It Starts Small

Among so many profound things I have learned is: think about what I am thinking about. Thought comes natural. They roll across our brain and we get programmed to run as fast as they roll. BUT do you ever stop to actually pause and think about what you are thinking about?

The devil is super crafty in communicating negative messages to us. He is going to do everything in his power to keep us from getting on the right train of thought. He will bombard our thoughts because he knows most of all of us will not stop and think about what we are thinking about. He knows with enough repetition we will begin to believe these negative thoughts.

Our inner voice has power from two sources, the Holy Spirit or evil. The Holy Spirit reveals the truth of God our Father and evil works to undermine all of the truth or to compulse and get us obsessed. Whatever he can do to distract us, we will do. He loves to make a playground out of our minds and imaginations. He will fill them with all sorts of unimaginable things that appeal to the flesh or speak to fear. He wants to captivate, paralyze and destroy us.

Taking back your thought life requires a lot of effort and work on your part, but the blessing is that you will never be alone! When you decide you have had enough, you have to stick with it. No quitting or giving up!

²³ For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith Mark 11:23

This is a wonderful and beautiful verse that has power speaking about our faith and confession that is used over and over, but rarely spoken in both a positive and negative sense. I believe this verse speaks about God filled and evil filled lives. According to Jesus, you can bring to pass whatsoever you say and believe in your heart. Notice Jesus says if a person confesses something and shall not doubt in his heart… Jesus is saying here if a person believes the words he is speaking with his mouth, he will have exactly what he says.

The word “Doubt” is from the greek word which means to hesitate, to waver, to doubt, or to differ. In context, Jesus is saying that when a person’s heart does not differ from what his mouth is saying, the combination of his heart and mouth are in agreement and will make things happen. There is a connection between our heart and mouth when they are in agreement.

This is why we have to be so careful what we believe in our heart and say with our mouths. When our heart and mouth get in sync we manifest things to life. It works both in positive and negative sides of life. It can manifest healing in our bodies, salvation to friends and family, prosperity, and growth, BUT this devil knows how to use this principle against you.

If he can fill your mind and heart with lies and get you to believe them, he can get you to start speaking them. For example, you are making a cake and put too much salt in it. Later, when eating the cake you think how stupid you are for not following the directions. In your heart you believe you do nothing but mess everything you touch up. Perhaps you are serving that cake to a group and they discover too much salt in the cake. You blurt outloud how stupid you are. Your mouth is in agreement with your heart and you believe a lie that you are stupid. Notice it was not your mind in sync with your mouth. You first thought it. Then believed it. Then spoke it.

The devil knows if he can get you to embrace lies you will start to believe them. Once you start to embrace those lies you will start to speak them and Jesus tells us, out of the abundance of the heart, you will speak. What do lies look like:

You are stupid.
You are not worthy to be loved.
You are a failure.
You are a (enter habitual sin).
God does not love you.
You will never overcome.
God can never use someone like you.
No one will ever care about you.
Your life is not worthy to live.
Everything you touch, you destroy.
You will never be free of mental health disease.
Nobody care.
You do not matter.
It is too late for you.
God won’t.
You were a mistake.
You are garbage.
You are ugly.
You are …. you are…. you are….

Great power is released when my heart are working in sync with each other. It is so important what we put in our heart. Not just scripture, but what belief we put into our hearts. This is why I struggled for so long. I truly believe Christ was the answer but in the same token my belief in all those lies I listed above were stronger. Is spoke less, if at all about Christ, and more about who I believed I was. If the devil can get us to believe and say wrong things, then those things will come to pass.

I know it is hard to control the mouth. When we start to run our mouths and say any thing that satan puts in our mind, we are playing with fire. It has been scientifically proven that when you speak something out loud, those words are verified and empowered in our mind and we begin to believe them. That is why the devil tries to get us to say these things out loud. It helps him build a stronghold in our mind and imagination.

This is why it is so important to fill our minds with the Word of God. His Word is absolute truth. The more truth we fill ourselves with, the easier it becomes to sport lies. It is not enough just to meditate, we need to believe God’s Word. Meditation of God’s Word brings a supernatural cleansing to wash our mind and emotions from the contamination of the world, memories of painful past experiences, and lies.

²³ And be renewed in the spirit of your mind; Ephesians 4:23

When we make it priority to fill our mind with God’s Word, we leave less room for the enemy’s thought to be intrusive. Satan loves empty heads. They give him acres to work with. If we are filling our mind with God’s Word, he does not have room to work. If we are thinking about His Word, Satan can not speak lies. When we are not full of Satan’s lies, we will not be confessing things that are untrue. When we allow God to renew our minds every morning, we become inwardly strong and very hard to deceive.

It is a lot of work and practice. This is my strategy:

#1 Rubber Band

The preverbal practice of snapping the rubber band in your mind. You know what thoughts you obsess over. It is that moment where you are running in your mind of something and it doesn’t stop. Make a practice of recognizing when the mind gets to running. Snap yourself back to the now. Purposely stop in the middle of it. Refuse those thoughts in the Name of Jesus and ask for his cleansing. Refuse to travel that path in your mind.

I carried some note cards taped together to make a book. It easily fit in my back pocket. I’d pull it out and quickly read scripture that reminded me who I am. I also carry a notebook with me. Those really small notepads with a spiral top. I’d write down a quick note of what I was thinking. Later when I had a moment of quiet with the Holy Spirit I would look over the thought and seek guidence.

If I struggled to let go of what I was thinking, I used diversion:

Started singing a praise and worship song in my head – satan hates it when we praise and worship God.

Immediately I would think about my morning devotion. What the topic was. What the verse was. For a while I would carry a sticky note on my note cards to pull it out and focus on that verse vs satan speaking lies.

I would directly speak to Jesus in my head as if he was physically standing there.

#2 Take time to think about what you are thinking

Thoughts are windows to our heart. Was it a lie? Was it something you believe that is not true? Pray over it. Satan has rung your bell because he knows it is something that attacks the very core of you. Look up scripture concerning what the lie or fear is. MOst often, looking over my thoughts, I could see how irrational they were, BUT they revealed something that I was struggling with deep within myself. I could be a struggled to believe and trust in a character of God or a promise of God, or even a detail about me that was untrue according to how God sees me.

#3 Decide

Is God’s Word truth or am I going to believe the lie?

It is so vital to discover who you are in God. It’s important to know, believe and trust in WHO God is. SO when Satan comes and tell you, you are a nobody, your automatic response is what you believe: I AM SOMEONE TO GOD!

#5 Prioritize God

We need to make God priority. If we want to be overcomers vs overthinkers, we need to make him first in our lives. We need to make His Word priority and let it fill our mind vs. leaving ourselves open for the taking. The more of God’s Word we sink our teeth in, the more good things we have to think about, believe, and speak.

It’s a battle that you are not alone in fighting, but God gives us the power to overcome it through Christ and the Holy Spirit.

I can tell you that if you are truly devoted to taking back your thought life, it is a lot of work, but rewarding and blessed work. I still struggle every now and then. Satan never stops attacking. He works diligently to use other people and himself to get me to open my mind to doubt, fear, and lies. We can not just overcome and take back, we have to maintain.