 In this video I'm going to talk about manifestation and the law of attraction and the problem with it and how Christians can biblically pursue their goals and dreams. If you're new to this channel, my name is Isaac David and this is The Daily Disciple where I help you follow Jesus daily. This content is brought to you by my patrons on Patreon, thank you to each one of you who support me monthly on Patreon. The idea of manifestation comes from what is called the law of attraction, which is a New Age philosophy. One manifestation website says this, it says, manifestation is looking into your own eyes and declaring your desire. Manifestation means to be the creator of your own reality. What we decide to focus on will expand. If that hokey New Age lingo isn't enough for you, you should know that it was majorly popularized by Oprah. You see, in the early 2000s, Oprah had this book club where she would get all her middle age lady viewers to pick up this one specific book, whatever it was for that month and follow along in the discussion. Now as you can imagine, whatever book she declared was the book of the month, that book spiked in popularity overnight. Oprah's approval meant a lot back then, unfortunately. The secret was one such lucky book. Why do you call it the secret? We really needed to contain the knowledge in a couple of words. The secret is the law of attraction. OK, so what do you mean by that? The law of attraction, I would describe as the most powerful law in the universe. And it is the law by which we are creating our lives. So whether we realize it or not, the law of attraction is working all of the time. It heavily promoted the law of attraction and this idea of manifesting your own future. And as you can imagine, the Middle Age ladies of the early 2000s gobbled it up. Now, I don't want to shade those Middle Age ladies too much for bringing this thing into popularity because it's all throughout motivational speaking, even to this day. Your desire dictates your destiny. Desire it, believe it, repeat it, and it shall be yours. The life you've always wanted is almost within your grasp. Just keep manifesting your future. Sounds like a sweet deal, right? I mean, a lot of people thought so. And unfortunately, a lot of people still think so. So what does manifestation look like practically? Well, we have some advice from a young lady here. So you have to always stay present in the moment and be manifesting the things you want in the future by already having them in your mind because that's how they come into the physical. And you can do this with anything. If it's money, you can say, I'm making so much money every day. I make money all the time. I am constantly bringing money into my life. I am wealthy, so on and so forth, whatever you want it to be. If you're attracting a specific person or a girlfriend or a boyfriend or a significant other, let's say you can say, I am so happy and grateful now that I am in a happy and loving relationship with blank, you can say my specific person. If it's an actual specific person that you know in real life, you can even use their name. There are some major problems with manifestation, and I probably don't need to spell them out for you for you already be picking up on some of the red flags that appear. The problem is, is that it has infiltrated the church in large part. Now, I'm not going to get into too much of how manifestations infiltration, that's a lot there, tongue twister, into the church has really changed the message and really distorted the gospel in some cases. That would be for a whole nother video. But what we need to know is how to identify what is manifestation and why it is wrong. Let's go back to that manifestation website for a second. Manifestation means to be the creator of your own reality. What we decide to focus on will expand. In that worldview, we become God, like we legit, like we are the dictators of our own destiny. What we think about will become reality. Like they're putting a lot of pressure on us, a lot of power in our hands, a lot of control. But notice how this directly conflicts with the teachings of the Bible. Proverbs 1921 says, many are the plans in the mind of man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand. You see, manifestation proposes that we have the power to simply think a thought or, you know, really just create something out of nothing through our thoughts. Like if I want a big, high-paying job, like I want money, like I want whatever, I simply think it, I manifest it into existence. But according to Bible man, we ain't got none of that power at all. The purpose of the Lord supersedes all of our own desires, thoughts, whatever manifestations, all of it, God's purpose comes first because he is sovereign. And you know, if we take on this manifestation worldview or even try to adopt it within the Christian worldview, we're actually taking a lot of glory away from God because when something we want to happen, something that we quote, unquote, manifested happens, we're like, look at me, how awesome am I? I manifested this and how awesome and powerful are my thoughts. But it's like, oh, God did that, bro. Like you did not do that. So we take the glory away from God that he deserves. And don't miss this too. The ugly truth of manifestation is that manifestation does not deliver. You know, I'm convinced that manifestation only works if you have rich parents. No, but really people have this obsession of asking the universe for stuff. Like you can be in a conversation just randomly and they're like, I put it out there into the universe or I asked the universe for it. And it's like, bro, the universe