From Disgrace, Shame, Humiliation and Hopelessness to Leaping to Victory and Celebration: The Victory Can Be Yours If You Strategically Position Yourself

By Dr. Nii Lante Wallace-Bruce

This book seeks to inspire you, lift up your faith and give you hope and confidence in the future. It teaches you not to accept the disadvantageous circumstances of your birth, the place where you started life or other limitations as a fait accompli, but rather to learn to become strategically positioned to have a deastiny-encounter that could totally transform your life and lead you to a life of victory and celebration.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Jul 8, 2013
• ISBN: 9781490800066

Dr. Nii Lante Wallace-Bruce

Dr Nii Lante Wallace-Bruce is an international evangelist, author and lawyer. He holds a PhD in law from the University of Sydney. He is admitted to law practice in Australia and Ghana, and he practiced law in Australia for many years. He later moved to the University of Western Australia, where he held a tenured position for more than a decade.  He has traveled to many countries, spending time in Southeast Asia and at the famous Max Planck Institute for International and Public Law in Heidelberg, Germany.  He is the author of numerous journal articles and a number of books, including faith-based Christian books. He currently works as a lawyer with the United Nations and preaches the Word of God.

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From Disgrace, Shame, Humiliation and Hopelessness to Leaping to Victory and Celebration

The Victory can be Yours if You Strategically Position Yourself

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DR NII LANTE WALLACE-BRUCE

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Copyright © 2013 Dr Nii Lante Wallace-Bruce.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright 1979, 1980, 1982 by Thomas Nelson, inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-4908-0007-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4908-0008-0 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4908-0006-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013911889

WestBow Press rev. date: 7/3/2013

Table of Contents

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1.  An Overview of the Biblical Account

2.  The Circumstances of the Crippled Man’s Birth Posed Challenges

You May Start Life with a Serious Disadvantage

It May Be No One’s Fault

He Was Dismissed as a Hopeless Case

3.  He Became Strategically Positioned

4.  He Could See the Beautiful Gate

Bible Teachings on Seeing First

5.  The Man Had Expectations

Expectations Are Vital

The Crippled Man Had Expectations

Begin with Your Own Expectations

Your Expectations Will Not Be Cut Off

6.  The Crippled Man’s Expectations Were Too Small

The Dangers of Negative Expectations

It’s All in the Mind

Conclusion

7.  What Is Strategic Positioning? (Part I)

Having Faith

Reading the Word of God

Being Obedient

Actively Praying

8.  What Is Strategic Positioning? (Part II)

Giving Cheerfully and Generously

Making Positive Use of Our Tongues

Guarding Our Hearts

Forgiving

Praising God

Loving God, Others, and Ourselves

9.  Conclusion on Strategic Positioning

10.  In the Name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth

Jesus Compared to Other Faith Leaders

The Centrality of Jesus Christ to the Christian Faith

The Popularity of Jesus Christ Today

What’s in a Name?

The Uniqueness of the Name of Jesus Christ

11.  Rise Up and Walk

The Defense at the Trial in the Sanhedrin

12.  He Took Him by the Right Hand

The Right Hand of God

The Right Hand Generally

Conclusion

13.  The Quantum-Leap Miracle

My Personal Testimony

The Former Crippled Man’s Case

He Left His Begging Bowl Behind

Forgetting the Past

14.  He Received More Than Healing

The Former Crippled Man Also Received Divine Direction

My Own Testimony

A New Direction Comes with a New Mind-Set

Conclusion

15.  He Held On to the New Revelation

Living Testimony of the Former Crippled Man

The Man Held On to the New Revelation

A New Vision Came

Conclusion

16.  He Praised God Throughout

17.  Final Word

About the Author

Dedication

To my son, Nii Odartey Wallace-Bruce

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to all members of the team at Westbow Press for their dedication and hard work on this book from beginning to the end.

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Introduction

You may be in a very bad situation today. You may be facing daunting challenges and experiencing shame, embarrassment, and humiliation. Perhaps your situation seems hopeless, and people are saying you are finished. Maybe friends and family have given up on you, and it may seem you have disappeared from society’s radar screen. All this may have happened to you through no fault of your own. Perhaps you were born physically challenged, or perhaps your parents birthed you in circumstances of abject poverty that have become a great hindrance to your progress in life, a sword of Damocles dangling over your head. You may be mired in abject poverty or some other problem, or maybe even where you were born has conspired to place some serious limitations on your progress in life. You may have problems with self-esteem or be seriously afflicted with modern-day curses on you and your family.

The cause of your problems may have nothing at all to do with you; you had no say in how those circumstances came about. You might not have even been aware of some of them until now and still don’t understand them, but you are their victim, and this is your reality. You’re confused and lost, and the future looks bleak. Even when you experience a bit of progress, you’re soon back to square one or even farther behind—one step forward, three steps back. You’re wondering where help could come from.

This book is meant to teach you that you should not accept your situation as a fait accompli and that God has the final say on your situation. This book is meant to give you hope for the future. Through Scripture, testimonies from the Bible, and real-life examples of people from different countries, cultures, and backgrounds, this book aims to demonstrate that God can help you even if you were born with physical or other challenges or are in what seem to be hopeless situations. God can intervene; he can raise you from a state of seemingly permanent limitation and give you a quantum leap to victory. The same people whose situations seemed impossible and who seemed lost will be celebrating in victory, and people will celebrate with them—through the intervention of the divine power of God.

