Study again the following verses in the Amplified Bible, and ask God to help you really understand the depth of their meaning: “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, [inasmuch as we] refute arguments and theories and reasonings and every proud and lofty thing that sets itself up against the [true] knowledge of God; and we lead every thought and purpose away captive into the obedience of Christ (the Messiah, the Anointed One)” (2 Corinthians 10:4-5).
Paul said we are to lead every thought captive unto the obedience of Jesus Christ. That means we take authority over wrong thoughts and bring them in subjection to God’s will. His will is His Word, so we must think according to His Word to be in obedience to Him. The devil likes to argue with us, tempt us to live in the mental realm of what reasoning dictates to us. He injects proud and lofty thoughts in our minds. He suggests that we are better than other people, saying they are wrong and we are right. He puts judgmental thoughts in our minds. We must cast down these demonically induced thoughts and replace them with humble thoughts of love and concern for others.
Since we are thinking most of the time, we will find the renewing of the mind quite a battle, especially in the beginning of our journey with God. When I initially started learning these principles, I felt all I did all day was cast down thoughts and watch them come right back.
I finally cried out to God, telling Him that I didn’t know how to just not think about something. He replied that the answer was very simple; I was to form the habit of filling my mind with good things so bad things could find no room.
I was once an extremely negative person, but God has taught me and brought me about-face so that now I am very positive and really have an aversion to being around negative people. Negative thinkers are not the type of people with whom I want to work or fellowship. Romans 12:21 shares one of the most powerful principles in God’s Word; it says that we overcome evil with good! It works in every situation.
Being good to people who have treated you badly is the way to win them and break the power of Satan. It is the open door to the radical blessings of God in our lives. Thinking good thoughts is the way to overcome the habit of thinking bad ones. Yes, good always overcomes evil.
God is stronger than the enemy: “You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world” (1 John 4:4 NIV). This makes reference to the fact that God and everything He represents is greater than the devil and anything he represents. God is good, the devil is evil; therefore, good always overcomes evil.
If we walk in the Spirit, we will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh (see Galatians 5:16). We don’t have to spend our lives fighting with sin, temptation, wrong thoughts, lusts of the flesh. We can choose the right thing, and the wrong thing will find no place to exist in us.
There will be times of fighting the good fight of faith, but as in any other war, if we win enough battles, we will eventually win the entire war.
LITTLE BY LITTLE
We overcome the devastations of our past ways of life little by little. We make a big mistake if we look at everything that is wrong in our lives due to many years of bad choices and expect to eradicate the results overnight.
God delivers us from our enemies little by little (see Deuteronomy 7:22). Expecting anything else only sets us up for discouragement. If you discover, as a result of reading this book, that you really have some problems with your thinking processes and need some big changes in your life, don’t even think it will all happen overnight or even quickly.
Having your mind totally renewed is a process that can take years. Be thrilled about your progress, and don’t be discouraged about what still needs to be done. Be excited about how far you have come, not depressed about how far you still have to go. Even realizing you have a problem is progress.
We have thoughts in literally thousands of different areas, and God deals with them one at a time. The Holy Spirit worked with me for a long time, helping me learn to think better thoughts about myself. Then we worked together on how I viewed other people, my past, my future, the world, my work, and so on. In the beginning of my journey with God, I felt defeated most of the time because I kept thinking about how far I had to go. No matter how much progress I made, I was overwhelmed by what still needed to be done.
Satan wanted to make sure I did not feel at all victorious, but eventually I realized I needed to be careful how I thought about my thoughts. I could think, I will never change. I’ll never be positive enough to overcome all the junk in my mind. Or I could think, I may still have problems in many areas of my thinking, but I have made progress, and I will continue making progress. Even if it takes the rest of my life, I will keep pressing forward and will enjoy new victories daily.
At first, thinking in this new way was awkward, it was work, it required effort. Eventually, being positive was natural, and being negative felt all wrong. Thinking wrong thoughts actually makes me uncomfortable now; I feel a burden on my spirit when I do. Just think how someone would feel who was perhaps twenty-fiveyears old and had never worn shoes in her entire life—when suddenly someone put shoes on her. She would definitely be uncomfortable. When God places this halter on our minds, it is uncomfortable at first; but it is the discipline that leads us into the good plan He has for us. He wants to transform our thinking, as this verse shows:
Do not be conformed to this world (this age), [fashioned after and adapted to its external, superficial customs], but be transformed (changed) by the [entire] renewal of your mind [by its new ideals and its new attitude], so that you may prove [for yourselves] what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God, even the thing which is good and acceptable and perfect [in His sight for you]. (Romans 12:2)
When our minds are completely renewed, we will prove for ourselves what is the good and perfect will of God. We must think in agreement with God in order to manifest His glory.
