I am finding what I am reading and meditating on in regards to our thought process has so much to do with so many different messages, courses, etc that I have had the privilege to learn from. I am also finding in this stage of my life and where I am ministering how important these truths are. I urge you, especially young people to lay hold of these truths early in your life. It will make all the difference.
As we have been learning the mind is a battlefield. Our problem is as we tend to live for self we do not really want to do battle. Sometimes it is easier to just not battle and when we lose we try to apply grace mercy and love. We use the excuses like " I just could not help it, they made me so angry, or I could not help what I saw on the TV and my mind wondered, or I have my rights." These probably sound all to familiar to all of us. But if we are born again we have been bought by the Blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are OWNED by Him. HMMMMM makes us think doesn't it. If we are owned by Him, He indeed is a gracious Master.
Notes on Chapter Three:
PG 33 "Regain the territory the devil has stolen from you. If necessary regain it one inch at a time always leaning on God's grace and not on your own ability to get desired results."
Ish 43:2 "I will be with you- through the rivers- they will not overwhelm you. When you walk through fire you will not be burned or scorched nor will the flame kindle upon you."
When I read this verse the part the flame will not kindle upon you, I remembered how when I was a kid we would gather kindling wood to start a bigger fire when we would go camping. This wood was needed to start a bigger fire. So basically what this verse is saying when we walk through the fire it will not harm you in any way, not even to begin something small and turn bigger. We must remember this and apply this to our thoughts . For instance when we have a thought and all of a sudden the whole thing is blown out of proportion what happened. Something kindled something to make it bigger. Was God with us, probably not because we did not call upon Him for His word says He will be with us. We need to make sure we call upon Him for His help on a continuous basis so nothing can kindle.
Chapter 3 continues talking about Habakuk 3:19 and how we need to develop hinds feet(to climb mountains swiftly) to walk not to stand still in terror but to walk and make spiritual progress upon high places (of trouble suffering or responsibility."It continues to say it is easy to quit but takes faith to get through.
Yesterday we went to preach at a Church in a pretty hilly area. As I looked at some of those hills many people would laugh because I was not the most physically active person. I hate hills. But I tackle them quickly. I can't stand walking up them slowly like most people do. So there I would be way ahead of everyone tackling the hill determined to reach the top and then there I would rest and catch my breath. So this is what must be in handling our troubles, etc.
PG 34 of Chapter three "The mind has to be renewed to follow after the Spirit and not the flesh. Our carnel, worldly fleshly minds have had so much practice operating freely that we surely do not have to use any effort to think wrong thoughts. After we have finally decided to be like minded with God then we will need to choose and continue to choose right thoughts."
This comment is crucial. The problem is we do not want to think like minded with God. We basically want to hold onto our excuses. "I can watch that on TV, it does not matter it is a sex scene. I am old enough. I can handle that without sinning. Or it does not matter what kind of language I use of hear on movies, etc etc. We can think of a zillion excuses to not want to think like God. But the problem is we think we think like minded to Christ. We need to truly recognize what are my thoughts. If they are not pure holy and like Christ then they are sinful thoughts and must be taken captive.
As the chapter continues it talks about God having set before us life and death and He urges us to choose life. It is always our choice,.
Prov 18:21 Death and life are in the tongue and they who indulge in It shall eat the fruit thereof. Sort of our common phrase "What goes around, comes around". Or "It will come back to bite you"
The chapter goes on to encourage us that though the battle seems endless we must remember we are reprogramming a very carnel, fleshly worldly mind ....reprogramming to think as God thinks
PG 35 states your mind is like a computer that has a lifetime of garbage programmed into it.
These next comments in chapter three really grabbed a hold of me to desire my life to change.
"...I had to wake up and realize I was going no where. I was a Christian without victory. PG 36 continues "Wrong mindsets many mental strongholds built up over the years, living in deception, ..been at the same mountain long enough..The Israelites had a wilderness mentality certain types of thinking (wrong thinking) kept them in bondage...Quality decision to get your mind renewed and learn to choose your thoughts carefully. You will not Quit and give up until victory is complete and you have taken possession of your rightful inheritance."
These last few thoughts shook me to the core. I realized I had a wilderness mentality. And that I do not want to stay there and I will fight to regain the territory the enemy has stolen.
Monday, May 24, 2010
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Battlefield of the Mind Chap 1-2
Well I finally finished chapters 1 to 3. I know those who are doing the actual study just finished chapter 2 yesterday. So Lordwilling this will catch myself up.
