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Peggy Joyce Ruth, aka "the Psalm 91 Lady" is author of a variety of Psalm 91 book titles with over six million copies in print. She taught a weekly Adult Bible Study for more than 35 years in her church in Central Texas as she shared how to make God’s Word your final authority. Known for her easy-to-understand style of communicating the Word of God and warm storytelling, Peggy Joyce's heart is that her books and teachings will bring you into the same freedom from fear she experienced and help you put God's Word to work in your life.
Today we're going to be talking about You Are What You Think. Now, how many of you have heard the old sign, You are what you eat? Well, I'm sure we've all heard that. Physically speaking, there's some truth to that. What you put in your body, what you eat now, is turning into muscles and tissue and blood.
Speaker 1:So, to an extent, physically, you are basically what you eat, you know. But that's only physically speaking. Today, I want us to go a step further than that, and I want us to give a little bit of food for thought. I want us to say today that you are what you think. Not just physically, but you are what you think mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and every other way.
Speaker 1:Now, the thought that you hold in your mind will eventually become what you are in every area of your life. That's why we have to watch our thoughts. So, think for just a moment with me. Are there some areas in your life where things consistently seem to not be working? They're just not working out.
Speaker 1:Are you constantly being pulled down and defeated in certain areas? Maybe it's an area of maybe some bad habit where you've had that bad habit for a long time and you can't seem to get the victory. It's not fun to go around the same mountain over and over. Now, some people have more areas of failure than others, but all of us, if we're honest now, we have some areas where we don't see quite as much victory as we'd like. And if we're continuously falling short of victories in certain areas, and we're finding ourselves falling there over and over, we finally react.
Speaker 1:Some react by just accepting the defeat and living in an under poor life. Some will react now by getting bitter and sometimes blaming other people. Others will just get into guilt and condemnation. Some will get defensive and make decisions. They think that I'm doing everything right, and I I just don't know what's wrong.
Speaker 1:But there are some people who react by getting busy and seeking God until they find an answer. And we can't just sit back and let whatever happens just happen. We've got to say, God, use me because I want this to be straightened out for our nation. So, today, let me suggest one area that could very well be causing problems. Now, we've talked a lot about the confessions of our mouth, but I want us to go just a step further and I want us to see the part that our mind plays in answering that when problems arise in our life.
Speaker 1:Now, Ephesians four verse 23, it's a very interesting study to go through the Word of God and find out what the Word says about our mind. It has a lot to say about our mind. In verse 23, it says, Be renewed in the spirit of your mind. That's God telling us, to be renewed, be new in the spirit of your mind. Okay, now this is our foundational scripture.
Speaker 1:I was amazed at how much the Word has to say about the mind. The Bible says, You be renewed. Where? In the spirit of your mind or in your spiritual mind. Another place it says, Put on the new mind.
Speaker 1:When we're born again, instantly, spirit is new, but the mind has to be renewed. It's interesting. The moment you accept Jesus, your spirit is is instantly changed, but your mind is not. The mind has to be renewed, and God expects us to start doing that. Now God created man in his image, and then he put within man a mind that has tremendous power.
Speaker 1:It's amazing, the mind power that we have. Now, I want you to think about Adam before the fall. He was able to name all the animals. Think about that. And then even remember what he named them.
Speaker 1:I might could go through and give them all a name, but then to come back and remember what name you gave them would be something else. So think about that. That took tremendous mind power to be able to do that. Now how or where did Adam get that kind of power? Okay, now I want us to go back and I want us to look at the breakdown of creation.
Speaker 1:When God created the earth, He created the plants and He created them with a body, basically. Then he created the animals, and he gave the animals a body and a soul. But last, he created man and gave him a body, soul, and a spirit. And then he gave his last creation, man, the authority and dominion over the entire earth. Man was the only creature with a spirit.
Speaker 1:Therefore, we see that the authority and the power, it's always coming now through the spirit. But our soulish realm, the mind and the will, they have the choice to decide to turn on that power. Now, when man fell, like everything else, the power and the authority got perverted. Now, the power and the authority didn't die. Adam didn't lose power and authority in the garden, but it became corrupted because of the sin and the flesh.
Speaker 1:And man started seeking mind power instead of the power of the spirit. And that's been a problem since the beginning of time. Now, are cults today that still operate in mind power, mind control. But when the mind is an end in itself, it's destructive because it's self, our our flesh, that's on the throne, and that's never gonna work. Anytime a person looks to self as the source, there's going to be destruction.
Speaker 1:Okay, now that's what God was saying in Romans eight verse six when he says the mind set on the flesh, self ability. When the mind set on that, it's gonna bring death. But the mind, he said, set on the spirit is going to bring life. Well, that one scripture alone should make us stop and say, okay, I don't I don't want my mind to be set on the flesh. It brings death.
