learn to pray in mornings, evenings, and at meals. Owen argued that those who led church services should take account of the needs of children. Services that were too long, he believed, did no one any good. Adult believers should not need written prayers, he believed, and these should be banned from public worship. But children were different and needed all the help they could get. Owen enjoyed many warm friendships. His social network included many of the most famous writers in seventeenth-century England. Among his friends and rivals were John Milton, Andrew Marvell, John Bunyan, and Lucy Hutchinson. Owen fell out with Milton and became the subject of one of his sonnets. Owen helped Marvell publish one of his most controversial political pamphlets. He encouraged his publisher, Nathanial Ponder, to publish Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. And he appears to have supported Lucy Hutchinson during her move into London, when she attended and took notes upon his preaching and translated large parts of his Theologoumena Pantodapa (1661)—a translation of which has been published with the title Biblical Theology. Owen’s letters reveal his kindness and care as a pastor, especially to mothers grieving their children’s death. Owen was deeply political. He preached to Members of Parliament on the day after the execution of Charles I, and pinned his hopes for the reformation of church and society on their efforts to transform England into a protestant republic. During the 1650s, under the leadership of Oliver Cromwell, Owen served on important committees that sought to establish a religious foundation for the new regime. But he grew dismayed by the ways in which the Cromwell family, and the administration they led, seemed to turn away from godly values. In 1658, he worked with leading army officers to create a crisis that, he likely hoped, would call the regime back to its earlier ideals. It failed, and instead created the crisis that was resolved by the restoration of the monarchy, the return of Charles II, and the persecution of dissenters that followed. During the Restoration, Owen kept his head down, and, as persecution slackened in the later 1660s, published pamphlets that argued that dissenters were the economic lifeblood of the English nation. But he was chastened by his attempts at political intervention and came increasingly to realize that his focus should be on things eternal. Owen often changed his mind. As his developing attitudes to political intervention suggest, Owen committed himself to some beliefs and behaviors that he came to regret. In his early years, he changed his churchmanship from Presbyterianism to Congregationalism. He innovated as a Congregationalist, installing as a co-elder and preacher a man who would not be ordained for several years. He argued for the weekly celebration of the Lord’s Supper, though it is not clear that he ever persuaded any of his congregations to practice it. He thought carefully about the end times and came to believe that, in the latter days, a large number of Jewish people would be converted to Christianity and would return to live in the Promised Land. He dismissed a great deal of discussion about the millennium, but became convinced that the binding of Satan had yet to be achieved. Owen changed his mind because he kept on studying the Bible. Owen was biblical, through and through, and depended just as much on the Holy Spirit. He certainly believed in a learned ministry–after all, he had taught theology at Oxford and done his best to promote godliness within the student body. But he also trusted the Holy Spirit to guide ordinary Christians in small group Bible studies that did not need to be policed by a formally trained expert. Aside from his own Bible study, which advanced on the serious scholarship represented by the three thousand titles that were included in the catalog of his library published soon after his death, Owen encouraged church members to meet together to study Scripture in private. Owen trusted the Bible and the work of the Spirit after writing about both. Owen was not a philosophically-driven, rationalist theologian. His writing abounds in biblical citations. It is molded and contoured by biblical revelation. But he warned that Christians could approach their study of the Bible with absolutely no spiritual advantage to themselves. Christians who approached the study of the Bible without absolute dependence upon the Spirit who inspired and preserved it would gain no more benefit than Jewish readers did from their Scriptures, he argued. Christians should never choose between entire dependence upon the Bible and the Spirit. Owen believed that the goal of the Christian life was knowing God. Before Owen, no one had ever shown clearly how Christians relate to each person of the Trinity. Owen described the goal of the gospel as revealing the love of the Father, who sent the Son as a redeemer of his people, who would be indwelt, provided with gifts, and united together by the Spirit. Owen’s Communion with God is among his most celebrated achievements—and no wonder. It is the exhalation of his devotion to Father, Son, and Spirit, and the discovery of the limitless love of God. Owen is much easier to read than many people imagine. There is a mystique to Owen—a widespread feeling that his books are too difficult and best left to expert theologians. But Owen’s greatest books were written as sermons for an audience of teenagers. Publishers have begun to modernize Owen’s language in new editions of his works. Now more than ever, it’s time to pick up Owen and find his encouragement for the Christian life.