This book will inspire you, lift up your faith, and give you hope and confidence in the future. It will teach you not to accept the disadvantageous circumstances of your upbringing or the place where you started life and other similar limitations as a fait accompli but rather to become strategically positioned to have a destiny encounter that will totally transform your life.

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Chapter 1

An Overview of the Biblical Account

This book draws on the account of the man born crippled in Acts 3 in the Bible. According to the Bible, the man was born a cripple. No human being had anything to do with it. Every day, he was brought to the Beautiful Gate of the temple to beg alms from those entering the temple. One day, he saw Peter and John going to the temple at the ninth hour for prayer. When the man saw them about to enter the temple, he asked them for alms. They fixed their eyes on him and told him to look at them. This ignited the man’s interest, and he focused his attention on them, expecting to receive something. Peter said, Silver and gold I do not have, but what I do have I give you: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk. Peter took the man by the hand and lifted him, and immediately the crippled man’s feet received strength. The man leaped up, stood, and began to walk. He followed Peter and John into the temple, walking, leaping, and praising God. All the people present saw him walking and praising God, realized he was the lame beggar who had sat at the gate, asking for alms. The man who had been healed. The amazed bystanders gathered with the three in Solomon’s porch.

This may seem like an old story in the Bible, but it has relevance for our lives today. We can learn a number of important lessons it, so this book will look at them in depth, showing how we can all benefit.

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Chapter 2

The Circumstances of the Crippled Man’s Birth Posed Challenges

You May Start Life with a Serious Disadvantage

The crippled man started life with his affliction; he had come out of his mother’s womb lame. Thus, the first point we can make from the story is that the man had had no say in the situation in which he found himself; it was not his choice or fault, and there was nothing anyone could do about it. Even if they had been looking for somebody to blame, they would not have found one. His lameness was a work of nature.

Many of us have started life with serious disadvantages. Some may have been born with a physical challenge (just like the man in question) or with some other challenge, whether emotional, psychological, or mental. Some have been born with a sickness that had been running in the family for generations. Others may not have come into the world with a problem or challenge but rather were born into it. In other words, they met the problem upon arrival. This could be a curse afflicting everyone born into that family, or it may be deep poverty. Even being born into a family with a notorious reputation for one thing or the other may be an inauspicious start to one’s life.

We can refer to some notable examples of such people. Esther, who later became the queen of Persia, was born into a Jewish peasant family and had been taken into captivity. The name Esther means star, but she was then known as Hadassah. Her parents were from the tribe of Benjamin, but she had been orphaned and brought up by her uncle, Mordecai, in Persia. At that stage, all the odds seemed heavily against her becoming somebody significant. She had started life at a huge disadvantage, but her breakthrough came when Queen Vashti publicly humiliated her husband.

Similarly, Daniel and the famous three Hebrew boys, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, were born in Judah but taken into captivity in Babylon in their early years. Daniel, who triumphed over the lions in the den, and the three Hebrew boys, who overcame the fiery furnace, had unfortunate starts in life by being taken into captivity in Babylon, a nation that was an enemy of God. They grew up under a harsh and wicked ruler, King Nebuchadnezzar, who saw himself as a powerful god.

The point I am making here is that we all do not start life on a level playing field. God made us in his likeness and image, but how we entered this world is never the same. Some people were born exactly after nine months of pregnancy and enjoyed smooth entry into the world. Others’ mothers experienced complicated or late pregnancies or had to undergo caesarian sections. Some simply enter the world by unfortunate or tragic circumstances, and others are born into unfortunate or tragic circumstances that become weighty baggage.

It May Be No One’s Fault

It is in our human make-up that when something bad happens to us, we tend to look for someone to blame. When something unfortunate or tragic has happened, one of our first reactions is to find fault; it becomes a blame game and a matter of finger pointing. When someone was born a cripple, many would have no doubt asked questions—lots of questions—as to how it came about and who might be blamed for it.

This is what happens with all our tragedies, physical or otherwise. Some people spend a lot of time playing the blame game; they cannot seem to get over the problem and move forward. Others have pity parties, suffer low self-esteem, or just accept their fate, code for giving up on life. Just imagine somebody falling into that mind-set at an early age and condemning himself or herself to a life of misery and defeat or that the parents have so condemned such a person and themselves.

However, whatever has happened to such a person may not be anyone’s fault, so trying to find someone to blame is futile. We can learn something from John 9, which tells us that Jesus and his disciples came across a man born blind. The disciples asked Jesus whether it was because of personal or family sin that the man had been born blind. To start with, it is mind boggling that the disciples asked if the man who had been born blind had sinned; how could he have sinned before he was born? We can dismiss this possibility with the contempt it deserves, but the disciples must have believed that a fetus could sin.

The Bible teaches us that all human beings carry the sin of Adam from birth; the only exception was Jesus Christ, who had been conceived by a virgin overshadowed by the Holy Spirit. Consequently, Jesus was born without the sin of Adam, which affects all human beings. However, the disciples were not pointing to the transferred sin of Adam but rather to an act the blind man could supposedly have been responsible for, which is still hard to comprehend. Jesus responded to his disciples, "Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God should be revealed