The Power of Our Thoughts.

People always tell me "it's all in your mind." To be perfectly honest it is all in our minds. Our victories and accomplishments start in the mind with our thoughts. We can think ourselves into a mess or we can think ourselves into a victory. Our thoughts become our life and future.

The way we talk to ourselves is one of the most important things in our life. We can never get beyond what we think especially what you think of ourselves. These thoughts may always be with us. However, if we will fill our mind with God's word and what He has to say about us, the old stuff will never come back. Because we find absolute truth in God's word.

The mind is the battlefield, it's where Satan attacks. Satan can get us to believe all of his lies and deceptions. What's so terrible about deception is instead of remaining a lie in our minds, it can become our reality if we let it. I've witnessed this first hand. I allowed the devil to fill my head with lies about how I wasn't good enough, that no one could ever love me, and that I was just damaged goods. These thoughts were with me for years, and I allowed it to happen. Even though those lies I allowed in to my mind are nothing like the life that God has given me, I could never get over them. Until someone finally told me recently that we have to think right before we can live right. God has a great plan for our life but if we can't believe it or let it happen, God won't be able to do it.

Get the Best of Evil.

Recently I've been thinking about and experiencing changes in friendship good an bad. After much prayer and reflection and the constant words of the Lord in my life I've come to this conclusion:

Love from the center of who you are; Run for dear life from evil; hold on for dear life to good. Be good friends who love deeply.

Don't burn out; keep yourselves fueled and aflame. Be alert servants of the Lord. Don't quit in hard times; pray all the harder.

Bless your enemies; no cursing under your breath. Laugh with your friends when they're happy; share tears when they're down.

Don't hit back discover beauty in everyone. Don't insist on getting even, that's not for you to do. God says He will be the one to do the judging.

Our Scriptures tell us that if you see your enemy hungry, go feed them; or if he's thirsty find him something to drink. Your generosity will surprise them with goodness. Don't let evil get the best of you, get the best of evil by doing good.

Awesome.

This just about sums up my entire walk with God.

Lay it Down.

Every year around this time we are reminded of the story of Palm Sunday when Jesus was welcomed like a King. The people laid down palms and ferns as a sign of reverence and respect. What habit or behavior are you willing to lay down to welcome Him into your soul?

The Sin You Can't Quit.

"If you’re not willing to stop sinning, you shouldn’t even call yourself a Christian.”

“The answer to habitual sin is to just stop it.”

“If you’re stuck in habitual sin, you should question whether or not you’re really saved.”

Christians manage to say a whole lot of stupid stuff when it comes to the subject of habitual sin. I bet you’ve heard some of those same ideas before. And I bet, just maybe, they freaked you out.

But let’s take those item by item.

"If you’re not willing to stop sinning, you shouldn’t even call yourself a Christian."

There’s a few problems here. First, Christians don’t claim to be sinless—quite the contrary, in fact! 1 John says, “If we claim to be without sin, we lie and the truth is not in us.”

Second, if you actually talk to a person struggling with a habitual sin, what you’re almost certain to find is that they are very willing to stop sinning—they just don’t know how to do it. I work with a whole lot of people stuck in habitual sin, and, consistently, they hate the thing, they don’t want to do the thing, they’ve tried all kinds of stuff to not do the thing, and nothing has worked. Willingness is not the problem.

That brings us to the second idea.

"The answer to habitual sin is to just stop it."

Only someone who has never faced down something impossible would say this. I don’t know about you, but my sinfulness is too big for me. ... It’s almost like I need a savior.

Paul—you know, the guy who wrote most of the New Testament—had the same experience: “For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. … What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” (Romans 7:19,24)

Paul’s answer to this was that he needed Jesus Christ to change him, that his willpower wasn’t enough. He wrote about this in the book of Galatians, when he chastised the people there for trying to live the Christian life “by human effort” (Galatians 3:3).

One of the ways Jesus changes us is to give us wisdom about what’s driving us to that sin in the first place. For example, maybe for some people, their sin of habit is pornography—and they feel really guilty about it. But very few of them have ever thought and prayed on the question, “What’s driving me to look at this in the first place?” A big motivator for some is that they use pornography as a stress release. Well, now, if we want to move past this habitual sin, we’d need to learn how to live a lower-stress life and learn what godly, healthy stress relievers look like. But we’d never come to that point if we’d clenched our teeth and decided to “just stop it” in our own strength. What is the root issue of your sin of habit?

"If you’re stuck in habitual sin, you should question whether or not you’re really saved."

No, no you shouldn’t. Here’s what the Bible says: “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Romans 10:13). If you’ve said, “Jesus, I’m a sinner, and I’m asking you forgive me and take control of my life and heart,” you’re as saved as saved can be.

As I said at the beginning, there are a lot of Christians who say dumb stuff on this topic, and, as we say in the South, bless their hearts. Some of them, I am certain, mean well. They do. They know sin is bad—and it is. They know God doesn’t want us to sin—and He doesn’t.

But these Christians are confused about how we move past a sin. The truth, as we were just saying, is that we do so piece by piece, bit by bit, with wisdom guiding the journey. Human willpower and gritted teeth alone don’t lead to changed lives.

The main thing that our well-meaning brothers and sisters are confused about, though, is the nature of God’s forgiveness. The truth is, it just doesn’t run out.

Jesus said if your brother wrongs you the same way seven times in a single day, you should forgive him (Luke 17:4). Further, you should be prepared to forgive the same person 70 times seven times (Matthew 18:22). And the Bible tells us our forgiveness of others is to mirror God’s forgiveness of us (Ephesians 4:32).

What all this means is that God has an impossibly high ability to forgive us. Which is good, because we have an impossibly high ability to sin. And isn’t that exactly what the Bible says? “Where sin increased, grace increased all the more” (Romans 5:20).

If you’re struggling with habitual sin, first, welcome to being human and a Christian. We’ve all been there. Second, relax for a minute. God’s not going to let you go. Take a deep breath and be still. Then, start asking God for wisdom. Seek out some older Christians who aren’t uptight about the subject. Seek the Lord on what’s driving the sin areas in your life. And step by step, address those behind-the-scenes problems; you will begin to see God change your life right in front of you.