Speaker 1:So, Lord, help me to set my mind on the spirit because that's what's gonna bring me life because it's spoken so clearly right here in the word of God. We don't have to throw away the power that's available. We just have to have our mind renewed to operate out of the spirit man by believing the Word. Now, when Christ redeemed us, we were restored back to what man had had in the garden. The difference now is that we've been resurrected on the inside of Jesus, and we operate now in His power and in His authority.
Speaker 1:But our mind now is the key. So, we're gonna put on the new mind. First Corinthians two verse 16 tells us, we have the mind of Christ, but we have to put on that new mind. It's not enough for us to be told we have the mind of Christ. We've got to operate there.
Speaker 1:We've got to take on the mind of Christ. If it could ever become a reality that we're operating in Christ's mind, there is absolutely no end to what we could accomplish. Never again would we ever be tempted to blame God when things didn't go right. The the same spirit, the same power that raised Christ from the dead, it dwells on the inside of us. And in Romans eight verse 11, it says, if the spirit that raised Christ from the dead dwells in you, then he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal body through his spirit, through the spirit that indwells you.
Speaker 1:Okay, now the spirit that's in you can give life to your mortal body. We need to realize the spirit that dwells in us can give life to this mortal body. Now, if we realize that, then never again would we consider ourselves helpless. Never again would we consider ourselves prisoners of our circumstances because we've been given back all the power and all the authority that was taken away. The secret is putting on the new mind and thinking the way God thinks.
Speaker 1:And we can know how God thinks because we have the Word. Now, sometimes people won't put the effort out to find out what the Word has to say, But that's not God's fault. If all we have to do is look in the Word of God and we can know how God thinks, and that's how He's telling us to think. We can operate in the new authority or we can go on living a powerless life. But it's not because the power is not there.
Speaker 1:And it's not God's refusal. It's not His failure when something goes wrong. We have authority over every circumstance. You know, we know the Word teaches that, but it's hard to imagine that. We have authority over every circumstance that affects us personally.
Speaker 1:Now, we don't have authority over another person's will, but we do have authority over our circumstances. Okay, now let me give you an example of the authority. All people have thoughts going on in their mind all the time. Your mind's never still. It's got thoughts going on constantly.
Speaker 1:No one is without a thought process. But what makes the difference is whether we decide that we're going to think constructively with the power of the mind of Christ or whether we're going to think with our old, fleshly mind full of fears and inhibitions. Because most people, they're making all their decisions out of fears. Fear is such a huge enemy to the body of Christ. Now, the thoughts that go on in our mind, they are creative forces.
Speaker 1:Our thoughts are not just abstract. They literally have substance now in the spiritual realm. Now, we live in the same world, but some people fail and some people are successful. Yet, we're all living in the same world. Some are sick and some are healthy.
Speaker 1:Some people are happy and some people are miserable. We're quick to blame all of that on our circumstances, but some people living in the same exact circumstances change their world by how they think. Even people who have the same demonic assignments coming against them, They'll have different results based on how they think. And sometimes we don't realize that we can change what's going on in our life just simply by how we think. Some will fail, while others in almost identical circumstances will finally pull out and succeed.
Speaker 1:Now, I've noticed that some people stay sick while others, with the same assignment of infirmity, will begin to learn how to walk in health. Now, you'll see people who remain miserable all of their lives and bitter, while others who maybe have undergone even worse circumstances will come out from under the oppression and they'll get set free. And you say, Well, what makes the difference? Why is that? Because we all live in the same world.
Speaker 1:Is God playing favorites? Is He answering prayers at random? No. The difference is within ourselves. The difference is within our mind.
Speaker 1:We literally are the product of our own thought life. Now, in Proverbs 23 verse seven, it tells us, for as a man thinks within himself, that's how he is. That... I mean, that says it pretty clearly. As a man thinks within himself, that's who he is.
Speaker 1:Think about it. You are the product of what you continually think on. Every person builds his own world with the power that Christ has placed within him. The mind of Christ, the thoughts of Christ, His power, all of that is ours, and it's ours to operate in it. When we do, we'll begin to change our circumstances for the better.
Speaker 1:Okay, now I'm going give you a little bit of background information. Let's look step by step now how we can take the renewed mind and change our circumstances. First, we need to realize that when God created this world, He set it in motion to be governed by spiritual and physical laws. Science has taught us how to live under these physical laws very successfully. You know, we're not having any problems with that.
Speaker 1:We've learned how to operate with gravity. We've learned how to operate with all the physical laws. We've learned to understand the natural functioning of the world. But sometimes we forget that the spiritual laws are just as sure. They're just as reliable as the physical laws.