Don’t be in a hurry! I know from experience that it does not do any good. It only serves to make us feel defeated all the time. Our own wrong expectation sets us up for feelings of failure. I was a very impatient individual most of my life and finally realized that God would move in His timing, no matter how big of a hurry I was in.
I saw the problem in me once I began studying God’s Word. I wanted immediate change, and when I didn’t get it, I felt discouraged, frustrated, and defeated. But 1 Peter 5:10 states, “After you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace . . . will Himself complete and make you what you ought to be.”
Why does He allow us to suffer? I believe the suffering begins when we realize we have a problem and that we cannot change ourselves—only God can. As we wait on Him, trusting Him for deliverance, we will see victory. The waiting tests our faith to see if it is genuine. Everyone goes through the same process, so we may as well settle down and enjoy the journey. If you struggle with keeping your thoughts above life’s storms, I encourage you to read my book titled Battlefield of the Mind. It will help you learn to renew your mind and stand firmly on God’s promises for your life.
We can be transformed from people who worry all the time to people who enjoy peace of mind on a regular basis, but we will have to fight the good fight of faith and not give up if everything does not change as quickly as we would like.
FORGET YOUR PAST
Thinking about the past, especially the bad, does not do any good. We can learn from mistakes we have made, but beyond that, the best thing we can do is repent of our mistakes and forget them.
God is greater than any mistake you or I have made in the past, and we have all made plenty of them. Everyone has some skeletons in his closet that he would rather not expose. God Himself encourages us to forget the past and move on: “Do not [earnestly] remember the former things; neither consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs forth; do you not perceive and know it and will you no
t give heed to it? I will even make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert” (Isaiah 43:18-19).
God is always doing something new. When we mentally stay in the past, we miss our right now, and our future. We must make an effort not to spend time on things that are useless. We talked about worry and how it does no good, so why engage in it? Dwelling on the past is another excellent example of spending time doing something that does no good. We can apologize to people if we have hurt them, we can ask God to forgive us, but we cannot undo what has been done, so moving on is the only real solution. As I said, we can learn from our mistakes, which is actually very valuable.
Through not using wisdom, you may have ruined a relationship, lost a job, made bad financial choices, or gotten involved in something that did not succeed. Whatever the case might be, take the lesson you learned with you and move on—there is nothing else to do. We learn from the Word of God and from life’s experiences (see Proverbs 3:13).
God is merciful and does not hold our sins against us. Hebrews 4:15 states that He is a High Priest who understands our weaknesses and infirmities. That knowledge always comforts me, as I am sure it does you. God is not angry with you if you messed up.
The apostle Paul stated in Philippians 3:12-13 that one thing he definitely attempted to do was let go of what was behind and press on to the things that lay ahead. If he had to do this, perhaps we should not feel so bad when the same thing happens to us. Paul was a great apostle—he received about two-thirds of the New Testament by direct revelation from God—and yet he made mistakes and had to move past them. I am sure he did not permit himself to dwell on the past. We cannot get beyond anything we refuse to let go of mentally.
The Word confirms that not pressing on will rob us of the futures God has planned for us. Hebrews 11 talks of those who pressed on by faith, and verse 15 says, “If they had been thinking with [homesick] remembrance of that country from which they were emigrants, they would have found constant opportunity to return to it.” Peter is a great example of a man who made a terrible mistake and had to let it go. God had called and anointed Peter to do something great. He had been one of Jesus’ twelve disciples and was actually one of the three with whom Jesus frequently spent special time. Yet, at Jesus’ crucifixion (His greatest agony, the hour of His need), Peter disappointed Him by denying that he knew Him. Peter was afraid; it was just that simple.
On resurrection morning, when Mary found the tomb empty, the angel she saw told her to go tell the disciples and Peter that Jesus had risen from the dead (see Mark 16:7). It has always really blessed me that the angel mentioned Peter by name. The others were lumped into a group called “disciples,” but Peter was singled out. Why? Peter probably felt as if he no longer even had the right to be part of the group; surely his grief was intense.
I am sure Peter felt he had destroyed his chance to serve God, that he had made a fool of himself and failed miserably. Peter had gone out and wept bitterly after he realized what he had done, and that was his time of repentance. Since he had repented, Jesus had already forgiven him, but then He let Peter know that he did not have to live in his mistake. Jesus included Peter in His plans for the future.
If you have made mistakes and find yourself still stuck in the past, I strongly urge you to make a decision to let go. Stop thinking about the past, stop talking about it, and press on.
I also encourage you not to dwell excessively on past victories. Don’t turn your past miracles and mighty feats into memorials that you admire; it may prevent you from doing even greater things in the future.
