Becoming a highly effective changemaker is another whole new “ballgame”.

Not to worry, as you can be one — just like how Paul was — by building up the following 3 habits as shared in the book of Philippians.

Do all things without complaining and disputing, that you may become blameless and harmless, children of God without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast the word of life, so that I may rejoice in the day of Christ that I have not run in vain or labored in vain. - Philippians 2:14-16, NKJV

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Let us start making things happen, being accountable, and go on to have a consistent private and public life. Be a highly effective changemaker—today.

Let’s take the one that I’ve came across recently—it’s the opening text written to the Philippi church.

Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, to all the saints in Christ Jesus at Philippi, together with the overseers and deacons: Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Thanksgiving and Prayer I thank my God every time I remember you. In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

It is right for me to feel this way about all of you, since I have you in my heart; for whether I am in chains or defending and confirming the gospel, all of you share in God’s grace with me. God can testify how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus.

And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God. - Philippians 1:1-12, NIV

I know, I know. Writing can be a very tricky thing.

Same goes for our speech. One may not know when certain framing of the words may offend the other party, even when the person was saying it with the very best intentions.

Is there a way to articulate one’s thoughts better?

Yes. Here’s 3 takeaways as exemplified by Paul’s letter:

Becoming wise in speech is not an overnight thing. However, working on them isn’t too hard at all. What you may need is to begin cultivating the habit of thanksgiving.

Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise; give thanks to Him and praise His name. - Psalms 100:4

First, giving Him the thanks, and allowing a smooth progression to giving His people (including you and I), sincere praise—it’s like keeping one another in prayer.

I’m confident that once the first habit has been built, the other 2 would come naturally; it’ll be a breeze for you.

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Thanks for allowing me to write to you. Let’s begin looking forward to improving and becoming wise in our words and speech today.

From artists to writers, teachers to high scoring students, entrepreneurs and marketplace leaders … you may find yourself wondering how you could get to be like them or have abilities near as amazing as them.

Allow me give the assurance that you already have in you the seed form of greatness that you can begin with—they are your talents; I’m talking about your skills here.

And that you can multiply your talents and do bigger works that you could possibly imagine.

Instead of giving you the top 10 tips to multiply your talents, here’s just a couple of them that’s based on Psalms 41:1.

Blessed is he who has regard for the weak; the LORD delivers him in times of trouble. ~ Psalms 41:1, New International Version

Bring Your A-Game In Helping Others

You may already be excelling in an area and are have the skills that complement someone that you already know; such as your friends or family members.

Start finding an area where your skills can help them, and actually be there to see to it that things get done.

Let’s say that you’ve mastered the art of getting startups from seed to profitability, and that you know a friend who is a hustler — as in will be willing to learn and put in real effort in applying to get things done — and perhaps having troubles in getting started; walk in, contribute by being the solution, and see to it that things get up and running.

Jesus brought His A-game when He saw Simon Peter, an experienced fisherman, having trouble one day and came in as the solution—not a weak one, but the solution that exceeded the imaginations of the guys who were at the scene.

So it was, as the multitude pressed about Him to hear the word of God, that He stood by the Lake of Gennesaret, and saw two boats standing by the lake; but the fishermen had gone from them and were washing their nets. Then He got into one of the boats, which was Simon’s, and asked him to put out a little from the land. And He sat down and taught the multitudes from the boat. When He had stopped speaking, He said to Simon, “Launch out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.” But Simon answered and said to Him, “Master, we have toiled all night and caught nothing; nevertheless at Your word I will let down the net.” And when they had done this, they caught a great number of fish, and their net was breaking.
~ Luke 5:1-6, New King James Version

Commending, Not Condemning

There will be people who will be weak in a handful of areas, let’s not go out in a mission to condemn and calling them “weak”.

Instead, look beyond the things that he / she is frustrated in and find out the things that excite them, and seek out their strengths.

Then commend them for what they excel in, and complement them by working or creating a new project with the skills that you have, see to it that things get up and running, and you’ll notice the following 3 things happening:

Multiplication wasn’t reserved only for those days—there were modern day accounts that had me all excited about seeing one occurring (read: The Supernatural Power of a Transformed Mind: Access to a Life of Miracles by Bill Johnson) even today.