Speaker 1:We never doubt the natural laws. We know they're gonna work. Man's been living by those natural laws. But so often, we forget that spiritual laws are just as sure. These spiritual laws were put in operation by God to bring good to us every single time.
Speaker 1:They were never intended to bring evil into our lives. Did you know that it's a very natural thing to be healthy? Even for people in the world, it's a very normal and natural thing for a person to walk in health. God created our bodies with a natural immune system. He put that in our bodies.
Speaker 1:Even the cells in our bodies are made to replace themselves every seven to eleven years. The body was designed to be healthy. It's almost abnormal for the body to be sick. But until our mind is renewed, we look at sickness and we think, Well, that's normal. This is the flu season.
Speaker 1:We're going to get the flu. Or that disease just runs in the family, so somebody's going come down with it. But it's really not normal. The body was designed to be healthy. It's almost a natural, normal thing to be prosperous.
Speaker 1:There's no way to observe nature and not be convinced that abundance is one of the natural laws. But these things, we're going to keep walking in these things in the negative until we get in inside of us, until we convince ourselves and start believing God's Word. You can plant a seed of corn in the ground, and what do you get back? You get a stalk of corn with many ears on each stalk, and each ear has hundreds of seeds, and all of that comes from one tiny little seed that you saved. Now, if that's not abundance, I I don't know what is.
Speaker 1:But God shows us through nature that to prosper is the norm. Look at the fields. They renew themselves every year. God has an abundance of health. He has an abundance of happiness.
Speaker 1:He has an abundance of prosperity for every single person. It's it's a a natural law. So, God is not the one holding back the supply. When there's lack, it's how we've operated the law of the harvest, And he wants us now to learn to operate in that law, but we have to change our thinking if we want to have what God is offering. Now, it's natural and it's in harmony with God's laws for us to be whole body, soul, and spirit all the time.
Speaker 1:That's what he wants for us. That's how God intended us to function. In third John two, I wish above all things that you may prosper and be in health just as your soul prospers. And that's something that a lot of us memorize, but are we walking in it? Our mind is a part of the soulish realm.
Speaker 1:So, he's saying, I wish for you to prosper and be in health. That's what I want for you. But that's only going to happen as our mind begins to operate and think the way that God thinks. We can't prosper God's way and walk in his health other than having our mind prospering. In other words, our mind has to be renewed to think like God thinks.
Speaker 1:Our mind has to prosper and be renewed to know what is natural for us to enjoy. And God wants us to enjoy all the good things that He's provided. Now, the spiritual laws were set up to provide every good thing for us, And the word of God is our handbook to teach us how to operate in those laws. So he didn't just give us the laws, but he gave us a handbook, the bible, to tell us how to operate in the laws. But you know what?
Speaker 1:So many people haven't even gotten in the word to know what it tells us. Anytime you find someone who continually experiences failure, where they constantly fail in different areas and it's become a lifestyle for them, they're going to find out that in some areas, they're resisting the spiritual laws. And sometimes, if they're having unsuccessful things happen, they need to stop and say, Okay, Lord, show me where I'm operating in these spiritual laws the wrong way. Every demonic assignment that ever comes against us is, first of all, to lure us now to violate God's spiritual laws. That's what the enemy is constantly trying to do.
Speaker 1:Because the enemy knows well that when we learn to walk in harmony with God's laws, then health and prosperity and life, is just gonna spring forth abundantly. Your body has no more to say about its condition than the clay that the potter uses. But the master potter has given us the ability now to choose with our mind and our will what's going to become of your body, what's going to become of your life. Your body will conform to the ideas and the thoughts that you hold in your mind. And that's what determines the condition of every area of our lives.
Speaker 1:It's what we continually think on that makes the difference. So, start thinking about what is it that I think on the most? Am I thinking on Oh, no. I dread what's coming next or Oh, no. This could really be serious.
Speaker 1:Sometimes we're not even paying any attention to what's running through our mind. Some people believe that out there in the world, there are just a lot of mixed opportunities. They're all jumbled together. Some people are just a melting pot of turmoil confusion and health or sickness. You know, it's just all around them.
Speaker 1:They maybe have a little peace here and there, but all of those things, they think they're just out there at random and they believe that just by happenchance, each person falls into who knows what. They they just say, we don't have any choice over that. We don't... I don't know what's gonna happen to me tomorrow, but we do. We can be in control of that.
Speaker 1:And if it happens to be a negative pit, they believe that that person stays there until perhaps God in his mercy comes and pulls them out. God has put good things around us and it's our choice. It's our decision how we're going to use it, how we're going to put it into practice. Well, that's not the way it works when people just think that whatever's out there, that's my lot in life. There's not a mixture of good and bad spiritual laws.
