2Co 10:4-5 KJV (4) (For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;) (5) Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ
As we move through our lives, moment by moment, day by day, on sub-conscious levels each of us is telling ourselves a story. This is a story we tell ourselves about ourselves. This is the story we tell ourselves about what is happening to us, about what we can or should do about what is happening, and what it all means. We all know that authors and writers makes a living creating and telling stories, but in a very real sense we make our lives in that very same way. The biggest difference between the stories we read in books or the movies we watch verse the ones we are all “writing” in our lives, is that we except the fact that they not real!! However, sadly, most people believe their perception and interpretation of life to be real, what we call ‘Reality‘. When we look at the etymology or origin of the word ‘Reality‘, we find it means “fixed property”, that which is ‘real’.
Now when some people hear this and immediately the story in your mind begins to tell you, “I can see, ear, touch, smell and taste, of course my life is real”. We have narrowed our reality down to only that which can be perceived by the sense. The worst part, we have also been made to believe that it is not possibility of changing reality. In our minds Reality is solid. Reality is—Real! The main reason the enemy wants you to think is because he want you to believe that what you’re going through is real and that there is no way out of it! He knows he can’t stop you! He has to trick you into stopping yourself!
Dan 7:25 and words as an adversary of the Most High it doth speak, and the saints of the Most High it doth wear out, and it hopeth to change seasons and law; and they are given into its hand, till a time, and times, and a division of a time.
Satan is not fighting you with guns and bullets, what he does is speak words of doubt, fear, limitation, dismay and discontentment. What this does is wear you down mentally by causing you daily to relieve some portion of an emotional painful experiance from your past. Weather we believe it or not the enemy knows that if he can keep you listening to your mind’s as it rebroadcast of every defeat, every failure, and every experience of pain, embarrassment and suffering that we will change our own season to match his desire for you!!! He came to kill, steal and destroy our life’s.
Now that I have to talk about the devil for all those religious folks that need a devil to validate their salvation, so you can blame him for the way things are in your life and all the evil the like to sneak and do, can we move on. Can we move from religion to spirituality and relationship?
The truth of the matter, your worst enemy is not the devil, Saint or a demon! We are our own worst enemy; the inner-me not an enemy! We allow just one bad situation from our past, one bad relationship, one parent that wasn’t their to love me, one whatever, and instead of giving it to God when we get saved and moving on with our life many years later we find that we have allowed it to scare our spirit and taint our personality. We say we are over it, whatever our ‘it’ is, but we just won’t let it go on a mental level. We just won’t allow ourselves to get past it and allow God to heal us! God is not going to heal what you will not let go of!
Psa 81:10-12 I am the LORD thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt: open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it. (11) But my people would not hearken to my voice; ….. (12) So I gave them up unto their own hearts' lust: and they walked in their own counsels.
It didn’t say that the devil had anything to do with that! They wouldn’t hear God and he allowed them to believe their own counsel, their own story about their situation. From that they created what they believe to be real!
Carrying the Past:
Php 3:13 GNB Of course, my friends, I really do not think that I have already won it; the one thing I do, however, is to forget what is behind me and do my best to reach what is ahead.
The only place that your past exist is in your mind; it is memory. The bible says, “God is a very present Help in the time of trouble”; the key word being “Present”. You will never experience the peace and power of God in your life if you’re stuck & held captive by your past thoughts and Memories. Memories themselves are not a problem. In fact, memories are really a good thing, when we can learn from our past and from our past mistakes. The problem comes in when we become so obsessed with the past to the point that the past seems as real as or more real than our present.
Heb 12:1 KJV Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us,
One translation says, “let us rid ourselves of everything that gets in the way”. Another translation says, “get rid of everything that slows us down”.
Why do some people come out of bad relationship only to after a few days run right back. I will tell you why, because on a subconscious level, the story they are telling themselves is,” If he beats me, disrespects or cheats on me it is because I deserve it, nobody else wants me, he really loves me he just doesn’t know how to show it!”
The word ‘weight’ in Heb 12:1, in the Greek means, anything that is a burden or hindrance. Think about it, if there is anything that we allow to slow our progress, to weigh us down, to remain a hindrance in our life it is our past!!!!! Why, because we want keep revisiting it!!
The worst part about carrying your past is over time the story that we continuously tell ourselves about our past slowly engraves itself into our physic and we allow it to take on the role of our personality. Sad as it seems, we think that what our past has offered us equates who we are. This personality, this false sense of self, than becomes a prison forged out of past memories, failures and pain!!
Salvation, soteriology, to be saved, to be freed from - comes through the Dead, burial and resurrection of Christ, but yet we have many saints that are imprisoned not by their past, but just their thoughts about the past!!!!! It is this illusion that obscures our true God identity!!!
Dropping the Past:
2Co 10:5 KJV (5) Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ
Your thoughts about what is happening to you are very rarely what is really taking place. Your thoughts only makeup your perception of what is happening based on what has happen in your past; and we even do this in situations that don’t pertain to us and make assumptions about others. We judge what we think other people will do based on our past actions.