And I had the privilege of experiencing one such event.

My multiplication story: 8 to 79

It was in late 2007, our group were on duty and it was about time for lunch.

We made a call to bring in food for 8 people.

An hour later, the food guys came and we were given supplies for 79 people, with drinks and all included!

From the over-abundance of our ration, we had to give most of them away, persuading people to take them, and still had more than enough remaining for ourselves.

My friend called it a miracle; and I agreed that it sure was a good one.

And then I remembered that it was exactly 1 week ago when I had been talking with another group of friends about food multiplication, thinking how cool would it be to in the presence of such an event, and asked God for one.

Why does multiplication happen even today?

I was reminded of that event during a recent dinner where I was serving my parents the best part of the dish (it’s a Chinese culture to serve our parents — the ones we respect — first), that were 2 prawns, and got back twice number of it. Well, I wasn’t the one preparing the stuff on the table; it was simply ordering the dish, being served, then give out the best first.

It was a small event, but the revelation was priceless.

God owns and prepares everything that we can see and imagine.

Agreeing on that, you’ll see how biblical promises / verses like “give to the poor is like lending to God”, “Give, and you will receive. You will be given much. Pressed down, shaken together, and running over, it will spill into your lap. The way you give to others is the way God will give to you”, and about giving the first fruits to God, makes sense now in regards to multiplication.

There’s no rocket science to this—no, it’s also not about twisting God’s arm to bring one into an event where multiplication occurs.

It’s actually simpler than that.

Multiplication happens when you acknowledge that all things you have belongs to Him.

And you acknowledge by giving.

That could be giving your time for your friends, your first fruits as a tithe, good words as encouragement in building others up, being a teacher to those who wants proper education, or giving your talents and fill the void where others are weaker in. Go on and discover ways you can give to, and you’ll see multiplication happening in your life too.

Give, and you will receive. You will be given much. Pressed down, shaken together, and running over, it will spill into your lap. The way you give to others is the way God will give to you. ~ Luke 6:38, New Century Version

You are made to excel in everything you do.

You are smart, intelligent, nimble, and fast in getting things done.

You are driven to succeed.

But, ask yourself the following as the day draws closer to the end:

“Are you too driven, until you drive God away from your life?”

Take time off, think, meditate on His word, pray … that 5 minutes spent today, build it up or spread it out to various times of the day, can draw you closer to Him, and perhaps re-align you back to the purpose that you are given this year.

Allow Him to take back the wheel.

You may want to start by giving thanks for the increase in your drive, the determination and persistence that you have today.

Acknowledge that with Him, there is no need to rush. You will still progressively see things getting done when you are with Him.

Many have been placed into your life in different seasons.

Some will get to be in close proximity of you.

While a handful will be the ones you will grow together with for your lifetime.

This group of people, aren’t just any friends or acquaintance that you’ve met sometime in your life. They are those whom you will fight tooth and nail for, battle long distances, and go the extra mile to build up each other and strengthen the friendship that you all have!

Here are some examples of friends whom great leaders had been willing to fight for.

Even kings and greatness have friends worth fighting for

Many people will have a strong group of friends whom they will grow with, through constant encouragement, building one another up, and constantly building stronger ties while caring for each other.

I have my group of close friends who we’ll be willing to drop every other task just to meet up and chill out.

Even heroes in society will have groups of great friends helping each other from zero to greatness. One of today’s example is Sergey Brin and Larry Page for starting a little known search-engine project — that eventually grew into a behemoth of a business breakthrough called Google — together.

In legends we have King Arthur paving the way for Lancelot — while Lancelot grew to become the finest of all the knights in the kingdom.

Historical figures too have well known stories of how great friends will fight for each other even when the odds are heavily stacked against them.

Think, King David and Jonathan (son of Saul). Jonathan did everything in his power and might to keep David out of trouble, and fought battles together, and making sure that the throne passed onto the hands of the rightful owner — King David.