Speaker 1:There are good spiritual laws, but we have to choose to walk in them. Number one: Every spiritual law is good. Everything God has put into existence, it's good. All the spiritual laws were given for our good. And number two, no one just happenchance falls into his situation.
Speaker 1:There is always a reason. And in the third place, we don't have to wait and hope that maybe God will have mercy on our situation and pull us out. God has already provided everything we need, he says, for life and godliness. So the ball's in our court. It's our move.
Speaker 1:And all it takes is for us to have our minds renewed to the word and change our way of thinking to think the way God thinks. That needs to be a prayer that we pray every morning. Lord, I wanna think the way you think. I wanna think the way your word tells me to think. The word is how God thinks.
Speaker 1:Thoughts have substance in the spiritual realm. We don't see a thought any more than we see angels, but a lot of things are tangible in the spiritual realm that are not tangible in the physical realm. If we could ever understand that, we'll understand that when a person believes in a certain negative thought, that negative thought is able to bind you in the spiritual realm and make you a prisoner, just as surely as a rope can bind you in the physical realm. By the same token, when we begin to take in good thoughts, when we start thinking the way God thinks, start thinking those good thoughts. And when we realize those thoughts are tangible, it can set us free to operate God's way.
Speaker 1:It's just a choice when we realize this and say, Lord, I I I realize you're telling me this so completely. I wanna walk in this. Just as surely as a knife in the physical realm can cut away the ropes that bind us, we're gonna find out that what God has set in motion, it can set us free. We're never going to be permanently free until we change our thinking. Our thoughts are going to either bind us or they're going to free us, and it has to do with how we think.
Speaker 1:It doesn't take a lot of discernment to see people that you know, some people that you know well, who are prisoners because of how they think, while others are set free because of how they think. It has to do with what's going on in our mind. Galatians six twenty two lists out the fruit of the spirit. So often, we'll look down that list and we come to self control, and we become afraid because we don't want to operate by the arm of flesh. Self control sounds like it's coming against the gospels, but the secret is in Hosea 14 verse eight.
Speaker 1:God says, it is I who answers and looks after you. I am like a luxurious cypress. From me comes your fruit. But we have to we have to take that scripture and put it into practice. It only happens as we allow him to bring forth his fruit.
Speaker 1:Okay. Our fruit comes from God. The fruit of the spirit comes from God. All nine of these manifestations are fruit of the Holy Spirit. It's the fruit of God's character.
Speaker 1:Now, the way we achieve this fruit of self control is by yielding our self, yielding our thoughts to that which is greater than we are. It's always in the mind that we have to get our mind thinking correctly. And that's what true self control really is. Self control that's done strictly by the flesh is going to fail. If it's sheer willpower, we can grit our teeth and almost kill ourselves trying, but God is wanting us to do it His way.
Speaker 1:Sometimes we're saying, Lord, I'm going to do it Your way if it kills me. And if we're doing it by the arm of flesh, we're going to find that that kind of self control, it'll kill us. It'll never work. We'll fall away and it won't last. But true self control, which is one of the fruit of the spirit, it comes when we begin to yield ourselves and yield our thoughts to that which is greater than we are.
Speaker 1:To yield our thoughts to begin thinking just exactly like God thinks. We can think the way God thinks, and we may have to get in the Word to find out how He thinks, but we can operate that way. That kind of self control is going to last. That's how you overcome bad habits. That's how you walk in victory is thinking like God thinks, thinking like the Word tells us to think.
Speaker 1:Okay, let's make some application. How do you yield your thoughts to God? Or how do you discipline your thoughts? How do you walk in this fruit of self control? Well, some people find it really hard to think steadily on any one subject for any length of time.
Speaker 1:I've often found myself jumping from one thought to another. I'll be thinking on one thing and pretty soon I'm off thinking about something Now, that's fine if you're just enjoying a smorgasbord of godly thoughts. That's fine. But if we're bouncing back and forth from worldly thoughts and negative thinking to thoughts that line up with the Word of God, we're breaking a spiritual law. It's what we're doing.
Speaker 1:We're not living in harmony. There's conflict within us and it stops the flow of God's blessing. Now, if you're serious about yielding your thoughts to God, then just try this little exercise. Choose a Scripture and practice meditating and thinking on that scripture for a length of time. Think on it.
Speaker 1:Write it out. Let it run through your mind. I've been amazed that when I do that, at what I find that's new and fresh. Because sometimes you'll read the scripture and it won't mean that much. But as you think on it and as you say it over and over, all of a sudden it just starts coming alive.
