Insight #22

Mind your mind

This week, in continuation of our series, we’re going to be looking at protecting our minds from the devil’s lies and seeds of fear. Well you may be wondering what positive and negative words have to do with the protecting mind. The truth is, it’s what you think about most that will eventually come out of your mouth and be expressed in your actions. Also our thoughts and what we meditate on will eventually form our personality. In Proverbs 23:7, the bible says, “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he”.

I could go on and on about the mind and its importance, but the question is, “how does it apply to the issue of using your words correctly? As we learnt earlier, God made us speaking spirits, but he also gave us minds. The truth is, if you spend all your time thinking about car accidents and negative things, this will be what will form most of your conversational content with friends and people you mean. The danger of this is that the more you think about evil things, the more likely you are to believe in them, even to the point that you begin to doubt God’s ability to keep you safe on the road or in your endeavours. Before you know what is happening, you’re already grooming fear in your heart and the more fear you have in your heart, the less faith you’ll have in your heart. Last week we saw that faith is needed to bring our positive confessions to reality, so also fear is needed by the devil to bring our negative confessions to reality. That’s why so many people are in trouble today because the let so much negative news dwell in their minds and in their speech and they wonder why what they were afraid of ended up happening to them. On the other hand though, when you spend your time soaking in God’s word, you groom the faith in your heart and eliminate the fear in your heart.

Now that we’ve seen why our mind is important to our confession, let’s take a look at how we can keep our minds in the proper position and shape in order to boost our faith and eliminate all fear and doubt.

1) Spend more time in God’s word

In order to keep your mind in shape, you need to soak in more of God’s word, make sure that when you read your bible, you read it to know of God’s promises to you and to understand your identity in Christ and not just as a ceremony. Also you should keep those words on your lips, confess God’s word over yourself and family at least once a day. This is the primary step to building a healthy mind.

2) Watch those you spend the most time with.

If your friends are negatively minded people who are always talking about disasters, and all sorts of evil that goes on in the community, you need to detach from such because the more time you spend with them, the more they plant seeds of fear into your heart and before you know it, you’ll start saying things like, “I can’t travel on this road because a lot of accidents happen there” or “this subject is too hard for me or this teacher is too wicked”

Instead of having those kinds of friends, get friends who speak the word of God constantly and who confess only the positive. Also, you need to ignore those who might try to mock you for being “too holy” or for being “a pretender” or they can say, “your own is too much, aren’t we all Christians? Run away from such people, they will only discourage you and bring the level of your faith down and increase doubt and fear in your hearts. Surround yourself with those that will continually encourage you to do the right thing and also correct you when you’re speaking negatively.

Don’t forget to put all what you’ve learnt today into practice and to get rid of anyone who helps you groom your fear; this could also apply to bad TV programs and music and so on. Make sure at all times and in every situation, you have God’s words on your lips. GOD BLESS YOU

PRAYER; Dear father, please help me watch my mind properly and Lord everything that is bringing fear and negativity into my heart, help me root it out in Jesus’ name, Amen

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Insight #21

This week we’ll continue our study on the effect of words. As we saw last week, God is a speaking spirit. He created earth by his words. And that’s not all, he made us in his image (i.e we’re speaking spirits too) and the great thing about it is that our words carry such a peculiar power that we choose life or death by our words. Let’s look at some more things our words can do.

(iii) The power to overcome

Now, we all go through various challenging situations, we even have some days when absolutely nothing goes our way. This is normal, and is also very easy to deal with but what most of us do is begin to say the negative. I’m sure you’ve heard statements like this, “I don’t know why but I just can’t understand maths” or “Every time I have a headache, it means I have malaria”. These are the kind of things the devil loves holding on to in order to oppress people. As usual, there’s a way out. Most Christian teenagers haven’t realised the fact that the devil can’t do anything to you except you give him permission through your words. YOU MUST KEEP THIS AT THE BACK OF YOUR MIND AT ALL TIMES! It’s extremely important. Let’s take a look at James 4:7

7 Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. (KJV).

I’m going to explain further. So as to avoid complications & misunderstanding, let’s look at the scripture step by step…1). “Submit yourself to God”- as we saw in our previous study,, for your words to carry the desired effect, you must draw close to God and submit yourself to Him. 2) “Resist the devil”- How? -By using your mouth. Every time the devil brings a feeling of sadness, depression, illness to you, instead of going around looking for pity and confessing negative, you pull yourself together and quote the scripture. Remember God said “resist”, not suggest or say softly. You say it with assurance and confidence and the devil will surely flee from you. So remember, the next time you are faced with a tough situation or sickness, God has given you the power to overcome and this power is in your words.

(iv)The power of “total self control”

Have you ever wondered if it was possible to achieve self control such that you’ll never miss quiet time, make silly mistakes and live exceptionally? Well look no further because God has once again made it possible. How? The answer is by controlling your tongue (words that come out of your mouth). Let’s look at James 3:2 in the NLT version.

2) We all make many mistakes, but those who control their tongues can also control themselves in every other way.

Wow. This is a beautiful promise that God has given us, once you can tame your tongue, you can control yourself in every other way. Do you know what this means? Your flesh will be totally subjected to your spirit and therefore, all those things you wanted to do (prayer, worship, bible reading) you will be able to do them smoothly. As wonderful as this sounds, it won’t just come automatically, you have to work very hard for it. That means that you won’t gossip, backbite, and talk about corrupt things with friends, negative and unproductive things. Let me advice you. This particular one might take some time, but God wants us to be persistent because the devil will try to throw serious discouragement your way but you must stand your ground, resist him and claim the beautiful prize God has put in place. Please note that even when you’ve tamed your tongue, it’s a continuous process in which you keep guarding against anything that will corrupt your words (e.g. bad TV programmes, bad friends e.t.c).

Join us next week as we move on in our series. GOD BLESS YOU.

PRAYER; Dear father, please help me to control my tongue and speak the way you speak and to use the right words for each situation I’m in. Please give me the perseverance I need to resist the devil when he tries to make me speak negatively and Lord help me to build a stronger relationship with you in Jesus’ name, Amen

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