The bible says that he (God) won’t put more on us than we can bare, and we are steady declaring to ourselves and everyone that will listen to our story; “I don’t know how I’m going to make it”! It is at that point your imagination will kick in and tell you “God has forgotten you, you going to die in this, you can’t make it”. However, you have to ask God to give you power to shut down all the mental chatter of your mind. The reason you have to stop the mental chatter of your mind is because if you don’t, you find yourself interpreting every situation you go through, good and bad, through the lens of your past pain, defeats, and failures!!!! Yes, Good and bad. A situation can be a blessing and because of the level of negativity you carry around inside your mind you will tell yourself your just waiting for something to go wrong; and as a man thinketh so is he, or so it becomes in his life!
You have to understand that every problem that we experience in our life can be traced back to a story that we are telling ourselves based on a painful past experience! Now you have to understand, we don’t just have one negative story. We have multiple stories that are running in our brain simultaneously.
We have a negative Story that keeps us stuck financially. We have one that keeps drama in our relationships.
We have stories that say it is flu season, and in spite of the work of Christ on the cross being finished and by his strips we are healed, I need to prepare to get sick.
Some people even have stories about why they have to contract such and such kind of disease and die from it!
This is why you have to be careful sitting around playing with ‘what if’ questions too long! What you give your energy, focus and attention to will manifest in your reality! Statistics have proven that when the cable companies introduce the medical channels and start showing the footage of surgeries that people needing surgical percegors increase dramatically!
What is In You Will Come Out:
Luk 6:45 KJV A good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is evil: for of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaketh.
Luk 6:45 GW Good people do the good that is in them. But evil people do the evil that is in them. The things people say come from inside them.
Now just in reading that verse it is really enough said, but allow me to go just a little deeper.
The word translated ‘heart’ here in the King James is the Greek word kar-dee'-ah which is literally translated, thoughts, feelings or mind. The word translated ‘Treasure’ in this verse comes from another Greek word, ‘thay-sow-ros'‘, that literally means “a place that a deposit was made“. So what this verse is saying is, the good and the evil that comes forth out of person is only due to a good or a evil deposits that they allowed to be made in their minds.
I find it interesting that the word translated ‘evil’ in this verse had nothing to do with a person’s essential character. The word evil in this verse meant “a place that had been influenced by a hurtful situation or painful experience“. The stories that we are telling ourselves are stories that are birthed out the painful, hurtful experiences of our past - “I am not smart enough”, I am not petty enough”, I am too this…”, I am too that….
I am:
I don’t have time to mess with it right now but, whatever you attach to your “I am” is always determined by whatever you have an abundance of in your heart. Also what you attach to your “I am” will come looking for you. The phrase “I am” is the door that allows access into your life!!!! If you keep declaring you’re broke it like send a personal invitation for things to start breaking and tearing up so it will take your money. At that point the only thing that can manifest in your life is more brokenness.
Have what you Say:
If your one of those people that wakes up in the morning and says, “this going to be one of those days“, what else should you expect to show up in your life other than what you ask for? The bible declares God to be a gentleman. He is not one to force himself on you. God is not in the business of overriding your belief system! The bible says, in Mark 11:22 that we can have exactly what we say if we doubt not. If you have no doubt in your mind that things are not going to get better, then you call that reality in to existence.
In the same token, right in the mist of your worst situation you can change your story of negativity & defeat, to a story of faith & victory !! The bible says that magnifies his Word above his Name. That obligates God to bring you out when you open your mouth and become “a voice” for the Word of God! The best part about it is when God brings you out you never look like what you been through.
What you saying about your situation is your story! I declare if your change your negative Story you can change your life!!!!
Remember, what you attach to your “I am” is determined by what you have an abundance of in your heart or thought life. Part ‘B’ of Luke 6:45 says -
Luk 6:45 KJV… for of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaketh.
You can never change your negative Story or your life until you see the danger of not allowing God to purify your thoughts. The bible constantly speaks and say it several places in several different ways, but the meat of it is to teach not to “be conformed” to world’s way of thinking, but be yet transformed by the renewing of your mind.
So we can remain balanced, I am not asking you to walking around and act like there are no bad experience in your past and to ignore what you may presently be dealing with. However, what I am saying is you can change your future by changing the stories that you are presently telling yourself about your past and what you’re presently going through. You are where you are because of the stories you are telling yourself!
Abraham & Sarah:
Abram, father of none, heard God, changed his story and became Abraham, father of nations. How? By changing the story he was telling himself about himself and his situation.
Sarai, heard God in Her husband, changed her story and became Sarah. How? By changing the story she was telling herself about herself and her situation.
It is important that you see this -
Gen 17:15 KJV And God said unto Abraham, As for Sarai thy wife, thou shalt not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall her name be.
Not only did Abraham have to change his story, he had to assist in changing his wife’s story.
The only reason Tammy Michelle Tate was willing to become Tammy Tate Wilson is because the story that I present to her about us being together sounded better than the story she had been telling herself about why she was single.
God has only given you power to change your own negative Story. However, sometimes you have to change the negative Story that you are telling yourself about the people around you. You don’t change it for them, you change your story about them so you can change how you treat them. People act toward you according to your mental story about them. If you have a positive story about your kids, people on the job, or in your church and things go smooth, but if we allow a bad situation to change our mental story it will unknowing affects the relationship.
