DESCRIBING THE NOETIC PYRAMID

Noetic Pyramid: a systemic, descriptive hierarchy; a way of looking
at the benefits of learning and implementing the attitudes, beliefs
and behaviors that must always precede real abundance in life.

With your faith in God and attention to your health as the foundation,
learning what we call The 7 Secrets of Living the Life You Love is both
easier and has much more meaning.

Then, we must develop the internal structures of abundance: we find
purpose often through meditation or prayer, and then visualize your
desired future.

The Pyramid then leads you from a firm foundation to the external
techniques of planning, teamwork, marketing and acquiring the
necessary money. None of these external elements will be meaningful
without the foundational elements, but these essential elements will
not inherently lead to abundance, either.

We must realize the benefits of learning and utilizing the internal
structure and external techniques to create abundance, freedom,
gratitude and fulfillment so you can truly live the life you love. An
abundant life has meaning beyond ourselves, so we must seek to
improve the lives of others. When we use our freedom to the benefit
of others; when we are thankful for the opportunity to share the
blessings of a materially abundant life, then we are fulfilled beyond
our ability to imagine.

Here some tips to make this year the very best of your life.
Commit your life to GOD in Christ including your past, your future,
your money, your relationships and your time. Spend time with
friends who will lift you, leaders who inspire you, mentors who
challenge you, and family who support you. Below are some
reference verses:
Proverbs 13:20
Malachi 3:10
Proverbs 3:9
II Corinthians 9:6
Ephesians 6:10-18
Hebrews 10:24-25
II Timothy 1:9
Jeremiah 29:11
Romans 7:25 to 8:1

Below is a great story from the life of Mr. Charlie “Tremendous” Jones, an insurance man by profession, as he speaks to a businessmen’s group. The following was transcribed from a recording from that presentation. Here are some of the points that Charlie discusses:

I say there are three great decisions in man’s life – 1) who are you going to live your life with, (2) what are you going to live your life in, and (3) and what are you going to live it for;

I must say that I have a peace in my heart. But it is not a peace I feel, it’s a peace I know. And I would rather know peace than feel peace.

God doesn’t patch up old hearts. . . the wonderful part about a living God, THE GOD, he gives you a brand new heart!”

You have to be a sinner to qualify. You know that? I never knew in my life that only sinners can become Christians. I thought Christianity was for the religious bonehead who wanted to play church. I didn’t know you had to be a sinner to become a Christian. And yet I find a lot of people who don’t know that.

I would say, just as a plain bread and butter every day layman, that there are a lot of thrills in life. . . but knowing God, as a man, as a husband, as a father, supersedes, overshadows anything else I have ever known, ever will know.

I had done everything I could to prove that this was myth, fable, fantasy, poetry, history that it was for the ignoramus, the poverty stricken, people who didn’t know any better. I remember as a young fellow growing up, my dad used to say, “Son, you’ve got to quit drinking, smoking, swearing, gambling.” I say, “Well, Dad, I may as well go to hell right now. What will I do with all my time?” I heard all these things. I heard the old approach, “Charles, God needs you!” I used to think that if God needs me, it’s too late for God. [Laughter]

Charlie’s story:

One day, about 18 years ago, a fellow jumps into my car. I thought that was sort of a miracle, most people were jumping out. But I was a young insurance salesman at the time and I had a little strategy. My strategy was always to let the other fellow talk himself out, when he’s talked out, I lower the boom on him and sell him a policy. The only trouble with this fellow was he never shut up. He got into my car, he says, “Hey, Jones, how is it with your soul?” Well, that was an interesting question, I wasn’t sure I had one. He saw that I was puzzled, he said, “Are you born again?” Here I am. And he said, “Are you going to heaven when you die?” I knew that nobody ever knew that they could go to heaven, nobody ever came back.

You know, I’m glad I met a little character like this. You see, the reason I appreciated meeting him was he didn’t argue religion with me. He didn’t tell me what church he belonged to. He didn’t tell me what to quit, he didn’t tell me what to join. He just told me that God was God, and Jesus Christ was no myth, that the Bible is true. He reminded me these 66 books written over 1,600 years by more than 40 different men, these books that came together to form a continuity that has come down through the ages to stand the test of time and challenge and bless and change the lives of millions of people. He reminded me that the Jew and Catholic and the Protestants disagree on a lot of things, but they all agree that the Bible is the The Word of God.

