Reinvent Your Life: How to Turn Your Life Around, Rediscover the Fire of Your Faith, and Get Your Power Back

By Alvin Slaughter

Through his travels, Alvin Slaughter has seen a pervasive weariness and discouragement in the body of Christ. He knows the signs because he has been there himself. Despite being in church all of his life, knowing every song and countless scriptures, Slaughter struggled with fear, depression, financial failure, and marital strife. Today, he is on the other side of the failures and self-doubts. He’s come to know that the life of faith is real, and he wants others to learn from his experiences.

In Reinvent Your Life, he uses his story as a backdrop to give you the tools you need to overcome whatever troubles they are going through. His casual storytelling and captivating humor allow him to transcend barriers of every kind and speak to the challenges of life that are common to all.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Charisma House
• Release date: Oct 31, 2011
• ISBN: 9781616382537

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INTRODUCTION

I FINALLY REALIZED I HAD to stop pretending everything was OK. Because it wasn’t. I had to quit acting like I had it all together. Because I didn’t. That was the bad news. The good news was that I was learning it was OK to admit that I didn’t have it all together.

The frustration and pressures of life that were coming at me at the same time from many different directions forced me to get real. They made me understand that it was OK not to have arrived yet, but it was extremely important for survival (not to mention success) to become real about the journey.

The reason I have written this book is that in my public ministry and private life I have met many people who are feeling the same way I once felt. When I experienced despair in life’s journey, I felt paralyzed emotionally and spiritually to the point that, even though I sort of knew what I needed to do to make things better, I just didn’t have the heart. I didn’t have the faith, the fire in my soul to do anything about it.

That was when I was forced to get real in order to survive. It was that life crisis that brought me to a place of embracing the truth, taking responsibility for my actions, and, ultimately, experiencing the grace of God to reinvent my life.

There are many people writing books about personal development and empowerment. I wrote this book because empowerment, once my personal passion, has now become my burden for others. There are too many people who have retreated into an inactive, safe place for living their lives in a survival mode. Still, they hope life will change for them. They wait for God, for other people, or for a stroke of good fortune to give them the power to affect the change they think they need.

Sadly, they don’t know that, as born-again believers, they already possess that God-given power for change, for personal empowerment, to walk in victory and fulfill their divine destiny. In my experience, they are not aware that they are continually giving away their personal empowerment while living a mediocre, defeated lifestyle.

If you think this scenario may describe your listless, humdrum life of discouragement or despair, I encourage you to face the truth. Jesus said, And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free (John 8:32). Are you ready to confront your issues? Follow your heart? Find peace of mind? Believe the divine empowerment that is yours for the asking?

The truth is, your life doesn’t have to be stuck in neutral because what you dreamed about, hoped for, and even prayed for didn’t turn out the way you expected. You don’t have to live in the mediocrity of survival mode just because life circumstances are not what you expected them to be. You can also find the grace of God for yourself as He reveals His power to you in Reinvent Your Life.

My prayer is that you may be inspired by a story that I share or a personal experience that I suffered as I struggled to face my issues. My goal is to be honest with you about my personal journey from failure to success in God, in relationships, in ministry, and in life. I have not arrived. My journey still presents incredible challenges. So, perhaps you can identify with my struggle and gain courage to embrace the truth that will set you free to live an overcoming life.

By the time I was thirty-four years old, I had seriously messed up my life. I had failed at most of my sixteen jobs, fathered two children out of wedlock, was evicted from two apartments, and suffered foreclosure on my mortgage. My financial problems led to two declared bankruptcies and an inevitable crisis in my marriage. I had lost a lot, and it didn’t seem like there was any way to get it back.

When I began to face my issues and embrace God’s truth, I am not kidding when I say my wife and I felt like we were reinventing life. In 2009, by God’s great grace, we celebrated our thirty-first wedding anniversary. The years have brought seasons of joy as well as disappointment, but we can testify to the fact that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them (Rom. 8:28). We have traveled the world together, living life-changing experiences as we have enjoyed getting acquainted with different cultures and observing life on the world stage. And we have grown together in our love for the Lord and for each other, as well as in the wisdom of God.

It was not always that way, as I have mentioned. Years ago, as I began to seek the wisdom of God, I discovered that wisdom can be defined simply as the ability to solve a problem. At times, I have felt like a reporter embedded with the soldiers on the battlefield of life. There, surrounded by common enemies, I have learned, through my own experience as well as through the experiences of others, to employ strategies that reflect the wisdom of God to confront every challenge victoriously. Make no mistake: I am aware that new challenges lay ahead in our future. But as we grow in wisdom as overcomers, we will not avoid failures; we will learn to confront them successfully.