Speaker 1:If I'll take a portion of Scripture and just read it over and over and do a little bit of cross references and maybe look up some of the words in the dictionary, If I do that consistently, you know, long enough, it's going to become mine. And then I notice that I quit vacillating in my thinking in that area. The truth suddenly becomes my opinion and becomes my conviction. If we keep putting that word in there, then it's not like we have to change how we think. The word itself will change us.
Speaker 1:Now, it's hard for some people to say concentrated in on one thought for any length of time, But, if we want to learn how to operate in God's power, and if we want to see it work, then we have to practice. Anything you get good at, you practice. We have to practice putting the Word to work. Practice thinking on the Word. I like to read a portion of Scripture and then play it out in my mind and think it through and think maybe about being in a certain situation and what I would do in that particular situation.
Speaker 1:We need to practice thinking, how could I most often put the word to work if this particular thing happened? Paul and Silas were in a dungeon, and they were singing praises. Don't just read over that quickly because you need to meditate on what went on that caused them to be able to do that. Meditate on being in that kind of discomfort. You know, most of time we just read and they were singing praises.
Speaker 1:We don't think about the discomfort they were in that they had to overcome to do what God's word told them to do. Perhaps with thoughts of how unfairly you've been treated. A lot of times we think on that. You know, this was so unfair what happened to me. And, those thoughts are trying to bombard your mind.
Speaker 1:God, I I was serving you. How could this have happened? Anger and discouragement will hit our emotions when we think this was not fair, what went on. Lord, nothing's working. What what good am I doing?
Speaker 1:You know, Lord, don't know. I'm just ready to throw the towel in. And then stop and think about how it would feel to move yourself over in your thinking because we're going find ourselves many times thinking incorrectly. But we can stop and we can choose to move our mind over. Paul and Silas had to have done that.
Speaker 1:They had to move themselves in their mind until they concentrated on the goodness of God or they could never have been singing praises at midnight when they had been beaten. And so, they were hurting, and yet they were able to praise God and they were able to sing praises to Him. They took themselves out of the negative. Maybe they thought on the brevity of life compared to eternity and the joy of a face to face encounter with the Lord. Maybe that's what they were thinking about.
Speaker 1:But, someway, Paul and Silas moved their thinking from the natural realm into the spiritual realm. Now, we have to practice, and the way we practice is about putting ourselves in their situation and imagining ways in which they must have moved themselves or how they could have moved themselves until praise just bursts forth out of your mouth like it did with Paul and Silas. When you think on the goodness of God, it doesn't matter where you are or what's going on. If you think on the goodness of God long enough, suddenly, you're gonna find out that it overcomes the negative. Meditate on the Old Testament story of the woman who just kept saying all is well until she got her dead son back alive.
Speaker 1:So many times we have things that happen in our life. You know, how many times are we saying, Lord, it's okay. All is well. I'm trusting you. Because most of the time, we're not doing that.
Speaker 1:We're not saying all is well. We're saying, Lord, this is not working out right. But her son was dead, and she was able to still keep telling people all is well. Picture yourself facing some impossible situation and then practice meditating on the promises and meditating on the goodness of God. Now, that's not easy to do.
Speaker 1:It wasn't easy for Paul and Silas. It wasn't easy for this lady whose son had just died. But we can do that when we make ourselves concentrate on the Word of God. We need to do that until it's a very easy and natural thing to say, All is well. So, begin to realize it doesn't matter what I see right now.
Speaker 1:I know God's Word is true. And no matter how bad a situation looks to us and Oh, Lord, I don't even see an answer out of this, if we concentrate on how good God is, how reliable His Word is, and keep meditating on that, God will show us away and walk us out of it. We're not going to change our thinking to think like God thinks until we meditate and practice, until it becomes what He thinks becomes our thinking, becomes our conviction. Now, hearing it once or twice is not enough to have that truth rise up in the face of an emergency. We've just read through a scripture every once in a while.
Speaker 1:Jack and I took our four year old grandson, Cullen, to the Bass Pro Shop right after it opened, and there were so many people you couldn't even stir them with a stick. But I told him, if we happened to get separated from each other, I want you to sit down right where you are, sit down on the floor, and Nana will know you're right in this area, and we'll come and find you very quickly. He was just... I think he was probably about three years old by this time, maybe four. Well, I had him repeat the instructions back to me.
Speaker 1:Well, sure enough, we stopped at the snack bar to get him something to eat, and I looked down, and he wasn't there. He was gone. You know, when that happens, boy, tell you what, your heart kinda skips a beat when have a little one you're responsible for. So I found a place, stepped up on something high enough, where I could look out across the crowd. And, thank goodness, there he was running as hard as he could run.
