Levi Lusko - Take Back Your Life: A 40-Day Interactive Journey to Thinking Right So You Can Live Right

ALSO BY LEVI LUSKO

Through the Eyes of a Lion: Facing Impossible Pain, Finding Incredible Power

Swipe Right: The Life-and-Death Power of Sex and Romance

I Declare War: 4 Keys to Winning the Battle with Yourself

2020 Levi Lusko

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or otherexcept for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by W Publishing, an imprint of Thomas Nelson.

Published in association with the literary agency of Wolgemuth & Associates, Inc.

Thomas Nelson titles may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fundraising, or sales promotional use. For information, please email SpecialMarkets@ThomasNelson.com.

Any internet addresses, phone numbers, or company or product information printed in this book are offered as a resource and are not intended in any way to be or to imply an endorsement by Thomas Nelson, nor does Thomas Nelson vouch for the existence, content, or services of these sites, phone numbers, companies, or products beyond the life of this book.

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are taken from the New King James Version. Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked ESV are taken from the ESV Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version). Copyright 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked KJV are taken from the King James Version. Public domain.

Scripture quotations marked THE MESSAGE are taken from The Message. Copyright 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson. Used by permission of NavPress. All rights reserved. Represented by Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

Scripture quotations marked NASB are taken from the New American Standard Bible. Copyright 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. www.lockman.org

Scripture quotations marked NIRV are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Readers Version, NIrV. Copyright 1995, 1996, 1998, 2014 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.Zondervan.com. The NIrV and New International Readers Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.

Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.Zondervan.com. The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.

Scripture quotations marked NLT are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation. 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked RSV are taken from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible. Copyright 1946, 1952, and 1971 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Scripture quotations marked TPT are taken from The Passion Translation. Copyright 2017, 2018 by Passion & Fire Ministries, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved. ThePassionTranslation.com.

ISBN 978-0-7852-3276-6 (HC)

ISBN 978-0-7852-3277-3 (eBook)

ISBN 978-0-7852-3570-5 (ITPE)

Epub Edition June 2020 9780785232773

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020937456

Printed in the United States of America

20 21 22 23 24 LSC 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Information about External Hyperlinks in this ebook

Please note that the endnotes in this ebook may contain hyperlinks to external websites as part of bibliographic citations. These hyperlinks have not been activated by the publisher, who cannot verify the accuracy of these links beyond the date of publication

Ebook Instructions

In this ebook edition, please use your devices note-taking function to record your thoughts wherever you see the bracketed instructions [Your Notes]. Use your devices highlighting function to record your response whenever you are asked to checkmark, circle, underline, or otherwise indicate your answer(s).

Thank you, Jesus, for a
seat at your table and for
giving me the power to win
the war against the version
of me I don't want to be.

CONTENTS

It is difficult to get your head around the immensity of the Panama Canal. I devoured a six-hundred-page book David McCullough wrote about it while on a family vacation last summer. Let me share some of my favorite takeaways. Each lock, if stood on end, would be taller than the Eiffel Tower. The amount of dirt that had to be removed was enough to make a Great Wall of Chinastyle barrier that would stretch from New York City to San Francisco. If you laid all the dirt on an area the size of a city block, it would reach nineteen miles into the air. The canal uses twenty-six million gallons of water to lift a ship the six hundred feet required to pass through the locks.

The importance of this water causeway, which connects the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic so ships can pass through without having to sail around South America, cannot be overstated. It takes eight to ten hours to sail through the canal, compared to the two weeks it took to go the long way. Using the canal saves eight thousand miles on voyages between one coast of North America and ports on the other side of South America. It has been called one of the supreme human achievements of all time.

The construction of the canal involved many different nations, including the French who originally undertook it, the Americans who finished it, the Panamanians who revolted from Colombia and declared themselves emancipated and thus an independent country, and, of course, Colombia, who lost the privilege of owning it. At one point, twenty-four thousand people from ninety-seven countries were simultaneously working on it. In all, the fifty-mile stretch took thirty years to complete.

Then there is the way the Panama Canal connects with major world events. The lock chambers were built to accommodate the Titanic, then the biggest ship in the world. But she sank in 1912 and never got the chance to navigate the canal. The first time a sitting United States president ever left the country while in office was when Teddy Roosevelt took a trip to Panama to check on the canals progress. Amazingly, only three Secret Service agents were sent to protect him. Despite the endless amounts of fascination that had been given to the project throughout its many decades of work, almost no attention was given to its inauguration, because just as the first ship crossed from one ocean to the other through the canalAugust 3, 1914World War I erupted.

The US and France spent almost $639 million to build the canal, making it the most expensive thing built in American history to that point. In lives, it was much more expensive: a staggering twenty-five thousand people died to create the passageway, ten times the number of people who died in the September 11 attacks. You heard me right. Thats five hundred lives for every mile of the canals fifty miles. The primary causes of those deaths were malaria and yellow fever, which were especially rampant in the hospitals. Nearly everyone who was sent to a hospital died of one of these diseases. It was so well known that being hospitalized was a death sentence that at some points people begged to not be taken to the hospital, regardless of how badly injured or sick they were.