Maybe your journey is filled with dead dreams, goals, failed relationships, and other debris of defeat strewn around you. You may have filled your library with books on self-help studies, steps, and principles, but you still feel powerless as you confront, or avoid, the challenges of life.

To help you reinvent your life, let me encourage you to receive the same supernatural intervention I received. Allow ministering angels to lift up your head to receive God’s power as your own. The Scriptures teach clearly that if you have received Christ as your Savior, the same resurrection power of the Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead lives in you (Rom. 8:11). Wow! That is the essence of reinventing life!

What have you done with that power? Did you give it away? If so, it’s time to get your power back! The greatest journey in life is to find the truth of God’s love for you and divine strength of His power in you. Begin to ask yourself these questions: Who does He say I am? How does He say I should live? Why does He say I’m here? Inquiring hearts want to know. To seek God for these answers is to seek wisdom. And He has promised that all who ask for wisdom will receive it (James 1:5). What do you have to lose?

As you read this book, don’t expect to coddle your pain or soothe your self-pity. Don’t expect to remain in a defeated posture of impotence in your Christian life. I believe if you honestly pursue the truths I share that turned my life around, then your mind-set will be changed dramatically. You will discover your potential in God to overcome every obstacle to living a victorious, overcoming life.

Will you take the challenge? Will you confront the lies of the enemy and your own faulty thinking to tap into the divine power that resides within you and that will transform your defeat into glorious victory? Will you determine to stop giving your power away? To own your personal destiny?

If so, it’s time to begin an exciting personal journey that will result in reinventing your life—starting now and continuing for eternity.

At the end of each chapter, you will find a section called Making It Personal. I encourage you to prayerfully consider the questions there and open a dialogue between you and God and you and yourself. Dare to admit that things aren’t OK, and I can promise you that you will begin your journey to reinvent your life.

CHAPTER 1

DISCOVERING YOUR LIFE’S PASSION

HOW MANY PEOPLE LIVE their lives filled with discontent and frustration because they are not fulfilling their secret dreams, their God-given passion in life, their divine destiny? How about you? Have you dared to consider what you would choose as a vocation or set as a goal if you could do anything you wanted? What would it look like if you could reinvent your life?

I’m not talking about wishful thinking that bumper stickers proclaim, like I’d rather be skiing or I’d rather be fishing. That is, unless you think you could become a successful professional in such a sport, establishing it as your God-given passion.

What I am asking is if you are working at a distasteful job for an hourly wage when you would rather be teaching students, treating the sick, or pursuing another secret passion in life. Are you living alone when you could be providing a home for a needy child, filling your home with love and laughter?

Is there something that you are passionate about but feel you cannot get involved in because, as someone said, the tyranny of the present is enemy of the future? So, you live in frustration, working to make the next paycheck, pay next month’s bills, and try not to increase your credit debt too much.

I encourage you to think about the desires lurking in your heart and mind that seem too impossible to even articulate, too frightening to consider seriously. You might just discover the passion for life that is God breathed and that would bring you greater fulfillment in life than you ever dreamed.

There is hope for your happiness. As you choose to seek God’s will for your life, you can expect Him to give you the desires of your heart, to discover your passion for life, which will let you enjoy His abundant life (John 10:10). Dare to take my challenge to dream again—I did; when it seemed hopeless, God gave me the courage to dream again—and then watch Him fulfill those dreams. With God’s help, and a big dose of courage, you too can reinvent your life.

DISCOVERING PASSION REQUIRES COURAGE

Recently I read a story about President James Polk, who came from a privileged family. He rose from being a lawyer to becoming the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and ultimately to serving as the eleventh president of the United States of America (1845–1849). Under Polk’s administration, the United States expanded its territory by more than a million square miles with the annexation of Texas and the Oregon territories.

Yet, some have dubbed Polk as the Slavemaster President, after a book by that title written by William Dusinberre. Part of the debate over adding new territories to the United States centered on whether slavery would be allowed or not. James Polk was a slave-owning politician. He had earned his fortune through the productivity of southern plantations worked by slaves who did not fare nearly as well as he did. Perhaps, to avoid blatant hypocrisy, he could