The reason a marriage goes bad is not just because of what anyone does to the other person. Marriages go wrong when one of the individuals allows situation to change their story about their spouse. Ask yourself, what mental story about my children or spouse that could be influencing my behavior toward them in a negative way?
Jonah:
Jonah, who did not want to go to Niniva, and ended up in the belly of the fish, changed his story by praying and prayer. In the prayer he calling things that were not as though they had already taken place. He prayed as if he was already out of the fish!
Jon 2:1-10 KJV (8) They that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy.
When Jonah was speaking of “Lying Vanities” in verse 8, what he was saying was if he was to trust what his situation looked like over his belief in God to deliver that he would have miss or forsook the mercy of God that was readily available to him.
One of the words for, Nineveh literally means, ‘agreeable‘. When Jonah was in the belly of the fish, the changing of his negative Story brought him into a place agreement with the will of God for his life.
Joshua & Caleb:
Joshua and Caleb didn’t deny that there were Giants in the land, what they did was change the negative Story! They heard what the other ten spies said, and they changed the negative Story.
You have to be willing to hear what the doctor says and change the story!
You have to be willing to hear what the bank says about your credit and change the story!
You have to be able to see ever thing you love take away from you and change the story!
Tit 1:15-16 BBE To the clean in heart all things are clean: but to those who are unclean and without faith nothing is clean; they become unclean in mind and in thought. (16) They say that they have knowledge of God, while by their acts they are turning their backs on him; …
The ten spies as well as Joshua and Caleb, saw the situation based on the abundance of the deposit that thay had allowed to be placed in their hearts. They could not see the situation any other way than the way they did! The ten told a story based on the negativity, fear, and disbelief that was in their hearts. Caleb told his story based on the abundant deposit and influence of his faith in God’s ability to faithful!!!!
People don’t believe that God can bring them out of the situations they are in because they believe what they see and the negative Story they tell themselves about what they see more than they believe the Word of God.
This is the same process that happens in your mind every time you’re faced with a situation that demands you to make a decision. For most of us, our story is just like the children of Israel, “yes this is a good Idea, and it would really change my life for the better, but!!!!!” “I would go back to school to get the education that I need, but…..!!! Many of us would do so much better if we would get our BUTTS out of the way!
Num 13:30 GW Caleb told the people to be quiet and listen to Moses. Caleb said, "Let's go now and take possession of the land. We should be more than able to conquer it."
In Num 13:30, we have to learn to do to our mental chatter, our story, exactly what Caleb did to the other ten spies, tell they to shut up, and start telling another story! Caleb told the people we are well able!!! Let me let you in on a secret; in the natural they were not able!!!!! That didn’t matter Caleb had decided to rewrite the story based on his faith in what God had said way back over in Exo 3:8 KJV
“And I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey;”
Ask yourself, “What has God promised you that you have allowed your own doubt, negativity and fear to talk you out of?” There is no way you can get anything from God when you Confession of Faith and You Belief System are not in agreement!
You Can’t Have It Both Ways:
In 1Kings 18:21 of the God’s Word translation of the bible, Elijah said, "How long will you try to have it both ways? In other words, how long are you going to come to church, jump, shout and hear good preaching about how mighty and powerful God is to deliver, only to go home listen to your own story about what your situations when it is testing time?
Jas 1:6-8 KJV But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed. (7) For let not that man think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord. (8) A double minded man is unstable in all his ways.
Jas 1:6-8 GW When you ask for something, DON'T HAVE ANY DOUBTS. A person who has doubts is like a wave that is blown by the wind and tossed by the sea. (7) A person who has doubts shouldn't expect to receive anything from the Lord. (8) A person who has doubts is thinking about two different things at the same time and can't make up his mind about anything.
What Hinders Prayer:
Want to know why you can’t get an answer to your prayer? There it is!!! Your trying to believe His story, while listen to your story. Your story says you’re not this and you’re not that and you can’t do this and you can’t do that. Your story will even at times go into great dealt to explain to the reasoning part of your mind why it has to be this way, why God won’t do it for you, and why you deserve to be in the shape you’re in.
Your victory is in your mouth!!!! The story that is keeping many of us stuck exist just only on a thought level of consciousness. What I mean by that is, many times these are things we only say mentally to ourselves; never out loud. However, when you begin to change your story you have to do more than just think about it, you have to open your mouth!!! You have to learn to open you own mouth and say, “If God said it I believe it and that settles it!” The bible says that you have to have a readiness to give to every man and reasonable answer to your hope. Well, brothers and sister, I am here as a witness to tell you that some times that man or woman that you have to give an answer to why you believe God is your own self!!!
Mar 11:22-24 GW Jesus said to them, "Have faith in God! (23) I can guarantee this truth: This is what will be done for someone who doesn't doubt but believes what he says will happen: …..
God’s Promises are Ye and Amen. They are waiting on you to speak! Your future is dependent on it! Speak into the Atmosphere!