Speaker 1:He was trying to find us. Well, when I caught him, I said, Why didn't you sit down like we talked about? Why didn't you do what Nana told you to do? And he said, I forgot. Well, see, in the heat of a moment, we're gonna find out with adrenaline flowing, whether we're four years old or whether we're a 100 years old, we're gonna find fear engulfing us, and we won't remember the things that we've just casually heard about.
Speaker 1:We have to make effort to do whatever it takes to renew our mind to think the way God thinks, to find out what God's Word tells us to to do in a certain situation. We can't read it once or twice. We've got to get inside of us. So when we do find ourselves in a certain situations, automatically we'll start doing what God's Word tells us to do. That kind of thinking doesn't just happen automatically.
Speaker 1:And it doesn't happen when we've just read the promise once or twice. You have to put that kind of thinking inside of yourself. That's our responsibility. Practice until you can yield your thought life to concentrate on how God thinks. If we don't make the effort, our thoughts won't just naturally go where they're supposed to go.
Speaker 1:They just won't. We have to say it and say it over and over until it becomes a part of us. Now, out of fear and out of discouragement, you're gonna be concentrating on failure and defeat. But if we'll just make the effort and put this Word inside of us, then it's going to become the natural thing to do when something happens, to just run to the Word of God. It takes practice, but it's so worth it.
Speaker 1:It's only in yielding ourselves to someone or something higher than ourselves that we'll ever be able to discipline ourselves physically and mentally. Now, in Philippians four nineteen, we quote, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Practically, all of us have that memorized, and we'll say that. And we put the emphasis on I can. I can do all things.
Speaker 1:But the emphasis needs to be on I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. We need to realize it's got to be a partnership with the Lord. Now, that comes from yielding our mind and realizing and picturing I have been resurrected inside of Christ Jesus. Now, it's really no longer I that's even living, but it's Christ living through me. And we have to say that many, many times for it to become a reality, for it to grab hold of us.
Speaker 1:But it's the Christ living in me, the life that I now live. I live by faith in God. So, let your mind dwell on that until that becomes your thinking, where it's not just the word of God, but it literally becomes your thinking. God wants us to picture ourselves operating in the power of God. Now, when I lay my hands on someone and pray for their health, it's like a revelation that before that prayer is even finished, we've got to come to a place where something is reversed.
Speaker 1:We realize that infirmity has to leave. We have to believe the word so much that when we say what the word says, that we've gone through it enough and it's become a part of us that we know. Just know it's going to go God's way. It's going to work the way the Word tells us it's going to work. Now, I have to picture that.
Speaker 1:I have to realize that a process has started to restore that person to hell that I'm praying for. Or myself. That I have to realize that God has started restoring my hell if I believe the Word enough and I say it until it just kind of clicks on the inside of me. It makes all the difference in the world when we begin to yield our mind to believe God's word. But you're not gonna believe it really counts.
Speaker 1:If you've just said it once or twice, you say, oh, that's a that's a wonderful promise. You have to say it until it becomes a part of you, until it becomes your way of thinking. Meditate on Christ on the cross and spiritually see that sin and our sin and our sickness is entering into His body. When we finally see that He's taken everything that's coming against us and He took it on His body. It literally became His.
Speaker 1:He took it for us. And the consequences of that sin... Picture the fact that it's leaving from the one that you're praying for. It's leaving from you when you're praying for yourself. Concentrate on the beating that Jesus took.
Speaker 1:Picture every category of sickness that you can imagine being paid for with each stroke of the whip. Picture the bruises that he received for every iniquity curse that's been handed down in your family Because all of our families have different iniquity curses, but those curses can be broken with the word of God. But it has to be where we read those scriptures, not once or twice, but until they become a part of us where we know that's God's word and we put it to work. Picture it. Meditate on it until it becomes unthinkable that you would take something on your body that Christ has already taken for you.
Speaker 1:We need to come to a place where we say, Lord, if I take that on my body, I'm saying that what you did was not enough. We've gotta come to the place where we get that kind of thinking out of our mind. The bad situation that we put up with and and the ones that we hang on to, they're coming from wrong thinking. It's not necessarily even from things that we've experienced. It's always coming from wrong thinking.
Speaker 1:We have the mind of Christ and God wants us to operate in that mind in the power of His thoughts. Now, we're living in the part of the country that has tornados. So you need to be honest with yourself. If you think of a tornado, and especially if town's maybe in a tornado watch, what are the thoughts in your mind? Oh, my God.
Speaker 1:I pray this passes over. I remember what it did to Waco. I remember what it did to Topeka and Oklahoma City. And and you start thinking all the things where things went wrong. Are those the thoughts in your mind?
