SHIFTS

IntroductionWelcome to SHIFTS

It was a sunny afternoon. Our youth event was to start at 2 p.m. To my surprise, heavy rain descended at about half-past one o'clock. I panicked. How would people attend the entertainment event we had spent months preparing? As the leader of our youth group, I was very concerned. It was the first major event for which I had mobilized a large number of young people. We had gone all around our city inviting other young people to the event we'd tagged as The Youth Carnival, promising a day of music, comedy, and a lot more. Now, a disaster was looming. Thankfully, the rain's intensity soon spent itself, and it stopped after about 15 minutes. The clouds cleared, and the sun began to shine again. Within minutes, people began to trickle into the hotel venue. Eventually, the room's capacity was maxed out and we had a very successful event.

In conceiving, planning, and executing the event – which was like nothing I'd ever attempted before – I was testing the principles I had learned from reading The Fourth Dimension by David Yonggi Cho, founder of the largest single congregation in the world.¹ In my journey through the book, I discovered that our imagination is so powerful that any picture that is sustained in our mind over time will attract or produce its material equivalent. I was very curious to identify the steps for going from dream to reality.

I had read Cho's book as part of my own personal development plan, a transformative journey that would soon ...