Dr. Cindy Trimm - The 40 Day Soul Fast Leaders Guide

A best-selling author, high-impact teacher, and former senator, Dr. Trimm is a sought-after empowerment specialist, revolutionary thinker, and transformational leader. She has earned a distinguished reputation as a catalyst for change and voice of hope to the nations.

Listed among Ebony magazines Power 100 as the top 100 doers and influencers in the world today, Dr. Trimm is a featured speaker on some of the worlds largest platforms, a frequent guest on Christian broadcastings most popular TV and radio shows, and continually tops the Black Christian News Network and Black Christian Book Companys National Bestsellers List.

Dr. Trimm combines her wealth of leadership expertise with her depth of spiritual understanding to reveal life-transforming messages that empower and inspire. Seasoned with humor, compassion, revelatory insight, and personal candor, Dr. Trimm opens minds and touches hearts with biblically-based principles of inner healing and personal empowerment.

Pulling on her background in government, education, psychology, and human development, Dr. Trimm translates hard-hitting spiritual insights into everyday language that empower individuals to transform their liveshelping change the path people take in search of meaning, dignity, purpose, and hope.

Gods Spirit touches our spirits and confirms who we really are (Romans 8:15).

Today, the first day of your journey to a more authentic life, begins with a focus on awareness. This is the first of 40 characteristics that define a person who is living authenticallyfor how can you be truly yourself if youre not aware of who you truly are?

For now, I want you to simply focus on being more self-aware. Without cultivating self-awareness, nothing else you do will move you toward living more authentically. It is the first step you must take in making the adjustments necessary to correct the course of your life.

If you are to grow as a person, you must be aware of what your thoughts are telling you about whom you are now and who you are capable of becoming. You must have an objective understanding of your own mindsets, habits, challenges, strengths, and weaknesses.

We shall not cease from explorationand the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. T. S. Eliot

ACTION STEPS

Describe what you believe are some outstanding characteristics about yourself?

How have you capitalized on those and harnessed the inherent power of you?

What more can you do to maximize your unique set of gifts and minimize your own peculiar shortcomings?

Take a look at the 24 questions in Appendix B. Take some time to look them over at the beginning of this 40-day journey. You dont have to answer them all right now; return to reflect on them occasionally throughout the Soul Fast process. Insights will come to you along the way. When these questions keep you awake at night and make you listless during the day, set aside time to pray and journal your thoughts until you find the answers.

Listen carefully to what you hear Gods Spirit sayingthat still, small voiceand write down what you hear.

Therefore if any person is [ingrafted] in Christ (the Messiah) he is a new creation (a new creature altogether); the old [previous moral and spiritual condition] has passed away. Behold, the fresh and new has come (2 Corinthians 5:17 AMP).

Were being shown how to turn our backs on a godless, indulgent life, and how to take on a God-filled, God-honoring life. This new life is starting right now, and is whetting our appetites for the glorious day when our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, appears. He offered Himself as a sacrifice to free us from a dark, rebellious life into this good, pure life, making us a people He can be proud of, energetic in goodness (Titus 2:12-14).

As we move through day two of our 40-day Soul Fast, I want to talk to you about the second characteristic of an authentic person: Godliness. Godliness begins with the Godlikeness of your thoughtsthe thoughts that govern your mind. It begins by putting on the mind of Christ.

As Paul wrote the Corinthians, Examine your motives, test your heart! (1 Cor. 11:27). Make sure everything you say, do, think, and choose is lined up with who it is you truly want to be. Check your heart. Clean house by sweeping up any impure motives or stray intentions. Pay attention to how the things you harbor within your heart affect your words and behaviorsand equally important, how your words, habits, and behaviors affect the life of your soul.

I encourage you today to do a thorough study of the word godliness and meditate on all it implies. Then ask yourself where you are falling short of it. Eliminate those things that are not adding to your faith and supplement those key things Peter listed that will have your life on a firm footing (2 Pet. 1:10)!

True godliness does not turn men out of the world, but enables them to live better in it and excites their endeavors to mend it. William Penn

ACTION STEPS

Meditate on the following and journal what you believe the Bible is saying about you as a person: God created human beings in His own imagereflecting His own nature. He blessed them saying: Prosper! Reproduce! Fill Earth! Take charge! (See Genesis 1:26-28.)

Sometimes we are our own worst enemy. Are you sabotaging your own success by the thoughts you think? Are you allowing those thoughts to interfere with how God wants you to view yourself? Are you giving someone else permission to lay things on you that arent yours to carry and dont further you toward your destiny?

Are your past failures holding dominion over your future? Are relationships distracting you, or worse, suppressing your God-like nature for greatness, significance, and love?

In what areas are you living a godless, indulgent life and how can youstarting right nowbegin living a more God-filled, God-honoring life?

What undermining habits do you want God to help you to give up? List them and commit them to prayer. From this day onward, expect God to empower you to live a godly life pleasing to Him.

Think of your sufferings as a weaning from that old sinful habit of always expecting to get your own way. Then youll be able to live out your days free to pursue what God wants instead of being tyrannized by what you want (1 Peter 4:1-2).

The way to be truly happy is to be truly human, and the way to be truly human is to be truly godly. J. J. Packer

You with open minds; truth-ready minds will see it at once. Prefer my life-disciplines over chasing after money, and God-knowledge over a lucrative career. For Wisdom is better than all the trappings of wealth; nothing you could wish for holds a candle to her