The Rage Within
I have interrupted the regularly scheduled Blog for a hot off the press word!!
Have you ever had your mind bombarded with thoughts? Thoughts of what someone has done to you, worry about finances or a million other problems that you just couldn’t think of anything else? Well if so then welcome to the party because so has EVERYONE else!!!
The human mind has between two and three thousand thoughts per day, which equals to about three per minute on average. So if you are in a stressful situation or on a deadline at work that number could be significantly higher!! No wonder my head hurts!!!
Lots of times thoughts just seem to “come” to us. We don’t always purposely think them. Recently I had a really stressful family situation that had my mind spinning all.day.long. Anyone else?? I wasn’t necessarily worried but I was angry about what was going on. By the time I got home from work my head was just on overtime! I thought man, I just need to go in my office and pray!!
Then the Holy Spirit spoke to me…”Do what you preached.” Ummm right…I knew that! I had spoke at a Women’s Retreat months earlier on Spiritual Warfare. I taught on how the battle begins in our minds and how to win the war. So I went to my office and pulled out my notes.
The mind is the battlefield we fight on. The enemy, satan, attacks us with negative thoughts about our situation like, you will never get out of debt, your marriage will never survive this, your kids will never get off drugs and on and on.
In 2 Corinthians 10:5, AMP it states, “ We are destroying sophisticated arguments and every exalted and proud thing that sets itself up against the (true) knowledge of God, we are taking every thought and purpose captive to the obedience of Christ. So the thoughts coming to me are sophisticated arguments set against the knowledge of God…they are NOT my thoughts, they are lies the enemy wants me to believe. Then it says what I should do…take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. I am supposed to take the thoughts that do not agree with God’s word and exchange them for thoughts that do.
Philippians 4:8 tells me how, “whatever is true, whatever is worthy of reverence, is honorable, seemly, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is kind, winsome, and gracious, if there is ANY virtue and excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise…THINK ON THESE THINGS, FIX your minds on them! Hebrews 12:2 says, “FIXING our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith.”
Then I saw it, the thing the Holy Spirit wanted to reveal….JESUS is all of those things!!! He is true, worthy of reverence, honorable, seemly, kind, and winsome, gracious, has virtue and excellence, and is worthy of praise!!!!
I need to exchange the thoughts the enemy is assaulting my brain with, with thoughts of Jesus!!! I need to FIX my mind on Him not the thoughts. Romans 12:2 says, “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” I have the responsibility to learn God’s word which then can transform my mind! Romans 8:6 says, “The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace.” If I choose to think what the enemy places in my mind it is death to me!
So I said out loud, “I choose to think of you Jesus, to think on your goodness and your faithfulness. I refuse to dwell on the thoughts coming to me. He seeks to destroy me but you desire to give me life. Immediately those thoughts stopped coming to me. The bombardment was over. I had won that battle…whewww!!! I had joy and peace all the next day. But…we don’t just do this once. We have to choose to do it EVERY time it happens. If you shoot an intruder and he gets up and keeps coming after you, you keep shooting!!!
I did a happy dance all over my office!!!! I alone make the choice to think the right things. I alone can make that exchange. Our enemy wants to wear us down with thoughts that agree with our situation so that we accept them as our own. When we do that we take ownership of them and they then control us. We must remain in control of our thoughts so that we can affect our circumstances and not let our circumstances affect us!!!
I have some pretty terrible circumstances happening in my life right now, and I would bet you do too. But those circumstances do not control my life, my attitude or my joy! Because they are simply facts I face. They are not the truth about the outcome of my situation! Boom!!
We don’t really believe something until we can DO it. We have to do it and do it and do it again….that’s how we fight, that’s how we win!