I have been very much encouraged by ths Bible Study. You never know when God is going to give you a life breaking expierence. I say breaking for what He can break makes us whole. As I read in chapter two the paragraph on page 28 "Your life may be in a state of chaos because of years of wrong thinking. If so, it is important for you to come to grips with the fact that your life will not get straigtened out until your mind does. You should consider this area one of the vital necessity. Be serious about tearing down the strongholds Satan has built in your mind . Use your weapons of teh Word, praise and prayer.""
It hit me like a ton of bricks . I have struggled with procrastination, being behind, not accomplishing what I would like to, etc etc. I have dealt with this issue in my life for years and years now. Never ever did I recognize or connect it as a problem with my mind or thoughts. At this revelation Iprayed "God show me what wrong thinking, or thought process I have in this area or where a stronghold can be." I know as I continue to pray God will reveal and I look forward to sharing with you what God will do and how my Chaos will straighten out.
Now that was my own personal testimony. I just want tonow point out some areas that were definitely interesting for me in these chapters.
Chapter One: Well-laid plans take time. Remember the devil has a strategy(pg15).. In this thought we must not get discouraged when things take time. The devil has a strategy to get us off the beaten path and he does not care how long it takes. We ourselves must have a strategy and not be impatient with how long it may take. Victory is always victory no matter how long it takes.
Pg 16 "Strongholds are in our mind...due to a certain way of thinking.... take these weapons and refute arguemnets. The devil offers us theroies and reasonings Pg 17 but be ye transformed bythe renewing of your mind.....Mary can't control her actions because she cannot control our thoughts...What we learn from this is our thinking definitely contributes to who we are and our actions and that we need to be in constant action of renewing our minds.
Pg 19) We must 1) get the knowledge of God's truth in us 2) we must renew our minds with His Word 3) we must use the weapons of II Corinthians 10:4-5
Our weapons Word, Prayer asking and talking, Praise must be genuine heartfeltof who Jesus is
Pg 23 We must 1) continue to study God's Word, 2) We will know the truth as we study and then 3) we will then be able to act on the truth which will set us free
Dont make excuse to justify behaviour
Pg 24 Our problems are internal in our thoughts and attitudes. Our outward behaviour is a result of our thoughts and attitudes. Satan knows well that if he can control our thoughts he can control our actions
CHAPTER 2 PG 27 "thoughts are powerful and have creative ability.. This teaches us to be real careful of what we think. We must keep our thinking in alignement with Gods Word.
Romans 8:5 We notice in this verse weather you follow the flesh or the spirt, whatever you follow you will first set your mind then pursue. The flesh looks for tehgratification of self but the Spirt if you follow after the Spirit you will gratify the Holy Spirit. Do we look to live our lives to gratify ourselves or gratify the Holy SPirit??? If we mind the thinsg of the Spirit we will walk in the Spirit.. Basicallythat tells me is that the walking in the Spirit will be an automatic walk when we are mind or have our mind on the things of teh Spirit.
PG 27 Vital for living is renewing our minds...we must get in us that this is more than a choice...it is crucial to live in a succesful Christian walk.
PG 28 We must be determined to ASk a lot of teh Holy Spirit to help us and to lean on HIm alone
Pg 29 A Vital neccesity just like air, blood pressure etc is to cultivate our relationship with the with Him in prayer and in the Word. Our spiritual life is dependant upon spending regular quality time with God. It must be a priority in my life. Right thinking is vital to victorias living. We must choose carefully choos our thoughts.
Thoughts bear fruit. Good or bad...
I have been very much encouraged by ths Bible Study. You never know when God is going to give you a life breaking expierence. I say breaking for what He can break makes us whole. As I read in chapter two the paragraph on page 28 "Your life may be in a state of chaos because of years of wrong thinking. If so, it is important for you to come to grips with the fact that your life will not get straigtened out until your mind does. You should consider this area one of the vital necessity. Be serious about tearing down the strongholds Satan has built in your mind . Use your weapons of teh Word, praise and prayer.""
It hit me like a ton of bricks . I have struggled with procrastination, being behind, not accomplishing what I would like to, etc etc. I have dealt with this issue in my life for years and years now. Never ever did I recognize or connect it as a problem with my mind or thoughts. At this revelation Iprayed "God show me what wrong thinking, or thought process I have in this area or where a stronghold can be." I know as I continue to pray God will reveal and I look forward to sharing with you what God will do and how my Chaos will straighten out.
