Living Intentionally

By Tope Popoola

You were created to live by DESIGN rather than by default. Progress however, demands that you take responsibility under God for the outcomes you desire in life.

Written in a breezy easy-to-read style, this book takes the reader through the everyday concerns of the average person who wants to design his path to personal discovery and growth, LIVING INTENTIONALLY gives you practical tips that guide you to the discovery and definition of your essence for living. Fundamental issues like the journey to self-discovery, financial success, relational ethos, overcoming excuses, dealing with envy, and many others that raise pertinent questions in every person's life are addressed by the author with tips on how to overcome every obstacle to unstoppable living.

This bestseller book sold its first two paperback print runs when it was first published in 2009. This revised and upgraded edition comes with even more engaging content. This book is a potent weapon against mediocrity and the common life. It is your blueprint for the unstoppable life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tope Popoola
• Release date: Dec 14, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215703298

Tope Popoola

THE AUTHOR ‘Tope Popoola is a man of many parts but only ONE passion – cultivating men and women of influence and affluence for whom Godly excellence is a culture. A widely travelled and highly sought-after conference speaker and Life Coach to several corporate executives and professionals, he is a Certified Management Consultant, Professional Mediator/Negotiator, Certified Agile Scrum Master and professional Trainer who speaks regularly on Leadership, Management, Marketing and Entrepreneurship. He has been instrumental to the training of leaders from over 40 nations. He serves on the International Faculty of Haggai International, a world-class Christian Leadership Training institute. He writes a weekly column “Empowered For L.I.F.E (Leadership. Impact. Finances. Excellence)” in the Nigerian Tribune, a Nigerian national newspaper. He is the host of a TV programme, “Enterprise 101 with Tope Popoola”. As a Pastor, he is the Founding Pastor of THE BUSINESS CHURCH (Luke 2:49)

Book preview

LIVING INTENTIONALLY

Blueprint for living the unstoppable life

‘tope popoola                                                                    

HERITEK SUPPORT SERVICES LTD

© ‘Tope Popoola

First Edition 2009

This Edition 2022

This book is protected by copyright and quoting or copying any part of it without due reference to the author is an infringement of extant copyright laws. Bible quotations, except where otherwise indicated, are from the King James Version of the Holy bible

You can reach the author via email at:[e-mail].

Website: www.topepopoola.com.ng

Instagram: #tope.popoola

Twitter: @topheritage

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/mavericktopepopoola

Facebook: www.facebook.com/empoweredforlife

Other books by the author:

Customer Relationship Management: Rules of Engagement

The Leaderpreneur

Leadership is for the Dead

The Portrait of the S.T.A.R Leader

Why Walk when you can Soar

Lead as you go

First Things First – How to Live a Life of Priorities

The 60-Second Motivator

He Still Visits the Manger

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to God Almighty for His faithfulness and for teaching me these things.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

One great lesson that anyone who desires to hugely succeed learns early is that no one succeeds all by himself. In the real sense of the word, there is no ‘I’ in success. At every stage of life’s journey, God brings people our way to help us accomplish His purpose in our lives. This project is by no means an exception. I acknowledge the input of many people in the fulfillment of this dream.

I must express gratitude to every member of THE BUSINESS CHURCH (Luke 2:49), my initial sounding boards for some of the ideas expressed in this book.

Finally, I doff my hat to ‘Tomi (of blessed memory) and our ‘precious stones’, Jesujoba, Samson and Tijesunimi, for the unfettered release they gave me at the time I first wrote this and for partnering with me to follow God’s heart even when things were not easy and the attacks were myriad.

I couldn’t have asked God for a better team.

PROLOGUE

True success is obeying God. – John Maxwell

For David, after he had in his own generation served the counsel of God, fell asleep, and was laid unto his fathers... - Acts 13:36 (ASV)

This book was first published in 2009 and it became my bestselling book till date. After we ran out of the third print run, it became obvious that the book needs to be placed on more global platforms for accessibility and for the universal relevance of the message in it. This edition has been edited and updated for currency of information.

I wish to make it clear from the onset that this book has a bold imprint of my Christian convictions. Those convictions have laid the foundation for all that I do and have become today. However, the principles apply to everyone, no matter their religious convictions. Value is a universal currency with legal tender in human transactions.

My favourite definition of success is ‘the progressive internalization and actualization of God’s purposes for an individual’. What this simply implies is that you can only be said to have succeeded when you are consistently working in line with your Maker’s original design and blueprint for your life.