Matthew 6:3 teaches us not to let our right hand know what our left hand is doing concerning good works. I believe this statement partially means not to dwell on the good things we have done. Give God the glory, thank Him for letting you be involved, and then move to the next thing He has for you.
I led a women’s ministry in St. Louis for about seven years. We built a weekly congregation with four hundred to five hundred women in attendance. We had wonderful times, learned and grew together, saw mighty works in women’s lives, but the time came when it needed to be over. God had directed Dave and me to take our ministry to a larger part of the world. In order to do so, we had to let go of what was behind. It was hard to do and even harder for many of those in attendance. After all, I was moving on to something new, but some felt as if I was abandoning them. For years after we disbanded those weekly meetings, people kept talking to me about “the good ole days” when we had the women’s ministry.
I was excited about the future, but they were hanging on to the past. Eventually many of those women were no longer involved in my life and ministry. When God moves, we must move with Him, or we will get left behind.
One of the women actually apologized to me on her deathbed, saying she had been angry with me for over ten years because she felt I had abandoned the women who depended on me. Of course, she realized she was wrong, but she had needlessly suffered emotionally for many years because she was hanging on to the “good ole past.”
Had I allowed the emotions of my friends to dictate my decision, I would not be seeing the good fruit I see today worldwide. Life is always flowing and going somewhere; we must be able to go with the flow. Don’t stagnate and make memorials out of what God might be finished with.
We will not find peace while living in the past. God’s power is available for us to live today; yesterday is gone, and we must let it go mentally and emotionally.
FILL YOUR THOUGHTS WITH FAITH
Although we have already discussed worry, I want to say a few more things regarding excessive thinking about the future. We would all love to know what the future holds, but nobody knows except God and those to whom He reveals coming events. He may, from time to time, give us supernatural insight into what the future holds, but generally speaking, we must live by faith daily.
Having faith means that we don’t see or have any natural proof of what tomorrow may hold. We believe for good things, we expect good things, and we wait on God. We may be disappointed occasionally, but in Christ we can always get quickly reappointed. We can shake off the disappointment or discouragement and move on with what God is doing.
I was pondering just this morning the future of our ministry. We have been in ministry since 1976, and many things have changed during those years. I realize that things will not be the same ten years from now, but I don’t know exactly what they will be. Dave and I are getting a bit older, and we realize that we will not always be able to maintain the heavy travel schedule that we have now.
When I try to look into the future with my thoughts, I must admit I don’t really see anything definite. I intend to keep doing what I am doing and prayerfully helping more and more people. I just believe whatever God does, it will all be good. I believe it is important for many of our readers to realize that even ministers and authors don’t always have exact direction from the Lord; we walk by faith just like everyone else. I trust that God will always take care of us, that He will always do the right thing. God does not make mistakes—people do. Often we make ours from excessive personal planning that becomes so important to us we miss what God wants to do.
Making plans for the future is part of our thinking process. If we go overboard, we can cause ourselves a lot of misery. We expect things to go the way we have planned, then when they don’t, we are unhappy and lose our peace.
God’s plan is always better than ours, so we should be careful about making too many of our own. I always say, make a plan and follow your plan, but be ready to let it go quickly if God shows you something else. God should always have the right of way and the right to interfere with our plans at any time.
We cannot live without making plans; if we tried to live without a plan, most of us would do nothing. But there are people who are obsessive about making plans, and I have noticed they seem upset a good part of the time. Why? Simply because they are not in control, but God is. Make plans in areas that you need to, but don’t plan your future so precisel
y that you create problems for yourself. One of the best pieces of advice we can receive is to live one day at a time.
These verses of Scripture teach us that God will get His way in the end, so be careful about excessive planning:
• The plans of the mind and orderly thinking belong to man, but from the Lord comes the [wise] answer of the tongue. Proverbs 16:1
• A man’s mind plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps and makes them sure. Proverbs 16:9
Our minds can come up with what seem to be great ideas, but in reality they will not work because they are our plans, not God’s. The Bible says that there is a way that seems right to man, but the end of it is death (see Proverbs 16:25). That does not mean we will literally die because of our plans, but it does mean they won’t add to our lives, they will subtract from them. They will cause trouble and not minister peace and joy; they won’t work.
We should thank God that our plans don’t always work, once again remembering that God is smarter than we are, and His plans are better. I want His will in my life more than I want my own, and I am sure you feel the same way.
How much mental time do you spend planning what you will do tomorrow, or even the rest of your life? If it is too much, then I suggest you spend more time telling the Lord that you want His will, asking Him to make His plans come to pass for you.
The Word says that if we will roll our works on the Lord, He will cause our thoughts to become agreeable to His, and our plans will succeed because they will actually be His plans (see Proverbs 16:3).