Speaker 1:If they are, you're the one that has to change that. And and we've got to come to the place where we realize Jesus took authority over the storm and his name. He expects us to do it too. It's not gonna happen just automatically. We're we're gonna have to read those scriptures until they become a part of us.
Speaker 1:We have to take our Psalm 91 covenant and realize that covenant is true. It's real. But we have to believe it until we put it to work and know that it's going to happen. When we yield our mind over to his way of thinking, we're going to find that the bad conditions in our body, the bad conditions in our circumstances and in our situations have been coming from wrong thoughts that were in our mind. Every time we're thinking about something that's not godly, that's sickness and disease and all these things, it's coming from wrong thinking, and we have to change that thinking.
Speaker 1:These circumstances are just outward manifestations of the thoughts that we've come to a place where we live with, or where we've not yielded ourselves over to God's kind of thinking. And that's not something we can do overnight. That's not something we can read one time and make it happen. That's something that we've got to say over and over and over until it literally becomes a part of us. People have never been able to overcome a certain sin in their life, or they've not been able to overcome some assignment of the enemy.
Speaker 1:Maybe it's an outburst of anger. Maybe it's self pity, disappointments, insecurity. Maybe some people can't get over drinking, jealousy, because they've never yielded their mind over to begin to think God's thoughts. When we dwell on what Christ did, when we dwell on what's available to us, it's going to start releasing that power to change our thinking. It usually won't happen in just thinking about it once or twice or every once in a while.
Speaker 1:It's something that we have to absolutely put to work in our life. And when we do, we'll begin to see victory. In Proverbs 23 verse seven, it says, As a man thinks within himself, so he is. That's one that I felt like the Lord said that we need to memorize because as a man thinks in himself, that's who he is. Now, we are what we think, and what we think is what molds our character.
Speaker 1:The thoughts you think on continually make up who and what you are. Spiritually, it affects your health. It affects your prosperity, your character, your attitude, your strength, everything that we are. What you think of is going to bring either victory or defeat. You know, when we stop and really realize that what I think on is either gonna bring me victory or defeat, that should get our attention.
Speaker 1:The power comes out of the spirit, but the yielded mind now is what releases that power to change your circumstances. Did you know that where you go and what you do is an outward sign of the thought patterns that are going on on the inside of you? Whether you find yourself in a beer tavern or whether you find yourself in church, it comes directly as a result of how you think and what you think. So ask yourself, what is my thinking? What's my thinking pattern?
Speaker 1:If you don't like what you're doing, if you don't like where you're going, change what you think on. It's not just a matter of saying, okay, I'm just gonna make a choice. I'm not gonna go there. When you change your thinking, you'll automatically start doing it right. I went through a period of time when I never could seem to get my house under control.
Speaker 1:It was constantly cluttered. Now, we all go through times when we get behind and our house gets cluttered, but I'm talking about it was a good while when I never got on top of it. And I would give it a good cleaning, put everything away, and it'd be maybe two days or a week, and everything would be piled up again. Now, since it was a constant harassment, I had prayed a lot about it. And one day, the Lord impressed me to get honest with myself and check out my thinking.
Speaker 1:And deep down, what was I really thinking? And when I got honest, I had to ask myself, what does my thinking have to do with the cluttered house? Well, I promise you it does. You can check out your thinking, and if you'll be honest with yourself, you'll find out why things aren't going right in your life. And I'm not talking about your mate's life.
Speaker 1:I'm talking about... Make this personal. When I got honest, this was my thinking. I remember that I started thinking, You know, I'm so busy writing Bible studies. I'm so busy counseling and doing the work of the ministry that I really don't have time to keep my house in good order all the time.
Speaker 1:But I was appeasing myself with those subconscious thoughts. And, I thought, that's okay, because I thought I've chosen the more important things in life. Well, the Lord impressed me to examine my line of thinking. It was true that I was busy. It was true that what I was doing was important from an eternal perspective, but my deductive thinking was wrong.
Speaker 1:I did not have to conclude that all of that that I was doing could keep me from keeping my house in order. God said, you don't have to decide, okay, you're doing a lot of good things, so that makes it okay that your house is not an order. And he said, That kind of thinking is wrong. Well, that caused me to decide that a well kept house was not a priority. But my thinking was coming from the failure to trust God to show me how to make it work.
Speaker 1:And so, sometimes, we accept things out of our reasoning. And God says, I want you to hear Me and hear what My reasoning is, what I'm telling you. There was fear. There was lack of trust. There was reason in my thinking.