Now that was my own personal testimony. I just want tonow point out some areas that were definitely interesting for me in these chapters.
Chapter One: Well-laid plans take time. Remember the devil has a strategy(pg15).. In this thought we must not get discouraged when things take time. The devil has a strategy to get us off the beaten path and he does not care how long it takes. We ourselves must have a strategy and not be impatient with how long it may take. Victory is always victory no matter how long it takes.
Pg 16 "Strongholds are in our mind...due to a certain way of thinking.... take these weapons and refute arguemnets. The devil offers us theroies and reasonings Pg 17 but be ye transformed bythe renewing of your mind.....Mary can't control her actions because she cannot control our thoughts...What we learn from this is our thinking definitely contributes to who we are and our actions and that we need to be in constant action of renewing our minds.
Pg 19) We must 1) get the knowledge of God's truth in us 2) we must renew our minds with His Word 3) we must use the weapons of II Corinthians 10:4-5
Our weapons Word, Prayer asking and talking, Praise must be genuine heartfeltof who Jesus is
Pg 23 We must 1) continue to study God's Word, 2) We will know the truth as we study and then 3) we will then be able to act on the truth which will set us free
Dont make excuse to justify behaviour
Pg 24 Our problems are internal in our thoughts and attitudes. Our outward behaviour is a result of our thoughts and attitudes. Satan knows well that if he can control our thoughts he can control our actions
CHAPTER 2 PG 27 "thoughts are powerful and have creative ability.. This teaches us to be real careful of what we think. We must keep our thinking in alignement with Gods Word.
Romans 8:5 We notice in this verse weather you follow the flesh or the spirt, whatever you follow you will first set your mind then pursue. The flesh looks for tehgratification of self but the Spirt if you follow after the Spirit you will gratify the Holy Spirit. Do we look to live our lives to gratify ourselves or gratify the Holy SPirit??? If we mind the thinsg of the Spirit we will walk in the Spirit.. Basicallythat tells me is that the walking in the Spirit will be an automatic walk when we are mind or have our mind on the things of teh Spirit.
PG 27 Vital for living is renewing our minds...we must get in us that this is more than a choice...it is crucial to live in a succesful Christian walk.
PG 28 We must be determined to ASk a lot of teh Holy Spirit to help us and to lean on HIm alone
Pg 29 A Vital neccesity just like air, blood pressure etc is to cultivate our relationship with the with Him in prayer and in the Word. Our spiritual life is dependant upon spending regular quality time with God. It must be a priority in my life. Right thinking is vital to victorias living. We must choose carefully choos our thoughts.
Thoughts bear fruit. Good or bad...
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Strongholds: A Wierd Word
It is interesting, this word stronghold. In some charismatic realms we use it to identify areas where people need some major healing in a particular area in their life. We hear of praying to bring down strongholds. Now I have not begun to read the book, Battlefield of the the Mind, but I did glance at the first page. Actually what I had looked at on the first page was the verse IICor 10:4&5 "For the weapons of our warfare are not physical but they are mighty before God for the overthrow and destruction of strongholds. Casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God and brings into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ". Now I know we will be looking into this further, but for now lets us know and believe from this verse we know we have weapons to bring them down.
But what is a stronghold? Many times we hear people praying for God to break the strongholds, or for the stronghold to come down. But what does that really mean? Is it only for someone who is heavily involved in drugs, alcohol, lust or an area where there is noticably no victory? At times we speak of things but we don't bring it down to our every day level. God opened my mind to a new understanding of the word stronghold.
As I read in Proverbs 21:22, "A wise man scales the city of the mighty and brings down the trusted stronghold." As I first read this verse the word that jumped out at me was TRUSTED. What stronghold am I trusting in. Basically to simplify the word we can ask the question, "What has a Strong hold on me? Asking the question this way we can see it can basically mean anything that has a stronger hold on us than the Lord.
Walls were built around cities to protect them. Strongholds are for our protection. In the BIble it speaks of some specific strongholds. It was considered a stronghold for either the way it was built or it's location. God mocks the Edomites because they trusted in their mountain stronghold. People trusted the stronghold of Petra because it was built out of the face of a rock mountain. When the enemy would come the people would run to the stronghold.
