“For as he thinks in his heart, so is he….” Prov 23:7 AMP
“Therefore if any person is [in-grafted] in Christ (the Messiah) he is a new creation (a new creature altogether); the old [previous moral and spiritual condition] has passed away. Behold, the fresh and new has come!” 2Cor 5:12 AMP
“Strip yourselves of your former nature [put off and discard your old unrenewed self] which characterized your previous manner of life and becomes corrupt through lusts and desires that spring from delusion; And be constantly renewed in the spirit of your mind [having a fresh mental and spiritual attitude], and put on the new nature (the regenerate self) created in God’s image, [Godlike] in true righteousness and holiness.” Eph 4:22-24 AMP
YOU ARE IN CHARGE OF YOUR THOUGHTS!
Sometimes the Lord shows you exactly where you are missing it!
This happened to me last night at a small group session concerning freedom and deliverance. We were all sharing topics of where we had believed the enemy’s lie, and how to speak and embrace the truth instead.
After a lull in the discussion, I decided to share a lie that I had believed since childhood, and how that lie has impacted me throughout the years. The odd thing was, where before when I would share this it had so much impact that I could feel the pain of it. This time it felt empty of power to wound.
And yet, I didn’t give that emptiness much thought… until the Holy Spirit so politely reminded me… He had brought freedom and deliverance to this very issue just last October. In fact, He had precipitated my healing of this warped notion all on His own. I was not seeking healing at the time… that made it even more precious!
Yet here I was, a few short months later, expressing a lie as if it was still an operative thing, having forgotten the work the Lord had done!
I had to repent last night and ask forgiveness for that, for absolutely losing sight of the healing He brought.
But because of my failure, the Holy Spirit was able to show me a strategy that the enemy likes to use over and over, and how we are to overcome that.
THE DEALIO:
There is an instruction for us as believers in Ephesians 4:22-24 that is so paramount, but so often overlooked as to result instead in shipwreck and failure.
We are called to put off (strip ourselves of and discard our former nature – our ways of believing and thinking and doing) – which characterized our previous (before receiving Jesus as Savior) manner of life. This way of being becomes corrupt and leads to delusion!
We pursue being constantly renewed in the spirit of our mind [having a fresh mental and spiritual attitude].
And then we put on the new nature (the regenerate self) created in God’s image, [Godlike] in true righteousness and holiness.
This putting off, being renewed, and putting on is a cycle that we repeat over and over. It is like a water wheel of momentum and power and freedom. Being washed by the water of the word…
But it all has to do with your soul as it is reflected by your will, intellect, and emotions.
Now that you are saved, in your mind you have an intersection of the spirit and your flesh. So you have a mind of the flesh (your old natural way of thinking and believing), and the mind of the spirit (the place of kingdom thinking that agrees with the word of God and is in “G” with the Holy Spirit. God’s desire is that your spirit and the influence of the Holy Spirit will ascend to full authority over you and that you will live by the Spirit, not the flesh. It is you who must decide what mind you will default to!!!
When you struggle and flip back and forth between the two manners of thinking (spirit or fleshly/soulish) you are being double minded… That is not to be so!
So the application for what the Holy Spirit showed me about myself and my own thinking (visa vie the lie I had been freed from):
– the enemy cannot take away your salvation, but he can promote a thought at a level far below the truth of what you have been shown. In this way he perpetuates a bondage principal that operates according to the word of God.
— that is: “as a man thinks in his heart, so is he”
— he presents something that counters the full truth of God’s word, and if you receive it and accept it, you are ruled by it! (Rom 6:16). You become the slave of this thinking!
— even though the Lord had initiated my freedom from a lie, and brought healing from it, my loose wielding of that fact caused a default back to the lie as if it were still operative! In a sense, I had let the word of God fall to the ground – which it never should. This was on me! I had to repent and renounce that way of thinking!
The beautiful visual that was shared as a picture of this process was: “the enemy stands before you, his hand out and he blows a lie towards you like a puff of smoke, or a dandelion flower. If you receive it and believe it, it becomes your truth!”
You see the enemy constantly counts on us being lazy in a sense, not active, not apprehending fully, not remembering, not enforcing (exerting self-control), not vigilantly putting off, not rising to a new standard of truth in our hearts and minds, and not arresting those lies that he blows towards us.
Thus we fail to operate in the mind of Christ, and instead revert to our old man thinking mode of our pre-saved self!
Thus, the enemy keeps us living short of the glory of God that has already been secured for us. We live under the horizon of being an overcomer!!! Under the potential that Christ has for us!
Therefore we miss, as Oswald Chambers describes, a way where nothing remains of the “old life”. Residing instead in a place where the “old gloomy outlook disappears, as does our old attitude toward things.” Where we can live via “love that endures long and is patient and kind, believes the best of all” (and the rest of 1Cor 13:4-8).
Folks, it has to do at its core with the thoughts that you secretly allow to rest in your mind. Do they conform to the word of God, or to your old manner of thinking.
This failure to renew your mind according to the word, and put off other thinking that contests it will keep you in bondage to the lies of the enemy!!!
It may even be the same place Hosea recounts, where the Lord healed Israel “but they did not know that He healed them.” (Hosea 11:3)
May this speak truth to us all…
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