But Have You Prayed

What hasn’t yet changed in your life because you haven’t started praying for it? Prayerlessness, of course, comes in varieties. Some almost never pray, proving that prayer is nothing more than a formality, a greeting card to God when they have time. Others only pray when they have some desperate and immediate need, treating prayer like a crisis-response line (and largely neglecting prayer otherwise). Others may pray regularly, but their prayers slowly devolve into repeated phrases that taste stale, impersonal, removed from real life. Even the best among us can sometimes swing between treasuring prayer when we think we really need it and skipping prayer when life seems to be going well. Prayer, however, is not a last resort, but a first line of defense, because God is not a last resort, but the one to whom we look first. Prayer is powerful because God is the most powerful agent of change in any of our lives. Oh, what peace we often forfeit Oh, what needless pain we bear All because we do not carry Everything to God in prayer. Jesus confronted the threat of prayerlessness in his disciples, and in a way that should land with gravity and hope in the midst of our own trials and burdens. Desperate Situation In Mark 9, a man had come, bearing his self-destructive, demon-oppressed son, searching desperately for Jesus — for healing. “Teacher, I brought my son to you,” the father says, “for he has a spirit that makes him mute. And whenever it seizes him, it throws him down, and he foams and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid” (Mark 9:17–18). Parents of young children can at least begin to imagine how excruciating and debilitating this suffering was. Is there anything this father would not do to see his son whole again? “What hasn’t yet changed in your life because you haven’t yet prayed for it?” By the time Jesus arrives on the scene, his disciples have been attempting to drive out the demon. But they were not able (Mark 9:18), even though they had been given authority over unclean spirits (Mark 6:7). And as they struggled over the helpless boy, the religious leaders emerge with crowds to argue with them (Mark 9:14), surely making the situation all the more stressful and tragic. Nothing but Prayer Jesus asks his father, “How long has this been happening to him?” “From childhood” (Mark 9:21). Not just for several weeks or months, but over years, potentially decades. “And it has often cast him into fire and into water, to destroy him. But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us” (Mark 9:22). Jesus, of course, can do anything, literally anything. “‘If you can’! All things are possible for one who believes,” he replies (Mark 9:23). “I believe,” the father famously responds, “help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24). So, Jesus heals the boy: “You mute and deaf spirit, I command you, come out of him and never enter him again” (Mark 9:25). The same spirit that evaded and overpowered the disciples surrenders immediately (and violently) (Mark 9:26), and at just the sound of his voice. When he is alone with his disciples, who are feeling confused and defeated by their failures, they ask him, “Why could we not cast it out?” (Mark 9:28). A penetrating and ageless question. “This kind,” Jesus says, “cannot be driven out by anything but prayer” (Mark 9:29). Maybe they didn’t pray at all, or maybe they prayed very little, or maybe they prayed formal, empty, heartless prayers, but either way Jesus says prayer — actually asking God — is what was missing. He could have said, This kind cannot be driven out by anyone but me, but instead he said, “This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer.” And as surprised as we might be that the disciples didn’t think to pray (or pray more), how often might Jesus say the same to us? What Kept Them from Praying? So, why didn’t the disciples pray? Why didn’t they ask God to help, to intervene, to do what was beyond the disciples’ own ability? We don’t know for sure, but the scene gives us a surprising number of potential reasons, many which might feel surprisingly relevant (and sobering) for own our prayer lives. DISTRACTED BY NOISE “How often have we given up praying because too many days or months or years have passed?” First, a great crowd had gathered to watch (and interfere with) their ministry (Mark 9:14). They weren’t doing spiritual warfare in the privacy of a home. The painful scene had become a stage, and the more the disciples failed and the longer the boy