We trust a stronghold because we feel it will protect us. In the spiritual a stronghold is anything that has a stronger hold on us than God. Strongholds are inanimate, abstract, words ideas, thoughts. The outcome of what we trust in can turn to anger , envy, jealousy, bitterness, lust, depression, alcoholism, drug addition or any addiction for that matter. Lets's think about it. When something happens even on a small scale in our daily life what does our spirt respond to? Where do our thoughts run to? What action is produced?
God opened up my mind to unerstand a basic value He has blessed me in over certain time periods of my life. I really could not put into words until now. I know the areas of victory in my life were because of what I believed. The Word of God has a stronger hold on me in certain instances then the lie of the enemy even when my emotions did not match. This means my emotions believed the lie but my heart and mind believed God over my emotions Our problem especially in the charasmatic realm is we want our emotions to line up with what we believe.
We sing of God being our Strongtower, our stronghold? But practically what does that mean? In big trials it easy to run to HIm and trust Him for we are pushed to Him due to bigger trials. But in the everyday? In this verse of Proverbs it says " A wise man scales the city of the mighty and brings down the trusted stronghold." If we are to scale the wall we need to not be afraid to get close enough to it to climb it. We need to recognize this is teh stronghold, take a hold of it, climb it and bring it down. We must have our trust be in what the Word of God says. That must have a stronger hold on us than any thoughts coming into our minds.
As we begin this Bible Study lets really look atthe problem areas of our life and how we respond to them. What is our thought life like? What do we think about, even of ourselves? Are we trusting in the one true Stronghold of Our Lord Jesus Christ?
But what is a stronghold? Many times we hear people praying for God to break the strongholds, or for the stronghold to come down. But what does that really mean? Is it only for someone who is heavily involved in drugs, alcohol, lust or an area where there is noticably no victory? At times we speak of things but we don't bring it down to our every day level. God opened my mind to a new understanding of the word stronghold.
As I read in Proverbs 21:22, "A wise man scales the city of the mighty and brings down the trusted stronghold." As I first read this verse the word that jumped out at me was TRUSTED. What stronghold am I trusting in. Basically to simplify the word we can ask the question, "What has a Strong hold on me? Asking the question this way we can see it can basically mean anything that has a stronger hold on us than the Lord.
Walls were built around cities to protect them. Strongholds are for our protection. In the BIble it speaks of some specific strongholds. It was considered a stronghold for either the way it was built or it's location. God mocks the Edomites because they trusted in their mountain stronghold. People trusted the stronghold of Petra because it was built out of the face of a rock mountain. When the enemy would come the people would run to the stronghold.
We trust a stronghold because we feel it will protect us. In the spiritual a stronghold is anything that has a stronger hold on us than God. Strongholds are inanimate, abstract, words ideas, thoughts. The outcome of what we trust in can turn to anger , envy, jealousy, bitterness, lust, depression, alcoholism, drug addition or any addiction for that matter. Lets's think about it. When something happens even on a small scale in our daily life what does our spirt respond to? Where do our thoughts run to? What action is produced?
God opened up my mind to unerstand a basic value He has blessed me in over certain time periods of my life. I really could not put into words until now. I know the areas of victory in my life were because of what I believed. The Word of God has a stronger hold on me in certain instances then the lie of the enemy even when my emotions did not match. This means my emotions believed the lie but my heart and mind believed God over my emotions Our problem especially in the charasmatic realm is we want our emotions to line up with what we believe.
We sing of God being our Strongtower, our stronghold? But practically what does that mean? In big trials it easy to run to HIm and trust Him for we are pushed to Him due to bigger trials. But in the everyday? In this verse of Proverbs it says " A wise man scales the city of the mighty and brings down the trusted stronghold." If we are to scale the wall we need to not be afraid to get close enough to it to climb it. We need to recognize this is teh stronghold, take a hold of it, climb it and bring it down. We must have our trust be in what the Word of God says. That must have a stronger hold on us than any thoughts coming into our minds.
As we begin this Bible Study lets really look atthe problem areas of our life and how we respond to them. What is our thought life like? What do we think about, even of ourselves? Are we trusting in the one true Stronghold of Our Lord Jesus Christ?
Saturday, April 17, 2010
PURPOSE OF THIS BLOG
Welcome to any who are interested in reading my devotional thoughts as I journal through my life with the challenges of being a wife, missionary and mother of many children from a different culture. Also in taking part in bible studies together to learn from one another and encourage one another. I am not familiar with much technology so we will see how this works out for the bible study end of it. Any suggestionsa re appreciated. This blog is written on a born again Christian perspective with the final authority in the Holy Bible as the written Word of the One and Only Most High God.
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