Speaker 1:I reasoned that I was already, quote, overworked. So how could I add more to my schedule? Deep down, my thinking was that I didn't want to have to put forth the effort that I thought it was gonna take, on and on. And the results of that kind of thinking was a cluttered house and constantly striving to keep on top of it. And that would never have changed if my thinking had not changed.
Speaker 1:And I remember one day, the Lord said, You're thinking wrong. The Lord had me begin to think on the fact that in spite of having a very busy schedule, I could hear God on how to make it work if I would just seek His face. And He showed me ways for keeping the house without hindering the ministry. When I started bringing God into it, trusting Him to help me and give me ideas, He began showing me how to make it work. Just simple little things.
Speaker 1:And it became a priority not to live in clutter. Now, I'm not concerned when occasionally you get cluttered. That's gonna happen at times. But if it becomes a pattern, I know immediately that I need to adjust my thinking. When you check these different areas in your life and make the effort to change your thinking, then you're gonna see changes in the natural.
Speaker 1:We have to change our thinking first. I had convinced myself it was okay because I was busy. But you've got to change how you think. And because sometimes we don't realize the power that our thinking carries. Suddenly, you're going to want to change your thinking.
Speaker 1:And as we yield our thinking that to line up with God's thoughts, not just what we assume are God's thoughts. But as we sincerely yield and truly want to know the truth, we'll begin to see conditions change that we never could have dreamed could have changed. Every morning, begin to say out loud what God thinks about you and about your situation. Say out loud what God's thinking even if you don't believe it right at first. God, I thank you that I'm healthy.
Speaker 1:And you can be saying that when you're not healthy, but start saying, Lord, I thank you that I'm healthy. Your word tells me that. I thank you that I'm useful and I'm strong. I thank you that I'm a loving person. I thank you, Lord, that I'm successful.
Speaker 1:I'm full of joy. I'm full of peace. I'm full of faith. You may not be seeing it, but start saying it. Start saying it until you convince your thinking.
Speaker 1:I have overcome these areas of weakness because I've been resurrected inside of Christ. And when we say that long enough, it will change our thinking. And the moment your thinking is changed, it's going to change the situation. Our old nature wants to concentrate on the problem. If we're in debt, we think about the debt and so forth.
Speaker 1:Your body will conform to whatever idea and thoughts you hold on to in your mind. We can think, you know, I've tried to budget my money. I've done everything I know. It's just not going around long enough. We've got to think...
Speaker 1:Change our thinking, and suddenly, it changes our circumstances. Your outward condition will finally match up with the thoughts that you've come to live with. And sometimes we're living with thoughts that we think, oh, I don't have any control over that. Change your thinking. Change what you're saying to yourself, And it'll be shocking to you how fast your circumstances will change.
Speaker 1:That's what ultimately determines the condition of your body. It determines the condition of your lungs, your heart, your blood system, your digestive system. They're just carrying out the dictates of the mind. What you think on is showing up in your physical body. We can't blame someone or something else.
Speaker 1:And you say, Well, what about that poor lady whose husband is mean to her? And finally, because of all the things that he's done to her, she finally developed ulcers. How can that be her wrong thinking that caused those ulcers? Well, it's not her fault that her husband's mean. If he wants to get rid of his sin, he's going to have to deal with his own wrong thinking.
Speaker 1:But the ulcers in her body came as a result of wrong thinking on her part. It could have been thoughts of fear, you know, what could happen to me, or thoughts of lack of trust. You know, I'm not sure that God's gonna be there to take care of me. Maybe low self esteem. But that's still wrong thinking on our part, and it will take right thinking in order to change it.
Speaker 1:Right thinking will cause us to have a good life in Jesus. It doesn't matter what is happening in another person. So, ultimately, we can't blame it on somebody else. We can't blame it on a mate. We can't blame it on someone, maybe our boss.
Speaker 1:We have to go back to our own thinking and start the cleanup right there, change our thinking. Now, I'm gonna end with a thought, very simply put. If you have an area that isn't right, then there is an area of wrong thinking and it can only be corrected by cleaning up our thoughts in that area because we are what we think on. We are what we think on, and it can only be changed when we change our thinking. Father, I'm asking you to help us come to the place where we realize that there's things that we need to change.
Speaker 1:Father, help us to realize that it's not just waiting until somebody else changes. Sometimes we think, well, these problems are coming from people that I'm having to live with or live around. But it's not that, Father. It's our thinking. It's our thinking.
Speaker 1:So, father, help us to line our thinking up with you just exactly like Paul and Silas did when when when they were in prison. They they got their thinking to line up with the word, and it set them free. Father, thank you for that. We can change anything that's going wrong in our life by changing our thinking. So help us, father, to do that.
Speaker 1:In Jesus' name. Amen.