Well, as this fellow went on, I began to see he wasn’t going to buy any insurance. And I didn’t want to get converted. Because I didn’t know that God had anything for me. But you know what he did to me? He opened up his New Testament and he began to read a few Bible verses. I never had anybody do this for me. And this is what he read, “There was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. The same came to Jesus by night and said unto him, “Rabbi, we know thou art a teacher come from God, and no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him. And Jesus answered and said unto him, I tell you the truth, unless you are born again, you cannot see the kingdom of God.” And Nicodemus said, “Well, how can a man be born when he is old? Enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?” And Jesus answered, “I assure you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and the Spirit. Humans can reproduce only human life, but the Holy Spirit gives birth to spiritual life. So don’t be surprised when I say, you must be born again. The wind blows where it wants. Just as you can hear the wind but can’t tell where it comes from or where it is going, so you can’t explain how people are born of the spirit.” And Nicodemus said, “Well, how can these things be?” And Jesus answered, “You are respected Jewish leader and yet you do not understand these things? I assure you, we tell you what we know and have seen, and yet you won’t believe our testimony. But if you don’t believe me when I tell you about earthly things, how can you possibly believe if I tell you about heavenly things? No one has ever gone to heaven and returned. But the Son of Man has come down from heaven. And as Moses lifted up the bronze snake on a pole in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, so everyone who believes in him will have eternal life. For God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.” God sent his son into the world not to judge the world, to save the world through Him. There is no judgment against anyone who believes in him. But anyone who does not believe in him has already been judged for not believing in God’s one and only Son.

I never forget, I turned to this young fellow and said, “You don’t believe that, I hope. You believe that a person can know God? You mean to tell me that God knows me? I said it couldn’t be true. Well, if that were true, the whole world would be a Christian. I said if this is true, I had gone through all these things that everybody else has done, I have grown up the church, I’ve gone through all of them again, I have been baptized, confirmed, I’ve joined the church. You come along and tell me that I can know God, God will live in me.

He said, “I’m not telling you. Here, read again.” I said, if this is true, how come you’re the first person that ever told me about it. He read me another verse. He said, “why don’t you read the verses in the Bible, Romans 10:9 and 10. “If you confess with my mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is by believing in your heart that you are made right with God, and it is by confessing with your mouth that you are saved. He said, “do you think it’s possible that the people who talked to Jesus knew how to profess it with their mouth, but did not know how to possess it with their heart.

You know as he, step by step, went through these verses, I began to see some things that I had never seen in my whole life. Because you see I never really looked at what God had to say. As Christian businessman, we do not tell what people what we think, all we want to do is tell what we know God said, and it works. That’s all.

I told this fellow, look, I don’t think I’m ready for this because there are a lot of things that I do that I don’t think are perhaps acceptable as the way you think. He said it doesn’t matter what I think. He said, let me read you another verse, and he gave me another verse. And he showed me that there was nothing I could do to get to heaven. There was nothing I could buy, there was nothing I could quit, and there was nothing I could join. There the Bible said, “By grace are you saved through faith, and not of yourself. It’s a gift of God, not of works, so no one can boost.”

He said, “now how do you get the habit?” I said, by having faith and doing the best you can. He said, read that over again. and I read it over again. “Well, by grace.” He said, “well, what’s grace mean?” Well, all I know, it’s my little girl’s name. We never used it at the table, and in other years, I learned other things. He said, “grace means ‘God’s Favor’. That you don’t deserve it. Unmerited basis. He says, more by grace, unmerited. By grace are you seen, through faith and that not of yourself, it’s a gift. He says, suppose I give you a gift. And then I tell you, you have to work for it. Is it a gift? I said, no, I worked for it. He said, “if God said he gives himself for salvation as a gift, can you do anything for it?” I said, “no.”

