Day Twenty-Nine
Overthrowing Your Strongholds
“For the weapons of our warfare are not physical [weapons of flesh and blood], but they are mighty before God for the overthrow and destruction of strongholds,…”
Amp 2Cor 10:4
Have you ever seen the poles along the interstates in Montana and Wyoming used to measure snow drifts? Sometimes I think it would help to have such a device to measure the pervasiveness of change which the Kingdom of God has made in our old patterns of thinking. That’s a vague notion I’m sure – let me clarify.
Simply put, the question is this – is there agreement between what I show people, what I demonstrate to be my thinking or opinions on some topic or towards some person – and what are the thoughts I allow to occupy my internal dialogue? In other words, am I congruent? If I harbor thoughts of dislike, distrust, jealousy, anger, rage, bitterness, etc. in my internal mind, but reframe those thoughts and actually dress them up with “pseudo-Christian fluff” that then gets projected outwardly – I am not congruent. I am living a divided life where what I think and tolerate in my thoughts is markedly different from what I display outwardly. This is not good.
The Scripture says, as a man thinks in his heart – so he is. It says out of the overflow of the heart his mouth speaks! We think we are hiding those critical, negative attitudes of our heart. Or at the very least we think we are dressing them up to make them more socially acceptable. But we deceive ourselves. They are known. More importantly — when your secret thoughts indulge dark thinking – thoughts that are more like the enemies thoughts than a believers, when they are diametrically opposed to the heart and thoughts of God – you place yourself in a dangerous and precarious position. When you harbor thoughts that are essentially “evil” in that they form a report that does not agree with God, His Word, or His will on the matter, you have then given the enemy a potentially evil foothold. He cannot read your thoughts, but he can read your actions like a book. He has studied you especially for places of weakness. If he can use your negative thinking as a platform and base of operations where he can skew your thoughts into deeper darkness – he will indeed! This is the zone of danger Will Robinson!
This is why we are called to guard our hearts above all that we guard – for out of them flow the very issues of life (Prov 4:20-23). We would seek to modify the projection of our thoughts, to make them look more kind. We excuse them as something that we are allowed to indulge – completely oblivious to the truth that as they continue to solidify and expand their hold on us — those thoughts are what we actually are becoming! If our eye is evil or unsound, then the very light that is in us is darkened, and how dense is that darkness (Mt 6:22-23).
So where is the line in you that marks the level of the Lord’s rule in your life and the reign of His Kingdom. To what depth does it extend? Do you religiously arrange your external behavior but bring no discipline to your thought-life? Do you still insist on harboring thoughts adversarial to His truth and His will simply because you excuse them as harmless? The Lord has given us His life in us and His word to renew our thinking to His. Saints – use His word as a yardstick to judge the quality of your thinking and to bring truth to your inner man. As your thinking is brought captive to the obedience of Christ Jesus, His life will expand and grow in you. You will begin to have victory over internal struggles and external conflict like never before. This, then, begins the overcoming life — the resurrection life, the new life in Christ being lived out in us that He came to give us.
Be free, be one with Christ in love, be-loved!
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