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Your thoughts can have a direct impact on your heart and the way you live. |
2 Corinthians 10:3-5 (KJV) 3. For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh: 4. (For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds 5. Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. What is on your Mind? If is full of good thoughts or bad ones? Do you yell at your computer when it is acting up or when a game cheats? Do you get annoyed when somebody interrupts you from your train of thought or when you are trying to watch a movie or read a book? When you have negative thoughts and attitudes, it directly affects your heart and the love you have in it. Negative thoughts affect how you live. The mind is the leader of all your actions. You need to guard your heart with all your diligence. By doing this, you will be able to love Jesus and others around you with all your heart. How can you guard your heart with all diligence? You do this by guarding your thoughts. Remember that your thoughts affect your attitude. When you have negative thoughts, you are going to have a bad attitude. “Why does God allow me to have these thoughts,” you might ask. This is not God’s fault because he loves you and wants you to feel good about yourself. Maybe you believe in God but do not believe all he has in store for you. Maybe you have turned your back on him. Maybe you are too self-willed and want to do things your way and not god’s way. When you do not have God in your life fully and allow your brain to be filled with godly thoughts, your brain will be filled with empty space. The prince of lies, Satan (the devil) he is a sly one. He looks inside your head for empty space. He fills this empty space with negative thoughts and other lies. You may have doubts about the Bible. You may have an unbelieving heart. This is dangerous because Satan may be victorious in this battle if your mind is constantly filled with his lies. He loves to twist the truth by adding to and taking away from the Bible. He will feed you his lies a little at a time and not all at once. He is a slow and cautious planner, knowing your weaknesses and fears and use them to his advantage. He brainwashes and gets us to believe in theories. If you believe the twists, you have been deceived by the devil. He offers wrong thinking to everyone. However, you do not have to accept what he has to offer. First of all, you must realize that you are in a war. It is not a war that you can win with knives, guns, joysticks and such. You need spiritual weapons. The first thing you need to do is reaffirming your faith in Jesus by praying the salvation Prayer: “Dear God in heaven, I come to you in the name of Jesus. I acknowledge to You that I am a sinner, and I am sorry for my sins and the life that I have lived; I need your forgiveness. “I believe that your only begotten Son Jesus Christ shed His precious blood on the cross at Calvary and died for my sins, and I am now willing to turn from my sin. “You said in Your Holy Word, Romans 10:9 that if we confess the Lord our God and believe in our hearts that God raised Jesus from the dead, we shall be saved. “Right now I confess Jesus as the Lord of my soul. With my heart, I believe that God raised Jesus from the dead. This very moment I accept Jesus Christ as my own personal Savior and according to His Word, right now I am saved. “Thank you Jesus for your unlimited grace which has saved me from my sins. I thank you Jesus that your grace never leads to license, but rather it always leads to repentance. Therefore, Lord Jesus, transform my life so that I may bring glory and honor to you alone and not to myself.” “Thank you Jesus for dying for me and giving me eternal life. “Amen.” Before we continue, this salvation prayer is based on several verses in the Bible: Romans 10:9-10 9. That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that Got hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. 10. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. Acts 2:38 Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. John 3:3 Jesus answered and said unto him, “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God.” By praying this prayer, meaning it, believing that Jesus is the Son of God and that he died on the cross for your sins an and accepting Jesus into your life as your personal savior, God is going to give you your free gift of salvation which is a ticket to get into heaven. This ticket is way better than the ones for movies, hockey games and fairs. You are born again because you are renewing your faith in God and Jesus. Pray this prayer any time you feel that you are wavering in your faith, especially the times when Satan is filling your mind with negative thoughts. The stronger you are in your faith, the more victorious you are going to be in your spiritual war. Next you have to pick up the number one weapon which is the Bible. The entire battle is the book of truth. Not one lie is mentioned in this book. There are many different translations of the Bible even some written as a comic book and even one called the Lego Bible. Choose the ones that are easiest for you to understand. But it is best to use an actual Bible for a complete understanding. You must know the word of God to understand what is in God’s mind. By doing this, you will know what type of thinking is acceptable to the Holy Spirit and what is not. The more you change your mind for the better, the more your life will change for the better. By letting God in your life, you are allowing him to expel bad thoughts and helping you to solve problems. Another way you can win this battle is to do good. You can do this by helping people through their issues of life, telling about the good that God is doing in your life. Read and study the Bible and you will walk in victory. Jeremiah 29:11 For I know the thoughts that I think towards you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end. Acts 10:28 How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: Who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him. The Lord knows all our thoughts. There is nothing we can hide from him. When we chose our thoughts carefully and allow your mind to be filled with good thoughts, you