Pastor and New York Times bestselling author Joel Osteen offers 90 days of inspirational devotions to help you become the best that you can be in every area of your life.

In Become a Better You, Joel Osteen provided 7 key principles designed to improve and enrich your life. He explained how each insight will positively impact your goals, your confidence, your relationships, and your spiritual life. These principles are:

• Keep pressing forward
• Be positive toward yourself
• Develop better relationships
• Form better habits
• Embrace the place where you are
• Develop your inner life
• Stay passionate about life

It is no surprise that these principles from God's Word will make a difference in your life and are goals that we should all aspire to!

With this devotional, Joel offers 90 days of thought-provoking messages, words of encouragement, and valuable scripture that emphasize the message of Become a Better You. This specially selected collection of biblical passages illuminates different points of Joel's messages and is designed to inspire you toward becoming all that God created you to be. He draws upon personal anecdotes to illustrate the passages and show the reader how he and others have used the 7 principles to better themselves and deepen their relationship with God. As you incorporate Joel's easy-to-grasp concepts into your life, you will be pleasantly surprised at how much more God has in store for you and how quickly you become a better you!

Introduction

Are you living better today than you were yesterday? Will you enjoy your life tomorrow more than you are enjoying it today?

You can!

Whether life is going well for us or collapsing right before our eyes, we all want to be better. We want to be more effective in our lives. We want to know God better; we want to be better spouses and parents, better lovers, better encouragers, better community leaders, better employees, and better bosses and managers. None of us gets up in the morning and says, "You know, today I really want to do worse than I did yesterday!" No, God put something deep down inside us that evokes a desire to be more like Him. In our inner being, we hear a voice saying, You were born for better than this; you are meant to live at a higher level than you are currently. Don't be satisfied with less. You can be better.

The question is: "How? What must I do to become a better me?"

Today, many people are developing a greater vision for their futures and are experiencing more of God's blessings and favor. But even if you are living your best life now, it is important that you do not become stagnant. God always wants to increase us, to do more in and through us. He always wants to take us deeper into self-discovery and then raise us to a higher level of living. He didn't create us to be average. He doesn't want us to settle for "good enough." He wants us to keep stretching, to keep pressing forward into the next level.

In Become a Better You, my goal was to help you look inside yourself and discover the priceless seeds of greatness that God has placed within you. I showed you 7 keys that you can use to unlock those seeds of greatness, allowing them to burst forth in an abundantly blessed life. These keys are not complicated or difficult; in fact, their sheer simplicity often causes them to elude many people's notice. Nevertheless, they are 7 key principles that have helped shape me and continue to keep me expecting good things in my personal life, in my relationships, in my family, and in my career.

I know these principles work, because I have experienced them firsthand in my own life.

So I decided to put together a 90-day reading presentation of the encouraging principles in Become a Better You to help you gradually develop a habit of becoming a better you each day.

Let me remind you that these devotionals are not meant to be full treatments of passages of Scripture. I am usually highlighting a specific point from the Bible that will inspire wholehearted love and worship of God. Hopefully the slower pace of these devotional readings will encourage you to immerse yourself in God's Word and see all the practical guidance God has to give you.

These daily readings from Become a Better You have been selected to emphasize the 7 keys that form the structure of the book. But I've added several features that I'm convinced will help you apply and live out the truth that God wants you to know. Each devotional includes:

- Scripture Reading to Become a Better You -- these passages will sometimes relate directly to the key being described, and in other instances the Scripture reading will provide necessary background for accurately understanding the truth you are studying. Please don't neglect these brief selections from God's Word if you want to gain the most benefit from this book.

- Key verse -- usually chosen from the Bible reading that expresses the theme of the devotional.

- Devotional Excerpt from Become a Better You -- a couple of pages of lessons and stories that I believe will encourage and uplift you.

- Today's Prayer to Become a Better You -- some suggestions that will help you express your heart's responses and set the stage for you to share your prayer requests, desires, gratitude, and fresh commitments to God. Feel free to adapt these prayers and make them your own; take a few moments to have a personal conversation with your heavenly Father.

- Today's Thought to Become a Better You -- this is not just a sentence for you to read and brush aside; it's a thought for you to think about today. God's Word tells us that our thinking patterns become our acting patterns. The way we talk to ourselves greatly influences the way we act. Today's Thoughts will encourage you to agree with what God thinks of you throughout the day!

As I already mentioned, there are 90 readings in this book. If you take them at the one-a-day pace I'm suggesting, it will take you three months to make your way through these pages. I'm convinced that by the end of the next 90 days, you will have become a noticeably better you. Your life can be transformed and renewed as you allow God's Word to refresh you and reshape your thinking, speaking, and daily activities. May this devotional book be another instrument God uses to help you become a better you!

Joel Osteen

Copyright © 2008 by Joel Osteen

Joel Osteen is a native Texan and the Pastor of Lakewood Church, which according to Church Growth Today is America's largest and fastest growing church with over 38,000 attendees. On July 16, 2005 after completing $95 million dollars in renovations, Joel moved Lakewood Church into its new 16,000 seat home -- the former Compaq Center which is now the largest regularly-used worship center in the United States.

According to Nielsen Media Research, Joel is the most watched inspirational figure in America. His weekly sermon is broadcast into television markets across the U.S. where it is viewed by seven million Americans each week and more than 20 million each month. His weekly broadcast is also seen in almost 100 nations around the world.

In 2004 his first book, Your Best Life Now was released by Time Warner debuting at the top of the New York Times Bestsellers List and quickly rising to #1. It remained on the New York Times Bestseller for more than 2 years and has sold more than 4 million copies. Most recently, Joel was named as one of Barbara Walters' "10 Most Fascinating People of 2006" and he was selected as the "Most Influential Christian in 2006" by the readers of Church Report Magazine.

The son of John Osteen -- a highly respected minister of the Gospel and the founder of Lakewood Church -- Joel attended Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma where he studied radio and television communications. In 1982, Joel returned to Houston and founded Lakewood's television ministry where he produced John Osteen's televised sermons for 17 years until January 1999 when his father passed away.

For many years John Osteen encouraged Joel to preach, but he always declined preferring to work behind the scenes. In early 1999, Joel felt compelled to accept his father's invitation and he preached his first sermon on January 17th of that year. Little did anyone know that would be the last Sunday of John Osteen's life. Two weeks later Joel began preaching and later that year was installed as the new Senior Pastor of Lakewood Church.

Almost immediately, weekly attendance began to grow at an extraordinary rate and, in 2005 Joel moved Lakewood Church into its present location, the former Compaq Center, a 16,000 seat arena that was once home to the Houston Rockets professional basketball team. Now, with his wife Victoria and the leadership staff of Lakewood, this innovative church is poised for the new millennium.

Joel's extraordinary success can be found in his core message: That our God is a good God who desires to bless those who are obedient and faithful to Him through Jesus Christ. It is Joel's deepest desire that his own life be an example of that principle and that everyone who hears this message of hope and encouragement would choose to accept God's goodness and mercy and to become all that God wants them to be. For more information about Joel Osteen, go to www.joelosteen.com

Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Distributor: Simon & Schuster
Publication Date: 10-14-2008
Pages: 288
Measurements: 9in X 6in X 17.78oz