doesn't care about you. And I don't say that to be mean. I say that to direct you to God who actually does care about you. You know, as Christians, we're called to bring all of our requests to God. But that doesn't mean they're always gonna happen or he's gonna come true. And honestly, it's a good thing that they don't always come true because God is infinitely wiser than us. If you got every single thing you wanted, when you wanted, you would miss out on a lot of growth and also learning to rely on God. The big dipper doesn't care about you, but God does. So you're asking me, yeah, but does this mean our thoughts don't matter at all? No, they do matter. No, our thoughts are important and the Bible makes that clear. It actually talks about how we need to take every thought captive. It's not good for Christians to dwell in thoughts of self-pity or anger or anxiety. Like, those things should be submitted to God. We have to submit our thoughts to him. And also, our actions are driven by our thoughts often and our behavior. So if we wanna serve God faithfully, yeah, we wanna focus on what we're thinking because it is important. But here's the difference. A lot of attraction will encourage us to have all of our thoughts directed inwards, all of our thoughts directed at us. I'm the best, I can get what I want, and so on. In this context, we're putting all of our faith in us to succeed. As Christians, we want God-directed thoughts. Thoughts like God is in control. God has empowered me to live through his power and his presence for him. Like I said before, that doesn't mean everything we want or everything we desire, every goal that we have will come true as we think it should. Sometimes Christians fall into this false philosophy of name it and claim it theology. This idea that if I have enough faith for what I want, God will give it to me. What we often miss is that God's purposes are often out of our sight. He is working beneath the surface. But you can trust that God is working things out for our eternal good and his glory. Now the reason that I say eternal good and not just good is because sometimes in our life things can happen, circumstances can arise that don't seem good. Like I mean, you even think about the disciples, right? Was there martyrdom good? Was that good? Like did they have nice good lives? Was God looking out for them? No, well, we say eternal good because in the grand scheme of things think about God's purpose and how it's been revealed to us through those disciples. Like look at how the gospel has spread to many billions or many millions, billions of people, right? Like that's unbelievable. We get a glimpse of God's purpose there. Was that good that the disciples died that that was their purpose? In the grand scheme of things, yes, that was good because it served God's purpose. And so for us, we can sometimes look at our lives and we're like, yo God, I thought you were looking out for my good and this seems tough, but what we can't see is what's going on underneath the surface, how God is using that, how God is working in us and through us. We sometimes take on such a limited perspective or tunnel vision and we're like, God, how are you actually using this? And because of that, we kind of maybe sometimes fall into this tendency of like, maim it and claim it. Like if I just believe I will get what I want or manifestation, if I just like think about something or think about making money, it will just come to me. These can be tempting philosophies. But ultimately, when we can submit our own desires to God and submit our life to him, and that's not an easy thing to do, but when we can say, God, like I give my life to you, I wanna submit my life to you and it's a daily thing because each day we're tempted to, oh, follow what I want or do all these kind of things that are aligned with my own kind of selfish desires, but it's being open and attentive to where God is leading us. And that's one of the missions of daily disciple ministry is to help people see what it looks like to follow Jesus daily. Part of that and a big aspect of that is submitting our lives to him, our day to him and say, God, like I have these goals, I have these desires, help align them with your heart, help align them with your will because it's not a bad thing to want to pursue like, oh, you have goals in this area or whatever. Like that's awesome. But the key is being attentive to what God is saying to us through other people, through circumstances, through his word, through the Holy Spirit, being attentive to those things so we're able to properly discern, okay, this is a good direction, okay, I'm gonna keep going here. And it's a process. I'm not gonna say this is an easy thing, like you're gonna get a sign from God and be like, okay, I know what's going on. But it's like, I'm gonna submit my life to him, that's the best place to be because I wanna be following Jesus. That's gonna be the best place for me. The last thing is remember that God is working underneath the surface. Sometimes his purpose is out of sight but it is always for our eternal good and his glory. Thank you so much for watching. I really appreciate it. If you're new here, subscribe down below cause I'm putting out new videos all the time. If you have topic suggestions for future videos, leave them down in the comments and I'd love to know your thoughts about this video. A lot of you don't know. I have an Instagram at it's Isaac David and a TikTok at it's Isaac David as well. I'm very active on TikTok. So if you're on there, definitely give me a follow and it's very fun. I really enjoy it. And I will see you guys next time. God bless.