Going Crazy!

 

Have you ever felt like you were going crazy? Nothing makes sense in your life. You have no direction. You are squeezed into a mold where you do not fit. 

There is a war going on in your mind...like there is a whole crowd of people up there arguing! I have a simple explanation, and an even simpler solution. Our mind is the battleground where Satan wars against us.

Our soul includes our mind, will and emotions. Our mind affects every part of us, including our physical well-being. The imagination is where Satan likes to play. 

He perverts the truth and comes up with all sorts of lies, which, unbelievably, we accept as truth! Then they affect us adversely for the rest of our life.  ( www.theophostic.com )

We live in this world, yet we do not wage war in the natural realm. Our weapons are not of this world. God gives us His divine power to demolish every spiritual stronghold we encounter. 

We can take authority over every haughty lie, which rises up against God's spiritual truth and against the knowledge of God (2 Corinthians 10:5).

God gave us divinely powered weapons to demolish all of Satan’s strongholds. We do this by taking every thought captive and having the mind of Jesus Christ (Philippians 2:5). 

The Holy Spirit’s priority is helping us to know and to do the will of God in His power (Philippians 2:12-13). He does this by transforming our mind to the mind of Christ (Romans 12:2; 2 Corinthians 3:18).

Prayer:

Father God, Satan really refined his art of deception over the years. However, Your Spirit of truth abiding in us, guides us to Your truth. When we surrender to You, our God of peace in us, there is no more lunacy warring in our mind. Now we can stand against the devil's wiles, which he shoots at us as fiery darts (Ephesians 6:11,16; John 16:13). 

You sent Your Holy Spirit in Jesus' name to teach us everything we need to know and to remind us of what we read in Your Word (John 14:26-27). You give us victory over the evil one through the power of Christ in us (Colossians 1:27). In Jesus' name, we take every thought captive and make it obedient to Your Word (2 Corinthians 10: 3-5).

Thought for the Day:

Do not conform your thoughts to the pattern of this world or Satan's lies, but allow God's Spirit to renew your mind to know the perfect will of God. - Romans 12:2

Understanding Negaitve Emotions - Part 2

 

One reason that addictions are so prevalent in our society is that people are attempting to anesthetize their pain from past trauma. Until we face the pain from the past, we will never be free from it. Many fear experiencing that pain all over again and refuse to address these issues. What they fail to realize is that the pain already affects them every day of their life and causes them to react negatively to current circumstances (Psalm 25:17). They are doping instead of coping.

God is able to heal us of any trauma from our past and to free us to live a victorious future. Pilgrim’s Progress, by Paul Bunyan, is a story about a man who carries a load of baggage with him everywhere he goes. Through the story, he brings this baggage to the cross of Christ and finally lays them down. We do this same thing. We carry emotional baggage that gets heavier with each day we live. This baggage ends up controlling our reactions to life.

Satan rages war with us on the battleground of our mind. He uses our thoughts to infiltrate our soul and to influence our emotions. Then once he controls our mind and emotions, he can also control our will and our actions. This is why Paul encourages us to think only on positive thoughts (Philippians 4:8). In order to get rid of Satan’s negative influence and to think only on positive aspects, we come before the Lord in total surrender and sit quietly and listen to His voice.

Dismissing any distractions, we submit our negative thoughts to God’s microscope and use the principles in Part 1 of this series on Understanding Negative emotions to uncover their root cause. Once we uncover Satan’s lie, we can walk in God’s truth. This allows our emotional baggage to fall away. Sure, we will feel negative emotions again, but they will not be empowered by the pain of our past.

Prayer:

Father God, thank You for offering us a way to discard the negative emotions of the past, so we are free to walk in Your freedom and power each day of our life. Help us to concentrate only on whatever is true, righteous, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent and praiseworthy (Philippians 4:8). Help us to live lives that are so full of holiness that the unsaved will see our good works and glorify You (Matthew 5:16; 1 Peter 2:12). Allow Your peace to transport us through any negative circumstance we encounter (Philippians 4:7).

Thought for the Day: Christ in us is our whole life, and we mature to walk in unity with Him. - Colossians 3:4

 

 

The Blessing of Difficulties

  

 

 

We often fear that facing our past will cause us more suffering. We imagine that we will experience all that pain all over again. We are already tormented from the damage done to us by other people, even if they did it unknowingly or could not help how they acted because of pain in their life. The truth, however, is that facing the past frees us to face the future. We encounter God in the midst of the memories, and He reveals His truth to us. This always trumps Satan’s lies, which otherwise keep us in bondage to him our whole life.

We also fear facing the current problems in our life. We want to ignore them or pretend that they do not really exist, so we do not have to deal with them. Have we made faulty decisions? Hung around with the wrong crowd? Is someone perpetrating his or her evil on us? Again, God’s faith, resident within us, gives us the power to deal with these issues as they arise. A young, Jewish boy faced the mighty Philistine with these astute words, “The battle is the Lord’s” (1 Samuel 17:47).

It is God’s anointing and power working in and through us that result in our victories in this world. When we see the mighty hand of God evident in our life on our behalf, this gives us glorious joy beyond words (1 Peter 1:8). Even when we are personally violated, God brings glorious freedom to Believers through forgiveness, empathy and second chances. We learn to trust God to turn around even the most negative issue for our good (Romans 8:28).

As we seek God’s deliverance from the issues, we learn that His grace sufficiently empowers us in our weakest moments, even if He chooses not to deliver us from the problem itself (2 Corinthians 12:9-10). We can glory in our imperfections and weakness, because that is when God’s power is manifested in and through us. We find our joy in His love rather than in our circumstances. Human joy depends on life’s situations, but God’s joy is our strength regardless of the circumstances.

We are happy just because of His presence in our life. We choose our emotions and our responses to them because Christ lives in us with all the power of the triune Godhead. We persevere in prayer and accept God’s answer, even if He says, “No” or “Wait.” We can also follow God’s Spirit in responding to the problems in other people’s lives. We do not have to rescue or enable anyone. We can help them, but only when the Holy Spirit tells us to do so.

Prayer:

Father God, remind us that Satan uses our thoughts as His battleground against Your Spirit. He attempts to persuade us to curse you and die (Job 2:9). As we surrender every thought to Christ and walk in obedience to Your Spirit’s direction, we live a positive, productive life regardless of our circumstances (2 Corinthians 10:5). We shine with Your love and live as a testimony of Your mercy and grace in our life.

Thought for the Day:

Walk in the Spirit, and you will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh.
– Galatians 5:16, 25