I have often wondered why what we want is not always what we get. Everyone I know wants to be physically fit and live in sound health. Yet, many are obese and many are constantly gravitating in and out of sickness. It has recently been established that the rising rate of obesity is going to be one of the most challenging health issues in the 21st century. Everyone wants a happy marriage, yet the rate of divorce is on the increase. Everyone desires to be rich and be able to afford the good things of life. But the reality is that many are broke, largely poor and live on the benevolence of others. Everyone I know has dreams and lofty ideals, yet many die in frustration and depression. Many have taken solace in the self-sacrificing, fatalistic aphorism that fingers are not equal. They even quote the scriptures to back up their state. Afterall, they say, Jesus said that society will always have an abundance of poor people.

Success is predictable. So is failure. Both leave footprints. Success is not a secret. It is a strategy. Learning the strategies, mastering and taking responsibility for their application is very crucial to our well-being and overall outcomes in life. Unfortunately, our refusal to master these strategies is the primary reason for all failure.

A few years ago, while navigating the stormy waters of trying to reconcile poverty with the love of God, I embarked on a journey of enquiry. It all started when the reality of unpaid bills as well as the inability to generate resources to do so began staring me in the face. Having resigned from a well-paying (at that time) corporate job to take up full time ministry a few years earlier, I felt that God was being unfair to me by making me so broke that I had a feeling that broke people felt sorry for me. This was after many years of giving my life completely to His service. The church I pastored was going through a major crisis, resources were dwindling, and I was frustrated within me even though I kept up an appearance of wellbeing. Yet, I had read and taught many scriptures that left no one in doubt about God’s riches (spiritual and material) in Christ Jesus. Things were so bad that my health broke down and I was hospitalized and eventually grounded for many months. That was a wake-up call. Thereafter, I took a break and began to study. I took another look at the Bible and prayed that God would connect me to his plans and purposes not only for me but also for humanity.

Coming into full time ministry from a corporate background, I had a few challenges with the religious mindset that taught us that money or even a desire to have it or succeed on earth was evil. As much as possible, in some of the religious circles I was exposed to at the onset of my Christian journey, money was not even a topic to be discussed except to show how evil it was! So, the first thing that God dealt with was my religious programming. It was not easy. It was like a process of detoxification for a drug addict. Sure enough, I had my withdrawal symptoms!

I separated myself from everyone and went out of circulation. Social media was not as popular as it is now, so I had minimal distraction. I literally died to human traffic and circulation. I bought and read books about the subject of success. I compared them with my knowledge of scriptures to know which are godly and which are not. I studied scriptures on success and the will of God and soon found a connection.

Success comes, not by prophecy (as valid as prophecy is), but through the application of simple strategies and consistent commitment to the process. Successful people live by design, not by default!

My quest was tough but it soon began to pay dividends. Having received light, I could no longer walk in darkness. Having discovered the promises of God, I was highly deficient in the operations of the principles that made the promises reality. The more I studied, the more I discovered that no man has any reason for being a failure in life if he can simply follow the principles. Furthermore, I discovered that those principles are no respecter of persons or religious inclinations. It is a matter of taking responsibility under God for where you want to go and what you want to be in life.

Did I blame anyone for my predicament? You bet that like most people, I did. Insignificant infractions that meant nothing to me when they occurred suddenly took on larger than life size in my mind. I was hurt and I felt that no one really cared. But that changed nothing. The only dividend of that was more pain and anguish. Change started when I recognized and embraced the fact that as someone has well said, You have not fallen until you say that someone pushed you! According toMichael Korda, Success on any major scale requires you to accept responsibility... in the final analysis, the one quality that all successful people have... is the ability to take on responsibility.In my meditations, I heard God clearly tell me, Nobody owes you anything! Whatever you get from people, even the ones you think should be obligated to you is a privilege, not a right Ouch!

Our lives are largely a product of our loftiest choices. Choices are decisions and after we have made them, they turn round to make us! Life is a cycle of sowing and reaping. At any given time, you are either going through sowing time or harvest time.

The universe is only committed to ONE thing: delivering a harvest to you. Your life today is a harvest of yesterday’s seeds. Strangely enough, inside today’s harvest is a seed you must sow to generate tomorrow’s harvest. Only a foolish farmer expects a harvest from a farm in which he sowed nothing! It is possible to partake of someone else’s harvest in terms of gifts, salaries, benevolence etc., but you can never be permanently sustained by the harvest of others. As a matter of fact, the largesse you receive from others as an overflow of their harvests counts as seed for them and further guarantees greater harvest in their lives!

All choices we make, negative or positive, have corresponding disciplines. The best definition of that word that I have ever come