Free Your Mind

Sow a thought, reap an action:
Sow an action, reap a habit;
Sow a habit, reap a character;
Sow a character, reap a destiny.
~ Samuel Smiles

Day Thirteen (a post from the 33 Day Challenge http://www.nicolelhvaughn.com/?cat=9)

One of the first things I realized after I was wholly surrendered to my Christ was that my thought life had gotten me in A LOT of trouble. My thoughts ended up becoming my actions... every time. 

I learned this playing ball.
I had a coach that taught me to lay on may back and shoot my basket ball in the air and catch it and visualize it going in the stripping the net, I did... and when game time came it worked. If I wasn't practicing physically, I was mentally. I did the same in softball as a pitcher. I visualized where I wanted the ball to go then I pitched it.

I learned the power of my thoughts and mind as I read books. I honestly cannot to tell you half the time if a picture in my head, a story line memory, is from a book I read or a movie I saw. It gets all tangled up in the filing cabinet of my brain because when I read it is just as visual to me as a movie.

I didn't realize the danger of my thoughts until I began to grow in Christ. It had never really occured to me that my thought life really mattered. I used it for sports and for getting into a good book... but I had never connected the fact that my failure in sexual and emotional integrity had anything to do with my thought life...

  As for you, my son Solomon, know the God of your father,

and serve Him with a whole heart and a willing mind;

for the LORD searches all hearts,

and understands every intent of the thoughts.

If you seek Him, He will let you find Him;

but if you forsake Him, He will reject you forever.

1 Chronicles 28:9

Then I looked back on my life.
I realized that I had been playing out sexual immorality and impurity in my mind through the books I was reading and the songs I was listening to and the movies I was watching. So when you throw in a little alcohol with a mind full of trash... well I was powerless to fight.
I was in fact decieved.
I was defeated.
I was in the process of being destroyed.

It was working... my inability to fight and my guilt and shame from being unable, plus the emotional and mental and spiritual damage that I was placing band-aid over band-aid over and self-medicating with alcohol, drugs, and illusion... My thoughts turned from visualizing sexual immorality to visualizing my suicide.

What would be the best way.
How could I do it without hurting my family.
It would have to look like an accident.
I don't want my family blaming themselves becasue it's not there fault...
I just can't live with me anymore.

Have you been there?
Are you there?

Wretched man that I am!

Who will set me free from the body of this death? 

Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!

Romans 7:24-25

Praise God in Christ Jesus my Life and my Lord! Yes He can set you fee from the body of this death! This death of your soul that happens little by little through sin and fear and failure... your spirit is already dead without Christ... so Satan is after your soul... your hope that will cause you to cry out to your God for help, for salvation, for life. He wants to silence your voice. To keep you from confessing the truth and finding life... he wants you to believe his lies and die. 

Oh honey, don't believe him.

Don't let him silence your voice and destroy your soul.

Cry out to Christ and let Him save your soul and give you His Spirit so that you will be complete in Him. Whole... mind, body, soul, and spirit.  

When I cried out to God for help and called on the name of Jesus to save me and wa wholly surrendered to Him I began to study words of truth like a mad woman. I was tired of studying lies. I needed more life in me... I was tired of death.

The more I studied the Word, the more I realized how dangerous my thoughts could be to me, to my relationship with God, and to my relationship with others. I realized it began in my mind and the was acted out in my actions... then I read:

For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh, 

for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh,

but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. 

We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing

raised up against the knowledge of God,

and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, 

and we are ready to punish all disobedience,

whenever your obedience is complete.

2 Corinthians 10:3-6 

Take every thought captive. I read this and I thought and I said to God... how? How do I do it? How do I take every thought captive? What does that mean?

Guess what he told me.
And He taught me.
He's a pretty good Father like that :-)

The fist thing He taught me was that I needed to go on the offensive. I needed to stop filling my mind with the trash I had been feeding it. Then I needed to fill my mind with His Word. Cleaning out the cup does no good if you leave it empty... You have to fill it with a nutricous drink and actually put it to your mouth and drink... and swallow and allow it to become a part of you and infiltrate your system.

Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God,

to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice,

acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. 

And do not be conformed to this world,

but be transformed by the renewing of your mind,

so that you may prove what the will of God is,

that which is good and acceptable and perfect. 

Romans 12:1-2

If I wanted my actions to be holy the first thing I had to do was get my thoughts holy... I needed a mind make-over. And ladies if you haven't picked up on it yet... that's what this challenge has been focused on thus far... a mind make-over. Thirty-three days to a new you... if you continue in what God is opening your eyes to as we go though this challenge.

Cause here's the thing,

"No matter how well you try to prevent tempting thoughts from entering through the gate of your mind, some will slip through. Life brings temptations. The day you stop experiencing temptation isn't the day you stop reading romance novels or watching R-rated movies or the day you put a wedding ring on your finger or the day you fast and pray for twelve hours straight. The day you stop experienceing temptation is the day you die. Temptation comes part and parcel with being human, and you are no exception to that rule."

~ Shannon Ethridge 

So your specific challenge until March 17th... take every thought captive. In your minds... when temptations invade. Take them captive. Rebuke them. Send them back to hell where they came from and then fill your mind with the Truth of God that refutes that sinful thought.

And if you are single don't think on comitting acts of sexual immorality with that guy... think on how to say NO when that guy wants something that belongs to THE GUY.

Ladies practice this with the young ladies in your life. Teach them to rehearse saying no in their mind. I would go so far as to write out a script and rehearse a play by play. If he says this you say that, and if he says this, then you can say that...   

Free your mind!

Your actions will follow...