How about the fellowship of the 12 disciples? With more than 70 over disciples that Jesus had, the 12 chose to stick together and went across borders with one another, battling storms and raging seas with each other, and definitely went all out to keep each other strengthened despite not knowing what the future had in store for them.

Jesus shed His blood

And then… there’s Jesus. Who went all out for His disciples, protecting them and guiding them to their calling, while empowering them to achieve their highest potential (turned Simon the wavering individual to become Peter the rock of confidence, got Saul the persecutor to become Paul the apostle of salvation).

In spite of being there for His disciples and for the people who seek His presence, He was still sent onto the cross, leading to the crucifixion, and then leaving His body totally in a mess, nailed down and bones broken, with blood slowly dripping away from every open would on His body.

He went beyond fighting tooth and nails for you. He shed His blood so that you can be in His presence today.

Beyond the cross — today with your friends

Thankfully, you don’t have to go through all that to show that you treasure and value your friends — carrying your cross in your daily journey is a good enough burden to handle.

Beyond the cross, you may have over hundreds or thousands of friends and people whom you have been acquainted with through the years…

Like Jesus, who went through thick and thin for His 12 disciples; who then are your friends that you will go through the bad times and the good, fighting principalities, time, and distance to be in the midst of one another — and building each other up?

You do not have to be of any specific age to start praising.

An Old-Testament leader, Jehosaphat [2 Chron 20:18-20], was at the age of 53 when he led his army to praise, and winning the battle with the divine intervention (an ambush) by God.

There are 2 ways as mentioned in the Bible where we can enter into His presence: singing [Psalms 100:1-2], and thanksgiving [Psalms 100:4].

Let’s look more into the latter; on thanksgiving (or “thanks”).

On “thanksgiving” or simply the word of “thanks”

The word “thanks” in Greek is translated to the word “charis”, it is also where we have the term “charisma”. Further defining it will allow us to get the word “grace”; where we have sentences such as: we thank God for the grace that He has done for us.

In the Old-Testament (OT), thanksgiving is an action (extension of our hands).

In the New-Testament (NT), thanksgiving is an attitude.

Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Do not quench the Spirit.
~ 1 Thessalonians 5:16-19 (New King James Version)

As we are now living in the days of the NT, we are encouraged to mix our prayers with thanksgiving. That’s right, do everything with thanksgiving.

Even in the days of Jesus, He showed us live examples on how God’s power was released time after time again when Jesus prayed and gave thanks.

Here’s a couple of examples you would have read in the Bible:

You choose to praise God not only for the good things that He has done (during the good times). In fact, you ought to praise God for who He is.

Praise is the response from our heart.

5 Power Praise Words Of Thanksgiving

In the Bible, there were 5 different definitions of the word “thanks”, and here they are in no given order:

Praise is vocal, public, and loud! Mix prayer with thanksgiving, and you might get to see a huge change in your life.

Have you gave thanks with praises to God yet?

And in times like this, where we’ve been all busy like bees.

Here’s the three things, you can do ‘em, that will rock your friends’ world today:

1. Go out for an evening walk

Walks are cool.

It’s the breeze and the fellowship that makes it fun. There’s also a health benefit by burning off the calories after a good hearty dinner!

2. Morning tea

Mornings have been replaced by the heavy rush of traffic to work (or from work – for those working the graveyard hours).

How nice would it be if your friends and you can have a good breakfast, by having some morning tea (and pastries too!).

3. Sending a praise message anytime!

Last, but never the least – in fact, it’s essential, send out a praise message right here on Praisewall!

A good post here may cheer a friend up, let them know that they’re loved.

It’s all simply to love one another.

Have you rocked your friends’ world today?

Great! Here’s a list of 5 simple and powerful praise words that you should be using on a daily basis in building people up.

Now, when was the last time you had spoke a good word, praised, or encouraged a friend? This morning? Great! Let’s keep up this good habit by building people up with power praise words shared here.

Thanks for reading this first entry in Praisewall.

Do bless your friends by forwarding this post to them.

Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing.
~ 1 Thessalonians 5:11