Gary Smalley - Change Your Heart, Change Your Life: How Changing What You Believe Will Give You the Great Life Youve Always Wanted

CHANGE YOUR
HEART
CHANGE YOUR
LIFE

2007 Gary Smalley

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Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible: New International Version. 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked GNT are from The Good News Translation. 1976, 1992 by The American Bible Society. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the King James Version of the Bible.

Scripture quotations marked NASB are from the New American Standard Bible. The Lockman Foundation 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977. Used by permission.

Scripture quotations marked NLT are from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation. 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked NKJV are from the New King James Version. 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Page design: Walter Petrie

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Smalley, Gary.

Change your heart, change your life : how changing what you believe will give you the great life you've always wanted / Gary Smalley.

p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-8499-1964-0 (hardcover)
1. Christian life. 2. Belief and doubt. I. Title.
BV4501.3.S625 2007
248.4dc22

2007038627

Printed in the United States of America

1 2 3 4 5 6 QW 08 09 10 11

To my oldest son, Dr. Greg Smalley, who started me on the path to understanding personal responsibility, for his unending love and patience with me until I understood the truth of Gods Word that set me free. He used to say, Dad, why do you give those people the power over you to control your emotions? I didnt get it for more than a year. He never lost the desire to help me. Then, when the truth of this book hit my heart, it changed me forever.

Love the King, your God, with all of your heart, soul, mind,and strength.

Love your neighbor in the same way you want to be loved.

Give thanks to God in all circumstances for this is his will.

Forgive those who trespass against you so that your heavenlyFather will forgive you.

Contents

First and foremost, I would like to thank God for allowing me to understand his message to share with all of you. Without him, this book wouldnt have been written. To Mike Hyatt, my longtime friend at Thomas Nelson, its great to be working with you again and I look forward to partnering on many books in the future. To Joey Paul, another dear friend at Thomas Nelson, thank you for your patience with me while I was perfecting each chapter. Your love comes shining through once again. To Tom Williams, you are an amazingly talented man. I love how you are so committed to making sure that readers understand my thoughts and ideas so clearly. My heart is filled with gratitude. To Paula Major, my editor at Thomas Nelson, thank you for your diligence in bringing even more clarity to my thoughts. To all of the people at Thomas Nelson who work behind the scenes, please know that you are thought of and Im grateful for all you do. To my writing team, Terry Brown, Ted Cunningham, and Sue Parks, the challenges that we went through to get this book out to the readers were well worth their weight in gold. I love each and every one of you. And to my beautiful bride, Norma, thank you so much for helping me become more like Christ. I love you endlessly.

One
Hope for You in
All Circumstances

It seems normal today for people to feel discouraged, stressed out, hopeless, and even depressed. The pace of our lives is part of the problem. Everyone seems to be in a huge hurry to go everywhere, even if theyre going nowhere. The tensions of the world add anxiety and uncertaintyterrorism, political turmoil, wars, and rumors of wars. And the disintegrating values of our nation dont help matters any. We are constantly egged on by advertising and our peers to want more and more things, entertainment, pleasure, and leisure, and this brings on the added stress of working harder in order to afford these things. These combined pressures bring many of us down, inducing more or less permanent feelings of discouragement, depression, envy, guilt, frustration, anger, and a host of other defeating emotions.

What if I could show you a way to rise above all that? What if I could show you a surefire way to live so that these pressures and negative influences would never interfere with your joy and satisfaction with life? What if I could show you a proven method of increasing your peace of mind, reducing stress to the point that it almost disappears, and increasing the satisfaction in your marriage beyond your wildest dreams? What if you were to hear negative words from your mate, experience difficulties in life as we all do, but you rebounded in less than a day? Would you be interested?

In fact, I can show you the secret to accomplishing all this and more. The secret is not original with me; I found the key to changing my life in Gods Holy Scriptures. I discovered four awesome, God-given beliefs that, when embedded in my heart, brought about changes in my life far beyond what I ever dreamed possible. These principles work. I know they do because they worked miracles in my own life. And I know they can work in yours as well, because they are Gods own principles for living and loving. They were written more than five thousand years ago, and I found them to be life changing for me. Ive used them every day for over six years and I cant get enough. I suspect that youll have the same response if what I write makes sense to you.

Wouldnt it be great if you suddenly found the willpower to lose all that unwanted weight in just six months? Wouldnt you love to achieve more of your goals and reap more benefits from your job? Wouldnt it be wonderful to experience the love and excitement in your marriage that you thought you had lost forever? It can happen. It provides more safety and love for your marriage than anything I know. As you fly through this book, youll learn the secret to achieving all these dreams and so much more. And the secret is simple: all you have to do is change some of the beliefs that are lodged in your heart.

Impossible! you may say. Surely just changing what I believe in my heart will not make such radical differences in my life. But it can. I am living proof that these four beliefs can change your life beyond measure. Discovering these beliefs has given me the most amazing and rewarding times in all my sixty-seven years, changing and enriching my life in ways I could never have imagined. Six years ago I didnt even know these principles existed. It was my psychologist son who introduced them to me. But when I began to put them into practice, the dramatic and exciting changes they produced in my own life led me to share them with people in my immediate circle. When I saw them change preteens, teens, and adults of all ages, I knew I had found something amazing that could turn a persons life around in just a few weeks. I couldnt wait to share these four beliefs with the world. Thats why I have written this book.