suffered, the more people came to watch. How many of us, with so many curious and suspicious eyes trained on us, would be courageous enough to stop and look toward heaven and pray? Or, how often does the sound of the crowds around us (constantly clawing at our attention through our devices), keep us from hearing Jesus say, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you” (Matthew 7:7)? Distractions, which come in many kinds and ways, often keep us from praying. DOUBTED BY MAN Not all had come simply to watch, though. Religious experts joined the crowd, arguing with the disciples and saying it couldn’t be done (Mark 9:14, 16). The spiritual enemy was obvious, but they had human enemies, as well — doubters, detractors, scoffers. They’re not waiting, like the rest of the crowd, for the disciples to heal the boy; they want nothing more than for followers of Jesus to fail (Mark 11:18). We may not face the same immediate opposition (though many Christians do), but wherever we are in the world, many want our prayers to fail — to prove that Jesus was just a man, the Bible just a book, and our prayers just wishful thinking. We know that faithfulness to Christ will cost us favor and approval from the world, and so the fear of man often keeps us from praying. DEFIED BY SATAN But the scribes were nothing compared with their unseen enemies. The disciples were dealing with an actual demon oppression — a real, destructive, spiritual enemy. A spiritual enemy strong enough to hurl the boy into fire and water, “to destroy him” (Mark 9:22). Maybe worst of all, he made the boy mute (Mark 9:17), unable to cry for help or even explain what was happening to him. What would you do while you watched him being torn apart? Even if we are not experiencing this kind of manifest demonic opposition, we do wrestle, every day, “against the spiritual forces of evil” (Ephesians 6:12). We pray into a downpour of fiery hostility. How often does Satan keep us from praying, doing all he can to keep us from our knees? DISCOURAGED BY INEFFECTIVENESS Though the disciples tried, really tried, to heal the boy, nothing changed. We don’t know what they tried, but we know that they tried (Mark 9:18) and that they had tried everything they knew to do (Mark 9:28). When Jesus says, “This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer,” he hints at all their failed attempts. And the boy still writhed and foamed and groaned on the ground — like he had for so long. A sense of futility surely began to set in. They had healed many before, but this spirit wouldn’t surrender. Maybe no one can heal this boy. How often have we given up praying because the outcome seems decided, because too many days or months or years have passed? Discouragement over unanswered prayer often keeps us from praying. Jesus Really Prayed Many barriers keep us from praying, but nothing kept Jesus from asking his Father, because Jesus knew that nothing was more vital and powerful than prayer. And he knew nothing was more vital and powerful than prayer because no one was more vital and powerful than his Father. “Some things will not change unless we humble ourselves, kneel, and plead with our Father in heaven.” When Jesus says, “This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer,” he knew so from personal and persistent experience. He was tempted in every way as we are, but without ever indulging in prayerlessness. We know how dependent he was on God — rising early in the morning (Mark 1:35), getting alone with his Father (Mark 6:46), and pouring out his heart (Mark 14:35). And we know he did this regularly (Luke 5:16). He was not distracted by the crowds or undone by the fear of man. He was not intimidated by demonic warfare or discouraged by God’s timing. He knew the soul-sustaining, demon-defeating, mountain-moving power of prayer — and he wanted us to know it too. Some oppression will not lift without prayer. Some wounds will not heal without prayer. Some trials will not end without prayer. Some sins will not die without prayer. Some relationships will not mend without prayer. Some things will not change, things we desperately want to change, unless we consistently and persistently humble ourselves, kneel, and plead with our Father in heaven. The all-wise, all-loving, all-powerful God has chosen to do much in the world through our prayers, because prayer is part of his precious relationship with his children and exalts him as the listening and answering God. So, what hasn’t yet changed in your life because you haven’t yet prayed?