are resisting the devil. You become like Jesus who had no bad thoughts. Of course Jesus was perfect, and we are not. So don’t be discouraged if one day you have bad thoughts. If you believed that Jesus died on the cross for your sins, you will not be punished. Just ask God for forgiveness. He will give it to you. Proverbs 23:7 For he thinketh in his heart, so is he: eat and drink, saith he to thee; but his heart is not with thee. Romans 8:5 For that they are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; nut they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit. Whatever is in your heart shows in your life. Since your thoughts affect your heart and attitudes, it shows how people see you. Would you rather have people see you as a person with a good attitude or a bad attitude? Remember the type of mind you have is the type of life you live. A negative mind will equal a negative live. On the other hand a positive mind will equal a positive life. So look at all areas of your thoughts and words. You need to think about what you are thinking about. “But I am good at hiding my thoughts,” you may say. “How can people tell that I have bad thoughts?” They can tell by your actions. Do you always have a frown of your face or walk with your head down? People notice things like this. These actions have a direct relation to your attitude. Romans 12:2 And be not conformed to this world: be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God. Every time you renew your mind with the Bible and praying you are transformed. Are your thoughts fuddled with negative thoughts? If they are, when was the last time you opened the Bible and read from it? I bet it has been a while. Open it up to a random verse and start reading! Ephesians 6:12 For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. John 8:44 Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it. We know that Satan is the father of lies. He fills us with discouragement. He makes us suspicious of God. He sends us false preachers who add and take away from the Bible. He is patient and waits for you when you lower your defenses. Then he attacks. He allows us to built strongholds. Many of us define shelters as a place to hide or find comfort. Some shelters we may be thinking of are the houses we live in. How many of us have a shelter that we call home? Then there are the shelter that protects us from tornados and bombs. However, in the Christian world, a shelter is not really a good thing. As Instead of cooperating with God and going into a place of freedom, we hide in shelters. A shelter in this sense is something that we build on our own to escape a situation in life without asking God for guidance. While some of us turn to God during trying times, others will respond in a way that God does not intend for you to deal with the problem. When I hear the word stronghold, I think of a castle during the medieval times that are protected from the enemies. I can even think of my body as a stronghold where the Holy Spirit protects me from Satan. However, when we use our own means to build a shelter and not by listening to God or obeying him, we are actually allowing Satan to form our shelters into strongholds. While it may seem that these shelters and strongholds are built for our own good, we are actually deceiving ourselves into believing the problems have gone away. In the long run, the problem has not gone away. It was actually increased in size because we are relying on our own understanding and not on God’s divine wisdom. Basically a stronghold is an area that is dominated by an enemy. In the case of your mind, you are building a stronghold by allowing Satan to dominate it and fill it with negative thoughts. This stronghold keeps you in bondage in a certain way of thinking. Learn to use the Bible to tear down the strongholds that are built in your mind. John 8:31-32 31. Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him. If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed: 32. And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. When you read and know your Bible, you will be able to overcome strongholds and gain knowledge of God’s truths. You will be able to face the truth about yourself and your strongholds. You can even look on the past and and handle those strongholds. Sometimes things that happened in the past can affect your future if you allow them too. Learn to live in the present and not the past. Satan allows strongholds to be built on your circumstances. Mark 4:24 And he said unto them, Take heed what you hear: with that measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you: and unto you that hear shall more be given. You must continue to read the Bible. You cannot just open it once in a blue moon. You must read from this book regularly. Set a time each day when you are not distracted from others in the house. Find a quiet place to read where there are no distractions. When you are reading leave the computer, radio and television off! When you sing songs of praise to God and Jesus and pray to them, these must be heartfelt. Use prayer to build a relationship with God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Proverbs 4:23 Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life. Just remember that thoughts produce attitudes. You need to cast down wrong thoughts by reading and studying the Bible. You can live above the mess because God will never forsake you. Things will always work out for your good. James 4:7 Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 2 Corinthians 3:18 But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord. God has a good life for you and wants you to excel in it. Luke 4:18-19 18. The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the broken hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and of recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised. 19. To preach the acceptable year of the Lord. 1 Corinthians 10:13 There hath no temptation taken you but such as in common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that you are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it. Always remember that God is faithful to his word. With God’s word you can control your thought to control your heart, actions and attitudes. |