Mmmm. Well, I could see that he was winning. And I terminated our interview. Gentlemen, he said something to me that day that I would like to give you tonight. Because I pushed him out of my car gently. He said, “Charlie, always remember this. If the Bible is wrong and you’re right, Christendom has nothing to lose. But if the Bible is right, and you’re wrong, you have your life to live in vain, and eternity to spend in hell.” That is as good a case as I’d ever heard. I made up my mind that I would not eat another meal, sell another policy, I would not do another thing until I determined in my heart, is it true or isn’t it true? Because up to now, all I had read was something to disprove it. I made up my mind that if it wasn’t true, I was going to sleep in Sunday morning, throw it in the trash can, save my dollar a week, because I thought the pastor was gypping me anyway. [Laughter]

But I also determined that if I decided it was true, if I became the first Christian and the only Christian in the whole world, then I would ask God to make me whatever a Christian was because at that time I didn’t know that I had ever met a Christian. I thought it might be a lonely life. I realize I was about to begin to do the most serious thing in my life. I drove the streets that afternoon. I must say that I couldn’t figure it out. But I finally began to see that it is understandable why my finite mind could never understand the infinite plan of God. And so that afternoon, for some strange reason, by God’s grace, for the first time in my life, I came to the conclusion, that this was the Word of God. I bowed my head in my car. I didn’t feel religious. I didn’t feel there was a great vacuum, but I knew that I did not know what it was. I really didn’t. I knew the animated existence like all of us know, but that’s not it.

I bowed my head like an ignorant child, I said, “God, I don’t understand all this business about religion. I want you to forgive me. Come into my heart, and make me whatever a Christian is, whatever that is, in Jesus’ name I ask you. Amen.”

I waited for a great deal because I heard about this decision-making business for years. I’ve done all I could to fight it off. And I knew something great was going to happen now. Something tremendous was going to happen now. That said, not a thing happened. I didn’t understand. Maybe God thought I was praying one of my old-fashioned prayers. I used to pray, “Lord, let me get hot tonight.” But I wasn’t praying that kind of a prayer, because I was praying the first sincere prayer of my life. So I bowed my head again. I said, “God, I really mean it. Amen.”

You know, I’ve been a Christian now almost 18 years. You know, in 18 years, I have never felt religious. Sometimes people come up to me and say, “I always check and get a religious feeling.” “Well, I guess I am due two. I’m still waiting. But on the other hand, I am glad I never got a religious feeling. You know why? Because that means I don’t have to rush around telling people how good it feels to be a Christian. Because listen, I never felt married. I have never felt like a man. One day, I became 21 and they called me a man. Although I understand it is a growing process. I’ll never forget I could hardly wait to get my wife because I knew when I had her, whatever it was I was missing, it was going to be all mine, and that it was going to be tremendous. The pastor said I now pronounce you man and wife, and I stood a married man, and I didn’t feel a bit different. Of course, a couple of weeks later, if I had woke up one night and I said, “Honey! I don’t feel married any more.” She would say, “You are just the same, don’t you even try to get out of it.” [Laughter]. I never felt married. One day, I swore off all other women, and I married one.

I never felt religious. One day, I swore off all of my tin gods, and I received Christ. I am glad I have never felt married. I just always have known it. I’m glad I’ve never felt religious. I must say that I have a peace in my heart. But it is not a peace I feel, it’s a peace I know. And I would rather know peace than feel peace. You see, I feel better because of what I know. But too many people are looking for a feeling to make them know. Listen. I know about your heart, your heart is the same as any of ours. I am talking about man’s will. There’s a craving to know. Why, we’re all alike. Yet, we are so different that God has his own way of reaching into each of our hearts.

I went home and told my wife that night what I did, I lead her in Christ and my sisters to Christ, my mother, my father, many of my associates, my Protestant associates, my Jewish associates, Catholic associates. I began to show them that there are only two kinds of people, there aren’t the black and the white, there is not the Jew and the Catholic and Protestants. There are those who receive Christ and those who reject Christ. It’s a simple line.

To assist you in learning how to live your life, you
can order two amazing films titled: Facing the Giants
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